========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 00:24:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Getting the word out Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Wgy don't you stop talking about "getting the word out" and get it out by sending copies for list members to review on line? At 12:50 PM 1/31/97 -0500, Steven W. Marks wrote: >On Fri, 31 Jan 1997, robert drake wrote: >> ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 22:06:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: oh, alright (clothing) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Miekal, i'm more of an off-beat poet. George, however, is the reverse. Er, that is, he always claps on the beat. db ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 00:33:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: main Subject: Re: Query: Performance and spirit In-Reply-To: <199702010139.UAA00578@chass.utoronto.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII _ghost dance: origins of religion_, weston la barre (waveland; 1970). dan featherston > > I'm looking for any suggestions (books, essays, manifestos, whatever) re. > > spirit possession, spirti doctors, getting the spirit, conjuring in > > connection with performance and the performative. Also essays about spirit > > possession and subjectivity. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 00:32:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Query: Performance and spirit Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Anything by Lydia Cabrera. Susan Levine has translated some of the stories. If you have Spanish go to Cabrera's _El Monte_, as close to a bible as santeria has, and the source, alas, for almost all of the "original" work in English since the 50's. Also check out Verges (I've forgotten first name), the great student of Condomble in Brazil. For that you'll need French. Thompson's Flash of the Spirit is readily available, but highly unreliable. Susan Sherman translated a Cuban play about santeria possession years ago, called, if I remember her spelling, Chango de Ima. Also check out Barbara Myerhoff's _Peyote Hunt_, and a look at Victor Turner's performance theory stuff would probably be helpful. I second the Hurston--a great book. Maya Deren also wrote about this at about the same time. At 08:39 PM 1/31/97 +73900, you wrote: >> >> I'm looking for any suggestions (books, essays, manifestos, whatever) re. >> spirit possession, spirti doctors, getting the spirit, conjuring in >> connection with performance and the performative. Also essays about spirit >> possession and subjectivity. > >Try Zora Neal Hurston's _Tell My Horse_. One of the best things on >Voudon and possession I've ever read. And of course Ishmael Reed's >_Mumbo Jumbo_. > >Mike >mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 00:55:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Getting the word out Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Date: Fri, 03 Jan 1997 01:23:28 >To: r.drake@csu-e.csuohio.edu (robert drake) >From: Mark Weiss >Subject: Re: Getting the word out > >.>praps what i'm saying, in marketing terms, is that most poetry is >>a niche market--and even moreso, most of the poetry that is generally >>discussed on this list. niche marketing techniques are intrinsically >>different than mass-marketing--you build an audience one reader at a >>time--and that frinstance reviews in magazines that already have the >>attention of your small target audience are likely to be more useful >>than broader-coverage mags--in addition, those reviews are more likely >>to be carefully thoughtout & relevent... likewise ads--not only can >>none of us afford ad space in the NYTs Book Review, but i'm sceptical >>that such would generate sales _or_ get books into interested readers' >>hands... whereas an ad in Avec might not only reach an interested >>audience, but might help keep that mag in business as well... > >Good point, and helpful. > > >>some of what i hear from you tho ("They have been educated to not read >>poetry--maybe they can be uneducated") seems to me to follow from assumptions >>about quality, as if that were some universal absolute. i dont >>assume that others "should" agree with me, or that they dont agree with >>me because they're ignorant, or because they've been taught not to. >>& frankly, i find a program that uneducates, or re-educates a population >>away from "wrong" ideas, kind ov scary... > > >I think you misunderstand my drift. I'm not saying that the kids are taught not to read the poetry I value, I'm saying they're taught that reading any poetry is a chore and that poets are involved in a strange game of mystification. I do think that most complex poetry (take the term as you like) is for most people an acquired taste. The product of a Rousseauean education that no one is likely to receive anyway, may chant his native woodnotes wild, but that may not help him a whole lot with, say, Pound, or Stein, or (fill in whoever you like). But that potential reader is more likely to have his/her curiosity peaked to make the effort if she/he has a memory of pleasurable associations with the idea of poetry. Like, maybe that person will want to look at the poetry section in the bookstore, or even share discovered poems with friends. But the theme cunningly hidden in the foliage idea of poetry as expounded by HS teachers who likewise are not particularly excited by poetry--any poetry--is not likely to facilitate that response. >I'm talking about the teaching of some basic skills and the allowing of an openness to change and the unexpected, as well as perhaps the inspiring of an aspiration to a particular kind of pleasure and understanding. >But let's call a spade a spade here. All teaching has an authoritarian element. We teach what we know, but also what we think the students should know, whether it's computer skills or the three rs or fly fishing. And the arts, any art, is also of necessity authoritarian--we hope, I think most of us, that our poems will act upon the reader and listener, perhaps not always in predictable ways, but it's us who lay out the parameters (not to slight the reader's part in this--no matter how active the reader may be, if I don't at least join him in saying play ball he'll play in someone else's field, if at all), and it's us who are saying, "look at this, look at that" out of the limitless field that's available. I'm aware that I may be both poet and audience, but I don't think that changes the dynamic) We do this because it's important to us, for reasons that are both various and obscure. Not everyone feels the need or desire to do so. > >>as fr libraries: i have a wonderful hardback copy of _in the american >>tree_, which i bought used at the library booksale. it had been added >>to the collection by ken warren, director of the library & a LangPo fan. >>it had never been checked out (over 7 years). as a publisher, i think >>it's a great idea to get libraries to buy my books. but i have mixed >>feelings at the thought that public libraries can, or should, stand in >>for the NEA by subsidizing the publication of literatures... > >Well, thanks to that library you found a book. >In the old--not-so-old--days when libraries had acquisition budgets I would walk into Butler Library at Columbia, even as a graduate preceptor, and have them order books that I thought they should have. Maybe they sat there unread forever, and maybe they were deaccessioned (so much nicer than "trashed"), or maybe, as has happened to me hundreds of times, they were stumbled across by a curious student who was astonished, then obsessed. Lives change that way. And it does help to get the word out. > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 08:24:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Query: Performance and spirit MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit check out the Maria Sabina material, the Mazatec shamaness who used mushrooms to get into a healing trance & thus "possessed" (silly word) composed & performed her chants -- I don't know if the book is still in print, but you can find extracts in a number of Rothenberg edited anthologies. -- Pierre > > > > I'm looking for any suggestions (books, essays, manifestos, whatever) re. > > > spirit possession, spirti doctors, getting the spirit, conjuring in > > > connection with performance and the performative. Also essays about spirit > > > possession and subjectivity. -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/ http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything that allows men to become rooted, through values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in _one_ language, is the principle of alienation which constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, [...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 09:27:18 -0500 Reply-To: Wendy Battin Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Query: Performance and spirit Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Julie, Do you know Antero Alli's _All Rites Reversed_? Vigilantero Press, & also available, I think, on the web. & of course there's Deren's _Divine Horsemen_. Wendy --------------------------------------------------- Wendy Battin wjbat@conncoll.edu (home) http://camel.conncoll.edu/ccother/wjbat/ (CAPA) http://shain.lib.conncoll.edu/CAPA/capa.html --------------------------------------------------- "It is not the crocodile's job to yell "Watch out for the crocodile!"--Henri Michaux ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 10:09:36 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: antero alli MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit antero alli's Paratheatrial ReSearch Webpage INTERMEDIA EXPERIMENTS & RITUAL TECHNOLOGY http://labridge.com/PTR/ were trying to get antero out to dreamtime fer a spell in may miekal -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 10:17:40 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Performance and spirit and quest MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit & throw in this jumble of books anything by ethnobotanists Richard Schultes, Terrance McKenna, Mark Plotkin & others on the ethnologies of entheogenic plants & ritual-- & our group, The Driftless Academy of Botanical Apparitions has a 45 minute video called "The Lady of the Gourd, & her Fertility" of a fertility ritual we performed as Minneapolis College of Art & Design. We went to the space in may of the year, built a 25 foot log tower (looked kinda like a boy scout signal tower) & planted gourds when spent the summer growing up it & covering this huge tower. Later in oct we invoked a fertility ritual with Lyx as the nascent gourdess coming into being as the gourds are harvest & the tower in brought down. (Unfortunately the Minneapolis fire department wouldnt give us a permit to burn it down, so we got this crazy pyrotechnicist instead.) Miekal -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 11:15:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: hart crane, charlie mingus & sonny rollins Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Aldon & others who responded to my original post--thanks for the other titles.I couldn't respond sooner--computer problems at home. It was the image of Sonny Rollins that made me try reading the proem "to Brooklyn Bridge" in the first place--I mentioned him first, his woodshedding there, then read the Crane over the Mingus (band's selection) & went into Paul Blackburn's poem "Listening to Sonny Rollins at the Five Spot" (CP 316). That poem tries to catch the way Rollins fragments a melody in a solo, by fragmenting the lyrics to "There Will Never Be Another You." Jay Bregman, sax, played it. Last poem was Blackburn's "Barrel Roll," one of my favorites, also with gulls, the East River, the bridge, and the feel of a jazz solo. The set worked pretty well, though I didn't do well by the Five Spot one--that should be more sung, more melodic than I did it. As for the other post, yes, I see Crane down there listening to Rollins ("Under thy shadow by the piers I waited,") & I can almost make out what he's doing in those shadows with Whitman! Sylvester Pollet Backwoods Broadsides National Poetry Foundation RR5 Box 3630 University of Maine Ellsworth ME 5752 Neville Hall 04605-9529 Orono, Maine USA 04469-5752 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 11:35:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: Getting the word out In-Reply-To: <199702010855.AAA07406@armenia.it.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 10th fl butler stax is the place to be for poetry up through about 1983, then it trails off... but there are some good books there and mysteriously elsewhere, two copies of B Mayer & A Waldman's 'basketball article', one in poetry one in sports .. thanks M Weiss if that was you who put all those books there .. Jordan Davis ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 12:07:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: Recent Publications, Hebronics, & Neologisms Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" herb-- cleanin out the mailbox--do you have an address fr Tzadik? &, asever, if you'd be interested in writing up a short 'view of the disk fr a future TRR, wd be welcomd yr pal luigi >Maria & other list members involved in the various threads refered to in >the subject line may be interested in a recent recording by Zeena Parkins >that is based, in part, on texts in Rotwelsch, a Yiddish-based argot used >by Jewish gangsters Germany from the 14th century into at least the late >19th century. > >The disc is called "Mouth=Maul=Betrayer" & it's in the often oddly curated >Radical Jewish Culture series on the Tzadik label. The two compositions on >the disc are Maul, where most of the Rotwelsch is, & Blue Mirror, which >deals with Jewish gangsters in the US in the first half of the 20th >century. These aren't narrative music theater pieces, so your sense of >their use-value may vary. > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 09:15:37 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Subject: Re: Query: Performance and spirit Comments: cc: jrothenb@ucsd.edu As a followup to Pierre's note regarding Maria Sabina and the above query, it surprised me that while he mentioned my own anthologies, he forgot to say that there's an excerpt from her veladas (night chants) in his and my Poems for the Millennium. I also have excerpts in the revised Technicians of the Sacred and in Shaking the Pumpkin, both of which should still be easily available. The Maria Sabina book in question (gathered by fellow Mazatecan Alvaro Estrada and translated into English by Henry Munn) was published by now defunct Ross-Erikson Publishers and is, I suppose, now only available through libraries. Technicians of the Sacred was my own opening shot on questions of this sort, which seemed to me then (& now) as very much tied up with the sources of poetry etc. & persistent even among many of us who pretend a distance from such matters. I think here of David Antin with his overt denials of the sacred and the dream, say -- & his retreat in the latter case at least after that strategy had run its course. (Since David is my oldest friend in all of this, I know whereof I speak.) But I would also suggest, among others, that Robert Duncan remains an outstanding guide on matters of that kind, although the performance question was never that much central to him. Dennis Tedlock's works (& Barbara Tedlock's too) would be good examples of dealing with the traditionally (ethnopoetically) spiritual and not descending into any version of new-agism. Anyway it seems to me that this is touching on a crucial problematic of twentieth-century poetry (and much of the 19th before it) -- certainly on the question of poets' and artists' relations to other times & places & to their own workings & concerns. Take as intros to the twentieth century such works as Kandinsky's Spritual in Art or Mallarme's The Book, Spritual Instrument. And the title of the latter is also that of the latest publication I've attempted -- a gathering of works & specuations on contemporary & ethnopoetic (traditional) approaches to the book (including, let me add, the book as an instrument of performance). The books (from my own workings) that are still in print are Technicians, Shaking the Pumpkin, Exiled in the Word (retitling of A Big Jewish Book), and Symposium of the Whole (essays & poetics by various hands, co-edited with Diane Rothenberg). Notably out of print are Revolution of the Word (where the theme remains beneath the surface) and America a Prophecy (co-edited with George Quasha) where it's very much writ large. And the new anthology with Pierre gets at it from Blake to Jabes, say, & in the second volume brings it toward the present. Okay & greetings. JERRY ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 09:16:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: divine horsepersons In-Reply-To: <199702011708.MAA29571@csu-e.csuohio.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Deren also, not surprisingly, made a film also titled "Divine Horsemen" -- It IS available on video, though probably not at your local Blockbuster -- Two students just gave me the video of "Pull My Daisy" as a gift -- Not sure what I think of it as film yet -- but Kerouac's narration (adapted from his "Beat Generation" play) was much better than I'd expected -- will provide title of that Baraka story Maria mentions later today -- it's in my room across campus (Yes, I'm actually living ON campus this semester -- never did it when I was a student -- Now I can see why it might not have been such a good idea at age 19) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 11:25:02 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: contact/review MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Steven W. Marks wrote: > > On Fri, 31 Jan 1997, robert drake wrote: > > > > but i'm not clear frm the above paragraph if yr equating "good magazine" > > w/ "mainstream publication"... there are plenty of good magazines running > > reviews and substantial critical work--Witz, Poetry Project Newsletter, > > Poetic Briefs, Mondo Hunkamooga, Chain, Texture, Compound Eye, Factsheet > > Five, Dusty Dog Reviews, Small Press Review, my own TapRoot Reviews... > > > By "good," I mean magazines like those you list as well as ones like > Another Chicago Magazine, Green Mountains Review, Boston Book Review, > American Book Review, etc. Is there a contact list with addresses of all these publications, & any others that might carry reviews, maybe at epc? miekal ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 12:41:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: contact/review Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >Is there a contact list with addresses of all these publications, & any >others that might carry reviews, maybe at epc? > >miekal spencer selby's "List of Experimental Poetry/Art Magazines" is currently the "EPC Selected Resource", & it has most of those addresses-- http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/selby/current.html didnt check fr them all, backchannel me if there's some missing... lbd ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 12:00:33 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Recent Publications, Hebronics, & Neologisms i just picked up mouth=maul=betrayer, it's fantastic! thanks herb. one thing that strikes me as very charming and strange is the fascination with the minutiae of jewish gangster life, obviously carefully researched and following, it seems, walter benjamin's all-too-well-founded alarmist dictum that no piece on information or detritus of a culture is too negligle to saved --all glossed with the note that the compositions "evoke a side of Jewish experience perhaps best forgotten." typically hebronic logic! md In message <199702011708.MAA29571@csu-e.csuohio.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > herb-- > > cleanin out the mailbox--do you have an address fr Tzadik? &, asever, > if you'd be interested in writing up a short 'view of the disk fr > a future TRR, wd be welcomd > > yr pal > luigi > > >Maria & other list members involved in the various threads refered to in > >the subject line may be interested in a recent recording by Zeena Parkins > >that is based, in part, on texts in Rotwelsch, a Yiddish-based argot used > >by Jewish gangsters Germany from the 14th century into at least the late > >19th century. > > > >The disc is called "Mouth=Maul=Betrayer" & it's in the often oddly curated > >Radical Jewish Culture series on the Tzadik label. The two compositions on > >the disc are Maul, where most of the Rotwelsch is, & Blue Mirror, which > >deals with Jewish gangsters in the US in the first half of the 20th > >century. These aren't narrative music theater pieces, so your sense of > >their use-value may vary. > > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 10:22:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Query: Performance and spirit Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm sending this message a second time, as I have no idea if it's getting through--it's not getting back to me. I'd appreciate if someone on the list would tell me if it's been posted. Anything by Lydia Cabrera. Susan Levine has translated some of the stories. If you have Spanish go to Cabrera's _El Monte_, as close to a bible as santeria has, and the source, alas, for almost all of the "original" work in English since the 50's. Also check out Verges (I've forgotten first name), the great student of Condomble in Brazil. For that you'll need French. Thompson's Flash of the Spirit is readily available, but highly unreliable. Susan Sherman translated a Cuban play about santeria possession years ago, called, if I remember her spelling, Chango de Ima. Also check out Barbara Myerhoff's _Peyote Hunt_, and a look at Victor Turner's performance theory stuff would probably be helpful. I second the Hurston--a great book. Maya Deren also wrote about this at about the same time. At 08:39 PM 1/31/97 +73900, you wrote: >> >> I'm looking for any suggestions (books, essays, manifestos, whatever) re. >> spirit possession, spirti doctors, getting the spirit, conjuring in >> connection with performance and the performative. Also essays about spirit >> possession and subjectivity. > >Try Zora Neal Hurston's _Tell My Horse_. One of the best things on >Voudon and possession I've ever read. And of course Ishmael Reed's >_Mumbo Jumbo_. > >Mike >mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 10:39:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Performance and Spirit Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" All them christian mystics, incl. Sts Teresa and Francis and tons and tons of others. There's also a pretty extensive sufi literature, also some Jewish esoteric, but someone else onthe list will have to give the details on this. If this thread continues we might produce a master bibliography. We also might use up a lot of gigabytes. Whatever blurs the boundaries. Beware the man from Porlock. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 13:45:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Steven W. Marks" Subject: Re: contact/review In-Reply-To: <32F319F5.DCF@mwt.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Don't forget Dustbooks' directories. Int'l Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses Directory of Poetry Publishers You can find Boston Book Review through the Bookwire site. __________________________________________________ Samples of reviews, criticism and poetry at http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 11:52:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Recent Publications, Hebronics, & Neologisms Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi Luigi, Since you sent this to the list, I'll respond here too. I don't have an address for Tzadik at hand, but the label is distributed by Koch International and should be available at many larger record stores: Tower, HMV, Borders, etc. In the US you can call 800 688-3482. or there's a Web site As I mentioned to most of the folks who back channelled me on this, if you go to a store, you'll probably get better results if you start out asking about John Zorn's label Tzadik, rather than about Zeena Parkins or Rotwelsch. As to the review, I probably don't have time, but, Luigi, is TRR branching (sorry) out further into new music now, or is this a one time offer? Bests Herb >herb-- > >cleanin out the mailbox--do you have an address fr Tzadik? &, asever, >if you'd be interested in writing up a short 'view of the disk fr >a future TRR, wd be welcomd > >yr pal >luigi > >>Maria & other list members involved in the various threads refered to in >>the subject line may be interested in a recent recording by Zeena Parkins >>that is based, in part, on texts in Rotwelsch, a Yiddish-based argot used >>by Jewish gangsters Germany from the 14th century into at least the late >>19th century. >> >>The disc is called "Mouth=Maul=Betrayer" & it's in the often oddly curated >>Radical Jewish Culture series on the Tzadik label. The two compositions on >>the disc are Maul, where most of the Rotwelsch is, & Blue Mirror, which >>deals with Jewish gangsters in the US in the first half of the 20th >>century. These aren't narrative music theater pieces, so your sense of >>their use-value may vary. >> Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 11:52:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: hart crane, charlie mingus & sonny rollins Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sylvester Pollet wrote: > went into Paul >Blackburn's poem "Listening to Sonny Rollins at the Five Spot" (CP 316). >That poem tries to catch the way Rollins fragments a melody in a solo, by >fragmenting the lyrics to "There Will Never Be Another You." >The set worked pretty well, though I didn't do well by the Five >Spot one--that should be more sung, more melodic than I did it. There's a recording of Blackburn reading this on an old Folkways disc (New Jazz Poets Folkways 09751) & he doesn't sing it. He does try to capture some of the rhythmic quality of the song, though. ANY of the old Folkways recordings can be obtained on cassette from Smithsonian Folkways Mail Order, 414 Hungerford Dr, #444, Rockville, MD 20850, or (800) 410-9815 or check the Web site: They have a lot of amazing stuff (not just music and poetry either - Sounds of the Junkyard, Tony Schwartz' great field recordings of New York City, and much more). Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 16:59:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: Recent Publicactions... & bruce andrews Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Hi Luigi, > >Since you sent this to the list, I'll respond here too. aurggh! damnd reply button... >... but, Luigi, is TRR branching >(sorry) out further into new music now, or is this a one time offer? > >Bests wea've always been pretty loose, intermedia & audio art etc., anything that has some language component, which doesnt leave out much... & in that vein-- hadnt seen it mentioned, and bruce andrews still doesnt have email(?), but i got th postcard: SALLY SILVERS & DANCERS in concert, presented by Dance Theater Workshop w/ original music & sound collage by Bruce Andrews Feb. 13, 15, 19, & 22, 8:00pm Bessie Schonberg Theater, 219 W. 19th St, NY NY reservations: 212-924-0077 wisht i cd be there... lbd ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 18:20:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: happy new year In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19970131174510.006ebf00@bway.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Does anyone know the correct tonal pronunciations for "gung hay fat choy"? I'm reading some stuff to some people in a room on Saturday night in DC and I want to welcome them to the new Ox Year but don't want to tell a roomful of people by mistake that their mothers eat army boots, or something. If I were going to do that I'd want to do it on purpose. Can anyone help? Gwyn, herself an ox ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 15:55:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: happy new year In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The Baraka story Maria mentioned is titled "The Screamers" -- first collected in _Tales_, subsequently reprinted in _Three Books by Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones_ -- and out of print ever since -- hmmmmm as Maria said, not exactly an instance of spirit possession, but certainly about getting the spirit -- suggest listening to Sun Ra live at Montreaux whilst reading this tale -- new book by a colleague: _An Introduction to Classical Korean Literture_ by Kichung Kim in M.E. Sharpe publishers new series "New Studies in Asian Culture" lots on poetry here -- available in paperback ISBN 1-56324-786-0 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 16:06:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: Re: Recent Publications, Hebronics, & Neologisms Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The address for Tzadik is: 61 East Eighth Street Suite 126 New York, NY 10003 I believe they've also released a disc by Ben Goldberg's "New Klezmer Trio," a group based in the Bay Area and composing/performing music similar to Zorn's and Parkins'in its sources, though the outcome differs somewhat. They also, incidentally, released another of Parkins' discs a few years back -- one which I don't have and the title of which I can't recall (though I'm hoping Herb or someone can refresh me here) -- that's absolutely extraordinary. The base material is North African... -Stephen Cope ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 16:43:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: Re: Query: Performance and spirit Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Nathaniel Mackey's recent books -- and particularly the two novels thus far published from the trilogy "From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate" -- deal with possession in music (referentially) and in writing (performatively -- the text seems quite possessed at times by the music it invokes). These might also be good sources for some of the Sufi experiences that Mark Weiss mentions... This may not be exactly the information that was being asked for, but: Would it be going too far to suggest that Jack Spicer's writing by dictation and Hannah Weiner's clairvoyant poems are in some sense texts of possession? (I'm sure there are others who could be included in this question... Best, Stephen Cope ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 20:02:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Forrest Gander Subject: Click Rose by Dominique Fourcade Whoa! what galloping screeching halting turn-on-a-dime and kiss my ass stanzas make up Dominique Fourcade's Click-Rose, new from Sun & Moon, rendered to us American English readers through the hypersensitive alembic of Keith Waldrop's ear. It's a clinodromic booklength sequence. His rose a sthenic, moving target of surprises in syntax diction tone and pulse. Hilarious. And lovely in its inclusiveness of friends, art, history, books, what a rich broth! It's like ladling yourself a bowl of soup and a horse spills out. No, that's a simplifying metaphoric wholesale error: it is roses that spill out, "blatently howling roses." And it is the only rosary I will ever count on to restore my soul. If you ain't yet read it, what an electric/eclectic/clitic pleasure awaits you. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 18:42:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Bromige Beat In-Reply-To: <32F2007C.69F8@mwt.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >does that make mr bromige one of those beat poets, he wonders to >himself-- No, he's more like a beat cop than a beat poet., He's a good poet, though. When we are together doing "Investigative Poetry" we play good poet/bad poet. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 18:47:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Query: Performance and spirit In-Reply-To: <199702010139.UAA00578@chass.utoronto.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >> >> I'm looking for any suggestions (books, essays, manifestos, whatever) re. >> spirit possession, spirti doctors, getting the spirit, conjuring in >> connection with performance and the performative. Also essays about spirit >> possession and subjectivity. I have been teaching _Mumbo Jumbo_ since it came out; and recently read Gerald Vizenor's _The Heirs of Columbus_. It would be right up yr alley. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 18:51:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Collapse In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I dont know whether anyone here has mentioned a terrific new mag called _Collapse_. Calling it a magazine isnt doing it justice. It is more than that. The second issue, called "The Verbal and the Visual", has several works on Robin Blaser, including articles by Charles Watts and Charles Berstein. It also includes a CD with the voices of Blaser and Roy Kiyooks. Address: 1276 26th Ave. West, Vancouver, B.C., V6H 2A9 Canada It's dated Dec 1996. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 18:53:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: oh, alright (clothing) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Miekal, i'm more of an off-beat poet. George, however, is the reverse. Er, >that is, he always claps on the beat. db Bromige meant to write "he always clamps on the beet." Remember, db writes his stuff very late at night, and he lives in wine country. He needs a typist. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 21:59:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: Chemscent MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Chemscent, Chemical Warfare List, 1943, General Training Course (Navy) Sym Name Nick Odor HS Mustard Hot Stuff Garlic Horseradish M-1 Lewisite Mustard Imitator Geraniums ED Ethyldichlorarsine Enemy's Delight Biting Stinging PS Chlorpicrin Puking Stuff Flypaper Anise DP Diphosgene Di-Phos Musty Hay CG Phosgene Choky-Gas Green Corn CL Chlorine Chlorine Highly Pungent CN Chloracetophenone Cry Now Apple Blossoms CA Brombenzylcyanide Cry Always Sour Fruit DM Adamsite Dirty Mixture Coal Smoke DA Diphenylchlorarsine Dopey Ache Shoe Polish HC HC Mixture Harmless Cloud Sharp-Acrid FS Sulphur Trioxide Fuming Spray Burning Matches FM Titanium Tetrachloride Floating Mantle Acrid WP White Phosophorous White Phos Burning Matches TH Thermit The Heat Odorless Do not smell deeply, Sniff only one, First smell, then think, Every perception of odor must be named, Breathe out strongly, Do not smoke while smelling. _______________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 20:30:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Collapse In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It's Kevin Killian. I second the recommendation by George Bowering is "Collapse 2, The Verbal and the Visual." It's really fine from cover to cover. Besides the features on Blaser and Kiyooka, there's a long article on Emily Carr (a transcript of a round table discussion by many eminent Carr scholars); as well as an interesting never before printed manifesto by Robert Smithson. However I should point out one error . . . in the section about Blaser I am given the credit for bringing the Helen Adam collages from Buffalo to Vancouver in 1995. This credit belongs to the poet Kristin Prevallet. I'm sorry, Kristin! This seems to be happening to you all the time! This wasn't my fault either! (The coffee table book "Women of the Beat Generation" by Brenda Knight has a lengthy account of Helen Adam almost entirely lifted from Prevallet's pioneering research into Adam's life and work, yet signed by Knight.) More on this later. In the meantime, order "Collapse." > I dont know whether anyone here has mentioned a terrific new mag called >_Collapse_. Calling it a magazine isnt doing it justice. It is more than >that. The second issue, called "The Verbal and the Visual", has several >works on Robin Blaser, including articles by Charles Watts and Charles >Berstein. It also includes a CD with the voices of Blaser and Roy Kiyooks. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 21:01:57 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Click Rose by Dominique Fourcade In-Reply-To: <970201200212_-1845205135@emout10.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 8:02 PM -0500 2/1/97, Forrest Gander wrote: > Whoa! what galloping screeching halting turn-on-a-dime and kiss my ass >stanzas make up Dominique Fourcade's Click-Rose, new from Sun & Moon, >rendered to us American English readers through the hypersensitive alembic of >Keith Waldrop's ear. It's a clinodromic booklength sequence. His rose a >sthenic, moving target of surprises in syntax diction tone and pulse. > Hilarious. And lovely in its inclusiveness of friends, art, history, books, >what a rich broth! Fourcade's fans will also want to read "Compact pour Claude," his lengthy catalogue essay printed at the end of "Laque sur Polaroid," the collection of Claude Royet-Journoud's painted-over photographs (Michel Chandleigne, 1996). The photographs themselves are quite startling, anatomical close-ups of a vagina in the Hustler style. L'Etat vs. Larry Flynt. I was so impressed by "Laque sur Polaroid" that I wrote to Paris and offered Royet-Journoud the use of my own genitals for a sequel. He demurred. Pourquoi pas? Kevin Killian http://www.multicom.org/gerbil/kkill.htm ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 00:27:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Performance and Spirit Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thinking about poetry and possession brought to mind poor Yeats in the classroom, realizing that, despite the watchful eyes of the nuns and his desperate desire to behave properly, he is falling into a sexual revery about a little girl. And suddenly he gives into the revery and finds himself transported to a brutal figuration of generativity and destructiveness, of the erotic refusing to be tamed to the appropriate. The life built by the public man can be torn apart in a second, and the whole world with it. It's Red Hanrahan, the hero of his early stories, being carried off by the fairies all over again, the victim of their inhuman purity of impulse. And where does that leave you? I don't know if all poetry is a form of possession, but I think it is, even the set-pieces of the Augustans. There's the sense that no matter how we try to train ourselves we can become at best receptive--the poem seems to come when it wants to and to leave when it wants to, unless we try to constrain it to our preconceptions, in which case we certainly lose it. And it's no respecter of occasions, so that those who have the weakness or good fortune to be on the receiving end often find themselves less than well-fitted to the time-constrained, appropriate world. I don't for a minute think that we relinquish choice in the moment of possession--I'm not sure how completely humans ever do. For one thing, the field in which our possessed selves operates is the field we bring to the experience. And the momentary changes and impulses are directed, by what comes before, but also by the changes in a chemistry whose stability is always fragile. We learn, we enlarge the field, but it's still the field, and the physiology, we brought to the game. Even when we sleep we make choices. On the crudest level, it's no accident that Freudians have Freudian dreams, Jungians have Jungian dreams, and Pharaohs dream about sheaves of corn. What we relinquish is the conscious awareness and direction of choice. Rituals, whether it's parlor-game tarot readings or the I Ching or the more serious committment of the otherwise decorous old woman in a NY or Havana barrio who becomes the horse of Shango and insists on throwing up her skirts to show the crowd how much bigger her cock is than theirs, are about choices faced in what Van Gennep called a liminal or marginal state--between statuses, in transition from known to knowable, a place without rules. The known and the knowable are always under seige, because it's not so much that we're on occasion in a stable place as that the rate of change slows down. Change is the constant. The poem is situated in that awareness, and to the extent that we have the courage to stay there it inhabits the liminal, which is by its nature formless. And the poem grounds itself in the particular because that's all there is to hold onto, and the only clues offered. It's the willful relinquishing of resistance to liminality. And it differs from the ritual practice of possession because, unlike the ritual, which, if done properly, always brings the participant out the other end (imagery of rebirth is inevitable her)it has no preordained pattern, no liferope, no social structures surrounding it that announce when the participant has reached the new place and what place that is. This sounds like the fugue state of psychosis, but in fact the crazy rarely will themselves to relinquish the inhibitions to behaviors seen as crazy and to the internal states that drive those behaviors. They really know that they may not be able to come back. I once asked a group of for-the-moment stable schizophrenics about a fantasy. They exchanged a few panicy glances and then assured me, one after the other, in the manner of well-behaved school-children, that they didn't have fantasies. Somewhere the poet has the sense that there's an internal structure to escape to when the game gets too wild, and it's that faith that gives him the courage to dive in when he's able. Yeats, for instance, knows that he's not about to throw himself on that little girl, although he may allow himself to court the danger. The internalized self-definition as Poet, which contains within it the privilege to depart from the everyday to bring back news from the margins, is a part of that structure. That's as far as I can rant tonight. Prednizone does loosen the tongue, but it doesn't grant much staying power. Not my drug of choice. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 09:57:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathleen Crown Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 31 Jan 1997 to 1 Feb 1997 In-Reply-To: Automatic digest processor "POETICS Digest - 31 Jan 1997 to 1 Feb 1997" (Feb 2, 12:03am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Hi Julie: On the spirit possession thread: Felicitas Goodman, Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia, and Ecstasy, Ritual, and Alternate Reality. Also Marghanita Laski, Ecstasy, and any work by Erika Bourguignon. And I second the reference to Nathaniel Mackey, whose communications with the Angel of Dust perform/theorize spirit possession. See Pedro Pietri's work, too. The "History & Ecstatic Speech" special session I organized at the MLA followed through some threads from Susan Stewart's "Lyric Possession" (in a recent Critical Inquiry) and Nicolas Abraham's work on transgenerational haunting. Houston Baker & Mae Henderson have done interesting work on conjuring, tongue speaking. --Kathy Crown -- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 09:19:15 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 31 Jan 1997 to 1 Feb 1997 kathy and julie: it seems that you're both working with similar paradigms of 'inspiration," etc, but in different arenas: kathy in high modern/postmodernist poetry, julie on the popular front. how exciting that your work is complementary. maybe put together a coupla panels for our Xcp conference? or future mla panels? this stuff is great, tres hot, and you both deserve a lot of support and encouragement! maria d In message <9702020957.ZM24735@erebus.rutgers.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > Hi Julie: On the spirit possession thread: Felicitas Goodman, Speaking in > Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia, and Ecstasy, Ritual, and > Alternate Reality. Also Marghanita Laski, Ecstasy, and any work by Erika > Bourguignon. And I second the reference to Nathaniel Mackey, whose > communications with the Angel of Dust perform/theorize spirit possession. > See Pedro Pietri's work, too. The "History & Ecstatic Speech" special > session > I organized at the MLA followed through some threads from Susan Stewart's > "Lyric Possession" (in a recent Critical Inquiry) and Nicolas Abraham's work > on > transgenerational haunting. Houston Baker & Mae Henderson have done > interesting > work on conjuring, tongue speaking. --Kathy Crown > -- > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 09:12:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Query: Performance and spirit In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII _Heirs of Columbus_ is a great novel -- have taught it ever since first reading it some years ago -- would also point readers towards Vizenor's book of essays titled _Manifest Manners_ -- which has much of interest to say about recent appropriations of American Indian spirituality (and lots of other stuff besides) -- Am using _The Vizenor Reader_ in a class this semester -- it's OK, and represents his work in fiction and essays as well (& includes hunks of his autobiography) -- but find the individual novels and essay books more satisfying -- (perhaps this is just BECAUSE I've read the books excerpted in the READER and am thus less happy with less of the text?!) Gerald Vizenor used to write more poetry too -- but the prose works are actually more poetic than his haiku in my opinion ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 12:42:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: EYE-RHYMES (forward Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" this was posted here, back in november, but it looks like they've extended th deadline, & also added some exhibition opportunities, so: >EYERHYMES*EYERHYMES*EYERHYMES*EYERHYMES*EYERHYMES*EYERHYMES*EYERHYMES* > >12 to 16 June 1997 >a multi-disciplinary, international conference on Visual Poetry >at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada > >mailing address: >Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies >352 Athabasca Hall >University of Alberta >Edmonton, Canada T6G 2E8 >tel: (403) 492-2972 >fax: (403eyerhymes conference >e-mail: eyerhyme@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca >website: http://www.ualberta.ca/~eyerhyme/ > >the preparation for wahat has been called the visual poetry event of the >century are progressing nicely so i thought the members of this list would >like an update and possible there are some poetic wordsmiths amoung us who >might what to contribute or even be brave enough to travel north or/and >east or west to the frozen prairies of sunny alberta in the (almost) rocky >mountains. >looking forward to seeing some of you, or at least your work >peter bartl >at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada > >Call for papers and proposals >-------------------------- > >The organizers invite proposals for papers dealing with various aspects >of the historical and contemporary interface between literature and the >visual arts. > >Some of the topics include: > >- Technopaignia and the Classical Tradition; >- Pattern Poetry, Heraldic Art and Visual Forms of Baroque Writing; >- Futurism, Constructivism, Dada; >- Concrete Poetry; >- Artist's Books; >- Visual Essays (such as those by Wyndham Lewis and Marshall McLuhan); >- Advertising and Poster Art; >- Calligraphy, Fraktur and Typewriter Art; >- Hieroglyphic, Ideographic and Pictographic Languages; >- The Impact of Print Technologies, Typefaces and= > Computer Graphics on Literature; >- Textual Elements in Painting; >- Work in New Media & Digital and Holographic Poetry; >- Collectors and Collections; >- Creative Dialogues Between Poets and Painters; >- Poetics of the Written Word. > >Papers may be submitted for oral/audio-visual presentation, or for display >in the "poster" format used at scientific conferences. In that case, the >texts and commentaries should be printed on separate sheets that can be >easily mounted on partitions 4 by 5 feet (1.2 by 1.5 meters). Submissions >of such "poster" papers will be accepted from individuals unable to attend >the conference in person, as well as participants who wish to forgo reading >their presentations. These "posters" will be available for viewing during >the conference, and will constitute part of its proceedings. > >Sessions will be organized according to themes or periods, and suggestions >are welcome for both potential speakers and topics for discussion. >Eye Rhymes is open to presentations made in other media. The organizers >are especially interested in soliciting papers dealing with Canadian visual >poetry, as well as obtaining proposals from creative practitioners. > >Abstracts should be no more than 300 words, and must be accompanied by a >one page resume covering relevant biographical and professional details. >Twenty minutes will be allowed for each oral presentation, though written >versions of papers may be longer. > >Please indicate if you would require financial assistance to attend the >conference, or if your participation would be contingent upon your ability >to arrange financing from non-conference sources. > >Although the program is firming up, we are still eager to hear interesting >ideas for presentations. > >Provide all of your communication co-ordinates on a separate sheet: >name, complete mailing address, phone numbers (office and residence), >fax number and e-mail. > >A creative component will accompany the conference, with exhibitions, >performances, and panel discussions involving visual poets. The working >language of Eye Rhymes will be English. Additional information, concerning >publication and other details, will be provided in future communications. > > >Exhibitions: call for entries >"ImageNations" and "Cantextualities" >-------------------------------- > >mailing address: >Department of Art and Design >3-98 Fine Arts Building >University of Alberta >Edmonton, Canada T6G 2C9 >tel: (403) 492-3261 >fax: (403) 492-7870 >e-mail: eyerhyme@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca >website: http://www.ualberta.ca/~eyerhyme/ > >The organizers invite you to submit entries for two juried international >exhibitions, that >will run in conjunction with the Eye Rhymes conference, which deals with >the contemporary interface between literature and the visual arts. > >Entries are welcome from individuals unable to attend the conference in >person, as well as from participants. The two exhibitions, ImageNations >and Cantextualities, will take place at the Fine Arts Building (FAB) >Gallery at the University of Alberta and at Latitude 53 Gallery in >downtown Edmonton. > >The exhibitions will be organized according to themes or periods. >The organizers are especially interested in entries dealing with Canadian >visual poetry, as well as works by creative practitioners. > >Entries of two- or three-dimensional work should be submitted in the form >of proofs or 35 mm slides and be accompanied by a written explanation of >approximately 50 words in length for each entry. Only accepted entrants >will be notified. Slides can be returned only if an envelope with a return >address is enclosed with the submission. > >Accepted entries must be accompanied by a one page resume covering relevant >biographical and professional details. > >Provide your name, complete mailing address, phone numbers >(office and residence), fax number, and your e-mail address on a separate >sheet. > >Please send entries to the above address by 28 February 1997. Actual works >will be required by 1 May 1997. > >Please direct Eyerhymes exhibitions inquiries to Peter Bartl + Susan Colberg >at the above address/fax/phone. > >-------------------------- >sponsored by: >the Faculty of Arts >the Department of Art and Design >the Department of English >the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Studies >the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library >the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies > >Please circulate this proposal >university of alberta ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 12:31:07 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: gold bug There's been some mention of Richard Power's mind-boggling _The Gold Bug Variations_ in the past few weeks. I have what I think is an interesting anecdote. I've begun reading Shawn Rosenheim's _The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Poe to the Internet_, and Rosenheim discusses Powers's book in the introduction. Apparently, *** Beadle (can't recall his first name), the non-fictional winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize for his research in genetics, enters the novel at a key point in the story, when Jan O'Deigh learns about an (actual) encrypted letter sent to Beadle by Max Delbruck. The letter leads to a kind of epiphany for O'Deigh, which Rosenheim describes as a key moment in the novel (as you can see, I haven't read it, though I have read _Galatea 2.2_, which makes me certain that Powers is from another planet). Anyway, here's my anecdote: Beadle's grandson, John, was my roommate in Milwaukee for three or four years in the 70's when the two of us were working as freight car mechanics on the now defunct Milwaukee Road and, as members of the Socialist Worker's Party, trying to win over rail workers to the principles of revolutionary Marxism. We weren't very successful at this. John's mother, Joyce, had a Master's in Spanish Literature, and when she died about three years ago, John called to ask if I would like to have all of her old Spanish lit books. I said sure, and I soon received three boxes of (mostly) diligently notated paperbacks, with stuff ranging from Gongora and San Juan de la Cruz, to Vallejo and Neruda. About a week ago, I went down to the boxes in the basement and pulled out a '65 Dell _Lorca: Obras Escogidas_ and, opening it, found a short and undated holograph letter from the geneticist Beadle to his daughter. At the end of the letter Beadle writes the following: "And thank you for the beautiful old edition of Poe! Reading him again, I am as delighted and riddled as I was when I first discovered, at 15, 'The Gold Bug' and 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue.' Poe is full of secrets, and my guess is that most readers have no idea what he's _really_ up to. Let me know when you get news on the application. love, Dad." I'm going to be going down and going through everything in the boxes! Maybe there's more. Kent ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 15:13:37 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ward Tietz <100723.3166@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: Address Query Would anyone happen to have an e-mail or postal address for Kathy Acker? Thanks, Ward Tietz ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 14:43:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: main Subject: notley, epic MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i'm teaching notley's _descent of alette_, _homer's art_, and want to set against these a film that explores the epic, specifically in regards to gender, power structures, war. there are plenty of films dealing w war-epic (viet nam) via male perspectives. but female? and not necessarily "war" films, but films that figure gender as instrument of epic vision. feel free to back channel. best, dan featherston ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 17:06:32 +0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: Re: notley, epic Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >i'm teaching notley's _descent of alette_, _homer's art_, and want to set >against these a film that explores the epic, specifically in regards to >gender, power structures, war. there are plenty of films dealing w >war-epic (viet nam) via male perspectives. but female? and not necessarily >"war" films, but films that figure gender as instrument of epic vision. >feel free to back channel. >best, >dan featherston Why not teach Anne Waldman's IOVIS as well. A GREAT feminine epic... Bil Brown ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 15:58:28 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: EPIC MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit oh oh mr B, somebody said that word "epic" its gonna get me aroused miekal ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 09:43:19 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: AWOL: ars poetica magazine and competition (Forwarded) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The following information has been posted by AWOL on behalf of ars poetica magazine. Please address any questions to ars poetica at the address below. ......................................................................... ARS POETICA Volume 3 now available $7 per copy or $20 subscription Now seeking contributions for volume 4 Closing date 20 February 1997 ars poetica PO Box 455 Bairnsdale Vic Australia 3875 ARS POTICA INAUGURAL POETRY COMPETITION To be judged by Catherine Bateson 1st Prize $500 2nd Prize $200 3rd Prize $100 For entry form send SSAE to: ars poetica PO Box 455 Bairnsdale Vic Australia 3875 Closing date 20 February 1997 All $ are Australian. ......................................................................... AWOL Australian Writing On Line awol@ozemail.com.au http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137 Australia Phone 61 2 7475667, Mobile 015063970 Fax 61 2 7472802 Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer & User Representative SIS Team. Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Phone 93517710 Mobile 015063970 Fax (02) 9351 7711 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 12:10:51 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: notley, epic Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" there is the bad 'desert storm' film with Meg Ryan as hero (in) Courage Under Fire. Also 'Beyond Rangoon' with one of the arquette sisters in Burma - has the recent Burmese international media star whose name elludes me right now... Or the Alien films - i realise these amy not exactly be epic - but Beyond Rangoon at least follows the ol' hero's journey (not very well i admit). Perhaps also interesting is Hearts of Darkness the Making of Apocolypse Now which was shot by Copolla's wife - a lot of her work is comment on life as the hero's wife - makes a nice contrast. & I haven't seen the new Evita but... ? & i haven't seen the euro pic set in 'Nam with Deneuve can't remember the name either sorry , butsomeone may know if this is worthwhile. Jan Schwankmeir's (sp?) Alice (from alice in wonderland) very much agendas gender vision, so too i guess would the wizard of Oz but i am babbling so i will stop,. dan also Nikita - read made as 'the assassin' i think, with brigit fonda, about a female assassin. There are also heaps of Indian & Chinese films that 'use' a woman's perspective to entertain audiences in epic surroundings. At 02:43 PM 2/2/97 -0700, you wrote: >i'm teaching notley's _descent of alette_, _homer's art_, and want to set >against these a film that explores the epic, specifically in regards to >gender, power structures, war. there are plenty of films dealing w >war-epic (viet nam) via male perspectives. but female? and not necessarily >"war" films, but films that figure gender as instrument of epic vision. >feel free to back channel. >best, >dan featherston > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 18:26:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: Address Query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Would anyone happen to have an e-mail or postal address for Kathy Acker? > > try: acker@easynet.co.uk ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 19:39:47 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: EPIC MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit E P I C ...as in, this list... is to me a cyber hybrid of an epic, co-written, in real time, complete with footnotes, commentary, local color, controversy, & even a little bit of poetry, the attention we maintain as we interact just a bit of noctural aftershave Miekal unshaven but incredulous ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 13:22:39 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ralph.Wessman@FORESTRY.TAS.GOV.AU Subject: gun controls Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit M. And wrote: >... remove them. Either their owners pay a fine or give up their >handgun; and prevent, stop the sale. Just remove handguns from >all markets, from all use.... Gun laws in Tasmania have tightened post-Port Arthur. But here the new restrictions can largely be by-passed by applying for a $5 authorisation to shoot on both private and government-owned forest property. Its a welcome return to sanity, say gun owners. It's a back door to by-passing the new regulations, argues the Green movement. Part of my job is issuing the authorities to shoot. A chap signing the form last week could barely control his pen. "The bunnies'll be safe from you" I joked. Others simply want to preserve family heirlooms. "It's for a .303, it was my fathers', I'll never go shooting but I don't want to lose it" is a typical response. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 20:37:58 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: MUTILATE THIS THREAD: Re: gun controls MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ralph.Wessman@FORESTRY.TAS.GOV.AU wrote: > > M. And wrote: > > >... remove them. Either their owners pay a fine or give up their > >handgun; and prevent, stop the sale. Just remove handguns from > >all markets, from all use.... > > Gun laws in Tasmania have tightened post-Port Arthur. But here the new > restrictions can largely be by-passed by applying for a $5 > authorisation to shoot on both private and government-owned forest > property. Its a welcome return to sanity, say gun owners. It's a back > door to by-passing the new regulations, argues the Green movement. > > Part of my job is issuing the authorities to shoot. A chap signing the > form last week could barely control his pen. "The bunnies'll be safe > from you" I joked. Others simply want to preserve family heirlooms. > "It's for a .303, it was my fathers', I'll never go shooting but I > don't want to lose it" is a typical response. what the hell is this, Ive never made a statement about guns in my life, at least not on a list, & why is someone from the forestry department posting to the poetics, sounds like an act of intermedia terrorism.... miekal who wonders "WHY ME?" ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 21:39:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: Re: MUTILATE THIS THREAD: Re: gun controls In-Reply-To: <32F4ECB1.61B6@mwt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I've argued long and hard for the possession of personal nuclear weapons. New technology with red mercury makes this possible - baseball-sized dirty limited range bombs to stop them from coming "over the hill." These would replace the Davey Crockett small atomic arms, basketball sized, heavy, and extremely difficult to hide. Perhaps the epic desire for epic is escalating the arms race. Perhaps not. Alan On Sun, 2 Feb 1997, Miekal And wrote: > Ralph.Wessman@FORESTRY.TAS.GOV.AU wrote: > > > > M. And wrote: > > > > >... remove them. Either their owners pay a fine or give up their > > >handgun; and prevent, stop the sale. Just remove handguns from > > >all markets, from all use.... > > > > Gun laws in Tasmania have tightened post-Port Arthur. But here the new > > restrictions can largely be by-passed by applying for a $5 > > authorisation to shoot on both private and government-owned forest > > property. Its a welcome return to sanity, say gun owners. It's a back > > door to by-passing the new regulations, argues the Green movement. > > > > Part of my job is issuing the authorities to shoot. A chap signing the > > form last week could barely control his pen. "The bunnies'll be safe > > from you" I joked. Others simply want to preserve family heirlooms. > > "It's for a .303, it was my fathers', I'll never go shooting but I > > don't want to lose it" is a typical response. > > > > what the hell is this, Ive never made a statement about guns in my life, > at least not on a list, & why is someone from the forestry department > posting to the poetics, sounds like an act of intermedia terrorism.... > > miekal > > who wonders "WHY ME?" > http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html images: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Tel. 718-857-3671 CuSeeMe: 166.84.250.149 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 13:45:40 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Re: MUTILATE THIS THREAD: Re: gun controls Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > >what the hell is this, Ive never made a statement about guns in my life, >at least not on a list, & why is someone from the forestry department >posting to the poetics, sounds like an act of intermedia terrorism.... > >miekal > >who wonders "WHY ME?" > > Editors of wonderful literary magazines (THE FAMOUS REPORTER) can work wherever they want as far as I'm concerned!!!! Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer & User Representative SIS Team. Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Phone 93517710 Mobile 015063970 Fax (02) 9351 7711 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 18:58:15 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marina deBellagente laPalma Subject: responses/thoughts Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Feb 2, 1997 Poetics friends and colleagues, a number of responses I've never had time to type out to various threads in the recent postings have become tangled, or maybe woven, already in my mind. So I'll share them with you as they are before I start trying to "craft" them ... Re: LISTENING: two CDs I want to highly recommend. They also tie in with the "SPIRIT POSSESSION" query, in that they are both, in vastly different musical genres & vocabularies, about expanding or transcending one's isolated sense of Self, both as musician and as listener: 1) "Ocean of Remembrance" Sufi improvisations and Zhikrs (it's from Interworld Music in Vermont, but I found it at the Stanford mall so how obscure can it be?) these are several Turkish musicians and the music (vocals, oud, rebab, flute etc.) consists of "recitations of the names of god." 2) "Simulated Winds and Cries" Electronic music by Jim Horton, hauntingly beautiful, melodic, brash; in the tradition of process music of the 60s,70s as the pieces are cybernetically generated, but also profoundly mystical in that Horton (who lives in Berkeley and has been an invalid in great pain for years now) says "the programs, running autonomously and slightly beyond my comprehension, play music I wouldn't have thought of if left to my own devices." Artifact Recordings, Berkeley. info@artifact.com When I need my head "cleared", my chi charged, or whatever, I also listen to Joshua Redman's "Mood Swing" especially the piece called Sweet Sorrow, to John Lee Hooker and of course the ever-true Franz josef Haydn. Re "OTHER PEOPLE'S BOOKS" lining our rooms/heads. No kidding. Being slightly compulsive, I have a list of every book I've read since high school (a very long time ago) Every year one or two standout: here is the top of the charts for the past 12 months or so. * The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. David Abram. Pantheon, 1996. * Coming to Our Senses: body & spirit in the hidden history of the west. byMorris Berman * THE GIFT: Imagination & the Erotic Life of Property Lewis Hyde * Jihad vs McWorld Benjamin Barber I will say a little more about what is so specials to me in these books in the context of other comments below ( as I said, it all got braided together) First, Re "the language that never sits stil"l: I churned up a nifty neologism this week: the form of society we live in is aptly described as Demo-Crapitalism. (Dont get me wrong, I wouldn't trade it for anything else around at present.) The word "crap" may offend some, but let's face it ... even by any other name, this is "the age of stuff", we are all in the Junk Tribe and consumer goods and global capital is the Game. This game requires a certain (limited) cognitive mobility of the players (that they have at least the illusion of making "choices"), hence the "demo" part (as in demotic.) But the two, as the "collapse" of communism illustrated, are inextricably linked -- if you want elections, you gotta take coca-cola too. Barber's thesis is that both Jihad (ie any fundamentalist religious ideology) and McWorld (global mass-produced corporate product especially cultural product, e.g.disneyfication) seem to be in conflict but are both forces that ultimately work against true democracy. Poets will not have dark satanic mills to point to as the culprit, but a diffuse and intoxicating web of seductions whose down side is located in other landscapes (Bhopal, the Tex-Mex border town where babies are born with birth defects due to toxic dumping ...) What ties together the above books or seems most crucial about them is the combination of something "global" with something local -- presence in one's body. To Miekal's phrase, "terrestrial reclamation" I would add "corporeal reclamation." That is crucial to my sense of what poetry is and does. [Given that, I must put in a mention of the book that's on my all-time top list : Mindfulness in Plain English, flawlessly logical explication and gentle hand-holding combined. by Ven. Gunaratana (dont let the unpronounceable name put you off it. I gave it to several friends in Europe this summer, it has been translated all over the place.) if you are ready to vaguely consider any kind of meditation or just leaning in the direction of wondering about what gives with buddhist philosophy and practice, this is a good straightforward beginning. ] Oh dear, I see that I have already violated several American taboos, having brought in both "religion" and "politics", two obscene things we keep "separate" in America. But with the way literacy rates are going, it wont be a "problem" for long. "Books just make people unhappy, darling." This leads me to the more pivotal point. Something triggered insight this week as a result of the discussion about LANDSCAPE and its effects upon poetry and/or thought processes. I find the distinction suburban vs. urban to be most un-skillful; it makes a dichotomy out of what is in fact a continuum -- at what point does city become suburb? the city limits? at x number of miles from "downtown" (already a fairly ambivalent notion in many cities. ) And a place like "silicon valley" as this area is now called, does not meet the former definitions, ie that one worked in the city and lived out in the sub-urb. So where does the definition go then?? Some months ago my family & I moved "down the peninsula" from San to Menlo Park, after five years of resistance on my part. All my SF friends bemoaned my exile to "suburbia". For once, I thought, I'll have a Reason for feeling like an Outsider. Gradually, I re-rooted, thanks to friends, colleagues, acquaintances, but especially to non-human allies such as a giant redwood, ponderosa pines, magnolias and other trees towering over our slightly ramshackle but harmoniously fen-shui-ed 1920s house, and the crickets and/or tree frogs that fill the blessedly dry and sage-scented air and encircle us with their sounds on summer nights. (having a garden 4 times the size of the one we had in SF is great, especially for our five year old son, the hot tub in the gazebo and the fireplace are also bonuses tied to being in a less densely populated area. I have always been interested in and sensitive... over-sensitive even [see my article "post-Immunnity or the Princess and the Pea" on my web-site] to place. This mayu be due in part to having lived in my lifetime in so many different places including Milan, the Italian Alps, Boston,San Fernando Valley, Hollywood, New York city, San Diego, Berkeley, British Columbia, etc.] So I began exploring the local terrain. We live in menlo Park, just one block north of Palo Alto. Our neigborhood, the Willows, is bounded by the San Francisquito creek, which wends its way down from Jasper Ridge ( which the San Andreas Fault straddles), alongside Stanford University's vast land holdings, and eastward ,to pour eventually into the San FrancsicoBay alongside the Dumbarton Bridge. It happens (far from accidentally) that this creek marks, for most of its length, the boundary between Palo Alto and Menlo Park and between the two counties (Santa Clara and San Mateo) in which they they are situated. With steep banks and a wide bed, pale and bone dry in summer, t serves as a discreet homeless encampment in places. Recent rains turned it into a surge of mud-brown liquid; then it returned to its usual sinuous green. At one point alongside the Stanford campus the county linie moves north a half mile (or the creek slips into Palo Alto, as it were.) Tis piece of land to its north is currently the subject of major hot debates in these parts between the multi-million dollar proposed development of that land and widening of Sand Hill Rd. to a major artery (it currently sort of dead-ends into the Stanford Mall's parking lot. But with a newly opened Bloomingdales... well.) versus the Menlo Park homeowners, the conservationists (open space groups, etc. ) and the claim that the Ohlone Indian burial site nearby must be considered) and activism by some of those pesky types who don't take things lying down, whom civilization extinguishes at its own peril. Well, enough local geo-politics. My point is that landscape to me is a living and changing thing; in some places we can be more aware of its impact upon our lives, but the effects are always there. I loved San Francisco, but it is mainly the buildings and human history and rich collage of culture one experiences there. The hills, the fog, the Bay even, they are background. Where you are is Haight Street or Chinatown or on the Bridge or in the Mission or the Castro, each with its odors, sounds, smells, its human-scape. I was in Hawaii recently for the first (in Maui, named after an indigenuous trickster figure who coerced the sun into making longer days for half the year. ) Took my son to look at the primordial confrontation of lava fields with ocean at LaPerouse Bay. Watched with a sense of uplift one afternoon a whale sporting itself quite close to shore ... great surge of interest by all at poolside, ooh aah, an enormous wild mammal so nearby, so far, so powerful, so vulnerable. (I thought of Berman's premise in Coming to Our Senses. In a chapter called "The Wild & the Tame", he proposes that the loss of a sentient Other to reflect us back to ourselves is a great spiritual impoverishment for our civilization. He cites zoos and even pets as poor, sad substitutes for that lost crucial experience.) There I was in the middel of the Pacific Ocean. I could feel it, how benign nature felt, yet how at any moment it could wipe us out with a typhoon or a tsunami. The songs of the different species of birds, extravagant flowers growing everywhere, with names like hibiscus, cymbidium, protea ... and yet, it was all so ... normal. The beauty of Hawaii hit me most strongly when I got home. The environment we live in is partly by necessity, taken-for-granted, and also maybe because we (I) live so much in our heads, that memory is more affecting than the things itself. David Abram's in his book, The Spell of the Sensuous, talks very articulately and beautifully about the co-extensiveness of our cognitive apparatus with the world around us, a reciprocity developed over 2 million years. The trip was followed by an extremely cold and wet period here in northern california, in which numerous plants died in my garden, alas. The Creek was flowing amply. As I walked by it on one of my first days back, I felt again that little frisson I get from knowing as I cross over the creek to walk along it on the Palo Alto side that I am crossing out of Menlo Park over a county line, and that this creek is passionately discussed every day in the local papers, including the SF Chronicle and San Jose Mercury. And for me, I realized that the mystery and attraction of the place also has to do with this quality of being a boundary. (for more on this see my web site and the essay "The Home Page as Literary Form", which looks at questions of boundary in relation to identity and some of my other reference points and connections to this. ) That I am most comfortble at the boundaries of things, sometimes blurring them, often just hovering, fluid, where one thing transforms into another. Sometimes these are borders, edges margins, just as often they are flash-points for creativity. "The image which seems to me to best represent the work of a writer at the point of his highest commitment is that of a threshold. The true writer moves continuously back and forth (trans-gressing), across one or the other thresholds that separate the different languages or cultures or mentalities or states of consciousness." [Paolo Valesio "Writer Between Two Worlds" in Differentia: Review of Italian Thought Number 3-4, Spring-Autumn 1989.] Anyway, the landscape of the Peninsula has been for me a way of re-discovering an existing and very fundamental structure in my persona and my writing. Thanks for a place in which to think this out. Marina deBellagente LaPalma 329 Pope Street Menlo Park CA 94025 (415) 326-4981 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 19:22:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Recent Publications, Hebronics, & Neologisms Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm hesitant to go on for too long about new music here, but Stephen Cope wrote: >They also, incidentally, released another of Parkins' discs a few years >back -- one which I don't have and the title of which I can't recall >(though I'm hoping Herb or someone can refresh me here) -- that's >absolutely extraordinary. The base material is North African... That'd be Isabelle, a suite "about" Isabelle Eberhardt, a European woman who travelled around North Africa often dressed as a man. The disc actually isn't on Tzadik, but Avant, Zorn's Japanese label offering similar material (though not broken up into series like "Radical Jewish Culture" etc.) As a Japanese import it'll probably be harder to find and expensive (US$20-25) This disc also includes a nice series of duets with percussionist Ikue Mori inspired by women super heroes from comic books of the 1940s & '50s. Bests Herb (Who's hesitant mainly cause later this week he'll be offering the new release of a new music CD with music by Pauline Oliveros and Ellen Fullman & I don't want new music to overstay its welcome on this most literary of lists about gun control.) Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 21:39:32 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: MUTILATE THIS THREAD: Re: gun controls MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Alan Jen Sondheim wrote: > > I've argued long and hard for the possession of personal nuclear weapons. > New technology with red mercury makes this possible - baseball-sized dirty > limited range bombs to stop them from coming "over the hill." These would > replace the Davey Crockett small atomic arms, basketball sized, heavy, and > extremely difficult to hide. Personally poetic terrorism is about as violent as I get-- > Perhaps the epic desire for epic is escalating the arms race. > > Perhaps not. let's recall for one brief moment the forgotten words of one the grand guiginols of Zaum, Alexei Kruchenykh who was recorded as proclaiming a revolutionary need for to: "REMEMBER VIOLENT NON-OBJECTIVITY" The charm remains. We just need to keep rehearsing our lines. Miekal ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 22:46:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joshua N Schuster Subject: from a distance MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I suppose I'll add to what seems to be really a new kind of genre, the reading witness reportage, which, if this list did not invent, surely it gave it sustenance. Upenn has perhaps one of the few and well-funded "middle-spaces" left in the world, a space which is half in the academy and half-run with pragmatic anarchy by the undergraduates and surrounding community. This place, the Writers House, finds itself in relative autonomy to the cuts and jabs of both the business (we need not make profit) and the academic institution (the decisions of what to program and which writers to bring always, so far, remain in the hands and help of undergrad students). The House here takes its own heat from the students who both run and think of the house, but so far that has lead to further understanding rather than further neglect. So, amid this space these past few days were the wonderful writers Lee Ann Brown (great smile, a less noticeable accent in person than on the phone, will sing you out of what you thought you heard, and deeply thoughtful), Jennifer Moxley (the grace and attack of a writer who always has more to say, who asks considerately about the names and ideas of the people she meets, and asks the right questions then and before, in writing and in person), and with much welcome, Steve Evans (who has the energy of many poets, the theoretical acuity to engage the hours into options, and the friendliness to think this through with you). They arrive Thurs. afternoon, and I help unload them in the guest suite, with short orientations over brief beers. Then a reading, with a room filled more than usual, but less than we should want or need. I give a scattered intro of clips of email conversations from students. Lee Ann reads first, all pieces I think from her excellent and back-and-forthcoming *Polyverse* (which we need in print Sun & Moon!). This book looks to be a stunning collection of what Lee Ann has collected up to recent, with substitute pledge of alliegences, thangs, oddly familiar songs, fellowed collaborations, catchy daily observations, and great short verse pieces. This is quite a book and quite wonderful to hear from. Jennifer Moxley then reads, and varies from her wonderful newest *Imagination Verses* to even more recent work. The book is brilliant and needs more than immediate encounters as perhaps finally a way of knowing there is great poetry even according to the young. And the newer work is, maybe, even better, which just means you'll need to hear more of this yourself. After the reading a few writers and visitors make way to a local Japanese dinner. The Sake is melted and we drink but I linger back with a headache from skipping breakfast and lunch. Finally now I get to ask Steve about that legendary panel this past summer in Orono on race and O'hara, and what he says is right, that given the politics of O'hara's time one has to read into O'hara's work the politics of dealing with that time, which O'hara does, and so does Steve. More food. Lee Ann wields her tape recorder and goes roundtable asking with good humor for oral documentary of everyone's experience of first orgasm. More food. Some reconvene at poet's accomodations. Major Jackson, there at the reading and dinner and on tape, says goodbye. I stay about and we talk on and about, with late tea and cookies (for what poets do is eat). Next day is again filled with talking and ideas. The writers all visit a seminar carried inside the House. Jennifer hopes there are spaces to be made where poetry doesn't have to be immediately defensive always explaining itself. Steve argues well with intensity with Al Filreis about the remains of poetic spaces. Lee Ann speaks more about her way of writing, and the making of forms for poetry, which anyone can read and write with. Then, downstairs with a ready audience, both poets read from talks and essays. Jennifer has a piece still going on "poetic labor" which we can read soon from a next great wave of Impercipients, these ones a flight of essays. Lee Ann reads some on "ballad notes" and induces smiles with the old drinking song which Francis Scott Key shifted into an anthem, then later we sing group-wise a piece from Helen Adam. Dinner is ready then, assortments of kugel, one batch by me. More food and more talking. Jennifer says a bit about prose, a bit about memoirs. Louis Cabri imagines more with the layout of a baroque reprise. The writers ask Louis about more from his journal *Hole* and what more from Canada and Louis says there will be more. We shift to couches. Steve talks further about what scenes seem as, now and before. I hear more from Jennifer about her translations and relations with Jacqueline Risset. Lee Ann talks some about her press. Lee Ann falls barely into sleep, wakes some and combs the cat, who responds curiously to her pocketbook and scratches at the money inside. Lee Ann grabs her recorder in time to tape our witnesses of near death moments. Steve remembers a time in school when Bill Luoma came in to a reading swearing he just saw death on a bus. Time passes late so we crash our separate ways to sleep. Next day just early stuff, brunch with the poets. Bob Perelman is there and we talk of magazines and groupings and workshopping poetry back when Bob studied at Iowa, then now when he taught at Iowa. Shawn Walker begins a house meeting with input help from the writers on future writers to bring. Soon the writers have to get back and gather their stuff, needing to leave on time for sandwiches and family. The visit was a wonderful time, and it's late now, so here is another log in the furthering genre of reading accountings. -Joshua Schuster ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 19:50:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Neologism Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" shruburbia ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 22:03:45 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: Neologism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark Weiss wrote: > > shruburbia mark: write the definition(s) & I'll stick it in our dictionary. Offer goes to everyone out there in poeticsland, they can also be emailed to me backchannel ifn yr too shy to show 'em off. think Im exceeded my daily post quota, I'll shut up now... miekal ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 23:43:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: Re: MUTILATE THIS THREAD: Re: gun controls In-Reply-To: <32F4FB12.60A9@mwt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII or REMEMBER NON-OBJECTIVE VIOLENT ENTITIES which is something I'm dealing with on the fop-l list at the moment... Alan http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html images: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Tel. 718-857-3671 CuSeeMe: 166.84.250.149 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 20:53:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Neologism Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" that class of suburbs with well-tended landscaping, as opposed to the kind with oil refineries and factories. At 10:03 PM 2/2/97 +0100, you wrote: >Mark Weiss wrote: >> >> shruburbia > >mark: > >write the definition(s) & I'll stick it in our dictionary. Offer goes >to everyone out there in poeticsland, they can also be emailed to me >backchannel ifn yr too shy to show 'em off. > >think Im exceeded my daily post quota, I'll shut up now... > >miekal > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 21:26:13 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Susan Howe takes San Francisco by storm In-Reply-To: <199702030346.WAA22177@mail2.sas.upenn.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Small Press Traffic presents Susan Howe Saturday, February 8, 7:30 p.m. New College Cultural Center 766 Valencia Street, SF The last time Susan Howe read for Small Press Traffic was three years ago, and mobs of people jammed the tiny space of Canessa Park--thrilled, delighted, awed. Simply put, Howe is one of the greatest readers we=B9ve ever heard, AND WE=B9VE HEARD THEM ALL--as well as a great poet, thinker and archaeologist of =B3marginalia.=B2 Howe is a Professor of English at the State University of New York, Buffalo. She is the author of My Emily Dickinson, The Europe of Trusts, Singularities, The Birth-Mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History_, and _The Nonconformist's Memorial. Her latest book is _Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974-1979_ (Sun & Moon). Geoffrey O=B9Brien has written, that Howe=B9s work is =B3a voyage of reconnaissance in= language, a sounding out of ancient hiding places, and it is a voyage full of risk. 'Words are the only clues we have,' she has said. 'What if they fail us?'" Local folks: check out Brian Bouldrey's column in the Lit Section of this week's Bay Guardian where he plugs this event. We love you, Brian. $5 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 21:09:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: definitions Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i've shred it before n i'll shray it again: shruburbia's shrokay. shkwiat n eshrafe. eshralienated shust aszh shrennywhere elsh. ekshep zwhen zhu shrink eshtolly wizj palzh athshloon. shoonererlatr tho yukon blone gen. Shrokay. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 23:42:41 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: perogatively MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit david: have you written your epic yet, or are you too old for that kinda thing? assortedly miekal ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 00:33:29 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: notley, epic / (Bandit Queen?) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT On Mon, 3 Feb 1997 12:10:51 +1300, dpsalmon wrote -- > . . . There are also heaps of Indian & Chinese films that 'use' > a woman's perspective to entertain audiences in epic surroundings. > > At 02:43 PM 2/2/97 -0700, you wrote: > >i'm teaching notley's _descent of alette_, _homer's art_, and want to set > >against these a film that explores the epic, specifically in regards to > >gender, power structures, war. . . . > >films that figure gender as instrument of epic vision. . . . > >dan featherston Dan -- the rather recent, lovely film BANDIT QUEEN comes to mind as one to consider -- not all too sure abt. female perspective in that per se, would need to see it again -- also, as for epic? hmmm, certainly an action film w/ some epic dimension (not to mention killer music) -- the film, as you perhaps know, is based on the real-life tale of Phoolan Devi, who became a popular Bonnie w/o Clyde sorta bandit-heroine in local mythology of 1980s Maharashtra, India (before she was captured & jailed, as depicted in the film). Her violent & sexual mistreatment in early life -- and her "heroic struggle" against both gender and caste strictures -- to become (as noted) a kind of queen of the bandits -- are all integral to the tale -- d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 00:57:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: notley, epic / (Bandit Queen?) In-Reply-To: <9702030546.AA29376@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cat Ballou? On Mon, 3 Feb 1997, David R. Israel wrote: > On Mon, 3 Feb 1997 12:10:51 +1300, > dpsalmon wrote -- > > > . . . There are also heaps of Indian & Chinese films that 'use' > > a woman's perspective to entertain audiences in epic surroundings. > > > > At 02:43 PM 2/2/97 -0700, you wrote: > > >i'm teaching notley's _descent of alette_, _homer's art_, and want to set > > >against these a film that explores the epic, specifically in regards to > > >gender, power structures, war. . . . > > >films that figure gender as instrument of epic vision. . . . > > >dan featherston > > Dan -- > > the rather recent, lovely film BANDIT QUEEN comes to mind as one to > consider -- not all too sure abt. female perspective in that per se, > would need to see it again -- also, as for epic? hmmm, certainly an > action film w/ some epic dimension (not to mention killer music) -- > > the film, as you perhaps know, is based on the real-life tale > of Phoolan Devi, who became a popular Bonnie w/o Clyde sorta > bandit-heroine in local mythology of 1980s Maharashtra, India (before > she was captured & jailed, as depicted in the film). Her violent > & sexual mistreatment in early life -- and her "heroic struggle" > against both gender and caste strictures -- to become (as noted) a > kind of queen of the bandits -- are all integral to the tale -- > > d.i. > --------------------------------------------------- Wendy Battin wjbat@conncoll.edu (home) http://camel.conncoll.edu/ccother/wjbat/ (CAPA) http://shain.lib.conncoll.edu/CAPA/capa.html --------------------------------------------------- "It is not the crocodile's job to yell "Watch out for the crocodile!"--Henri Michaux ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 02:02:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: definitions In-Reply-To: <9702030530.AA21062@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII So ish exurbia an (sic) honorific? Does a sheep farm nirvana make? Or is urbia the only primate habitat? Wendy, w/little lamb who made thee? it's that season. On Sun, 2 Feb 1997, David Bromige wrote: > i've shred it before n i'll shray it again: shruburbia's shrokay. shkwiat n > eshrafe. eshralienated shust aszh shrennywhere elsh. ekshep zwhen zhu > shrink eshtolly wizj palzh athshloon. shoonererlatr tho yukon blone gen. > Shrokay. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 20:21:47 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: notley, epic / (Bandit Queen?) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yeah, i should have thought of that. I think she has just been arrested for something. Although i am glad films like that are made i don't know that i would call it 'lovely'. It's interestingly problematic though, euro audiences seemed to lap it up, while Indian audiences (well middleage & up) were not able to cope with the graphic sex of it, so i think it failed to reach a sector of it's potential audience that could have benefited from discussion of it - that's in this country anyway. I couldn't speak for anywhere else ( can't actually speak for anything outside my personal contacts) anyway, dan >the rather recent, lovely film BANDIT QUEEN comes to mind as one to >consider -- not all too sure abt. female perspective in that per se, >would need to see it again -- also, as for epic? hmmm, certainly an >action film w/ some epic dimension (not to mention killer music) -- > >the film, as you perhaps know, is based on the real-life tale >of Phoolan Devi, who became a popular Bonnie w/o Clyde sorta >bandit-heroine in local mythology of 1980s Maharashtra, India (before >she was captured & jailed, as depicted in the film). Her violent >& sexual mistreatment in early life -- and her "heroic struggle" >against both gender and caste strictures -- to become (as noted) a >kind of queen of the bandits -- are all integral to the tale -- > >d.i. > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 23:56:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: definitions Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Shrure i'm shritin my epic. Shts shcald 'Esh Azh R' shro eckshpek mosh shwerdz shoo begin widj esh azh r. Shet in shruburbia, shapperently conshernz shnuthin,but shcode-breakersh sjin fucshia warrjh shmay well shpeak of jhdzeir shdett of zzhrattishood to jzish shraga of shmale shrimulashn at zzhee shreoicisht heighshs. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 02:09:02 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: definitions MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Bromige wrote: > > Shrure i'm shritin my epic. Shts shcald 'Esh Azh R' shro eckshpek mosh > shwerdz shoo begin widj esh azh r. Shet in shruburbia, shapperently > conshernz shnuthin,but shcode-breakersh sjin fucshia warrjh shmay well > shpeak of jhdzeir shdett of zzhrattishood to jzish shraga of shmale > shrimulashn at zzhee shreoicisht heighshs. are you quoting Abraham Lincoln Gillespe again? allusions more obscure than Lb? m well past my dreamtime ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 00:31:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: definitions/epics Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ah, thats better. just cleared my computer of shrum virush oopsh. . . lets try again. yeah, thats fixed it. the reason i'm feeling so good, good and silly, is that the group i'm with, who have brought a lawsuit to make the city council appear in court to defend their approval of an absurdly inadequate set of mitigation measures in an enivronmental impact report concerning the annexation of an apple orchard so that a man named o'reilly can turn it into a 16-acre business park (there are adequate business parks just 4 miles down the road already), held a fundraiser from 4-7 this sunday p.m., and this event was better attended than i'd feared it wd be. we also held a silent auction and my friend and collaborator mark perlman gave us a print for which someone pd $150 (it's worth $1100, but what can you do), so we probably raised net abt $1500, which means we now have abt 50% of the $18 grand we need to pay our attorney by the end of the month . . . hope dies last. I like living in a town small enough (or it has been) that small groups can make a difference politically. today's m.c., Buzzy Martin, musician and curator of music at jasper o'farrell's bar, ran for city council last fall and without campaigning at all (his sole lawnsign was on my lawn, and i say 'my' because my wife supported another candidate and put her lawnsign on 'her' lawn) polled over 800 votes, and it only takes 1500 to get a seat. we hope (, , ,dies last) his increasing visibility will get him elected 2 years from now. he's needed there because pro-development forces rule since november, including a mayor, Sam Crump (Mister crump dont 'low no barrelhousin here), who had the gall to observe re-the o'reilly (whom some of us refer to as Oh, really?) project was probably unpopular with more than half the electorate, but "what kind of message would that send to developers?" Gee, Sam, stay away, I'd say . . . Since retiring, i seldom appear in public so am now tired but wired and roaming the virtual streets looking for wedding guests. I dont t h i n k there was a target in my epic shlepic ramble. I just like yr coinage shruburbia. i dont rightly know if thats where i am, maybe in exurbia (epic poem ed spenser never finished?). . .it was a tiny Appletown USA when i first clapped eyes on it (1969) but later hordes known as yuppies Marin-ated our town so now you can get a good decaff latte and rearended by a set of B(asic) M(arin) W(heels), Marin being the county between Sonoma County and San fran. hey, anyway, we got shrubs! db ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 01:07:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: definitions/epics Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A marinated town is by definition more an exburb than a shruburb. Down here in San Diego, where the powers that think to be are trying to convince the voters to bribe the football team to stay by spending 78 million on a stadium expansion _and_ promising to buy all the seats needed at each game to make it come out to 60,000 (I suppose they could give the empty seats to welfare mothers), there aint much left to save, but the developers talk about the american way while fighting over the poor scraps like a bunch of hungry dogs. Not my best sentence, but you get my drift. And the very rich, as if to demonstrate that they didn't have to be real smart to get that way, build their houses on the edge of cliffs with no bedrock support, no vegetation to hold them together, and the surf pounding at the bottom--and they really do seem surprised when the place falls in. Sometimes the city helps things along by undercutting the cliff with a new road, thereby killing two birds with one stone--you get a mudslide _and_ stop the traffic. Actually, shruburb was my attempt to remind the list that there are suburbs, and then there are nasty suburbs where all of the bad stuff that cities tend not to want visible get zoned out to--refineries, rust-belt workshops, all that stuff, and a lot of lost kids with no prospects and bored to tears. But I couldn't think of a good name for that kind of place--gruburbs? Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. At 12:31 AM 2/3/97 -0500, you wrote: >Ah, thats better. just cleared my computer of shrum virush oopsh. . . lets >try again. yeah, thats fixed it. > >the reason i'm feeling so good, good and silly, is that the group i'm with, >who have brought a lawsuit to make the city council appear in court to >defend their approval of an absurdly inadequate set of mitigation measures >in an enivronmental impact report concerning the annexation of an apple >orchard so that a man named o'reilly can turn it into a 16-acre business >park (there are adequate business parks just 4 miles down the road >already), held a fundraiser from 4-7 this sunday p.m., and this event was >better attended than i'd feared it wd be. we also held a silent auction and >my friend and collaborator mark perlman gave us a print for which someone >pd $150 (it's worth $1100, but what can you do), so we probably raised net >abt $1500, which means we now have abt 50% of the $18 grand we need to pay >our attorney by the end of the month . . . hope dies last. > >I like living in a town small enough (or it has been) that small groups can >make a difference politically. today's m.c., Buzzy Martin, musician and >curator of music at jasper o'farrell's bar, ran for city council last fall >and without campaigning at all (his sole lawnsign was on my lawn, and i say >'my' because my wife supported another candidate and put her lawnsign on >'her' lawn) polled over 800 votes, and it only takes 1500 to get a seat. we >hope (, , ,dies last) his increasing visibility will get him elected 2 >years from now. he's needed there because pro-development forces rule since >november, including a mayor, Sam Crump (Mister crump dont 'low no >barrelhousin here), who had the gall to observe re-the o'reilly (whom some >of us refer to as Oh, really?) project was probably unpopular with more >than half the electorate, but "what kind of message would that send to >developers?" Gee, Sam, stay away, I'd say . . . Since retiring, i seldom >appear in public so am now tired but wired and roaming the virtual streets >looking for wedding guests. I dont t h i n k there was a target in my epic >shlepic ramble. I just like yr coinage shruburbia. i dont rightly know if >thats where i am, maybe in exurbia (epic poem ed spenser never finished?). >. .it was a tiny Appletown USA when i first clapped eyes on it (1969) but >later hordes known as yuppies Marin-ated our town so now you can get a good >decaff latte and rearended by a set of B(asic) M(arin) W(heels), Marin >being the county between Sonoma County and San fran. hey, anyway, we got >shrubs! db > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 07:23:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: EPIC In-Reply-To: <32F4DF1A.68F0@mwt.net> from "Miekal And" at Feb 2, 97 07:39:47 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > E P I C > > ...as in, > this list... > is to me a cyber hybrid of an epic, co-written, in real time, complete > with footnotes, commentary, local color, controversy, & even a little > bit of poetry, > > the attention we maintain as we interact > Sheesh, and here I always thought epic was a poetic genre. Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 07:55:02 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: simon@CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU Subject: Re: notley, epic / (Bandit Queen?) Re: Phoolan Devi 1. She turned herself in on Thursday last. 2. If you're considering the film, and not her life, the film is not a female perspective or view or gaze. beth simon ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 09:42:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: jarnot@PIPELINE.COM Subject: notley/epic Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" for those of you interested in alice notley, there's an interview with her (conducted by judith goldman) in the new issue of the poetry project newsletter (february/march 1997). in it she talks about ideas of epic and feminine epic. you can get a copy by sending $5 to The Poetry Project Newsletter/The Poetry Project/St. Mark's Church/131 E. 10th Street/NY, NY 10003. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 10:05:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Mitch Goodman Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sad news from Maine. Mitchell Goodman died Saturday at his home in Temple, Maine, of pancreatic cancer. Poet, novelist, anti-war activist all his life. He was 73, and when I saw him last, at the Poets of the 1950s conference in Orono in June, he was full of life. We exchanged books & had a good talk. Here's a poem from his book More Light: Selected Poems (Dog Ear Press 1989). Circles within Circles That's how it goes: the old man who understands it all in the end dies and in the same moment a new one in the same form comes pushing up out of the wet earth crying out in surprise. Sylvester Pollet Backwoods Broadsides National Poetry Foundation RR 5 Box 3630 Room 302 Ellsworth ME 5752 Neville Hall 04605-9529 University of Maine Orono ME 04469-5752 http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 09:00:41 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: from a distance josh s rites...: In message <199702030346.WAA22177@mail2.sas.upenn.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > I suppose I'll add to what seems to be really a new kind of genre, the > reading witness reportage, which, if this list did not invent, surely it > gave it sustenance. > .. this was a terrific review josh, of writers who (for once) i know something about and it's so nice to read of them thru you/the list. a year ago i knew lee ann but not steve and jennifer; steve i met thru his indeed tour de force o'hara paper and then i met jennifer but just a week ago received imagination verses in the mail from spd. what a treat. also having met you and shawn and al f at the writers' house last yr i had a warm memory...sorry to get so sentimental all, but january is over and that is a moment of great feeling and rejoicing in minnesota. the sun is out for dramatically longer each successive week, and life is percolating under the three feet of snow... md ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 07:57:51 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Query: Performance and spirit MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > I'm looking for any suggestions (books, essays, manifestos, whatever) re. > spirit possession, spirti doctors, getting the spirit, conjuring in > connection with performance and the performative. Also essays about spirit > possession and subjectivity. I'm with Stephen Cope on Spicer. _After Lorca_ would be a great, complex object to bring to the class because its next to impossible to pin down. the pretence of spirit possession/communication is elaborate but also at various points punched through with humor, openly denied, even mocked, & then perpetuated anyway. c. .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu "Or, worse, they will change the point of view (top becomes bottom, male becomes female, etc etc) and think, like the [Realists] they are, that they have changed something." ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 09:20:38 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: definitions/epics In message <199702030907.BAA25491@denmark.it.earthlink.net> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > A marinated town ... hey, some of us like our seaports! i better shut up feel like im cruisn for a bruisn here... md ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 09:17:57 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: definitions/epics bromovich writes: > Ah, thats better. just cleared my computer of shrum virush oopsh. . . lets > try again. yeah, thats fixed it. > > the reason i'm feeling so good, good and silly, is that the group i'm with, > who have brought a lawsuit to make the city council appear in court to >etc hey db yr a cool guy. i'm sorry i laughed at your red suspenders and silly facial hair two years ago...md ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 09:15:27 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: notley, epic / (Bandit Queen?) just to continue on this thread, i have some discomfort with the wording of your sentiments, which i take overall as expressing the kinds of concerns i brought up in my last post --namely, "indian audiences were not able to cope w/ the graphic sex of it, so i think it failed to reach a sector of its potential audience that could have benefited from a discussion of it..." it sounds kinda, a little, like,...patronizing, as if indian audiences fell down on their job of spectator and thus the movie failed to "enlighten" those who "most needed it" or some such. the "civilizing mission" foiled thru the backwardness of the Other. etc. this post isnt hostilely or "policingly" intended. just sharing my impressions. In message <199702030721.UAA08335@ihug.co.nz> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > Yeah, i should have thought of that. I think she has just been arrested for > something. Although i am glad films like that are made i don't know that i > would call it 'lovely'. It's interestingly problematic though, euro > audiences seemed to lap it up, while Indian audiences (well middleage & up) > were not able to cope with the graphic sex of it, so i think it failed to > reach a sector of it's potential audience that could have benefited from > discussion of it - that's in this country anyway. I couldn't speak for > anywhere else ( can't actually speak for anything outside my personal > contacts) > > anyway, > > dan > > >the rather recent, lovely film BANDIT QUEEN comes to mind as one to > >consider -- not all too sure abt. female perspective in that per se, > >would need to see it again -- also, as for epic? hmmm, certainly an > >action film w/ some epic dimension (not to mention killer music) -- > > > >the film, as you perhaps know, is based on the real-life tale > >of Phoolan Devi, who became a popular Bonnie w/o Clyde sorta > >bandit-heroine in local mythology of 1980s Maharashtra, India (before > >she was captured & jailed, as depicted in the film). Her violent > >& sexual mistreatment in early life -- and her "heroic struggle" > >against both gender and caste strictures -- to become (as noted) a > >kind of queen of the bandits -- are all integral to the tale -- > > > >d.i. > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 09:22:00 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: hebronix/poetix > Sheesh, and here I always thought epic was a poetic genre. > > Mike > mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca epic shmepic ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 09:23:37 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: hebronix/poetix 2 > Sheesh, and here I always thought epic was a poetic genre. > > Mike > mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca > an allegory of brith, i mean birth: there's an epic in your pupik. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 08:31:52 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: notley/epic MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > for those of you interested in alice notley, there's an interview with her > (conducted by judith goldman) in the new issue of the poetry project > newsletter (february/march 1997). in it she talks about ideas of epic and > feminine epic. you can get a copy by sending $5 to The Poetry Project > Newsletter/The Poetry Project/St. Mark's Church/131 E. 10th Street/NY, NY > 10003. also dont forget to check the Talisman back list--there's an issue on Notley back there somewhere I know. Linda knows which one. Linda? .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu "Or, worse, they will change the point of view (top becomes bottom, male becomes female, etc etc) and think, like the [Realists] they are, that they have changed something." ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 09:32:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: notley, epic / (Bandit Queen?) Comments: To: simon MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Dan, you might try Dreyer's "Passion of Joan of Arc" or Bresson's "Trial of Joan of Arc," though the latter may be unavailable on video. Jacques Rivette has a 1994/95 film on Joan called "Jehanne la Pucelle," but it's yet to be released in the States. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: simon To: POETICS Subject: Re: notley, epic / (Bandit Queen?) Date: Monday, February 03, 1997 7:46AM Re: Phoolan Devi 1. She turned herself in on Thursday last. 2. If you're considering the film, and not her life, the film is not a female perspective or view or gaze. beth simon ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 09:02:24 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: MUTILATE THIS THREAD: Re: gun controls In message UB Poetics discussion group writes: > or REMEMBER NON-OBJECTIVE VIOLENT ENTITIES which is something I'm dealing > with on the fop-l list at the moment... > > Alan what's fop-l, o jennifer of my heart? > > http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html > images: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ > Tel. 718-857-3671 CuSeeMe: 166.84.250.149 > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 09:08:18 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: notley, epic / (Bandit Queen?) In message <199702030533.AAA19810@wizard.wizard.net> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > On Mon, 3 Feb 1997 12:10:51 +1300, > dpsalmon wrote -- > > > . . . There are also heaps of Indian & Chinese films that 'use' > > a woman's perspective to entertain audiences in epic surroundings. > > .. > > the rather recent, lovely film BANDIT QUEEN comes to mind as one to > consider -- not all too sure abt. female perspective in that per se, > would need to see it again -- also, as for epic? hmmm, certainly an > action film w/ some epic dimension (not to mention killer music) -- > > the film, as you perhaps know, is based on the real-life tale > of Phoolan Devi, who became a popular Bonnie w/o Clyde sorta > bandit-heroine in local mythology of 1980s Maharashtra, India (before > she was captured & jailed, as depicted in the film). Her violent > & sexual mistreatment in early life -- and her "heroic struggle" > against both gender and caste strictures -- to become (as noted) a > kind of queen of the bandits -- are all integral to the tale -- > > d.i. > this film has been the subject of much controversy, including an attempt on phoolan devi's part to suppress it, as it does her sense of her own story a disservice. if i were going to teach this film, i'd familiarize myself w/ this controversy so i'd have some sense of whether or not i was violating the subject's wishes. one of my students who is working on hindi film, gender, and censorship followed this pretty closely, and ended up wishing that she had not seen the movie, which, even before the controversy,, she found voyeuristic and sensationalistic. having not seen it myself i can't comment, but thought it important to pass on word of its controversy. -md ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 17:02:49 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "F.A. Templeton" Subject: Re: possession/spirit POETICS Digest - 30 Jan 1997 to 31 Jan 1997 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII From a performance angle as well as textual: Try Maya Deren's films and writings. And L.A. performance artist Rachel Rosenthal. Also do some research into how artist Matt Mullican came up with his world of signs (he WENT there, hypnotised in performance). His accounts of how he got to that stage are a wonderful performanec too; my favorite part was when he looked at three drawings of stick figures, one on a blank page, one (I think) standing on a line, and one in a corner (3 lines behind); and he asked himself, "which stick figure can feel pain most?" The answer, to everyone present as well as to him, was the one in the corner. Dimensionality. And Nathaniel Mackey re possession/performance in Bedouin Hornbook etc. Jeff Nuttall actually changed my life with a fake lecture on possession in the very early 70s, whatever fake means. And what about Freud's performing hysterics? Fiona Templeton ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 09:27:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: allegories of berth Comments: To: maria damon In-Reply-To: <32f602f914df692@mhub1.tc.umn.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'd always thought "exurb" better applied to those hollowed out areas at the center of most major cities where all that we value in the urban used to take place, but whose place will next be taken by identical sports palaces and shopping malls once the speculators get the prices down and the tax breaks up -- AND re: reviews of readings as genre: for several years I have asked students to write reviews of poetry readings -- the "student-authored" "reading review" appears to have a generic introduction: "When my professor assigned a poetry reading I didn't expect to enjoy the experience, but much to my surprise poet X captivated me." At first I thought this simply a transparent effort to captivate the professor's higher grade range -- but it occurs so often that I now think it a measure of just what the students' prior educational experiences have taught them to expect of poetry and poets -- The non-English majors among my students are uniformly surprised to find that they enjoy listening to poetry -- will probably not make it to see all my San Francisco friends at Small Press Traffic this weekend, but will catch Howe's South Bay reading at Stanford -- maybe we can compare notes here afterward -- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 12:39:09 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: simon@CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU Subject: Phoolan Devi The film, _Bandit Queen_, is voyeuristic and that's just for starters. It misrepresents/disdains/exploits/uses/licksandspits et al, the individual, the problems, the issues, the time, the location, the sociocultural universe, the economics, the woman, India, and whatever else I've left out. pah beth simon It is not a particularly Indian film, and it is not a film paritcularly about India. But yes, the sex is graphic. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 09:44:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: definitions/epic Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" maria, when did this laughing-at occur? where were we, two years ago? Its not that I have a poor memory, or that you are a forgettable person (from yr postings, clearly not), but its just that its my mission to make people laugh, and quite a number have laughed at me in recent years. Perhaps i'll revive the red suspenders; the facial hair is stuck on real tight. all yrs, db ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 13:00:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Getting the word out In-Reply-To: <199702010855.AAA07406@armenia.it.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII About the copy of In the American Tree that was never checked out: a VERY LARGE number of titles are acquired by research libraries (and to a lesser extent this is true of public libraries as well) that never get checked out. Strange but true. Of course this indicates that there should be a lot more work done on resource sharing, coordinated collection development, inter-library loan, etc. etc. And under the current economic pressures these things are indeed speeding up...(I've been involved with them over the years at a number of libraries). But believe me, research in the library literature shows that such a fate for any given title in a given library, is not statistically unusual. It was not by any means a unique event caused by the unpopularity of non-mainstream poetry! Mark Prejsnar Atlanta ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 12:38:27 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: goodman does anyone have a mailing address for denise levertov? wd it be appropriate to send condolences to an ex-spouse (i don't know the protocol here)? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 10:47:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: On not checking it out In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Despite the fact that I have made reference in print to the fact of a text's never having been checked out of the UCLA library -- none of us should equate that with the book's not having been read -- PARTICULARLY in research libraries people often use books without removing them FROM the library. This is a practice in my own work -- I'm one of those annoying people who disregard the signs posted by the librarians and reshelve books myself (BUT I DO make sure to shelve them correctly!) -- The one exception -- from time to time our library keeps records of the usage rates of journals they are considering for elimination -- In those instances I not only leave the journal on the reshelving shelf so that my use of it may be tabulated, I go get it several more times so it will be counted again and again -- Aldon (he who considers libraries his own private study) Nielsen ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 12:48:58 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: definitions/epic In message UB Poetics discussion group writes: > maria, when did this laughing-at occur? where were we, two years ago? Its > not that I have a poor memory, or that you are a forgettable person (from > yr postings, clearly not), but its just that its my mission to make people > laugh, and quite a number have laughed at me in recent years. Perhaps i'll > revive the red suspenders; the facial hair is stuck on real tight. all yrs, > db > i don;'t think i actually laughed at you. i just didn't quite know what to make of you. it ws at mla 2 yrs ago, at the panel on poetries of the isles of california, where ed dorn railed against the "bootlicking fascists of multiculturalism" and i had to get up after that, the unknown and only chick on the panel, and talk about jessica hagedorn, ntozake shange, and the bay area as multicultural heaven. afterward someone (mdavidson?) introduced us. it was myfirst experience w/ the "poetry division" and w/ many of the folks i now know thru poetix list etc. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 14:01:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: Re: MUTILATE THIS THREAD: Re: gun controls Comments: To: maria damon In-Reply-To: <32f5fdfd2fd0232@mhub1.tc.umn.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Fiction-of-philosophy, a strange list I co-moderate out of Purdue... Alan On Mon, 3 Feb 1997, maria damon wrote: > In message UB > Poetics discussion group writes: > > or REMEMBER NON-OBJECTIVE VIOLENT ENTITIES which is something I'm dealing > > with on the fop-l list at the moment... > > > > Alan > > what's fop-l, o jennifer of my heart? > > > > http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html > > images: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ > > Tel. 718-857-3671 CuSeeMe: 166.84.250.149 > > > http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html images: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Tel. 718-857-3671 CuSeeMe: 166.84.250.149 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 15:33:33 +0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: Re: possession/spirit POETICS Digest - 30 Jan 1997 to 31 Jan 1997 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >From a performance angle as well as textual: >Try Maya Deren's films and writings. And L.A. performance artist Rachel >Rosenthal. >And Nathaniel Mackey re possession/performance in Bedouin Hornbook etc. >And what about Freud's performing hysterics? > >Fiona Templeton I agree with all Fiona. I would Like to add (besides Deren, Mackey & funny-but-true Freud) Artaud to that list. Eshelman's Translations in Conductors of the Pit is the best I have seen. This subject is a bit like my baby. So any and all responses would be grand. Think about Diamanda Galas too... she IS NOT as POP as it would seem... Check out her book Shit of God. Excellent=E9 and CHOCK FULL of multiple voices from other (re)sources. Cheers, Bil Brown ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 15:52:45 +0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: Re: Nate Mackey Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >And Nathaniel Mackey re possession/performance in Bedouin Hornbook etc. > >Fiona Templeton Does anyone have an email address for Nate Mackey? I would love to contact him on something of regional importance. Bil Brown Living&WritingPoetics in Louisville (No where near the angel of Dust) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 15:41:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: possession/spirit In-Reply-To: <9702031750.AA22415@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Might also check out Mead and Bateson, "Art, Grace, and Style in Primitive Art in Bali." And there's a "modelling" study of French-Canadian actress Viola Legere. I can hunt it down if you're interested; it's a remarkable act of attention. Backchannel, since I'll have to go back to lurk-mode shortly. Wendy On Mon, 3 Feb 1997, F.A. Templeton wrote: > >From a performance angle as well as textual: > Try Maya Deren's films and writings. And L.A. performance artist Rachel > Rosenthal. > > Also do some research into how artist Matt Mullican came up with his world > of signs (he WENT there, hypnotised in performance). His accounts of > how he got to that stage are a wonderful performanec too; my favorite part > was when he looked at three drawings of stick figures, one on a blank > page, one (I think) standing on a line, and one in a corner (3 lines > behind); and he asked himself, "which stick figure can feel pain most?" > The answer, to everyone present as well as to him, was the one in the > corner. Dimensionality. > > And Nathaniel Mackey re possession/performance in Bedouin Hornbook etc. > > Jeff Nuttall actually changed my life with a fake lecture on possession in > the very early 70s, whatever fake means. > > And what about Freud's performing hysterics? > > Fiona Templeton > --------------------------------------------------- Wendy Battin wjbat@conncoll.edu (home) http://camel.conncoll.edu/ccother/wjbat/ (CAPA) http://shain.lib.conncoll.edu/CAPA/capa.html --------------------------------------------------- "It is not the crocodile's job to yell "Watch out for the crocodile!"--Henri Michaux ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 16:19:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Blackberry/ Cranburn...... TWO QUESTIONS..... 1) Sylvester Pollet---is it the Seeker's hit "I know I'll never find another you?" (from circa 1966) that Blackburn cuts up into a poem? Could you post the poem perhaps? Or is it another song with the same name? (in that sense the title is self-refuting, autotelos, self-reliant, onanism, etc.) 2.) CAN ANYBODY TELL ME what the name of the lead singer of the CRANBERRIES name is? (this is SERIOUS and it is a question that actually related to poetry. I need to know). Who knows maybe even the winner may win a date with me? (but don't let that scare you!)---Chris ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 15:39:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Blackberry/ Cranburn...... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >2.) CAN ANYBODY TELL ME what the name of the lead singer of the CRANBERRIES >name is? (this is SERIOUS and it is a question that actually related to >poetry. I need to know). Dolores O'Riordan When I once, on the television, saw her in some program on PBS which featured Pavarotti, Bono and The Edge from U2, Michael Bolton, and a few others, Dolores sang Ave Maria. One person listening thought at first that it was Minnie Mouse -- but I think she's actually a very good singer, although true that hers is a fairly thin voice. >Who knows maybe even the winner may win a date with me? >(but don't let that scare you!)---Chris I'll pass this time, but if you're ever in town . . . ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 16:46:24 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Phoolan Devi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >The film, _Bandit Queen_, is voyeuristic and that's just for starters. >It misrepresents/disdains/exploits/uses/licksandspits et al, >the individual, the problems, the issues, the time, the location, >the sociocultural universe, the economics, the woman, India, and >whatever else I've left out. I could not agree more. It was the first film I'd walked out of since "Leaving Las Vegas", which was the first film I'd walked out of since "seven." Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 18:19:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: Phoolan Devi In-Reply-To: <9702032308.AA06452@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > >The film, _Bandit Queen_, is voyeuristic and that's just for starters. > >It misrepresents/disdains/exploits/uses/licksandspits et al, > >the individual, the problems, the issues, the time, the location, > >the sociocultural universe, the economics, the woman, India, and > >whatever else I've left out. > > I could not agree more. > It was the first film I'd walked out of since "Leaving Las Vegas", which was > the first film I'd walked out of since "seven." Agreed. Woman's p.o.v. my kiester.. Though the last before that I walked out on was a pseudo-hip Demme film. Name escapes me for good reason. Came close to walking out on The English Patient but my s.o. wanted to see it out. Wendy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 17:16:12 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Julie Marie Schmid Subject: Re: Blackberry/ Cranburn...... In-Reply-To: <970203141140_716317350@emout05.mail.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The lead singer of the Cranberries is Dolores O'Riordan. On Mon, 3 Feb 1997, Chris Stroffolino wrote: > TWO QUESTIONS..... > > 1) Sylvester Pollet---is it the Seeker's hit "I know I'll never find another > you?" (from circa 1966) that Blackburn cuts up into a poem? Could you post > the poem perhaps? Or is it another song with the same name? (in that sense > the title is self-refuting, autotelos, self-reliant, onanism, etc.) > > 2.) CAN ANYBODY TELL ME what the name of the lead singer of the CRANBERRIES > name is? (this is SERIOUS and it is a question that actually related to > poetry. I need to know). > Who knows maybe even the winner may win a date with me? > (but don't let that scare you!)---Chris > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 15:31:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: On not checking it out Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yes, and I often sit on the floor in the stacks for hours after stumbling on a trove of books I know nothing about, sometimes in fields I know nothing about, because I found my way there in search of the one book that I may need to take home. At 10:47 AM 2/3/97 -0800, you wrote: >Despite the fact that I have made reference in print to the fact of a >text's never having been checked out of the UCLA library -- none of us >should equate that with the book's not having been read -- PARTICULARLY >in research libraries people often use books without removing them FROM >the library. This is a practice in my own work -- I'm one of those >annoying people who disregard the signs posted by the librarians and >reshelve books myself (BUT I DO make sure to shelve them correctly!) -- > >The one exception -- from time to time our library keeps records of the >usage rates of journals they are considering for elimination -- In those >instances I not only leave the journal on the reshelving shelf so that my >use of it may be tabulated, I go get it several more times so it will be >counted again and again -- > >Aldon (he who considers libraries his own private study) Nielsen > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 14:39:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Blackwaite/Brathburn In-Reply-To: <970203141140_716317350@emout05.mail.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Not hardly the Seekers -- "There Will Never Be Another You" available in numerous recorded versions -- I like Sarah Vaughan's myself -- Blackburn's version in the Jarolim Collected -- AND I've just come across ref. to a documentary on Brathwaite's "Mother Poem" -- apparently filmed in Barbados (or videoed))\ A Donette Francis, who is a grad. student at NYU, had something to do with the making of -- Anybody ever seen this or know anything about it? bewitched, bothered and bewildered, aldon (who has now exceeded his quota and will post no more today) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 19:19:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Blackberry/ Cranburn...... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Chris Stroffolino wrote: > > 2.) CAN ANYBODY TELL ME what the name of the lead singer of the CRANBERRIES > name is? (this is SERIOUS and it is a question that actually related to > poetry. I need to know). Dolores OReardon, or somthing like that, me thinks -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/ http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything that allows men to become rooted, through values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in _one_ language, is the principle of alienation which constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, [...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 17:17:27 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: main Subject: Re: Phoolan Devi In-Reply-To: <009AF557.B7026E4A.109@CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII beth, what would an 'indian film' be? isn't all film 'voyeuristic'? all'seeing'? interestingly, 'voyeurism' implies 'seeing' that's directed _in_ from the _out_ side, which warps (perverse: 'to turn about'). best, dan featherston On Mon, 3 Feb 1997 simon@CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU wrote: > The film, _Bandit Queen_, is voyeuristic and that's just for starters. > It misrepresents/disdains/exploits/uses/licksandspits et al, > the individual, the problems, the issues, the time, the location, > the sociocultural universe, the economics, the woman, India, and > whatever else I've left out. > > pah > > beth simon > > It is not a particularly Indian film, and it is not a film > paritcularly about India. > > But yes, the sex is graphic. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 18:20:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark W Scroggins Subject: Upper Limit Music In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Listfolks: I'm pleased to announce the very imminent (within the next week) publication of my edited collection of essays on Louis Zukofsky, _Upper Limit Music: The Writing of Louis Zukofsky_, by the University of Alabama Press. The contents are as follows: Introduction I. Cultural Poetics, Political Culture: Zukofsky in the 1930s 1. Between Contact and Survival: Louis Zukofsky's Poetry of Exile, Steve Shoemaker 2. The Revolutionary Word: Louis Zukofsky, _New Masses_, and Political Radicalism in the 1930s, Mark Scroggins 3. Jewish-American Modernism and the Problem of Identity: With Special Reference to the Work of Louis Zukofsky, Norman Finkelstein 4. Zukofsky, Marxism, and American Handicraft, Barry Ahearn 5. Poetry and the Age: Pound, Zukofsky, and the Labor Theory of Value, Alec Marsh 6. "A Precision of Appeal": Louis Zukofsky and the _Index of American Design_, Ira B. Nadel II. Toward the Postmodern: Zukofsky's Life of Writing 7. A "no man's land!": Postmodern Citationality in Zukofsky's "Poem beginning 'the'", Ming-Qian Ma 8. Writing and Authority in Zukofsky's _Thanks to the Dictionary_, Peter Quartermain 9. The Comedian as the Letter Z: Reading Zukofsky Reading Stevens Reading Zukofsky, P. Michael Campbell 10. "Words Ranging Forms": Patterns of Exchange in Zukofsky's Early Lyrics, Susan Vanderborg 11. From Modernism to Postmodernism: Zukofsky's "A"-12, Burton Hatlen 12. A More Capacious Shoulder: "A"-24, Nonsense, and the Burden of Meaning, Marnie Parsons 13. A Fractal Music: Some Notes on Zukofsky's Flowers, Kent Johnson (And a cover drawing by Guy Davenport, to boot.) You'll recognize many listmates and other acquaintances among the contributors. I'm extremely pleased at how the whole project has turned out; it should be of great interest to anyone with an investment in Zukofsky's work. For more information, write the University of Alabama Press at Box 870380, Tuscaloosa AL 35487-0380, or drop me a line directly. Best, Mark Scroggins ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 17:51:11 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Getting the word out MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > About the copy of In the American Tree that was never checked out: a VERY > LARGE number of titles are acquired by research libraries (and to a lesser > extent this is true of public libraries as well) that never get checked > out. Strange but true. Of course this indicates that there should be a > lot more work done on resource sharing, coordinated collection > development, inter-library loan, etc. etc. let me just add to Mark's post that an item which is not checked out of the library is not necessarily going unused. I spend a good deal of my time (probably too much) reading, strange as it may seem, right here on the premises--& that includes poetry. in fact, in light of this discussion, I'm thinking maybe I should check the buggery things out after all, just to boost their circ statistics. hell, maybe I'll check them all out, over & over--I could develop a rotating, year-long schedule, maybe even organize this as a group activity. see, there is something to be learned from the folks at Dianetics. c. .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) "Or, worse, they will change the point of view (top becomes bottom, male becomes female, etc etc) and think, like the [Realists] they are, that they have changed something." ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 20:11:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: Blackberry/ Cranburn...... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >TWO QUESTIONS..... > >1) Sylvester Pollet---is it the Seeker's hit "I know I'll never find another >you?" (from circa 1966) that Blackburn cuts up into a poem? Could you post >the poem perhaps? Or is it another song with the same name? (in that sense >the title is self-refuting, autotelos, self-reliant, onanism, etc.) > >ONE ANSWER.... It's true, Paul wrote on all those topics (like self-refuting onanism). I'll try to type the poem, but I'm not sure I can control the spacing, Chris. It's on page 316 of Blackburn's Collected Poems, or send your address & I'll send a copy. Come to think of it, I must have your address somewhere. Listening to Sonny Rollins at the Five Spot THERE WILL be many other nights like be standing here with someone, some one someone some-one some some some some some some one there will be other songs a-nother fall, another--spring, but there will never be a-noth, noth anoth noth anoth-er noth-er noth-er Other lips that I may kiss, but they won't thrill me like thrill me like like yours used to dream a million dreams but how can they come when there never be a-noth-- (Paul Blackburn, 1964) Sylvester Pollet Backwoods Broadsides National Poetry Foundation RR5 Box 3630 University of Maine Ellsworth ME 5752 Neville Hall 04605-9529 Orono, Maine USA 04469-5752 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 22:50:21 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KYLE CONNER/LRC-CAHS Subject: Re: Blackberry/ Cranburn...... In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Praise to you, Sylvester, for actually typing in a Blackburn poem! And, yes, it seems that you got the spacing right. It never ceases to amaze me how Blackburn's open form immediately captures MY breath and spirit, catches me up in its vitality and freshness of articulation. Isn't this what Blackburn finally mastered--a vitality of articulation? And in doing so, a unique and individualized presentation of truth. Long live Blackburn the Word! Kyle Conner ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 20:05:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: allegories of berth In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:27 AM -0800 2/3/97, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: >will probably not make it to see all my San Francisco friends at Small >Press Traffic this weekend, but will catch Howe's South Bay reading at >Stanford -- maybe we can compare notes here afterward -- This afternoon a man called Small Press Traffic and said, "It says here that you're having Suzy Howe reading at New College. Is that Susan Howe?" And when I told him that is was indeed Susan Howe, he said that it said Suzy Howe in the paper. He added, "This is *terrible*." I wish I had asked him which paper it was in! Dodie Bellamy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 23:26:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: armand schwerner Subject: POSSESSION ETC Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" on Jan 31, Julie Schmid wrote: "I'm looking for any suggestions ... re: spirit possession, spirit doctors..." etc. Julie: a very few suggestions: 1. *Untold Sisters, Hispanic Nuns in their Own Words,* Electa Arenal & Stacey Schlau, U. of New Mexico Press, 1989. Full of remarkable documents.I cite just a very few representative quotes. For example, citations from the Venerable Madre Isabel de Jesus (1586-1648): "While I was looking at a carved figure of the Most Holy Christ, He beckoned me with His holy head, and looking at me with His eyes, He pointed to the wound in his Most Sacred Rib: He ordered me to enter Him through it, He performed this gesture of love with me, by means of His own portrait." Arenal/Schlau: "Jesus appears as mother; Isabel sees Him nursing dogs from his engorged breasts.... Madre Isabel explains that Christ's milk-filled breasts are his mercy, but their engorgement (his pain) is a result of his children's refusal to accept his divine word; this refusal is their illness... [Isabel's vision makes] inextricable connections between herself and Jesus through the imagery of his milk of mercy and body-blood..." 2, *Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions*, John Lame Deer and Richard Erdoes, NY:Touchstone, Simon & Shuster, 1972. For instance, from the Chapter on "Looking at the Sun, they Dance.": "Staring open-eyed at the blazing sun, the blinding rays burning deep into your skull, filling it with unbearable brightness...Many people do not un derstand why we do this. They call the sun dance barbarous, savage, a bloody supersitition. The way I look at it our body is the only thing which truly belongs to us. When we Indians give of our flesh, our bodies, we are giving of the only thing which is ours alone....It is [at acute moments]that the visions occur--visions of becoming a medicine man, visions of the future.... Insights gained at such a price are even greater than those that come to a man on a hilltop during his vision quest; they are truly wakan--sacred." 3. *The Shaman Aningatchaq* by Tom Lowenstein, Shaman's narration presented in transliteration and translation and commented on by Lowenstein from Tikiraq, Alaska.London: Many Press, 1981 (address: 15 Norcott Rd, London N.16) : A shaman's anecdote: "In the early days, shamans living on the west side of the village used to visit (in spirit flight) the people who lived on the east side. Once one was travelling in a ball of fire: and when someone strujck a whale's jaw bone, the shaman fell. It was forbidden to touch a whale's jaw wlhile a shaman was flying." And another: "And once Tigautchialuk (another shaman) was doing "ulimaq" (a practice in which the shaman turns his clothes inside out before flying). He left Tikiraq; he flew off, and when he was near the cliffs, he met someone coming from the south. And the shaman flying from the south made Tigautchialuk's spirit fall to earth. His "inuusiq" (life force) failed, and he died. I don't know where Tigautchialu, was heading. Ulimmaq was something the shamans used to do before spirit flight." 4. *KA PO'E KAHIKO, The People of Old* by Samuel Kamakau, Honolulu:Bishop Museum Press 1964. "Noha Ana--Medium Possession: Spirits often return and speak through a "maluna," a person who is inspired because he has become possessed "Ma ka uluhia ana mai a noho iluna." Some possessed persons speak crazily. Some speak as inspired prophets "uluhia kaula" or prophesiers "uluhia wanana", some just talk, and some give inspired help. There are many kinds of spirits that help for good and many that aid in evil. Some lie and deceive, and some are truthful; it would not be possible for a man to do these things without the aid of his possessing spirit." [Originally published in Hawaii in 1871.] Visions and Dreams: Dreams are of two kinds: dreams at the moment of falling asleep "hihi'o"; and dreams in deep sleep "moe 'uhane." A vision, "akaku," is unlike either of these. It is what one sees when one is really awake..." 5.*Le Vodou Haitien* by Louis Maximilien, Port-au-Prince, Haiti:Imprimerie de L'Etat, 1945. "La crise de Loa se developpe sous l'influence de l'idee d'une possession d'un etre humain, par l'esprit d'un dieu." With photos, sketches, presentation of priestly function in detail, ceremonies, rites and the language of rites. 6. *Tales of the Hasidim, the Early Masters* Martin Buber, NY:Shocken 1947. The Coat "Whatever the rabbi of Koznits said sounded as if he were praying, only weaker and in a lower voice. He liked to hum to himself proverbs and sayings current among the Polish peasants. After a Purim feast, which he had presided over in great happiness, he said: 'How right, what the people say: Take off your coat, dear soul, and prance with joy at feast and dance.' But how curious a coat is the body!' Sometimes he even spoke to God in Polish. When he was alone they would hear him say: 'Moj kochanku,' which means 'My darling.' " *Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart's Creation Spirituality in New Translation*, by Matthew Fox, with commentaries.Garden City: Image Books, Doubleday, 1980. A big anthology of the Christian mystic whose writings are suggestive of Zen experience and writings. "You should love God mindlessly, that is, so that your soul is without mind and free from all mental activities, for as long as your soul is operating like a mind, so long does it have images and representations. But as long as it has images, it has intermediaries, and as long as it has intermediaries, it has neither oneness nor simplicity. And therefore your soul should be bare of all mind and should stay there without mind." ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 05:02:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: selfless shame promotion Dear Aldon: Thank you for sending me THREE copies of LLS, your beautiful magazine available in fine bookstores everywhere... aside from the mention of your book and the very funny satirical (collage) piece by Steve Tills and the visuals by Spencer Slby and Jacques Debrot, there was also Mary "interrupted puppet" Winters who has a great piece called "What I like Best About A Relationship is its Potential FOr Narrative" and the lost glacier. Loss Glazier has a line about the "TExt's ability to DOPE the given situation" and there are some bittersweet 'nostalgic' type poems too-- Richard Flynn "Feeling and form/(a yesterday I/ find almost impossible"!!!!! and qeoffrey jacques' "California"-- "nothing's sweeter or lovelier/ than the acquantaince I'm pleased to make/alongside this tinkling/tinker toy/if only i knew what hearts meant as we sit staring over coffee/talking about sublime occupations/.---etc. or as Michael Bassinski says (on a similar topic): "the mouth of the heart is/not near the heart/ who is"------ The only thing I hate about the issue are those terrible poems "Society's Child" and "Things People Say While Dancing"--- I can't believe you'd publish such dribble, but I'll forgive you. Chris Stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 00:33:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Quiet as a mouse Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" the list at midnite ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 17:30:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: meetings Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" maria, it's beginning to filter back to me . . . twilite zone soundtrack, please . . .but i (I) wasnt on the calif panel, i was on alan golding's brit poetry panel talking abt allan fisher. its funny that mdavidson made this introduction thats elusive to my memory, because he has always maintained that he first met me "coming round a corner" of my house in the country, but i didnt move to the country till 1970, and met md first at his apt in bkly in 68 or 69. but i know this matter of mixing up a striking impression of a person with meeting him for the first time: i "first met" g bowering coming around the corner of brock hall (in whose basement the campus-newspaper staff held chain-smoking contests), and surely that meeting did take place, because i remember him that moment,against that backdrop, pale and shaking and somewhat surly, but he told me once that we met first in creative writing class, playing footsies with the same third party. the first time i met anselm hollo (having corresponded with him slightly a decade before) was when he was visiting san fran, and staying with bob and francie (perelman and shaw). i then lived in sAn fran and bob came by to take me over to meet anselm. i was a little bit the better for wear and began to obsess as bob drove and spoke, that i wd say something dumb when i at last met the great finn. I decided I'd say, "I've wanted to meet you for a long time!" Up the stairs and into the kitchen and there sat hollo, the sunlight falling directly onto his eyes, which were an incredible blue and with almost no pupils, like a cat's. struck by this sight, i cd only stammer "Anselm, it's been a long time!" Anselm, not missing a beat, replied "Eternity." db ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 05:35:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Keats's House is Falling Down... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit thought this news from the Manchester Guardian, in via John Whiting in London, wld be interes -- Pierre Sign of the Times (one of a series). One doesn't have to be an advocate of the Great Books approach to literature to be saddened by this. I know the building well; it's within walking distance of where we live. You need only imagine the likelihood of such a fate befalling the house of, say, Morike, to realize what we Anglo-Saxons are allowing to happen to our literary heritage. Ezra Pound's birthplace in Hayley, Idaho, is also falling to bits. At least it has a peeling wooden plaque on the wall, but the town's little publicity hand-out doesn't even mention him. It will ultimately depend on the enthusiasm of one of those World Cultures which we now so warmly embrace. Perhaps the Japanese will endow Keats' house before it becomes a pile of rubble. John Whiting ###################################################### ##### The [London] Guardian February 4 1997 ODE TO RACK AND RUIN Sebastian Faulks KEAT'S HOUSE is falling down. It is the most perfect memorial to any English writer - exactly preserved, full of important papers, open to the public, delightful to visit, charged with atmosphere - and it is coming apart. The beautiful Regency cottage is in Hampstead, north London, and was built by Keats's friends Charles Brown and Charles Dilke in 1815-16. Part of the problem is that the house is built on clay and seldom stays still; the curator, Christina Gee, says that an entire wing has parted from the main house and many of the supporting walls are easing away from the chimney flues. Plaster has fallen from the ceilings and the chimneys are wrapped in Polythene; the collection of manuscripts and books is threatened by water and the walls of Keats's bedroom are stained by damp. Andrew Motion, the writer who has just finished a biography of Keats, used to watch water run down inside the walls while he was researching in the library. As a matter of fact the house was always prone to leak. Brown and Dilke did not spend much on the construction of the building and Keats's biographer W J Bate records that even in Keats's day the basement kitchen and dining room were damp for much of the year. Although houses in the street are now very expensive, 1815 Hampstead was in the countryside and the house, though pretty, was small. For full board Keats paid L5 a month. He moved in with Brown in the winter of 1818. After years of intense apprenticeship, of many trials and many errors, Keats was at last on the verge of something magnificent. Bate's restrained biography puts it like this: "The year ... from about mid-September 1818 ... may be soberly described as the most productive in the life of any poet of the past three centuries." I used to visit this wonderful museum frequently in the seventies, partly because I loved Keats's poetry but also because I was fascinated by Charles Brown. What must it have been like to live with a genius during his most productive period - a period, as Bate reminds us, almost unmatched in literary history? Brown was in his early thirties, a former merchant with an inherited income of about L300 a year, which was enough to lead a life of literary leisure. He was of a type not much seen today: a businessman whose passion was for admiring and encouraging the creative gifts of others. What everyone said about Brown was that he was practical and "down to earth". Mind you, so, in many ways, was Keats. Small, voluble, pugnacious, he had impressed his teachers with a belief that he would achieve something in the world, but probably "in some military capacity". Did he talk to Brown at dinner about his poetry? Perhaps he talked about Fanny Brawne, whose mother had taken Brown's half of the house the previous summer. She was a sharp-featured girl of 18 whom Keats initially thought "ignorant", minx-like and lacking modesty, but in the summer of 1819 she began to receive his sumptuous love letters. And what can she have made of them? After one of his characteristic periods of recapitulation in early 1819, Keats cleared his mind. The planets moved into a favourable conjunction and he began to write again: first the Ode To Psyche; then one May morning he went and sat beneath the plum tree at the front of the house and wrote the entire 80-line Ode To A Nightingale. When Keats came in at lunch time Brown noticed that he had some pieces of paper in his hand. They had a maid at that time who was a keen tidier and throweraway, and Brown saw that Keats stuffed the pieces of paper down behind some books: he had thought them worth saving. When Keats went up to his room, did Brown go to the bookshelf, pull out the scraps of paper and read them? A few days later Keats wrote Ode On A Grecian Urn. He followed this with the Ode On Melancholy. Although the Ode To Autumn would not come until later in the year, he had, as Bate puts it, "within about three weeks written four of the greatest lyric poems in English". And now the house is falling down. The curator of the museum says that 60 per cent of her visitors are from abroad; British schoolchildren rarely visit these days because Keats is no longer on their syllabus. They do not have to study pre20th century writers at all, and if they do, then, according to Christine Cayley of the Cambridge Examination Board, "Many British children choose an author such as Jane Austen, with popular video versions available." As Andrew Motion puts it: "If children are not studying these poems then something has gone drastically wrong." Keats's reputation has suffered a kind of literary subsidence, partly caused by the fact that today's children are protected from exposure to anything old or, God forbid, "difficult". Motion hopes vigorously to reinvent Keats for today's reader and thinks it more likely that this can be done through biography than by merely hoping that the texts will be read again. Even a decade ago the idea that such drastic critical repair work might soon be necessary would have seemed to belong to some illiterate nightmare. The house meanwhile has just become a charitable trust and has passed from the care of Camden council's leisure services to that of the City of London. Christina Gee is hopeful that the corporation will do all that is needed - though the relevant department, alas, has just been asked to make cuts of L3.8 million. Within a few months of his astonishing summer Keats was dead of TB in Rome at the age of 26. This self-taught son of a stable keeper had driven himself to compose four of the greatest lyric poems in English - but he had no video tie-ins. The important thing is that the City of London does its duty, but donations are welcome at Keats House, Keats Grove, London, NW3 2RR (telephone: 0171-794 6829). - ENDS - -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/ http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything that allows men to become rooted, through values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in _one_ language, is the principle of alienation which constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, [...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 14:29:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark W Scroggins Subject: Upper Limit Music Comments: To: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: cc: Multiple recipients of list POETICS In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Listfolk: This is to announce the impending publication (within the week, hopefully) of my edited collection, _Upper Limit Music: The Writing of Louis Zukofsky_, by the University of Alabama Press. The contents are as follows: Introduction Cultural Poetics, Political Culture: Zukofsky in the 1930s 1. Between Contact and Exile: Louis Zukofsky's Poetry of Survival, Steve Shoemaker 2. The Revolutionary Word: Louis Zukofsky, _New Masses_, and Political Radicalism in the 1930s, Mark Scroggins 3. Jewish-American Modernism and the Problem of Identity: With Special Reference to the Work of Louis Zukofsky, Norman Finkelstein 4. Zukofsky, Marxism, and American Handicraft, Barry Ahearn 5. Poetry and the Age: Pound, Zukofsky, and the Labor Theory of Value, Alec Marsh 6. "A Precision of Appeal": Louis Zukofsky and the _Index of American Design_, Ira B. Nadel Toward the Postmodern: Zukofsky's Life of Writing 7. A "no man's land!": Postmodern Citationality in Zukofsky's "Poem beginning 'the'", Ming-Qian Ma ' 8. Writing and Authority in Zukofsky's _Thanks to the Dictionary_, Peter Quartermain 9. The Comedian as the Letter Z: Reading Zukofsky Reading Stevens Reading Zukofsky, P. Michael Campbell 10. "Words Ranging Forms": Patterns of Exchange in Zukofsky's Early Lyrics, Susan Vanderborg 11. From Modernism to Postmodernism: Zukofsky's "A"-12, Burton Hatlen 12. A More Capacious Shoulder: "A"-24, Nonsense, and the Burden of Meaning, Marnie Parsons 13. A Fractal Music: Some Notes on Zukofsky's Flowers, Kent Johnson (And a cover drawing by Guy Davenport, to boot.) I'm very pleased with the way this project has turned out; there's _something_ here for anyone interested in Zukofsky, I think. For more information, contact the press at U of Alabama P, Box 870380, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0380, or feel free to drop me a line. Best to all, Mark Scroggins ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 08:26:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Walkin out In-Reply-To: from "Wendy Battin" at Feb 3, 97 06:19:32 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > I could not agree more. > It was the first film I'd walked out of since "Leaving Las Vegas", which was > the first film I'd walked out of since "seven." > Agreed. Woman's p.o.v. my kiester.. Though the last before that I walked > out on was a pseudo-hip Demme film. Name escapes me for good reason. > Came close to walking out on The English Patient but my s.o. wanted to see > it out. > > Wendy Wow, a whole lotta walkin out goin on. I don't think I've ever walked out on a movie. I guess I'm an unreconstructed voyeur. I can't stop looking. I loved the English Patient. Did anybody notice how Olson's Special View of History got worked into the Herodotus business? That's Ondaatje for you. Bob Creeley once showed me a letter from Michael Ondaatje in which he talked about rewriting In the Skin of a Lion 4 or 5 times in order to work into it certain important points from the Olson/Creeley correspondence. The Globe and Mail, Canada's right wing business rag, has recently tried to stir up an attack on the English Patient by comparing it unfavourably to--get this--Casablanca. They ran an essay by some philosophy professor from Calgary who claimed that Casablanca was a "moral" movie and TEP was an "immoral" movie based on their respective orientations toward "self-sacrifice". When a number of very articulate letters came in calling into question the rather simple minded sense of "morality" being deployed, the Globe ran a 20 column inch editorial trying to connect the English Patient to the Kim Philby spy scandal, and claiming that it seriously undermined patriotic Candians' will to go to war for their country. Should the need arise. O those neo-cons. Ya gotta love em. Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 09:50:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: epic/definitions MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I tried replying to Maria's post, but it seems to have disappeared in the void. (Useful if you're a Buddhist, but not so good for messages . . . Anyway, Maria, I was confused by your epic/pubick connection, couldn't quite make your point out (perhaps there was none?), but did think it could work as a description of HD's wonderful poem, Helen in Egypt, a classic post-Pound take on the epic. Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 08:20:30 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: Blackwaite/Brathburn Comments: To: "Aldon L. Nielsen" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Aldon, I'm rather fond of Chet Baker's version of "There Will Never Be Another You," sung in that achingly pure, hurting, tender, fundamentally YOUNG voice, or at least that voice just at the moment of discovery and change. His "My Funny Valentine" the same . . . And Sonny Rollins' album "Live at the Five Spot" has a small part of Blackburn's poem on the liner notes, if I remember rightly. What with sampling and all, maybe we should talk about favorite versions of works. I was a little surprised, to use a mundane example, that none of my students had ever heard the Stevie Wonder original of the Coolio cover. It seems to me that the concept of "plagiarism" is undergoing a sea change these days, what with borrowings left and right; I remember a quote -- was it Eliot? -- who said "mediocre poets imitate; the best steal outright." Joe Safdie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 10:40:10 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Getting out the word out Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 05:51 PM 2/3/97 MDT, you wrote: etc. etc. >let me just add to Mark's post that an item which is not checked out >of the library is not necessarily going unused. I spend a good deal >of my time (probably too much) reading, strange as it may seem, >right here on the premises--& that includes poetry. in fact, in >light of this discussion, I'm thinking maybe I should check the >buggery things out after all, just to boost their circ statistics. >hell, maybe I'll check them all out, over & over--I could develop a >rotating, year-long schedule, maybe even organize this as a group >activity. see, there is something to be learned from the folks at Dianetics. I have to confess, c., that I've been doing that for some time now: checking out books and not reading them. I check out seven, read one, return five, get heavilyfined on two, check out five, read two, return seven, begin the cycle again. I consider it doing my part to assist in the up-keep of such institutions: my method usually generates an average of $20 in fines per book read. About the cost of the book did I buy it in a store. All this, too, might be learned from Dianetics. Who said the below? > >"Or, worse, they will change the point of view >(top becomes bottom, male becomes female, etc etc) >and think, like the [Realists] they are, that they >have changed something." (Who said the above?) Why have we heard nothing about your new limited edition on here? Its recent review? m ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 10:25:15 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Phoolan Devi & all the rest Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 06:19 PM 2/3/97 -0500, Wendy Battin wrote: >Agreed. Woman's p.o.v. my kiester.. Though the last before that I walked >out on was a pseudo-hip Demme film. Name escapes me for good reason. >Came close to walking out on The English Patient but my s.o. wanted to see >it out. Oh yes. You will find a hill the shape of a woman. Her back. Reclining. Nude as the sand. Occasionaly she will rise from bathtubs, etc. With greater frequency than ever before I have found myself absolutely disgusted while watching movies I thought would be stupid but entertaining. The E. P. for all its immaturity (what was a line? "the map of the body, the map without boarders?) was at least nothing like the new line of, as you say, pseudo-hip films a la Demme, Tarintino and whoever made that "Seven." But I suppose this is a useless complaint... Matthias ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 10:31:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Phoolan Devi & form Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 05:17 PM 2/3/97 -0700, you wrote: >beth, >what would an 'indian film' be? >isn't all film 'voyeuristic'? all'seeing'? >interestingly, 'voyeurism' implies 'seeing' that's directed _in_ from >the _out_ side, which warps (perverse: 'to turn about'). >best, dan featherston Form, IMO, especially generic form, may assist content (subject matter) but it should not be used to excuse it, no matter how warping it is. Nor do I recall the above-discussed film using a particularly self-referential or dialectical approach. --(not beth) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 10:10:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Bandit Queen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Although I didn't walk out on the Bandit Queen, I did find it to be a classic example of limits of propaganda. The director, who was at the screening where I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival, was so busy trying to get his audience enraged at the abuses of the Indian ruling classes, that he ended up pounding us over the head with images in which "good" and "bad" were so sharply delineated I felt like I was trapped in an old Bob Steele western where you always can tell who's who by whether they wear white or black. Or maybe some Manichean comic book. The so-called gratuitous sex was just part of that manipulative mechanism, so evil that when Phoolan Devi goes back and guns down all those guys who raped her, you're supposed to sit in the dark muttering "right on", like when Sally Fields gets Keifer Sutherland at the end of that terrible movie that came out last year (which I didn't walk out on, either). Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 13:35:44 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: 3 propositions for today 1. All groups, associations, and credentialled professionals in poetry are the reader's adversaries and enemies, no matter what artistic tendencies they may represent. 2. Poets themselves do not realize what poetry, and the reader, together demand of them. Poetry & the reader ask for a sacrifice of flesh and blood. The rest is scholarship and "food for thought". Poetry lives on the other side of death. 3. Every poet who sacrifices heart and soul for the sake of poetry will be held up for ridicule by all groups, associations, and credentialled literary professionals, as well as by the reader and by poetry itself. Sacrifice is an illusion, mercy is sacrifice, poetry is against idolatry. Addendum: none of the above should be taken literally or without cream. 2nd addendum: these maxims refer to poets, not would-be writers. 3rd addendum: there is no poetry on the internet. 4th addendum: there is no poetry on the coffeehouse circuit. 5th addendum: there is no poetry on the academic reading circuit. 6th addendum: there is no poetry [fill in the blank]. 7th addendum: Henry is pompous, crabby and [fill in the blank] today. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 11:29:42 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: citation, use, sampling etc Comments: To: Joe Safdie In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I didn't get to attend the big plagiarism conference of some years back, and couldn't talk anybody at San Jose State into copying the idea -- Some years ago, though, I gave a paper at ALA titled "Citation, Use and Sampling" which used examples from Perelman, Harryman and others to comment on debates between Searle and Derrida about the topics listed in my title -- Sent it to _Sagetrieb_, but their reader, who had never read the Derrida essay cited & used, wanted revisions that I did not want -- so it's been here in my desk ever since -- I've thought I should make it available as some kind of counter to Lehman's mean-spirited and inaccurate account of the Harryman/Derrida lines in _Signs of the Times_ -- If I can relocate the disk that essay is on, maybe I'll ask Loss if I can add it to my pages at EPC -- Odd footnote -- Copy shops around the country have grown more paranoid since the last court decision that should have made things easier (perhaps an inverse response to the rampant illegalities of copyright infringement the same shops once practiced), and now I am frequently told that I cannot copy myself -- Three shops in the past year have refused to make copies for my students of printed materials that I authored and whose copyright I own -- Though I have on occasion received small checks because professors at USC, where they will not interview me, have copied my works for their classes (I KNOW IT'S NOT THE SAME PEOPLE COPYING ME AND NOT INTERVIEWING ME -- But how am I going to work up a good case of ressentiment if I let details like that get in my way!) and what about titles -- titles apparently cannot be copyrighted on their own -- At least twelve people have appropriated "Reading Race" as a title for a publication (let's not even start to count conference panels & papers) -- So far Dana Nelson, bless her heart, is the only one who acknowledged the origins of the title in her book -- Shoulda trademarked the thing, like the coach who trademarked "threepeat" a few years ago -- If I ever have a collected poems I'm going to title it _Gone with the Wind_ and hope for big sales -- This post, by the way, was adapted from a text by David Bromige, who wrote _My Poetry_ -- I even copied his birthday -- I even own a pair of red suspenders -- and Maria once laughed at me in San Diego -- I've grown a beard and started wearing glasses, but I can't get that accent right -- as we said in grade school, accept no substitutes -- yours, aldon -- or maybe somebody standing in his place -- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 14:38:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shoemakers@COFC.EDU Subject: Re: Upper Limit Music In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks for the announcement Mark. But just for the record, the title of my essay shld be "Between Contact and Exile: Louis Zukofsky and the Poetry of Survival" (tho the other way maketh a kind of sense too...) steve On Mon, 3 Feb 1997, Mark W Scroggins wrote: > Listfolks: > > I'm pleased to announce the very imminent (within the next week) > publication of my edited collection of essays on Louis Zukofsky, _Upper > Limit Music: The Writing of Louis Zukofsky_, by the University of > Alabama Press. The contents are as follows: > > Introduction > > I. Cultural Poetics, Political Culture: Zukofsky in the 1930s > > 1. Between Contact and Survival: Louis Zukofsky's Poetry of Exile, > Steve Shoemaker > > 2. The Revolutionary Word: Louis Zukofsky, _New Masses_, and Political > Radicalism in the 1930s, Mark Scroggins > > 3. Jewish-American Modernism and the Problem of Identity: With Special > Reference to the Work of Louis Zukofsky, Norman Finkelstein > > 4. Zukofsky, Marxism, and American Handicraft, Barry Ahearn > > 5. Poetry and the Age: Pound, Zukofsky, and the Labor Theory of Value, > Alec Marsh > > 6. "A Precision of Appeal": Louis Zukofsky and the _Index of American > Design_, Ira B. Nadel > > II. Toward the Postmodern: Zukofsky's Life of Writing > > 7. A "no man's land!": Postmodern Citationality in Zukofsky's "Poem > beginning 'the'", Ming-Qian Ma > > 8. Writing and Authority in Zukofsky's _Thanks to the Dictionary_, Peter > Quartermain > > 9. The Comedian as the Letter Z: Reading Zukofsky Reading Stevens > Reading Zukofsky, P. Michael Campbell > > 10. "Words Ranging Forms": Patterns of Exchange in Zukofsky's Early > Lyrics, Susan Vanderborg > > 11. From Modernism to Postmodernism: Zukofsky's "A"-12, Burton Hatlen > > 12. A More Capacious Shoulder: "A"-24, Nonsense, and the Burden of > Meaning, Marnie Parsons > > 13. A Fractal Music: Some Notes on Zukofsky's Flowers, Kent Johnson > > (And a cover drawing by Guy Davenport, to boot.) > > You'll recognize many listmates and other acquaintances among the > contributors. I'm extremely pleased at how the whole project has turned > out; it should be of great interest to anyone with an investment in > Zukofsky's work. > > For more information, write the University of Alabama Press at Box > 870380, Tuscaloosa AL 35487-0380, or drop me a line directly. > > Best, > Mark Scroggins > Steve Shoemaker ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 07:42:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: guess lawsuit Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" this appeared in th latest issue of _Next_ (box 13019, long beach ca 90803)--thot it might be of interest to some... >From: NEXTmag@aol.com >Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 02:26:13 -0500 (EST) >Subject: Re: guess lawsuit > >GUESS LAWSUIT AGAINST POETRY READING PROCEEDS >By G. Murray Thomas >Guess Jeans is proceeding with its libel and slander lawsuit against several >local writers. The lawsuit was a reaction against a reading given at Midnight >Special Bookstore in September. On December 23, the judge postponed a >decision on a defense motion to dismiss the case. The next court date is >January 30. >As the lawsuit moves forward, Common Threads, one of the organizations being >sued, has scheduled another "Justice for Garment Workers" Literary Reading at >Midnight Special. The event will take place on Sunday, February 2, at 2 pm. >Among those reading will be Luis Campos, Alexis Krasilovsky, Julia Stein and >Merrihelen Ponce. Edna Bonacich will give an update on the fight between >Guess and UNITE. Midnight Special is located at 1318 Third St. Promenade in >Santa Monica. >The lawsuit was filed against UNITE, the Union of Needle trades Industrial >and Textile Employees and Common Threads, a woman's group working to improve >working conditions for garment workers. Also named in the lawsuit are David >Young, national director for UNITE, fifty unidentified individuals ("Does 1 >through 50, inclusive") and fifty unidentified associations. >Some of the charges in the lawsuit are based on a "Justice for Garment >Workers" reading held at Midnight Special on Sept. 8, 1996. The reading was >sponsored by the L.A. local of the National Writers Union, and Common >Threads. At the reading, Enrique Flores, a former employee of Kelly >Contractors, one of the contractors which sewed clothing for Guess, described >his working conditions. Edna Bonacich, a professor of sociology at UC >Riverside, described the Common Threads campaign against unfair working >conditions at Guess. Other writers, including Julia Stein and Carol >Schwalberg, read writings about garment workers, none of which mentioned >Guess specifically. Only David Young and Edna Bonacich have been served with >papers. >The lawsuit is based on the claim that "false and defamatory" statements were >made about Guess during the reading and in publicity for it. The specific >statements objected to were that Guess uses sweatshops and home labor in >southern California to produce its clothing. Guess denies these allegations. >The defendants have characterized the lawsuit as a S.L.A.P.P. (Strategic >lawsuit against public participation) suit, a form of legal harassment used >to silence critics. California has an anti-S.L.A.P.P. statute. UNITE and >Common Threads have asked that the lawsuit be thrown out under the >anit-S.L.A.P.P. statute. No ruling has yet been issued on this. >Recent developments involving Guess throw light, direct and indirect, on the >lawsuit. One firm tenet of Guess' defense is that appeared on the U.S. Dept. >of Labor's "Trendsetter" list of clothing manufacturers actively improving >the working conditions of their employees. However, on Nov. 27, 1996, the DOL >removed Guess from the Trendsetters list, following a DOL investigation which >found Guess had used contractors which violated minimum wage and overtime >regulations. >Recently, Guess announced, perhaps coincidentally, that it is moving more >than half of its manufacturing in southern California to Mexico. >If you are concerned by this lawsuit, would like more information, or would >like to volunteer to help, you can call Suzi Hoffman at UNITE, (213)239-6520. >Or attend the Midnight Special Reading on February 2. > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 17:51:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: Blackberry/ Cranburn...... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>TWO QUESTIONS..... >> >>1) Sylvester Pollet---is it the Seeker's hit "I know I'll never find another >>you?" Wonderful! Billy Fury does a great version of this song. Tosh Berman TamTam Books ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 19:43:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: responses/thoughts In-Reply-To: <199702030258.SAA05999@mail.well.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >. Being slightly >compulsive, I have a list of every book I've read since high school (a very >long time ago) I have a list of every book I have read since I was 14. After I have read 10 books by someone, I make up a little list for his/her name and staple it to the cover of the notebook I keep my main list in. I always thought I must be the only person tight-assed enough to do this. I even list Bromige's books! George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 23:21:56 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cloward@UTDALLAS.EDU Subject: Query: Performance and Spirit Comments: To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII There is a rapidly growing amount of worthwhile literature concerning that spirit worker amoung spirit worker--the shaman (or to use Eliade's term "the technician of ecstasy")--and performance/poetics. A good place to start might be Andreas Lommel's Shamanism: The Beginnings of Art (1967) and J. Rothenberg's Technicians of the Sacred (esp. his Pre-Faces, both 1967 & 1984 eds.). As P. Joris has already pointed out, the Mazatec shaman Maria Sabina is certainly an interesting case study. Robert Gordon Wasson's Maria Sabina and her Mushroom Velada and the Folkways Records recording of one of her 1956 curing ceremonies (Mushroom Ceremony of the Mazatec Indians of Mexico) are both exceptional documents. Also worthwhile: Joan Halifax has produced an interesting compilation of shamanic narratives called Shamanic Voices and Mark Levy has produced an excellent study of shamanic influences in modern art (Technicians of Ecstasy, 1993) that includes an engaging take on contemporary performance artists such as Karen Finley and Rachel Rosenthal. (I would also humbly suggest a much neglected source, my M.A. thesis--The Shaman's Voice: Anne Waldman and Marina Sabina(University of Texas at Dallas 1992)--which deals with Waldman's conscious use of shamanic themes and techniques, including substantial borrowing from Sabina.) I could go on...I'm very much intrigued with the idea that the poetic act often, if not always, consists of a type of opening up to an exotic Other (whatever that may consist of--spirits, mythology, chance associations, natural phenomena,etc.) and that a poetic tradition, whither it be Bantu, Mazatec or that massively unstable ritual we share called contemporary American poetics, gives the poet the tools to bring it back alive. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 07:54:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: RLIN search In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Can anyone help me? I have this print out from RLIN that tells me where all the Spicer manuscripts are lodged throughout the country in what different university libraries, etc.... however, they use a code I find hard to crack. Can someone tell me what and where "RRAL" ("Resources for Research in American Culture") is? Thanks--- Kevin Killian ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 10:20:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: Keats's House is Falling Down... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Pierre, tell your friend there's an organization in Hailey, Idaho called The Ezra Pound Association, trying to raise money to buy the Pound house. In October, the town celebrated "Ezra Pound Week,' with a play, lectures, slide shows of Italy, performance readings, etc. He can get details about the organization on the National Poetry Foundation Bulletin Board at http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/ >thought this news from the Manchester Guardian, in via John Whiting in >London, w >ld be >interes -- Pierre > >Sign of the Times (one of a series). One doesn't have to be an >advocate of the Great Books approach to literature to be >saddened by this. I know the building well; it's within >walking distance of where we live. You need only imagine the >likelihood of such a fate befalling the house of, say, Morike, >to realize what we Anglo-Saxons are allowing to happen to our >literary heritage. Ezra Pound's birthplace in Hayley, Idaho, >is also falling to bits. At least it has a peeling wooden >plaque on the wall, but the town's little publicity hand-out >doesn't even mention him. > >It will ultimately depend on the enthusiasm of one of those >World Cultures which we now so warmly embrace. Perhaps the >Japanese will endow Keats' house before it becomes a pile of >rubble. > >John Whiting > >###################################################### >##### > >The [London] Guardian February 4 1997 > >ODE TO RACK AND RUIN > >Sebastian Faulks > >KEAT'S HOUSE is falling down. It is the most perfect memorial >to any English writer - exactly preserved, full of important >papers, open to the public, delightful to visit, charged with >atmosphere - and it is coming apart. The beautiful Regency >cottage is in Hampstead, north London, and was built by >Keats's friends Charles Brown and Charles Dilke in 1815-16. >Part of the problem is that the house is built on clay and >seldom stays still; the curator, Christina Gee, says that an >entire wing has parted from the main house and many of the >supporting walls are easing away from the chimney flues. >Plaster has fallen from the ceilings and the chimneys are >wrapped in Polythene; the collection of manuscripts and books >is threatened by water and the walls of Keats's bedroom are >stained by damp. > >Andrew Motion, the writer who has just finished a biography of >Keats, used to watch water run down inside the walls while he >was researching in the library. As a matter of fact the house >was always prone to leak. Brown and Dilke did not spend much >on the construction of the building and Keats's biographer W J >Bate records that even in Keats's day the basement kitchen and >dining room were damp for much of the year. Although houses >in the street are now very expensive, 1815 Hampstead was in >the countryside and the house, though pretty, was small. For >full board Keats paid L5 a month. > >He moved in with Brown in the winter of 1818. After years of >intense apprenticeship, of many trials and many errors, Keats >was at last on the verge of something magnificent. Bate's >restrained biography puts it like this: "The year ... from >about mid-September 1818 ... may be soberly described as the >most productive in the life of any poet of the past three >centuries." > >I used to visit this wonderful museum frequently in the >seventies, partly because I loved Keats's poetry but also >because I was fascinated by Charles Brown. What must it have >been like to live with a genius during his most productive >period - a period, as Bate reminds us, almost unmatched in >literary history? > >Brown was in his early thirties, a former merchant with an >inherited income of about L300 a year, which was enough to >lead a life of literary leisure. He was of a type not much >seen today: a businessman whose passion was for admiring and >encouraging the creative gifts of others. What everyone said >about Brown was that he was practical and "down to earth". >Mind you, so, in many ways, was Keats. Small, voluble, >pugnacious, he had impressed his teachers with a belief that >he would achieve something in the world, but probably "in some >military capacity". > >Did he talk to Brown at dinner about his poetry? Perhaps he >talked about Fanny Brawne, whose mother had taken Brown's half >of the house the previous summer. She was a sharp-featured >girl of 18 whom Keats initially thought "ignorant", minx-like >and lacking modesty, but in the summer of 1819 she began to >receive his sumptuous love letters. And what can she have >made of them? > >After one of his characteristic periods of recapitulation in >early 1819, Keats cleared his mind. The planets moved into a >favourable conjunction and he began to write again: first the >Ode To Psyche; then one May morning he went and sat beneath >the plum tree at the front of the house and wrote the entire >80-line Ode To A Nightingale. > >When Keats came in at lunch time Brown noticed that he had >some pieces of paper in his hand. They had a maid at that >time who was a keen tidier and throweraway, and Brown saw that >Keats stuffed the pieces of paper down behind some books: he >had thought them worth saving. When Keats went up to his >room, did Brown go to the bookshelf, pull out the scraps of >paper and read them? > >A few days later Keats wrote Ode On A Grecian Urn. He >followed this with the Ode On Melancholy. Although the Ode To >Autumn would not come until later in the year, he had, as Bate >puts it, "within about three weeks written four of the >greatest lyric poems in English". > >And now the house is falling down. The curator of the museum >says that 60 per cent of her visitors are from abroad; British >schoolchildren rarely visit these days because Keats is no >longer on their syllabus. They do not have to study pre20th >century writers at all, and if they do, then, according to >Christine Cayley of the Cambridge Examination Board, "Many >British children choose an author such as Jane Austen, with >popular video versions available." As Andrew Motion puts it: >"If children are not studying these poems then something has >gone drastically wrong." > >Keats's reputation has suffered a kind of literary subsidence, >partly caused by the fact that today's children are protected >from exposure to anything old or, God forbid, "difficult". >Motion hopes vigorously to reinvent Keats for today's reader >and thinks it more likely that this can be done through >biography than by merely hoping that the texts will be read >again. Even a decade ago the idea that such drastic critical >repair work might soon be necessary would have seemed to >belong to some illiterate nightmare. > >The house meanwhile has just become a charitable trust and has >passed from the care of Camden council's leisure services to >that of the City of London. Christina Gee is hopeful that the >corporation will do all that is needed - though the relevant >department, alas, has just been asked to make cuts of L3.8 >million. > >Within a few months of his astonishing summer Keats was dead >of TB in Rome at the age of 26. This self-taught son of a >stable keeper had driven himself to compose four of the >greatest lyric poems in English - but he had no video tie-ins. > >The important thing is that the City of London does its duty, >but donations are welcome at Keats House, Keats Grove, London, >NW3 2RR (telephone: 0171-794 6829). > >- ENDS - > > >-- >========================================= >pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 >tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu >http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/ >http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Everything that allows men to become rooted, through >values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in >_one_ language, is the principle of alienation which >constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, >[...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality >and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose >it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot >========================================== Sylvester Pollet Backwoods Broadsides National Poetry Foundation RR 5 Box 3630 5752 Neville Hall Ellsworth ME University of Maine 04605-9529 Orono ME 04469-5752 http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 09:38:10 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: epik proklivities I was hoping there might be someone out there in poetryland that took to the thought that the epiktext has evolved into a sensibility that includes co-writing in a space like the poetixlist. so once again youall leave it up to me to beat the dog (except we havent even seduced the dog into the house yet!) Am writing from the booklined walls & floors of the lovely ms maria professorina, miekal who wonders if we maria & I will ever get time to work on our hypertext collaboration again and here's me, having taught a class here last night and lost my composure cuz i hate teaching in front of friends (miekal) i babbled about lenny bruce, blaser's cups, and ginsberg. we listened to bruce tapes, the younger ones were shocked ("did he perform this to a mixed audience? or an allwhite, behind-closed-doors kind of thing?") anyway today is the reading day, miekal and i will go to my office and work on our hypertext, then at 3:15 is the reading in the dark ING-GLITCH department of the soul. send good vibes at 3:15 cetral standard time. last nite miekal told the class about bern porter and passed books around. it was cool, the highlight of the evening. epik/pupik not heavy, just a little aphorism, m boughn, about life and death. maria d ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 09:45:42 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: meetings david, i was on the calif panel. you were in the audience. i'm sorry but i did not attend your panel on brit lit. i rmember your red suspenders in the month of decembers. and your facial hair gave your face a look that was oh so square. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 09:48:21 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: epic/definitions I > > Anyway, Maria, I was confused by your epic/pubick connection, couldn't > quite make your point out (perhaps there was none?), but did think it > could work as a description of HD's wonderful poem, Helen in Egypt, > a classic post-Pound take on the epic. > > Mike > mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca not much to it. nothing to be confused about. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 09:43:24 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: query 1) what is jivaro? bob kaufman uses the word somewhere in golden sardine. 2)i forget. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 16:46:13 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: from a distance Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" hi Joshua, appreciate the reportage keep it coming and while I'm on the topic thanx to all others with such posts. There's a great collected sub-genre further down this line sometime. One other i remember, but which passed - seemingly w/out comment - was Bill Luoma's field trip. love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 11:29:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: apologies Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sorry I forwarded that whole long document by mistake--I thought Pierre Joris's original ended with the John Whiting part. Mistakes were made. Sylvester Pollet Backwoods Broadsides National Poetry Foundation RR 5 Box 3630 5752 Neville Hall Ellsworth ME University of Maine 04605-9529 Orono ME 04469-5752 http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 10:21:12 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Poets' homes I took my son up to Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin for a swim meet a few weeks back. Had dinner at Club 26, a fine supper club there. On the wall, in frame, amidst a smattering of old jazz photos from the 50's and 60's, is Lorine Niedecker's poem, "Club 26," celebrating the place she dined at with her husband every so often. I understand that the Niedecker house is still standing by the lake, and I was wondering if anyone knew of any efforts to preserve it? Of course, if Pound's house is up for grabs and Keats's house is falling down, maybe it's a lost cause. But maybe not: If Niedecker's work adorns the wall of a smoky supper club bar, maybe there's some community pride that could be tapped into? I'd be interested in trying to help if the effort seems feasible... about an hour and a half away. Anyone know anything? Kent ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 08:58:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: epic/definitions Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mike Boughn wrote: >Anyway, Maria, I was confused by your epic/pubick connection, couldn't >quite make your point out (perhaps there was none?), but did think it >could work as a description of HD's wonderful poem, Helen in Egypt, >a classic post-Pound take on the epic. This goes back to Hebronics again. Maria's original post said pupik, not pubik. Your pupik is a couple of inches above your pubic area, it's your belly button. Can't you Xtians ever get our language right? Great idea of Helen in Egypt bringing the epik & pubik together though. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 11:58:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: Bandit Queen i haven't seen Bandit Queen, but i confess, i'm a little puzzled. Mike Boughn seems to be having trouble with a scene where a woman shoots a number of men who gang raped her after it is clear that they will not be punished for their crime by any other force. this movie is based on a real woman's life who really _was_ gang-raped by villagers and then blamed and treated like a whore because of it in a class-rigid, woman-hating rural society. um, so, what is so bad about an audience feeling some satisfaction to see this continued threat to her existence, people who have done one of the most abusive, contemptuous things imaginable to a person and feel no remorse, killed -- and killed instead of her, because in the accounts i have read of this woman's life, post-rape, she received death threats... at the start of this thread, i wasn't sure what was being objected to in the movie, and i'm still not clear on it. but no, i wouldn't find it a problem that i'm expected to feel pleased, as an audience member, when a woman who has been mass-raped, beaten, disenfranchised, refused justice, and had her life threatened finally fights back against her rapists... i WOULD find it a problem if i were expected to see her mass-raped, etc., then expected to excuse the people who did it ("oh, she was wearing tight clothes," "oh, what was she doing out at night if she didn't want it," "oh, they are poor, ignorant, down-trodden men who were just taking their anger at their oppression out on her" etc.). speaking of movies one walks out on because of content, i have a movie i can't even bring myself to SEE because of content. a reviewer mentioned horror at the way "Breaking the Waves" is being given critical acclaim, given that it is what sounds like an appalling glorification of oppression and victimization of women... a woman's husband has an accident which makes him unable to perform sexually, so he orders her to have sex with other men as a way for him to have sexual pleasure third-hand. evidently, the film maker appears to think she is really as Good Woman, the Right Kind of Woman, becuase she does. even sex which becomes increasingly violent, till a sailor who has raped, beaten, and mutilated her tells her to come back for more, her husband orders her to do so, she does (that good, Griselda-myth of a woman) and is murdered. because she has been so dutiful, according to the filmmaker, the last scene shows her ascending to heaven... no one seems to be objecting to the appalling message of this film, its extreme and even approving presentation of violence against women, the notion that a good woman should do whatever her man tells her to, should be a sade-like submissive (filmmker says, in interviews, that he read de sade and was impressed. used it as one of sources/bases for film! he actually BRAGS about that!) even if it, quite literally, kills her. i dunno about you all, but i have so little stomach for violence against women that i am not sure i could ever see even phoolan devi, where at least it sounds like no one is trying to say its a great thing that she got raped... e ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 09:29:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: knowing when to stop Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hen ry Gould had me by more than the lapels with his propositions today. True, true, true, i felt, but i cant agree to the addenda. Just take New Hampshire alone, an academic setting if ever there was one: brilliant fucken poetry, HG, from Allan Fisher (an academic as far as employment goes) to Chris Stroffolino (has darkened academic doorways) to Rae Armantrout (educates La Jolla) to Bob Perelman (breaks out of the Penn) to Peter Middleton (pedagogues in Old hants) to Barrett Watten (author of Waning StAtes) to Tony Lopez (teaches college in Devonshire), and a number besides who may or may not or who definitely dont teach, but who were going to the far side of death and bringing back poetry into dread academic context--Randolph Healy, Lisa Robertson, Deanna Ferguson, cris cheek, Miles Champion, Denise Riley, Kathleen Fraser, Tom Raworth, Invidious Distinctions, If Your Name Is Missing I Meant You,et al, et al, believe you me, pal. It was poetry up there with John Keats and some dont even have houses to fall apart, sad as that surely is. But true, true, true, Henry G, until you began to crab out on us. db ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 00:40:04 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS : IWCS'97 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 14:52:20 GMT >From: ludman@austerlitz.devinci.fr (Irene Ludman) >Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS : IWCS'97 > > >CALL FOR PAPERS > >1st INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON >COMPUTATIONAL SEMIOTICS > >26th - 27th May, 1997 >P=D9le Universitaire L=C8onard de Vinci >PARIS - LA DEFENSE - FRANCE > >TOPICS > >SEMIOTICS OF TEXT : Suzanne Bertrand-Gastaldy, University of Montreal > >Computers are increasingly used to assist text analysis for cognitive, >literary, anthropological, sociological, documentary, etc. research. The >workshop will focus on actual realisations, on the possibilities and >limits of methodologies and existing tools to take into account the >complex and >multidimensional nature of texts, allowing multiple points of views for a >variety of user needs. Issues such as desirable features of text analysis >software, robustness and conviviality of implantations, interaction >between corpora and users, constraints that actual tools put upon kinds of >analyses and coding choices, the ability to elaborate models of electronic >analytical tools suited to different semiotic theories, semiotical >foundations of markup languages are examples of possible debates. > >SEMIOMETHODOLOGY : Claude Vogel, L=C8onard de Vinci University > >Several genres are currently under investigation for semiotic studies : >electronic mail, news, corporate information, Web publishing. The flood of >full text is overflowing semantic analysis, and this major paradigm break >leads us to reconsider our approach of text processing. The size of these >new corpora, the lack of consistency of information, the physical >scattering of the basic units of texts, make the classical documentary >solutions >very uncomfortable. Instead, the semiotic based analysis seems to be a >highly compelling perspective. It is focused on chronology; it provides a >way >to build transitive narratives throughout large amounts of data, and it >does not require the understanding of the details of each local >grammatical >sentence in order for a global plot to be elaborated. This promising trend >may give a second wind to ethnomethodology. For this reason, it is more >appropriate to use the term "semiomethodology" when evoking this attempt >to rationalize the computational approach of the symbolic dynamics which >underlie collaborative production. > >ORGANIZATIONAL SEMIOTICS : Kathleen Carley, Carnegie Mellon University > >Organizational semiotics is the semiotics of organizations and >organizational dimensions of textual semiotics. The objective of this >workshop is to >define the boundaries of this new specialty. Specifically, we will address >the issue of : "How can semiotic analysis of interpersonal and corporate >exchanges be used to reveal, evaluate, and contrast the underlying >organizational logics and changes in these logics over time ?" Recent >advances in >textual analysis are facilitating this endeavor and creating new >opportunities for understanding organizational behavior. Critical issues >in the area >of organizational semiotics include : 1) how to quickly and reliably >analyze large quantities of texts, 2) how to reduce textual data to an >empirical >form that can be combined with other types of data and analyzed >statistically, 3) how to identify corporate texts (those representing the >"view" of >the organization as an entity) and address issues of authorship, and 4) >how to identify institutional constraints on the production and >maintenance >of corporate texts. New and innovative computational methods for >empirically analyzing texts are being developed to address these and >related >concerns. These techniques have the potential to move textual analysis >beyond counting words or locating a few themes or concepts. This section >will >focus on the issues involved in performing organizational semiotics with >particular attention to the new computationally based techniques for >facilitating organizational analysis that increase the ease, speed or >reliability of coding texts and generate information that can be analyzed >statistically. > >BIOSEMIOTICS : Jean-Claude Heudin, L=C8onard de Vinci University > >Recently, algorithms and architectures based on models derived from >biological systems have been receiving an increasing amount of interest. >This >section will explore how such new approaches and techniques could be used >for managing large amount of information exchanges on Internet or >Intranet. >Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to, >applications of agent-based systems, autonomous and evolving agents, >genetic >algorithms and programming, neural networks, cellular automata etc. to >text stream analysis and in the more general framework of semiotics >analysis. > >SUBMISSION OF PAPERS > >Send four copies of an abstract (approximately 500 words) in english or >email it to : > >Ir=CBne Ludman - IWCS'97 >P=D9le Universitaire L=C8onard de Vinci >92916 PARIS-LA DEFENSE-CEDEX, FRANCE >Phone: (33) 01 41 16 73 05 >Fax : (33) 01 41 16 73 35 >Email : irene.ludmann@devinci.fr > >DEADLINES > >Submission of abstracts >by 1st April 1997 > >Acceptance notification to authors >by 15th April 1997 > >Submission of full papers >by 12th May 1997 > >ORGANIZING COMMITTEE > >Claude Vogel (chairman) >Suzanne Bertrand-Gastaldy >Kathleen Carley >Jean-Claude Heudin > >PROGRAM COMMITTE > >Pierre Boudon (canada) >Guillaume Deffuant (France) >Evelyne Lutton (France) >Joe Porac (USA) >Carl Roberts (USA) >J. Sebeok (Canada) >Peter Stockinger (France) >Bill Turner (France) > >For more information please visit the following Web page : >http://www.devinci.fr/home/actua.htm > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 09:42:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: keep off the grass Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Aldon, i too have been forbidden to copy myself in those kinda shops. not just when i sit on the glass, either. But thats a great title, _Gone With the Wind_, think i'll write a poem to fit it . . and i've already written one i'm going to call "Reading Race." whats the harryman/derrida reference? Btw,if you dont stop having my birthday, youll be talking to my attorney. . and that goes for Cole Swensen as well. thanks to you guys, messerli only has room for a tiny poem of mine on his calendar of poets' b'days. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 12:44:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: Re: query Comments: To: maria damon In-Reply-To: <32f8aa9a1746007@mhub1.tc.umn.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII A First Nations group in South America - I believe Levi-Strauss among others writes about them. Alan On Wed, 5 Feb 1997, maria damon wrote: > 1) what is jivaro? bob kaufman uses the word somewhere in golden sardine. > 2)i forget. > http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html images: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Tel. 718-857-3671 CuSeeMe: 166.84.250.149 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 09:51:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: after David In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The list at midnight ____________ The listing after midnight ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 12:57:18 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco Subject: Re: Poets' homes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain Here in Cambridge, they have refurbished the Longfellow home with materials that have already outlasted the man's work by decades. Meanwhile, the block housing the last diner in Harvard Square has been damned to dynamite, and will not see the spring. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 09:57:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: reading lists Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" george's posting today reveals to all the remarkable b a l a n c e of his mind, as leftbrained as it is rightbrained. i'm afraid my own attempts to emulate him by keeping a list of h i s books fell apart 'round about #50, but i d o know that his most recent jeu d'espirt (sic,and as we canadians say) should be appearing before too much longer, the wonderful roman-a-clef-novel __Piccolo Mondo__, as funny as it is serious, as tall as it is long, as broad as it is deep. You might send advance orders to the address george always appends to his postings, for this very purpose no doubt. db ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 10:19:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: "Jibaro, my pretty . . ." Comments: To: maria damon In-Reply-To: <32f8aa9a1746007@mhub1.tc.umn.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Maria -- I think "jivaro" is another version of "jibaro" -- Spanish originally for "rustic or uncultured," as my DC friends used to describe people who were, in their opinion, hopelessly "country" -- came to have certain ethnic connotations in the New World -- Felipe Luciano, of the "original" last poets, has a famous poem that begins "Jibaro, my pretty nigger," -- when will we see the last last poets? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 13:34:01 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: knowing when to stop In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 5 Feb 1997 09:29:09 -0500 from Don't mind me. False, false, false, it should have been. I'm in it for the poison. - Henry (subject to the February Imp of the Perverse) p.s. every librarian is shadowed by a double known as Savage Reader. She hates books, but likes to read. She only likes poetry - but she hates "poetry". The only male poet she likes is Villon, and he's too obvious. ALL the rest are too sentimental. She hates agendas. Books are for pure laziness; not even decadence, not even vulgarity - laziness, pure and simple. She hates everyone who's trying too hard. She writes poems herself - secret put-downs of ALL her suitors. She would never be caught dead at a conference, a school, a coffeehouse, a library, a museum, a workshop, a reading, a magazine, a publishing house, a bookstore, an award ceremony, a memorial reading, or anything else having to do with culture. She is Savage Reader. She is your Nemesis. She's not part of Your Generation. She's not an Older Poet or a New Poet, she's not a Discovery or an Original, she's not an Experimenter or an Authority, she hates Prestige, she hates Blurbs, she hates your Ambition, she doesn't want to get any more mail from you or books from you or poems from you - she wants you to Shut Up and Turn off That Machine. She is...[fill in the blank]. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 14:12:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: keep off the grass Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" David, is that poem the "Ballad of the Pennsylvania Marathon" you were working on? >Aldon, i too have been forbidden to copy myself in those kinda shops. not >just when i sit on the glass, either. But thats a great title, _Gone With >the Wind_, think i'll write a poem to fit it . . and i've already written >one i'm going to call "Reading Race." whats the harryman/derrida reference? >Btw,if you dont stop having my birthday, youll be talking to my attorney. . >and that goes for Cole Swensen as well. thanks to you guys, messerli only >has room for a tiny poem of mine on his calendar of poets' b'days. Sylvester Pollet Backwoods Broadsides National Poetry Foundation RR 5 Box 3630 5752 Neville Hall Ellsworth ME University of Maine 04605-9529 Orono ME 04469-5752 http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 14:24:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Monroe Subject: Diacritics special issue Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm pleased to announce the publication this week of "Poetry, Community, Movement," a special double issue I've guest edited for Diacritics (fall-winter 1996, vol. 26, numbers 3-4). The issue is the first in the journal's twenty-five year history devoted exclusively to contemporary poetry. Contributions to the opening "Text/Context" section include: Jonathan Monroe -- "Poetry, the University, and the Culture of Distraction"; Rachel Blau DuPlessis -- "Manifests"; Rosmarie Waldrop -- "Form and Discontent / Four Prose Poems"; David Kellogg -- "Perloff's Wittgenstein: W(h)ither Poetic Theory?"; Aldon Lynn Nielsen -- "Black Deconstruction: Russell Atkins and the Reconstruction of African-American Criticism"; and Marjorie Perloff -- "Whose New American Poetry? Anthologizing in the Nineties." The second half of the issue includes in its "Symposium" section: Jonathan Monroe -- "Syntextural Investigations"; Ann Lauterbach -- "Misquotations from Reality"; Bob Perelman -- "Poetry in Theory"; and Charles Bernstein -- "Community and the Individual Talent." The issue concludes with "Poetry, Community, Movement: A Conversation" (Charles Bernstein, Ann Lauterbach, Jonathan Monroe, and Bob Perelman). To order copies of the double issue ($12 each), write via e-mail to jlorder@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu; via snail mail to: Attn. Journals, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2715 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218-4319; or call 410-516-3858 or 1-800-548-1784. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 14:35:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Johannah Raney Subject: Re: Bandit Queen I just wanted to make a humble suggestion that people actually --experience-- for themselves films/books/paintings before destroying them based on potentially rigid feminist/or/otherwise interpretations. Breaking the Waves is one of the most aesthetically interesting and emotionally powerful films I have ever seen. It does disturb your gut, and I spent the last hour of it clenched in a tight spasm of tears, but I don't find that kind of visceral emotional reaction offensive...I could see, on the other hand, how one might be (if he/she didn't appreciate kitsch, that is) the cartoonish and tacky qualities of something like "Baywatch." Yes, Breaking the Waves is about oppression, but I don't think Bess's husband can be so swiftly and cleanly pinpointed as perpetrator. The strict, island community, which is the centripetal force of the film, and the notions of goodness versus evil/sin therein, are more accurately the culprits. I understood it less as a plot of male/female sexual dynamics than as one of, yes, "goodness" in the face of anti-Christian hypocrisy. The husband's influence is also more ambivalent than what you think; it is not entirely clear that his actions are not sincerely motivated by a wish to liberate her from him, to free her from her compulsive and (also unclear) psychologically-unstable love..."love so much it hurts." It takes a party pooper to spoil the end of the film, but since the final scene is out of the bag, I think it worth noting that another way to read the "heavenly ascent" is as an image of redemption and love's justice...that the purity and goodness of unconditional, generous, unguarded love that Bess strives for throughout the movie in her own dialogue with God finally comes to her, and her wish is granted. I understand disgust at the exploitation of violence, especially violence against women, but I would hope such valid concerns would not keep us from appreciating the full dimensionality of strange and human stories. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 11:30:52 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: william marsh Subject: Re: 3 propositions for today Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >3rd addendum: there is no poetry on the internet. can i get that in writing? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 14:19:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Bandit Queen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >i haven't seen Bandit Queen, but i confess, i'm a little puzzled. Mike >Boughn seems to be having trouble with a scene where a woman shoots a >number of men who gang raped her after it is clear that they will not be >punished for their crime by any other force. The scene is long and clearly delights in showing the rapes. If memory serves it even has slow motion sequences. It is a scopofilic (sp?) gaze to be sure. this movie is based on a >real woman's life who really _was_ gang-raped by villagers and then blamed >and treated like a whore because of it in a class-rigid, woman-hating >rural society. It is also about a *revolutionary* who has battled with the existing social mores and the government and largely gotten away despite the odds for years. The movie reduces Devi's life to nothing but an unending string of rape scenes. And the only major plot development apart from her being raped, the only thing she is depicted as doing for herself (apart from an early scene of beating the crap out of her first rapist, her decidedly-ex husband) is falling in love. Essentially, the movie's "dialectic" is that poor Devi is constanly being raped and all she ever really wants is to fall in love. Consequently, when she kills the rapists she is not, in the movie, seen to be striking out against her society (the obvious aspects of which you mention--class-rigid, woman-hating, rural, to which I would add colonized and capitalistic) but against personal enemies. >then expected to excuse the people who did it ("oh, she was wearing >tight clothes," "oh, what was she doing out at night if she didn't want >it," "oh, they are poor, ignorant, down-trodden men who were just taking >their anger at their oppression out on her" etc.). I think it could be argued that aspects of this movie's cinematography (sp?) do just that: Devi is often made to appear particularly sexual before and you could argue even during the rape scenes. This is to say that, as mentioned above, it would not be too hard to argue that the camera has a particularly male gaze. > >speaking of movies one walks out on because of content, i have a movie i >can't even bring myself to SEE because of content. a reviewer mentioned >horror at the way "Breaking the Waves" Yes. I saw a preview for this monstrosity. >no one seems to be objecting to the appalling message of this film, The preview was enough. No thank you in the first place with that one. > >i dunno about you all, but i have so little stomach for violence against >women that i am not sure i could ever see even phoolan devi, where at least >it sounds like no one is trying to say its a great thing that she got raped... Not even the movie was suggesting that. Matthias Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 13:26:11 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Poets' homes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:21 AM 2/5/97 +0600, you wrote: >I took my son up to Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin for a swim meet a few >weeks back. Had dinner at >Club 26, a fine supper club there. On the wall, in frame, amidst a >smattering of old jazz photos from the 50's and 60's, is Lorine >Niedecker's poem, "Club 26," celebrating the place she dined at with >her husband every so often. > >I understand that the Niedecker house is still standing by the >lake, and I was wondering if anyone knew of any efforts to preserve >it? Of course, if Pound's house is up for grabs and Keats's house is >falling down, maybe it's a lost cause. But maybe not: If Niedecker's >work adorns the wall of a smoky supper club bar, maybe there's some >community pride that could be tapped into? I'd be interested in >trying to help if the effort seems feasible... about an hour and a >half away. Anyone know anything? > >Kent > Kent: if anyone would know about this, I think Karl Gartung, at Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee, would be the person. I believe the address of Woodland Pattern is 720 East Locust St., Milwaukee, WI 53211. I don't know if he's on email. Good luck. charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 15:43:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: Bandit Queen i generally DO hesitate to dismiss without seeing, but in this case, since seeing feeds into the box office figures, i think hesitation is warranted. i find it hard to imagine how "purity and goodness of unconditional, generous, unguarded love" can be distilled from a woman letting her husband order her into increasingly violent and unpleasant sex which she doesn't want because he finds it titillating. the reviewer described, in particular, a scene where she emerges from the hold of a ship after being raped by two filthy, knife-wielding sailors, with her face beaten and cut into a jigsaw puzzle. anything that tries to make a claim for that being a good way, for ANY reason, for a woman to be, seems to me far from having any possibility of a redeeming dimensionality of strange and human stories. considering that she is sent back for MORE of this by her husband and is murdered by the same two sailors... what could possibly redeem THAT? the, uh, "freedom of speech" governing larry flynts' "chester the molester" (a cartoon of a pedophiliac molesting children by a man later convicted of molesting his own children), woman in a meatgrinder, woman raped on a pool table, and tied and bloody women offerings? perhaps the true belief in a deep religious epiphany available through suffering that "informed" the inquisition as they killed people and just happened, oh yeah, to confiscate their land and holdings along the way, along with any jewelry and money on the bodies of the, uh, "redeemed"? i don't mean to rant, but i think a line MUST be drawn making violence against women glorified and used as subtext to sell and excite absolutely unacceptable. i am concerned about making it illegal to print, since censorship is a bitter and treacherous rally, but one can practice censorship of the pocketbook by refusing to support, even by boycotting, anything attempting to sell or promote violence against women. also, i wouldn't call the review i saw narrow at all -- it is often fashionable to deem any feminist document "narrow," but in fact, given that the dimensions of effect on real-life, breathing, you-and-me women in most things of this culture is routinely overlooked, subsumed, unexamined, and/or supressed, i've found feminist criticism a very useful "second look." think, for example, of drug trials -- "oh, we've done extensive testing, so this is safe" IF you are a white, college or middle aged male. i've actually HEARD researchers say they didn't test on pregnant women, or women, because the hormone cycles made it too difficult to determine/write up results. yes, those narrow, narrow feminists noticing that since pregnant women and women were assumed to BE part of the population affected, it might be nice if they were part of the testing... or a myriad of other examples, but i think of feminist criticism as a determined bringing to light of what we are made, by our society/culture/world, only too wiling to not see... ok, off my soapbox now... e ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 12:52:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: keep off the grease In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII David -- Cole and I already talked with our attorneys -- they suggested that you be enjoined from having our birthday -- we thought that a bit extreme, and decided that we would simply enjoin you ON our birthday whenever possible -- Actually, I made an offer to Douglass to solve that problem by arranging to have myself reborn on a different date for purposes of the anthology -- maybe instead he'll run our three poems together as one birthday bash -- BUT to reach something more substantive -- the Derrida/Harryman ref. is to a page early on in _Vice_ where Carla places lines adapted from Derrida's "The Law of Genre" (since collected for English readers in _Acts of Literature_ -- David Lehman "discovers" this fact and produces it in _Signs of the Times_ as a reason to dismiss both Derrida and Harryman -- I had used Carla's revision of Derrida, and Bob Perelman's revision of Carla Harryman in one of his papers in one of my papers, deliverd in '88, to get at some issues in the debate between Searle and Derrida over distinctions between citation and use -- Searle thought Derrida was abusing Austin, and using him, -- see _Limited Inc_ for Derrida's sides of the debate -- for Searle's, which he refused permission to copy into _Limited Inc_, see the 1977 issue of _Glyph_ -- the essay is titled "Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida" -- ----- Change of topic, but still on the copy After reading Kevin Killian's post the other day, I got Kristin's Helen Adam essay from her EPC page and compared it to Brenda Knight's introduction to the Helen Adam section in _Women of the Beat Generation_ -- Clearly 50% of Knight's intro is directly lifted from Kristin Prevallet's paper -- It would not have been enough simply to identify Prevallet's essay as the source for the information in the intro., as Knight has done much more than take information, but Knight didn't even do that much -- Since she at one point quotes KP, and might therefore expect that readers might look up the source of the quote one day for further info, I don't know what Knight could have thought she was doing -- I do think it's now time to examine the other "knight-authored" sections of the book to see if more of this form of "scholarship" was done -- Has anybody else looked at this book yet? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 13:16:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: the Shadow Librarian, and Other Stories Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Henry, you might be amused by this two-liner Karen Gordon (_The Transitive Vampire_, etc) wrote in a class I was teaching 20 years ago: SIGN ON LIBRARIAN'S DESK r e v e n g e which says it all,--not that it doesnt bear saying again. (and on the appropriations thread,i'll note i "borrowed" this for "My Poetry"). And here's something else turning up on that thread: Aldon's poem made from a list-line i wrote. . . very funny, A.N. Wd that be listing t o port or listing f r o m port? here's another use of it: the list at midnight ____________________ the listless at dawn which for me abt covers the bleakness during the time the list was "held". . .btw, why is that done with the list? is it so the sparkplugs can be cleaned? Or is it so that addicts like myself and maria damon can get our "real work" done? oh oh, lookout, here comes something else barely related: can anyone describe to me in words an english professor can understand, the actual nuts and bolts of "Initializing", "Establishing," and "Authenticiation," in the context of logging-on? Thinking of it as one code meeting another (I suppose), can anyone get more micro abt it? My interest has to do with metaphor, so dont go metaphorical on me more than you can possibly help. Or put it this way, why are those 3 words used for those three sets of operations--why those three words and not their cognates or cousins. thanks if you can help, db ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 16:18:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: no excuses MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII -- longue the word shudders from the body of the uniformed man, and some might say it's a uniformed word, but i jennifer say no, it's a body word full of spit and sweat and moisture from the lungs barked into the air; it's tongue and langue and lung simultaneously, clothed in the body of the swell-dressed man in a uniform of black and red for anarchy and com- munism or blue and black for skies and soils of the motherland; it's languor and lunges and a tong altogether, dynasties of tongs and im- plements just as the uniform is carapace not character / armor, but true and real revelation in the blacks and whites of the fatherland; and it's line and length and tinged altogether, tainted with scents and odors of the true-real body supporting it above and atmospheric, against blood-red plant-green, the khaki family desert fairy-tale untrue; and that is the tail of the bodily word, i jennifer always do say. +++ _________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 13:21:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: did i repeat myself? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" if i posted two messages with identical beginnings (tho not endings) its because i was mis-advised re "Failed Mail." [surely theres a cure for that here in california] So this isnt an apology, merely a laying of the blame. db ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 13:42:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Laura Moriarty Subject: POSSESSION Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" on Jan 31, Julie Schmid wrote: "I'm looking for any suggestions ... re: spirit possession, spirit doctors..." etc. Julie - It just occurred to me to mention Robert Gluck's Margery Kempe (High Risk) and of course Margery Kempe herself - Bob's version is great - He did a nice reading of the crucifixion scene in the chapel at the Unitarian Church last year. We have the tape. Another possibility is Luisah Teish - who I think lives here in the East Bay - One book of hers is Jambalaya (not sure the publisher, but not a small press) - We have a reading by her in which she talks about possession etc. She performs her stories. Good luck in your search - Laura ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 13:35:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Homonyms & Borrowings Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sylvester, good one! a Wilde suggestion. mention of the 90s reminds me that gone w the wind was copped from Ernest Dowson, who also provided the title of at least two other popular artproducts of "our" time (one song, one movie): anyone want to play trivia? [no, no, george, _that_ isnt a line of dowson.*] db *Anyone desiring to play trivia something something something something else Please come help me to forget Olivia some more some more give up,she's in my cells turns out to have been a false attribution. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 16:43:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: Bandit Queen aaahhhhhh, NOW i'm beginning to see... one of those lets-make-the-violent- shots-sexy kinds of movies. bleCH!!! and you are very right -- devi did much more than avenge her rape. organizing a massive groundlevel resistance seems no mean feat -- how does the movie get around that one? oh yeah, the sex scenes. i remember in clint eastwoods "Unforgiven" there was the most horrific scene of violence against women, but i remember it being filmed in what felt like a very sympathetic, woman's-point-of-view way and i could never say quite why it felt like that (the rape and murder in "Platoon" had that same quality) but i'm wondering, now, if it is a matter of camera shots -- if the shots are taken, at least a significant number, from the "gaze" of the victim? i just remember, from "Unforgiven," a sense, rare in movies, of the violence not as quick and oh-isn't-this-a-fun-special-effect, but rather, chaotic, hard to parse, TERRIFYING, and unforgivingly terrible. one saw the utter horror of such an act, its brutality. i guess part of this was not flinching away or glossing over the appalling aftermath -- the other women trying to sew the wound, pack it with dressing and stop the bleeding, the raw masses of cotton that could not contain the disaster and the clear swelling and pain, the devastating effect on her of the scars, the pain and sympathy and anger, and worst of all, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness her injury invoked in everyone around her, even people who didn't, initially, like her that much... perhaps it is violence-in-context, as well, rather than violence-violence-violence with no context? some of later shots in "Unforgiven" seemed a mocking parody of shoot-em-up cinema, where you got the "pretty" shooting scene, then you got the decidely unpretty result, the ambiguities of what was supposed to be simple revenge, the victims trying to move, their pain -- not just a quick snappy gloss of them with gory special effect, but again, the unswerving look at the simple, human, "this hurts" and bodily damage... e ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 15:44:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Bandit Queen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I just wanted to make a humble suggestion that people actually --experience-- >for themselves films/books/paintings before destroying them based on >potentially rigid feminist/or/otherwise interpretations. If I may speak not only for myself but - sorry - for others on the list: who do you think you're addressing? I think most people on her are considerably open-minded; if anything they (we, I) err on the side of giving too much weight to aesthetics compared to ethics. This isn't the Christian Colition reading list. Furthermore, just as you can accuse people of not "experience[ing]" films, etc. because of the imagined (guessed-at) moral (representational) content, so also there is a certain complicity in going to see such a film, since usually most people have a pretty good what they're about to see... so from my perception of it, _Breaking the Waves_ does not look like enough of an "art film" to justify my attention in spite of the apparent violence and sexism. I would take the risk of not seeing it (for the cost of nearly an hour's wage) for the same reason I might risk not seeing the latest...van Damme movie. Of course I could be convinced otherwise, ie that the movie handles its subject matter in an intellectual, sophisticated, artistic, righteous, complicated and/or "truthful" manner rather than what I assume, which is a fairly simplistic, not very complicated or -(sorry)- dialectical method. However, you have not convinced me that it does. (As below.) Breaking the Waves >is one of the most aesthetically interesting and emotionally powerful films I >have ever seen. What does it mean to say "aesthetically interesting"? Leni Rosenthal's films might be "aesthtically interesting" but it is still not difficult to understand some people walking out of them; there is an aesthetics of content too, if I can put it that way, and it may be something more than "taste". It does disturb your gut, and I spent the last hour of it >clenched in a tight spasm of tears, but I don't find that kind of visceral >emotional reaction offensive...I could see, on the other hand, how one might >be (if he/she didn't appreciate kitsch, that is) the cartoonish and tacky >qualities of something like "Baywatch." Perhaps I don't appreciate kitsch. That is, its never held me in tearful spasms. Yes, Breaking the Waves is about >oppression, but I don't think Bess's husband can be so swiftly and cleanly >pinpointed as perpetrator. The strict, island community, which is the >centripetal force of the film, and the notions of goodness versus evil/sin >therein, are more accurately the culprits. I understood it less as a plot of >male/female sexual dynamics than as one of, yes, "goodness" in the face of >anti-Christian hypocrisy. 1.) Are you or is the film suggesting that "'goodness' in the face of anti-Christian hypocrisy" is worth being humiliated, sexually abused, beaten and killed? 2.) Occam's razor. The husband's influence is also more ambivalent >than what you think; it is not entirely clear that his actions are not >sincerely motivated by a wish to liberate her from him, to free her from her >compulsive and (also unclear) psychologically-unstable love..."love so much >it hurts." Well than, he's an angel. This kind of disgustingly uneven pairing of "opposites" on an ethical scale is exactly what makes me walk out of films. "We had to destroy the woman to save her..." It takes a party pooper to spoil the end of the film, The film described does indeed sound like a party... but since >the final scene is out of the bag, I think it worth noting that another way >to read the "heavenly ascent" is as an image of redemption and love's >justice...that the purity and goodness of unconditional, generous, unguarded >love that Bess strives for throughout the movie in her own dialogue with God >finally comes to her, and her wish is granted. There is nothing kitchy about being a martyr. I understand disgust at the >exploitation of violence, especially violence against women, but I would hope >such valid concerns would not keep us from appreciating the full >dimensionality of strange and human stories. Please explain what is meant by this phrase. I for one am extremely tired of going to movies that looked interesting only to discover, again and again, that they are full of violence and have almost nothing to say to their audiences other than "look at me, arn't I shocking? arn't I a trip? Gross and cool, huh?" Those Tarentino films were both like that and also the ones by David Lynch. From your defense of the film I'm putting it in a category with those. Matthias Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 17:16:49 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: simon@CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU Subject: Re: Bandit Queen My initial paracomments re Bandit Queen aren't/shouldn't be based on the rape sequence (alone), nor on, what someone suggest, not seeing it (for rigidly feminist or whatever whatevers) or dismissing it (seen or unseen) (based on rigidly feminist or whatever whatevers). I've seen it. I see a whole lotta films. I like a whole lotta filsm, movies too. Et cinema, brute'. I speak/know several South Asian languages. Lived in India. Didn't take Bandit Queen as if I thought I was going to the Travels In India series at your local community college. What I mean is this: as whatever kind of movie you take it as, spaghetti westerns, pee wee;s big adventure, freddie's back part lxiv, the piano pianissimo, verite, austin's workout tapes, whatever... Bandit Queen is bad. It is bad. It's a bad bad bad movie. It's a really bad film. Bad. (sit. roll over.) beth simon ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 14:00:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: keep off the cheese (the mouse at midnight) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ok Aldon, you can enjoin me anytime at all. and thanks for the info, which i'll follow up--usually interesting to see a scholar writing about people one knows & their works: works which one has "incorporated" until (though one couldnt have done them) they feel like a part of oneself.Its like getting yr drivers license in the mail, or passport photo. Now its official and you dont look happy any more. But then again, it h a s to be you, too, its just that the lighting and the equipment arent your usual visuals. And after all, you always w a n t e d a drivers license and a passport. They make it easier to get around, a n d they signal arrival. I come to realize the partiality with which I had been reading these associates, that I hadnt glimpsed the look their work turns towards the camera. Its like going into an unknown restaurant and spotting a photo of lorinne niedecker. Does that niedeckerize the restaurant more than it restaurantizes niedecker? Feelings that shimmer like that are those some among us prefer, and they depend upon the certainties of other parties for their origination. What can be given in return is an open question, I daresay, like Robin Blaser's "Whatever". ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 15:42:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Possession, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Armand Schwerner (who never answers his email [well, hardly ever]), recommends *Tales of the Hasidim, the Early Masters* Martin Buber, NY:Shocken 1947. It's a classic, but I think _must_ be read with Gershon Scholem's critique and corrective, "Martin Buber's Interpretation of Hasidism," in his _The Messianic Idea in Judaism_ (Schoken pb). Buber's _Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism_ (same publisher) bears looking at, too. And Eliade, _Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy_ (Princeton/Bollingen Series LXVII) is a locus classicus. Incidentally, and lest I bring down the wrath of the Schwerner, who has powers of his own (I've heard that the mere hint of a flame has been known to bring down immolation on the flamer), anyone interested should run immediately to his ongoing and I hope never-ending masterwork, _The Tablets_, for as good an example of multiple possessions as one could hope to find. To the uninitiated I say no more, for fear of ruining the surprise. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 16:42:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: Re: "Jibaro, my pretty . . ." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Jibaro is a term I've seen (or heard) in much Puerto Rican song -- with distinct, often celebratory, ethnic connotations. My sense is it's similar to gitano (gypsy) in Andalusian culture. Not sure, however, if it's the same as "jivaro"... Stephen Cope >Maria -- I think "jivaro" is another version of "jibaro" -- Spanish >originally for "rustic or uncultured," as my DC friends used to describe >people who were, in their opinion, hopelessly "country" -- came to have >certain ethnic connotations in the New World -- > >Felipe Luciano, of the "original" last poets, has a famous poem that >begins "Jibaro, my pretty nigger," -- > > >when will we see the last last poets? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 19:22:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: EJOYCE@EDINBORO.EDU Subject: Re: Poets' homes MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Another person who might know about Niedecker's home is Glenna Breslin of St. Mary's College. She is working on a biography of Niedecker and read a lovely paper on her relationship with her neighbor, Aeneas McAllister at last spring's Orono poetry of the '50's conference. It sounded like she has been tracking Niedecker's living situations. Lisa Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 20:11:38 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: Diacritics special issue Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" how interesting; the special issue of diacritics edited by jonathan monroe features two (count 'em) essays by jonathan monroe. just jealous, don't mind me, maria d >I'm pleased to announce the publication this week of "Poetry, Community, >Movement," a special double issue I've guest edited for Diacritics >(fall-winter 1996, vol. 26, numbers 3-4). The issue is the first in the >journal's twenty-five year history devoted exclusively to contemporary >poetry. > >Contributions to the opening "Text/Context" section include: Jonathan >Monroe -- "Poetry, the University, and the Culture of Distraction"; Rachel >Blau DuPlessis -- "Manifests"; Rosmarie Waldrop -- "Form and Discontent / >Four Prose Poems"; David Kellogg -- "Perloff's Wittgenstein: W(h)ither >Poetic Theory?"; >Aldon Lynn Nielsen -- "Black Deconstruction: Russell Atkins and the >Reconstruction of African-American Criticism"; and Marjorie Perloff -- >"Whose New American Poetry? Anthologizing in the Nineties." >The second half of the issue includes in its "Symposium" section: Jonathan >Monroe -- "Syntextural Investigations"; Ann Lauterbach -- "Misquotations >from Reality"; Bob Perelman -- "Poetry in Theory"; and Charles Bernstein -- >"Community and the Individual Talent." The issue concludes with "Poetry, >Community, Movement: A Conversation" (Charles Bernstein, Ann Lauterbach, >Jonathan Monroe, and Bob Perelman). > >To order copies of the double issue ($12 each), write via e-mail to >jlorder@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu; via snail mail to: Attn. Journals, The Johns >Hopkins University Press, 2715 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218-4319; or >call 410-516-3858 or 1-800-548-1784. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 20:55:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: Bandit Queen MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Well, I don't know why Phoolan Devi wanted the movie suppressed. If the events the movie represents occurred in the way they are represented, I certainly would understand why she, personally, might want to blow all those guys away. Nevertheless, I still have a deep suspicion of individuals who manipulate images in such a way as to incite homicidal feelings in large numbers of strangers. Call me an old anachronistic Enlightenment goof. It probably comes from hanging out with Maoists in the olden dayes, and seeing the way that a passion for justice can be manipulated so that very nice people end up doing very cruel things--exactly the opposite of what they thought they had set out to do--all in the name of justice. It's like all those people running through the streets looking for Jews to kill because somebody told them that the Jews drank the blood of Christian babies. Who wouldn't want to kill them? Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 01:14:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: main Subject: Re: breaking waves, de sade, etc. In-Reply-To: <199702051658.LAA04276@toast.ai.mit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII this is in response to eliza mc grand's post: > maker appears to think she is really as Good Woman, the Right Kind of Woman, > becuase she does. even sex which becomes increasingly violent, till a intentional fallacy. but it brings up an interesting question: does a film maker's decision to show violence necessarily mean that s/he's condoning violence? or can it be a critique of violence? > sailor who has raped, beaten, and mutilated her tells her to come back for > more, her husband orders her to do so, she does (that good, Griselda-myth her husband doesn't tell her to go back; the reasons why she goes back are several and complex. one could also argue that she chose to go back, knowing she would die. > of a woman) and is murdered. because she has been so dutiful, according > to the filmmaker, the last scene shows her ascending to heaven... actually, you don't see her "ascending to heaven": you see church bells swinging in the sky-- by extension, a trope (and a silly one). > no one seems to be objecting to the appalling message of this film, its > extreme and even approving presentation of violence against women, the notion > that a good woman should do whatever her man tells her to, should be a > sade-like submissive (filmmker says, in interviews, that he read de sade > and was impressed. used it as one of sources/bases for film! he actually > BRAGS about that!) even if it, quite literally, kills her. again, how can we assert what the "message" of the film is? this argument seems to privilege authorial intent. de sade: i'm gonna risk an avalanche of invectives thrown my way and ask some questions about de sade: what do you mean by saying the film-maker was "impressed" by de sade? does reading de sade mean yr a "bad" person? i'd be curious to know how many people on the list have read de sade. how many have read de sade's work in the academy? has anyone noticed how conspicuously absent he is from the academy-endorsed 18th century canon? is this because he was a hack, or does it have to do with a timidity among scholars in grappling with these "morally problematic" works? is ignoring de sade a critical, informed, and intelligent stance? i don't think so. while the acts depicted in de sade's works are, yes, _horrible_, it's also horrible to categorically censor art based on hearsay. i know people who refuse to read freud because his work is reported to be "misogynous and phallo-centric." yes, his work is phallo-centric; but what if kristeva had come to that conclusion and refused to read him? this sort of censorship breeds ignorance and mis-information. it is to art what turning off the evening news is to the world: turning away from violence doesn't "make it go away." whatever happened to know-thy-enemy? > i dunno about you all, but i have so little stomach for violence against > women that i am not sure i could ever see even phoolan devi, where at least > it sounds like no one is trying to say its a great thing that she got raped... "breaking the waves" can also be seen as a critique of back-woods, patriarchical societies that base their authority on judeo-christian precedent (i.e., continuing the patriarchical traditions found within the bible). because the protagonist doesn't rise above her oppressive conditions doesn't mean that the film is condoning oppression. if she had transcended the patriarch, it would have smacked of the it's-a-wonderful-life b.s. that hollywood feeds us. sadly, these heroic-fantasy films are the ones that gross millions, because so many people are afraid to face art that addresses violence without lapsing into unrealistic heroism. this is also why westerns and the whole post-viet nam rambo stuff went over so well: we'll solve our problems on hollywood stage sets. those who censor art because of its "graphic depictions" of violence, sexuality, would have art be a way of turning away from the world, refusing to aknowledge how horrifying it can be. that, to me, is the real danger. dan featherston ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 00:49:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: reading lists In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Wait a minute, wait a minute! It was not I that wrote the ribald fiction yclept _Picollo Mondo_ It was the too bashful Bromige hisself who wrote that wonderful book, which I have had the pleasure of reading in typescript. And if the darn thing ever gets published I am going to buy 2 copies. 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 Feb 1997 00:28:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: allegories of berth In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >This afternoon a man called Small Press Traffic and said, "It says here >that you're having Suzy Howe reading at New College. Is that Susan Howe?" >And when I told him that is was indeed Susan Howe, he said that it said >Suzy Howe in the paper. He added, "This is *terrible*." > >I wish I had asked him which paper it was in! > >Dodie Bellamy agree. But now I am wondering. What is Fanny Howe's name? Is it Stephanie? Anyone know? 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 Feb 1997 07:54:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: delays MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Is there some problem with the list? Is anyone else suddenly having their poetics messages held back and dumped 50 at a time into their mail accounts? Charles B., what's going on? This is most unpleasant. Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 12:55:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Poets' homes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Author of "Under the spreading chastity/ the village smoothy stands..."? At 12:57 PM 2/5/97 EST, you wrote: >Here in Cambridge, they have refurbished the Longfellow home with materials >that have already >outlasted the man's work by decades. Meanwhile, the block housing the last >diner in Harvard >Square has been damned to dynamite, and will not see the spring. > >daniel_bouchard@hmco.com > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 13:31:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Bandit Queen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Eliza McGrand wrote: >i haven't seen Bandit Queen, but i confess, i'm a little puzzled. But isn't your argument similar to "I haven't read Ezra Pound, but he's a fascist anti-Semite, so the poetry can't be any good." Doesn't the way in which these situations may be presented within the context of the films count for anything? Can't you trust that someone who's seen Bandit Queen can have a problem with this presentation? Is a film that has been perceived, to be inartfully manipulative, a good film if you believe in the idea they're shilling for? To bring it round to a film I HAVE seen, a lot of the praise for John Sayles' Lone Star seems to be based on the political sentiments he projects (which, for the most part, I agree with) and not the film itself, which I think is no better or worse than most network television programs. But maybe that's just me. It's great that there are filmmakers with progressive values who are able to work within the film industry, but intentions alone do not make a good art. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 20:13:38 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: Bandit Queen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" zentropa was the most disgusting, anti-semitic, pro-nazi movie i've ever seen in my life, and i would never see another movie by the person who made it. so, i obviously will not comment on "waves's" content.--md I just wanted to make a humble suggestion that people actually --experience-- >for themselves films/books/paintings before destroying them based on >potentially rigid feminist/or/otherwise interpretations. Breaking the Waves >is one of the most aesthetically interesting and emotionally powerful films I >have ever seen. It does disturb your gut, and I spent the last hour of it >clenched in a tight spasm of tears, but I don't find that kind of visceral >emotional reaction offensive...I could see, on the other hand, how one might >be (if he/she didn't appreciate kitsch, that is) the cartoonish and tacky >qualities of something like "Baywatch." Yes, Breaking the Waves is about >oppression, but I don't think Bess's husband can be so swiftly and cleanly >pinpointed as perpetrator. The strict, island community, which is the >centripetal force of the film, and the notions of goodness versus evil/sin >therein, are more accurately the culprits. I understood it less as a plot of >male/female sexual dynamics than as one of, yes, "goodness" in the face of >anti-Christian hypocrisy. The husband's influence is also more ambivalent >than what you think; it is not entirely clear that his actions are not >sincerely motivated by a wish to liberate her from him, to free her from her >compulsive and (also unclear) psychologically-unstable love..."love so much >it hurts." It takes a party pooper to spoil the end of the film, but since >the final scene is out of the bag, I think it worth noting that another way >to read the "heavenly ascent" is as an image of redemption and love's >justice...that the purity and goodness of unconditional, generous, unguarded >love that Bess strives for throughout the movie in her own dialogue with God >finally comes to her, and her wish is granted. I understand disgust at the >exploitation of violence, especially violence against women, but I would hope >such valid concerns would not keep us from appreciating the full >dimensionality of strange and human stories. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 09:53:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: delays Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Is there some problem with the list? Is anyone else suddenly having their >poetics messages held back and dumped 50 at a time into their mail >accounts? > >Charles B., what's going on? This is most unpleasant. > >Mike >mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca Yes, that's been happening to me last two days. but I just switched from digest to real-time, and didn't know whether that might be the problem--the main-frame here. evidently not? My pile of messages arrived around 9:30 a.m. EST, though a few had come before that. Sylvester Pollet Backwoods Broadsides National Poetry Foundation RR 5 Box 3630 5752 Neville Hall Ellsworth ME University of Maine 04605-9529 Orono ME 04469-5752 http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 10:19:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lisa Samuels Subject: possession MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit since ms. moriarty mentions margery kempe and robert gluck's very good and at times sublime re-imagining of kempe -- julian of norwich's writings, what are called =revelations of divine love=, are often marvelous, particularly in her measuredly ecstatic jesus-visions, her desire to "one" with god, and her revelation about the meaning of the lord and the servant parable (in the long text). and see =the cloud of unknowing= and its (unknown) author's talk of the "sharp dart of longing love" etc. and with all the talk of freud, how about andre breton's =communicating vessels=, with its contention that dreams and writings are =predictive= forces, oracles of the future, rather than psychologically =descriptive= ones? lisa s. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 08:15:07 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Jivaro/Jibaro In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Does anyone out there now if "Jivaro" is the name that group of Indios gave themselves, as heard and transliterated by colonizers, or if the Portuguese named them that? I suspect the latter, which is why I also suspect the relationship to "jibaro," but I know neither enough "Jivaro" history nor enough Portuguese -- and wouldn't you know it, budget cuts have pretty much removed Portuguese expertise from our campus, despite the rather large population of speakers of that language in the state -- AND for you newcomers to the list -- when the number of messages hits 50 the list is held till Charles lets go of it again (or till the next day) because Charles still isn't sure he wants to be 50 -- One reason I'm often seen including multiple subjects in one post is a futile attempt to stave off contributing to that dread number myself -- but here I am at 46 already, about to be held -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 11:49:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Re: delays Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>Is there some problem with the list? Is anyone else suddenly having their >>poetics messages held back and dumped 50 at a time into their mail >>accounts? When more than 50 messages are posted to the list in a single day, the listserv program automatically shuts down the list. We then must manually restart it, which usually happens quickly but can take up to a day. This is a good occasion for me to thank Joel Kuszai for his extraordinary help in managing the list: mostly sorting through hundreds of error messages (bounced poetics posts) and helping with various subscription problems. The list could not function without his generous commitment. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 12:40:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maz881@AOL.COM Subject: Re: walkin out hey wendy. i walked on the english patient. the idea of walking is funny for me because i used to live with a stand up comic, ross brockley. he's a professional walker and always checks with the box office before he goes in how long into the movie he can stay & still get a refund. he even did a siskel & ebert thing for comedy central, reviews of movies he's walked on. it was too wierd for the cable guys to pick up as he harshed. anyway, he and his boyfriends, so called alternative comics (mark marron, todd berry, dave atell), would sometimes try to make their audiences walk by being intentionally unfunny and/or sick and they would count the number of people who left. i've been influenced to think that to walk the audience at a poetry reading would be well the best thing you could do. bill ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 11:16:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: possession Comments: To: Lisa Samuels MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Also along those lines, Richard Rolle's _Fire of Love_. A contemporary of the Cloud author, as I recall. Not quite as good as Cloud or Dame Julian, but worth lookng at. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Lisa Samuels To: POETICS Subject: possession Date: Thursday, February 06, 1997 10:21AM since ms. moriarty mentions margery kempe and robert gluck's very good and at times sublime re-imagining of kempe -- julian of norwich's writings, what are called =revelations of divine love=, are often marvelous, particularly in her measuredly ecstatic jesus-visions, her desire to "one" with god, and her revelation about the meaning of the lord and the servant parable (in the long text). and see =the cloud of unknowing= and its (unknown) author's talk of the "sharp dart of longing love" etc. and with all the talk of freud, how about andre breton's =communicating vessels=, with its contention that dreams and writings are =predictive= forces, oracles of the future, rather than psychologically =descriptive= ones? lisa s. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 13:15:30 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: address query Anyone have an email address for Joyce Jenkins or Richard Silburg? Please BACKCHANNEL to Henry_Gould@brown.edu (don't reply to list). Thanks!! - Henry ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 13:56:16 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Bandit Queen (Lone Star) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 01:31 PM 2/5/97 -0800, Herb Levy wrote: (snip) >To bring it round to a film I HAVE seen, a lot of the praise for John >Sayles' Lone Star seems to be based on the political sentiments he projects >(which, for the most part, I agree with) and not the film itself, which I >think is no better or worse than most network television programs. But in what manner no better or worse? are objecting to the "style" of the filming: the framing (or lack there of), the colors (or absence), the relative stability of the camera, etc., or to the acting or what? I thought Lone Star one of the best movies of the last several years--and not just because its general politics were agreeable, but because its artistic merit seemed closely on a par with its political stance, its statements about the perception of regional and personal histories. Perhaps its a leap, but I guess I'm tempted to compare its style as roughly comparable to a novel by Dostoevsky (in translation! (sadly)): that is to say, the "art" of the thing is less in its style than in its content, but the two inescapably influence each other. I also suggest Dostoevsky because I think Sayles' method of analysis of the society in Lone Star is similar to Dostoevsky's in, for example _The Devils_ (or _Demons_ in the latest English trans.): the society is seen from the standpoint of human interaction, and the film's method seems to be to reiterate the circumstantial influence on the character's perceptions by bring the same group of people into contact at different times in different places with different sorts of knowledge. I thought that Sayles' handling of this, and his script, and the unobtrusive clarity of the camera and acting was of the highest order. Certainly much better than the tube, IMO. >It's great that there are filmmakers with progressive values who are able >to work within the film industry, but intentions alone do not make a good >art. Matthias ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 15:00:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Bandit Queen (Unforgiven) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 04:43 PM 2/5/97 -0500, Eliza McGrand- wrote: >i remember in clint eastwoods "Unforgiven" there was the most horrific scene >of violence against women, but i remember it being filmed in what felt like >a very sympathetic, woman's-point-of-view way and i could never say quite why >it felt like that (the rape and murder in "Platoon" had that same quality) >but i'm wondering, now, if it is a matter of camera shots -- if the shots are >taken, at least a significant number, from the "gaze" of the victim? I think you pose an interesting question, an area for someone to examen closely, given the violent content of most movies today. Violence is certainly the pin holding together american (contemporary foreign films are, I believe, from what few of them I have seen, no exception) films of of all kinds of genres: not only the old "gangster" and "western" genres, but many "romance" films, comedys, "arthouse" films: the fascination with guns and their effects seems unending, in Hollywood and out. What are the various circumstances of modern film violence? How are acts of violence shown? The scopofilic gaze coigned, I believe, by Laura Mulvey, and borrowed, I believe, by Frederic Jameson concerns those moments in which the "forward" motion of the film (the plot, the events, the interactions between charactes, the scenes that give modern film its almost relentlessly forward moving narrative) is halted, usually in order to give a better view of the female body. So when the femme fatale arrives the camera pauses on her thighs and the forward motion of the action is halted. Then later some of the more college-educated directors started playing with the idea and you get Scorcese or DePalma or whoever pausing the film (often with the technology of slow motion) on depictions of violence. The beauty of violence this suggests. >i just remember, from "Unforgiven," a sense, rare in movies, of the violence >not as quick and oh-isn't-this-a-fun-special-effect, but rather, chaotic, >hard to parse, TERRIFYING, and unforgivingly terrible. one saw the utter >horror of such an act, its brutality. i guess part of this was not flinching >away or glossing over the appalling aftermath -- the other women trying to >sew the wound, pack it with dressing and stop the bleeding, the raw masses >of cotton that could not contain the disaster and the clear swelling and >pain, the devastating effect on her of the scars, the pain and sympathy and >anger, and worst of all, feelings of helplessness and hopelessness her >injury invoked in everyone around her, even people who didn't, initially, >like her that much... Yes. Its interesting though about the circumstances around the filmed act of violence. Showing the aftermath seems effective at times, but at other times (eg, say, "Resevoir Dogs") it seems merely gratuitious: the film hoping to make a greater aesthetic shock by "showing more." And then, as you mention, there is also the context of the plot of the film to take into account: > >perhaps it is violence-in-context, as well, rather than violence-violence-violence >with no context? I see this as how the characters react to this violence in their world. I think when I am in the theater this is the most effective strategy, both for making the violence truly horrific and effectively "realistic" (which people might object to but I particularly enjoy films that come as close as possible to documentary styles: this has always seemed the most effective use of film, to me (ie, rather than special effects, etc.)) (cinema verite, almost). For example, I am thinking of two films by Werner Herzog with similar names: "Woteck" and "Strozek". The depiction of violence in these films (in one a soldier murders his wife, in the other a woman and a man are beaten up) is strikingly different, but I would argue equally effective. In one the violence is done shown in slow motion and is beautiful and horrifying at once; in the other it happens quickly and is barely seen in the dim light: but in both the effect of the violence on the participants: the murder, the victims, etc., is central to all the following scenes. some of later shots in "Unforgiven" seemed a mocking parody >of shoot-em-up cinema, where you got the "pretty" shooting scene, then you >got the decidely unpretty result, the ambiguities of what was supposed to be >simple revenge, the victims trying to move, their pain -- not just a quick >snappy gloss of them with gory special effect, but again, the unswerving look >at the simple, human, "this hurts" and bodily damage... Then of course too is the fact that many of the earlier westerns show almost no violence at all. The final shoot-out in "Stage Coach" for example, when the camera cuts away just as the Duke fires first... But then that movie more than compensates for such "lack" by gunning down in open view several dozen Indians, the blink of an eye... What are more examples? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 12:27:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Franklin Bruno Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" 1) Aldon mentions: >BUT to reach something more substantive -- the Derrida/Harryman ref. is >to a page early on in _Vice_ where Carla places lines adapted from >Derrida's "The Law of Genre" (since collected for English readers in >_Acts of Literature_ -- David Lehman "discovers" this fact and produces >it in _Signs of the Times_ as a reason to dismiss both Derrida and >Harryman -- > >I had used Carla's revision of Derrida, and Bob Perelman's revision of >Carla Harryman in one of his papers in one of my papers, deliverd in '88, >to get at some issues in the debate between Searle and Derrida over >distinctions between citation and use -- Searle thought Derrida was >abusing Austin, and using him, -- see _Limited Inc_ for Derrida's sides >of the debate -- for Searle's, which he refused permission to copy into >_Limited Inc_, see the 1977 issue of _Glyph_ -- the essay is titled >"Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida" -- Is this '88 paper available? I've always though the D/S debate (which is also, not very covertly, one about the analytic/continental split) had fertile ties to contemporary poetics, but I haven't thought hard about it. 2) Is Joel Kuszai still around here? Could someone who knows the answer please backchannel me his e-mail address? 3) Has anyone out there read a Cuban author named Virgilio Pinera? All that seems to be translated is a remarkable book of stories called -Cold Tales- and the novel -Rene's Flesh-, both in the Erdanos Library series. Has anyone translated his poems? fjb ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 15:07:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Bandit Queen (Lone Star) Comments: To: Matthias Regan MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Lone Star was certainly enjoyable (I watched it with some buddies while quaffing a pint of Wild Turkey at the Flatirons Theater), but I didn't find it as noteworthy as you did Matthias. For me, Sayles is a filmmaker who thinks he's at his most poetic when he's merely being baldly schematic. I worked with him briefly on a project about Ellis Island for Propaganda Films a few years ago - nothing came of it, sotry of my life - but he's a nice guy. Still, there were some wonderful grace notes in the film. Unfortunately, it dissolved into a lot of froth. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Matthias Regan To: POETICS Subject: Bandit Queen (Lone Star) Date: Thursday, February 06, 1997 2:01PM I thought Lone Star one of the best movies of the last several years--and not just because its general politics were agreeable, but because its artistic merit seemed closely on a par with its political stance, its statements about the perception of regional and personal histories. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 13:32:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: for db: initializing, establishing, and authentication MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Bromige writes: "oh oh, lookout, here comes something else barely related: can anyone describe to me in words an english professor can understand, the actual nuts and bolts of "Initializing", "Establishing," and "Authenticiation," in the context of logging-on? Thinking of it as one code meeting another (I suppose), can anyone get more micro abt it? My interest has to do with metaphor, so dont go metaphorical on me more than you can possibly help. Or put it this way, why are those 3 words used for those three sets of operations--why those three words and not their cognates or cousins. thanks if you can help, db" This response from resident software architect. Re actual nuts and bolts: Initialization, of, I assume, a session with a computer system. There's what's known as transient state associated to such a beast -- you will find hidden underneath in the deep dank basement a set of running software programs that are needed to keep that connection alive. They have state, data, that needs to be set in order for the programs to function. Things like where this connection is coming from, the port number etc etc etc. That set-up, and getting these programs going, is called initialization. There is an opposite to initialization; when the session is dropped and all that transient data is forgotten. Of course, some of it may get logged, so that Big Brother can keep track of his minions. Establishment: when the connection is actual, live, and ready to go --- both endpoints are there, know about each other and can start yammering away. Authentication. To do with computer security ---- is Mr. DB at the end of the line really Mr. DB, or some other sinister influence? How would the system know? How would we ever know? The protocol for authentication usually involves exchange of protected/encrypted data, such as passwords. Jussi Ketonen jussi@steam.stanford.edu jussik@viewstar.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 13:57:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Laura Moriarty Subject: Re: allegories of berth Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" George Just talked to Fanny on the phone and she said no it's just Fanny. Laura >>This afternoon a man called Small Press Traffic and said, "It says here >>that you're having Suzy Howe reading at New College. Is that Susan Howe?" >>And when I told him that is was indeed Susan Howe, he said that it said >>Suzy Howe in the paper. He added, "This is *terrible*." >> >>I wish I had asked him which paper it was in! >> >>Dodie Bellamy > > agree. But now I am wondering. What is Fanny Howe's name? Is it Stephanie? >Anyone know? > > > > > >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 Feb 1997 14:45:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Coffey Subject: poetry "schools" Dear members of the list: At publishers weekly, where I work, we are preparing a poetry feature for an upcoming issue. The approach is to devise a piece that will assist booksellers (and others) in knowing what the different disciplines/schools/programs/ aesthetics are across the poetry spectrum in the U.S, and connect, where possible, each segment to the houses that publish them, the companaies that distribute them, the journals that keep their authors' new work out there, or the writing programs that fuel them, or the influences that are their foundation. At the moment, we are thinking of such segments as Language poets, multicultural poetics, or latino and black and asian, gay and lesbian poetries, spoken or performance poetry, St. Mark's of New York School, formalist, mainstream perhaps, experimental maybe, classical, poetry in translation, etc. Although I realize that some may see such reckoning and partitioning a woeful disservice, i think that, for the purposes of knowing how to stock a poetry section and keeping it both deep and contemporary, such an approach can be helpful. I would appreciate hearing from anyone who agrees that this may be useful, and who might have advice to offer on the various camps/alliances etc. Of course, i welcome comments from those who wish to dissent as well. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 18:35:29 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Getting out the word out MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT matthias wrote: > I check out seven, read one, return > five, get heavilyfined on two, check out five, read two, return seven, begin > the cycle again. I consider it doing my part to assist in the up-keep of > such institutions: my method usually generates an average of $20 in fines > per book read. About the cost of the book did I buy it in a store. well, I suppose this is to some extent the general case. I was just thinking semi-seriously that we could turn our disorganzied non-effort into an organized effort. but maybe theres little point l. lets just everybody keep up the good work, then. > Who said the below? > > > >"Or, worse, they will change the point of view > >(top becomes bottom, male becomes female, etc etc) > >and think, like the [Realists] they are, that they > >have changed something." nobody, or I did. actually it came from Spicer (& from somewhere before that etc) but obviously through me. > Why have we heard nothing about your new limited edition on here? > Its recent review? um, ok well I wasnt going to say anything about it just yet but I do "have a chapbook out" now --Dusky Winders-- on nominative press collective (which is me & kinkos). its avail for $3 or possibly for trade (I do very high quality offset work) from me c alexander 160S 1300E #16 Salt Lake City UT 84102 or email me calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu if you want to hear about the work, Peter Ganick has written a review of it for Taproot--but I'm not sure when it will appear, really. I just read it myself. c. .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) "Or, worse, they will change the point of view (top becomes bottom, male becomes female, etc etc) and think, like the [Realists] they are, that they have changed something." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 19:03:39 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Getting out the word out MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT forgot to mention that the chapbk is limited to 20 (now 16) copies. > but I do "have a chapbook out" now --Dusky Winders-- on > nominative press collective (which is me & kinkos). > > its avail for $3 or possibly for trade (I do very high quality offset work) > from me c alexander 160S 1300E #16 Salt Lake City UT 84102 > or email me calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu > > if you want to hear about the work, Peter Ganick has written a review of it > for Taproot--but I'm not sure when it will appear, really. I just read it myself. .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) "Philosophy is intellectual order, which neither religion nor common sense can be. It is to be observed that religion & common sense do not coincide either, but that religion is an element of fragmented common sense. Moreover common sense is a collective noun, like religion: there is not just one common sense, for that too is a product of history & a part of the historical process. Philosophy is criticism & the superseding of religion & 'common sense'. In this sense it coincides with 'good' as opposed to 'common' sense." Gramsci ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 20:18:58 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: poetry "schools" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Michael Coffey wrote: > > At the moment, we are thinking of such segments as Language poets, > multicultural poetics, or latino and black and asian, gay and lesbian > poetries, spoken or performance poetry, St. Mark's of New York School, > formalist, mainstream perhaps, experimental maybe, classical, poetry in > translation, etc. My suggestion is that for poets who are still alive, to ask them what category they wish to be in. My choice for myself would be mainstream, because lawd knows, Ive been spending my life trying to fit into the mainstream. Miekal who heard a rumor that qazingulaza is open for business, tho its gonna take a couple days of tweaking to make it zing. but if you cant wait & your browser is frames friendly & your connectivity hums then come check out the new imaginary land of qazingulaza. -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 20:43:05 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: event report hi guyzies: here's a cc of a note i sent to my colleagues today about miekal and's reading, which inaugurated the "alternative verbal arts" reading series brian horihan and i are doing at the university: From: "maria damon" Date: Thu, 6 Feb 97 20:34:57 -0600 To: englfac@maroon.tc.umn.edu, engrad-l@maroon.tc.umn.edu Subject: reading just a note to thank everyone who attended the inaugural poetry reading of the "alternative verbal arts" series and, for non-attendants, to describe the event. miekal and was wearing a coat made of scraps of cloth with words on them, entirely handstitched by a friend, zebra-striped pyjama pants, and an earring that was a tiny book of pen and ink designs. that about sums up the atmosphere. he read some poetry, then played some of his charming computer poems for us, which featured some word-animation, sound, and visual/collage like material. play and inventiveness was the main agenda. he showed a few parts of the hypertext he and i are collaborating on; shd have a website in a few days. he finished with a love poem, fairly conventional in syntax and content, accompanying himself on amplified home-made ocarinas that looked like gourds and sounded haunting, esp w/ the echo effect of the amp. then he sold material, print and graphic, from his Xexoxial Editions press. the crowd (a fulll house) was pretty diverse: a couple of undergrads including brian horihan, the organizer whose UROP grant is sponsoring the event, and a creative writing major named martin; a number of folks from the mfa program in creative writing (including anna reckin, elissa raffa, jenny willoughby and some people whose names i don't know), some american studies and history students, a few people from the alternative arts community and teachers of permaculture, three faculty members and some students from the lit program such as laurie dickinson, who doubled as tech support, and curt leitz. it was fun to see people who know each other from different parts of their lives run in to each other there (like, an amstud student and an experimental theatre person; a history student and a soo-line garden founder) and express delighted surprise. the refreshments, provided by creative writing, were elegant and went like hotcakes. all in all, a gala event. next week's event will most likely be more subdued with fewer visuals, but engaging and cool nonetheless. again, thank you all--maria damon ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 19:50:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Getting out the word out Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear Chris: I guess as the two c.alexanders on this list, we had better trade some work. I'll send something your way if you'll send your book my way. charles alexander chax press 101 w. sixth st., no. 6 tucson, az 85701-1000 (not only the names, but we're two of the few westerners who aren't in california) all best, charles ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 21:00:08 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: Getting out the word out MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Charles Alexander wrote: > > I guess as the two c.alexanders on this list, we had better trade some work. > I'll send something your way if you'll send your book my way. well at least you guys were born with the name Michael David Anderson. when I was fifteen I took a look in the chicago phone book & there were 325 of em, & 12 that had my middle name. changed my name that day, I did, I did. Michael David Anderson aka Miekal And ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 19:13:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: event report Comments: To: maria damon In-Reply-To: <32fa96b872fe002@mhub1.tc.umn.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Please tell us what constitutes a "teacher of permaculture" ?? Is this anything like the permafrost? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 21:39:14 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: event report MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Permaculture is an international movement of designers, ecologists, gardeners, community planners, & more fringe elements such as myself. I use its design principles in all facets of life including my art, my relationships, village design, education & teaching, sex & play. Some easy ways to think of natural design is to think of the following ideas: "everything gardens", "the most amount of change with the least amount of effort", "the problem is the solution", "work with nature, rather than against", "the yield of a system is theoretically unlimited". Long time Australian permaculture teacher Bill Mollison says: "Permaculture is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing food, energy, shelter, and other material & non-material needs in a sustainable way. Without permanent agriculture there is no possibility of a stable social order." Miekal And who teaches permaculture but is not a permaculture teacher. -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 21:17:15 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Getting out the word out MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > well at least you guys were born with the name Michael David Anderson. was not! .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) "Philosophy is intellectual order, which neither religion nor common sense can be. It is to be observed that religion & common sense do not coincide either, but that religion is an element of fragmented common sense. Moreover common sense is a collective noun, like religion: there is not just one common sense, for that too is a product of history & a part of the historical process. Philosophy is criticism & the superseding of religion & 'common sense'. In this sense it coincides with 'good' as opposed to 'common' sense." Gramsci ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 21:18:46 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Getting out the word out MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > I guess as the two c.alexanders on this list, we had better trade some work. > I'll send something your way if you'll send your book my way. consider it mailed. chris .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) "Philosophy is intellectual order, which neither religion nor common sense can be. It is to be observed that religion & common sense do not coincide either, but that religion is an element of fragmented common sense. Moreover common sense is a collective noun, like religion: there is not just one common sense, for that too is a product of history & a part of the historical process. Philosophy is criticism & the superseding of religion & 'common sense'. In this sense it coincides with 'good' as opposed to 'common' sense." Gramsci ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 22:26:36 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: Getting out the word out MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Christopher Alexander wrote: > > > well at least you guys were born with the name Michael David Anderson. > > was not! after 2 days away from the computer I forgot how to type--sorry to c alexander, sorry to c alexander. m and ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 21:25:51 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Getting out the word out MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > after 2 days away from the computer I forgot how to type--sorry to c > alexander, sorry to c alexander. [tunefully "oh oh dont hang that mournful head at me."] chris ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 22:39:51 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: child of tree MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit according to the list specs Chris Shultis is on this list. is this the same chris shultis that performed cage's child of tree for amplified cactus. chris, where can I get a recording of that? miekal and who still hasnt been able to get a good solid plunk out of his 3 ft barrel cactus ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 23:35:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: event report / an adage Miekal And, in offering definitions for "Permaculture" & "natural design," presents some adages, including: "the problem is the solution" This suggests an update (& something of a reversal) on an all too familiar commonplace -- thus: if you're not part of the problem you're not part of the solution d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 22:16:56 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: poetry "schools" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The first piece of advice that sprang to my mind is that _Publishers' Weekly_ might think of a poetry piece that looks at poetry that comes from outside the USA as well as US poetry. A lot of the US poets I know feel affiliations with lots of international poetries, in English and other languages. 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 Feb 1997 11:21:35 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: 9448721P@ARTS.GLA.AC.UK Organization: Glasgow University Subject: OBJECT PERMANENCE #8 Announcing the publication of the eighth and FINAL issue of OBJECT PERMANENCE. Featuring work by Bruce Andrews, John M. Bennett, Andrea Brady, Adrian Clarke, Clark Coolidge, Peter Finch, Pierre Joris, Peter Middleton, Carlyle Reedy, Robert Sheppard, Fiona Templeton, Lawrence Upton/Bob Cobbing and Johan de Wit. And more than 14 pages of reviews and listings. Available from Peter Manson, Flat 3/2, 16 Ancroft Street Glasgow Scotland G20 7HU stlg3 surface mail abroad; stlg4 airmail. Payment, from overseas, by Sterling IMO if possible (orders in equivalent local currency are ok, but a Sterling draft drawn on a UK bank is best). Contributors` copies are on the way... ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 04:02:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Names are not Objects Miekal, I've always wondered about the origin of your name. Names do seem particularly unstable with regards to people. I only recognized "the artist formerly known as prince" in Fargo from his symbol in the credits (he's the one shot in the snow after the chase scene). What was his name before it was Prince? There was of course Edward Howard Symmes (R Duncan) Not mention such favorites as Carolyn Ochs (Lyn Hejinian) Mary Korkegian (Rae Armantrout) George Palmer (aka Michael) Robert Davidson (aka Michael) and if my granddaddy had not been adopted many decades back, I'd be Ron McMahon. Such is life. According to Switchboard.com there are 6 Ron Sillimans in the US listed in various white pages. I've probably ruined their reputations. And when we first moved to Paoli, there was a Jesse Silliman living directly across the street from us (one of my sons is Jesse). (Let's see, if there are 6 of them in a nation of 270 million, the odds of any one being at an address is roughly 1 in 65 mill, the odds of two across the street would be pretty darn high: why can't I win on odds like that in the lottery?), but she was a she and he's a he, in spite of the spelling. There's even a second Krishna Evans (name of my wife) living in Houston, TX. And we had a childcare helper in Berkeley whose name also was Krishna (particularly unusual in that, like Jesse, it's normally a masculine form). So what's the tale of Liz Was (not her current name either as I recall)? Ron Silliman >Date: Thu, 6 Feb 1997 21:00:08 +0100 >From: Miekal And >Subject: Re: Getting out the word out > >Charles Alexander wrote: > > >> >> I guess as the two c.alexanders on this list, we had better trade some work. >> I'll send something your way if you'll send your book my way. > > >well at least you guys were born with the name Michael David Anderson. >when I was fifteen I took a look in the chicago phone book & there were >325 of em, & 12 that had my middle name. changed my name that day, I >did, I did. > >Michael David Anderson aka Miekal And > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 04:12:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Film thread John Sayles has made several movies that are as one-dimensional as any piece of agitprop (viz. Matewan), but Lone Star isn't one of those. Rather, like Brother from Another Planet, it struck me as quite transcendant of such values (they're there but sort of implicit throughout and not really what the film hangs on). Lots of great cameos, like Tony Ameandola's (sp?) Mexican used car dealer. If this is equivalent to what's on TV, they must have better TV there than we get in Philly. Hey, but then I liked the English Patient (it's an interesting transformation from the book in that each treats a different level as the frame story and a different level as "the focus"), but I admit to being a sucker for its self-indulgences (both film and book, for that matter). It'd make a great double bill with The Sheltering Sky (a truly great film and book) and a triple bill (does any theater do that anymore?) with Antonioni's The Passage. A truly bad film (violence as porn) might be The Missouri Breaks (was that Pekinpaugh or Penn?) which treats the acts of killing in exactly the same episodic method that a cheap porn flick would getting from one sex scene to the next, each more violent than the one before. Last film I walked on was El Topo. Last video I turned off halfway through was Bridges of Madison County (Meryl Streep in her same old swedish accent posing as Italian immigrant: "Ja, Ve are Italian"). My Cousin Vinny was the one before that. (A good rule: avoid anything that might end up being shown uncut on a transcontinental flight.) Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 08:08:16 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: poetry "schools" In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 6 Feb 1997 14:45:36 -0500 from Dear Michael McCoffey, be sure to tell bksellers to reserve a wide range of shelving for the Providence School over there between Physics and Self-Help (Archaeology). Poets to include: High, Prevallet, Shvarts, Mandelstam, Villon, Wright (all 10 of them), Dickinson, Sappy (all 100 of them), Gould (lower shelf - remainders), Savage Reader (note: add poison warning - hold chapbook at least 2 ft from nose), Ashbery, Berrigan (all 4 of them), Berryman, Henry Pussycat, Florida Sweets (Valentine seasonal market), Louise Chan Littletree (has anyone read this poet yet? What is wrong with you people?). - Henry Gould p.s. throw in a few NY School-bred Language epic beat-up New Coast Af-Am Brazilian elderly Swedish lesbian garbage-can-lid-challenged Hopi smartass adolescent mute performance slang nu-english poets just to make it interesting. & make sure they're all Irish. Best of luck! So much to choose from! ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 05:56:21 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Bandit Queen (Lone Star) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Matthias Regan asked: >At 01:31 PM 2/5/97 -0800, Herb Levy wrote: >(snip) >>To bring it round to a film I HAVE seen, a lot of the praise for John >>Sayles' Lone Star seems to be based on the political sentiments he projects >>(which, for the most part, I agree with) and not the film itself, which I >>think is no better or worse than most network television programs. > > But in what manner no better or worse? Certainly in terms of narrative form. Very few narrative films, especially from the States, end with such an intense rush to resolve all narrative threads, while this is quite common in network tv. Aside from overall production values being better in film, I think this kind of closure may be one of the strongest differences between narrative as presented in the two media. In general, it seems to me you're arguing for some kind of social realism, style in the service of progressive content ("the 'art' of the thing is less in its style than in its content") whereas I see Lone Star as a manipulative allegory (Sayles HAS done far worse in this mode, what's the name of that mining/labor film?). I'd rather see progressive content mirrored in a progressive style I'm certainly not getting what I want from a movie like Lone Star, but I also think it would be possible to get a lot closer to what you want then what Sayles creates in this film. I do like a lot of the bit parts, Francis McDormand (from Fargo) as the ex-wife of Chris Cooper's character, for instance, is great. I like the flashbacks as pans across the scene, rather than the more usual breaks that signal such a change in a lot of films. But as to the various stylistic features you raise, I can only say that what you see as "unobtrusive clarity", just seems lackluster & uninspired to me. Bests Herb Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 08:16:38 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Names are not Objects ron s, he of the silly name, rites: > Names do seem particularly unstable with regards to people. I only > recognized "the artist formerly known as prince" in Fargo from his > symbol in the credits (he's the one shot in the snow after the chase > scene). What was his name before it was Prince? > > There was of course Edward Howard Symmes (R Duncan) > > Not mention such favorites as > Carolyn Ochs (Lyn Hejinian) > Mary Korkegian (Rae Armantrout) > George Palmer (aka Michael) > Robert Davidson (aka Michael) > > and if my granddaddy had not been adopted many decades back, I'd be Ron > McMahon. > > Such is life. > > According to Switchboard.com there are 6 Ron Sillimans in the US listed > in various white pages. I've probably ruined their reputations. And > when we first moved to Paoli, there was a Jesse Silliman living > directly across the street from us (one of my sons is Jesse). (Let's > see, if there are 6 of them in a nation of 270 million, the odds of any > one being at an address is roughly 1 in 65 mill, the odds of two across > the street would be pretty darn high: why can't I win on odds like that > in the lottery?), but she was a she and he's a he, in spite of the > spelling. There's even a second Krishna Evans (name of my wife) living > in Houston, TX. And we had a childcare helper in Berkeley whose name > also was Krishna (particularly unusual in that, like Jesse, it's > normally a masculine form). > > So what's the tale of Liz Was (not her current name either as I > recall)? this is picking up on the trhead i tried to inaugurate some weeks ago, suggesting that we all tell each other the origins of our names. i love this kind of thing, seems kabalistic to me. i was really unnerved to find out, in the course of chris funkhouser's trying to show me how to use the web, that there's an undergrad at brown u called Maria Damon. in addition, last yeear when i was on the cape, the cape cod times featured a ltter to the editor about a heartbreaking photo of a guy who'd lost his dog, and how voyeuristic the photo was, and wasn't it hard enough for the poor guy to have lost his dog, w/o having to see his photo in the paper, etc.,,,signed by Maria Damon. then, on returnin here, i reconnected w/ my former health care workers to provide me w/ a prescription for medication. the nurse called me back and said, when did you switch to your current medication? i sd i'd always been on it, and no other. when's yr date of birth she sd, and when i told her, she sd, that solves it, we've got another patient with your same name and i was getting you mixed up. i know some of you have names that are pretty common (miekal, one of my danish cousins changed her name to be the only one of its kind in the danish phone book, cuz their names are all frederiksen, larsen, rasmussen, etc) but i tend to think of my name as unusual. oh well. seething with humility, maria d ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 10:03:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: Names are not Objects Comments: To: maria damon In-Reply-To: <32fb3946220d455@mhub1.tc.umn.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII There's a Jordan Davis who's a sound poet in Cleveland. Luigi-Bob knows (of) him. And then there was the two year period when I went around saying no, I don't have an 'e' in my last name. Diane Ward of Buffalo should have something to say about this phenomenon -- she did the last time we ran thru this thread ... signed Jordan whose computer is still dead and who therefore must use clunky telnet in perpetuity ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 08:28:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Names are not Objects Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >What was his name before it was Prince? > I believe the given name is Prince Rogers (or Rodgers) Nelson. All I know re: my own name is that my father was born in 1907, not long before Oklahoma became a state, in its dusty northwest corner, and named after the last territorial governor who became the first state governor: Charles Haskell. So my dad was the first Charles Haskell Alexander and I am technically a "jr." although that got dropped when I was a teenager or perhaps even before. Once a policeman came looking for me in my studio in Tucson and was very surprised when I came to the door, as he had a warrant for a Charles Alexander who was 6 foot 4 inches tall (I'm 5 foot 10) and a different color. But that's better than my wife, who lives in the same town here with another Cynthia Miller who used to run an animal grooming business but now is a convicted (and much publicized) animal abuser who didn't do jail time but had big fines and can never have pets again. We thought she got off lightly. My wife has considered changing her name to mine (last only; although I guess we could have two Charles Alexanders in the same house) because of it, but so far hasn't taken such a step. what's in a name? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 07:46:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: RLIN search Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Can anyone help me? I have this print out from RLIN that tells me where all the Spicer manuscripts are lodged throughout the country in what different university libraries, etc.... however, they use a code I find hard to crack. Can someone tell me what and where "RRAL" ("Resources for Research in American Culture") is? Thanks--- Kevin Killian ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 10:39:26 -0500 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: poetry "schools" In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This issue of labelling is fascinating, and is going to be around for the foreseeable future. My first response, Michael, is: assuming any broad usefulness to such an approach, what label would you attach to your own work?? The question isn't only rhetorical...it would be really interesting to know. I don't think I could/would attach one to mine. (A less interesting example, as you probably haven't seen it..) To avoid labelling, I've developed a habit of referring to what I like as "interesting poetry," with the converse of that being mainstream, or just "not very interesting." A very interesting parallel to what you-all are doing: in the 1980's I lived in Boston; the famous poetry bookshop Groliers had a good selection of LangPo books & chapbooks; but they had them on a separate shelf labelled (literally) "Language Poetry." Now on the one hand many area poets thought that was an absurd ghettoization intended to keep this stuff (which somehow wasn't real) from infecting the rest of the 15,000 or whatever volumes in the store. ALL the rest, you see, were in a single A to Z sequence. On the other hand, several young poets I knew found this a useful way to find out who & what LangPo was, when they hadn't had direct contact with anyone who could tell them; and while they saw in principle what was wrong, the arrangement helped them at a crucial point of exploration... Since your publication has to do crucially with marketing, it seems hard for it to avoid labelling. It is interesting to consider the alternative...That would be (to be acceptable to the majority of folks on this list) for Publisher Weekly (and Groliers) to not ghettoize, BUT to give Nate Mackay & Susan Howe & Clark Coolidge & David Shapiro as much attention & publicity as Amy Clampitt. (Of course they should get much, much more.) The thing about these labelling approaches is that they are often the only way mainstream institutions are willing to give ANY real space to stuff outside the mainstream. Mark P. Atlanta ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 10:55:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Diane Marie Ward Subject: Re: Names are not Objects In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII this thread/dilemma/annoyance reminds me of a teacher i had once -- she could not remember all of our names so she assinged us numbers -- (i still remember i was #21 -- one of those scars we carry) Now i simply just use my middle name and hyphenate it -- I rather like Jordan's "Diane Ward of Buffalo" sounds rather stately/regal "Diane Ward of Buffalo - land of chicken wings, football fanatics and postmodern/language poetry" On Fri, 7 Feb 1997, Jordan Davis wrote: > There's a Jordan Davis who's a sound poet in Cleveland. Luigi-Bob knows > (of) him. And then there was the two year period when I went around saying > no, I don't have an 'e' in my last name. Diane Ward of Buffalo should have > something to say about this phenomenon -- she did the last time we ran > thru this thread ... signed Jordan whose computer is still dead and who > therefore must use clunky telnet in perpetuity > --------------------------------------------------------------------- Diane-Marie Ward dward@acsu.buffalo.edu State University of New York at Buffalo --------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 10:08:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: Names are not Objects Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" names?... joe amato the top-fuel drag racer... joe amato the bodybuilding reporter on espn... joe amato (jr.) the son of joe amato... up?... will the real joe amato please stand ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 11:11:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Mitch Goodman Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The New York Times (Thurs. 6 Feb. 97, B-13) ran a nice obit for Mitch Goodman, the largest of the day, except for Pamela Harriman. But it's too bad they couldn't have bothered to proofread it, or maybe just don't know any bettter, so the world gets this: "...after meeting a young English poet, Denise Leverton, at a youth hostel in Geneva..." and later "But by the time Miss Leverton had collected signatures from hundreds of artist and writers for an antiwar advertisement...." Ron, maybe not all name changes are voluntary! It's just another reminder that someone we know and love as a household word more or less doesn't ring any bells in the power centers. Sylvester Pollet Backwoods Broadsides National Poetry Foundation RR5 Box 3630 University of Maine Ellsworth ME 5752 Neville Hall 04605-9529 Orono, Maine USA 04469-5752 http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 11:17:42 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: Fwd: New rules on internet access Comments: To: SASIALIT@LISTSERV.RICE.EDU MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Friends, colleagues, et al. -- I received the attached message via another mailing list to which I belong, and felt it worth circulating -- am here posting it to both the POETICS listserv and the SASIALIT listserv. I don't know a thing about this beyond what's written below -- but I do plan to send in a little note to the FCC's email address for feedback, advising them that as a private citizen, I should be pleased not to get extra, gratuitous charges for email use. (Note, the deadline for such feedback is said to be February 13.) regards to all, d.i. > --------------------- > Forwarded message: > To: bababooks@aol.com > Date: 97-02-06 09:58:45 EST > > ----- Begin Included Message ----- > > This will impact us all! Please read on..... > > > > I am writing you this to inform you of a very important matter > > currently under review by the FCC. Your local telephone company has > > filed a proposal with the FCC to impose per minute charges for your > > internet service. They contend that your usage has or will hinder the > > operation of the telephone network. > > > > It is my belief that internet usage will diminish if users were > > required to pay additional per minute charges. The FCC has created an > > email box for your comments, responses must be received by February > > 13, 1997. Send your comments to > > > > isp@fcc.gov > > > > and tell them what you think. > > > > Every phone company is in on this one, and they are trying to sneak > > it in just under the wire for litiagation. Let everyone you know here > > this one. Get the e-mail address to everyone you can think of. > > > > isp@fcc.gov > > > > Please forward this email to all your friends on the internet so all > > our voices may be heard! > > > > Please pass this along. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 10:18:32 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: poetry "schools" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" it may be useful in this regard to consider jed rasula's account of current poetic practice in _the american poetry wax museum_... rasula identifies "four zones" of the contemporary american "poetry world": the associated writing programs; the new formalism; language poetry; and "various coalitions of interest-oriented or community-based poets" (440)... now i'm not suggesting that one should adhere precisely to these "zones" in laying out publishing or distributing criteria, only that such zones may be a start in thinking about what poetry communities are 'out there'... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 08:31:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: "Arctic Summer" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It's Kevin Killian. I would like to announce the publication of my new book, "Arctic Summer" and urge all of you to look for it in your bookstores, to get it from the publisher, or to get it from SPD. It is my first novel in 7 years and took me 10 years to write. Maybe some of you will like it, it's set in the poetry scene of the 50s, starts out in New York and winds up at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Some of you will know that "Arctic Summer" was the name of the novel E M Forster began, then abandoned, about this time. Masquerade Books 801 Second Avenue New York, NY 10017 Thanks also to all of you who have told me that you have ordered my book "Little Men" from Hard Press. I don't think I've had an original title in many years, and my next book will be "Reading Race." ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 11:30:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Amiri Baraka Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Amiri Baraka gave a talk and reading last night, Univ. of Maine, part of Black History Month observances, Multi-cultural etc. etc. Great, wide-ranging, energizing. Topics from language controversies to slave narratives to O.J. to Oedipus to rhythm & blues to multinationals. And that's only a few of the topics. He was in top form, and flying to California today to be in a Warren Beatty film (called Bullworth, I think, about a Senator Bullworth). All you film-threaders can look forward to that one! Sylvester Pollet Backwoods Broadsides National Poetry Foundation RR5 Box 3630 University of Maine Ellsworth ME 5752 Neville Hall 04605-9529 Orono, Maine USA 04469-5752 http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 10:00:40 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: tv vs. film... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" about tv: i don't quite think it's what it used to be... 'nypd blue' or 'er' or 'murder one' are, to my mind, doing some pretty extraordinary things... both visually and structurally, they're outdoing many of the films around, and have the added advantage of serial length... easy to see this if you have cable: just watch 15 minutes or a half-hour of nypd blue, and then click around and have a look at the various films on the various networks (that is, if you can bring yourself to pull away---it's pretty addictive stuff)... anyway... just didn't want tv to take a complete and customary beating over and against (non-tv) film... though of course commercials continue to be a downer... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 10:43:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Names are not Objects Comments: To: Diane Marie Ward MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Hmmm... football and langpo. Sounds downright Edenic. 'Cept for that snow thing. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Diane Marie Ward To: POETICS Subject: Re: Names are not Objects Date: Friday, February 07, 1997 10:36AM "Diane Ward of Buffalo - land of chicken wings, football fanatics and postmodern/language poetry" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 09:06:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Celebrating Tet in the dorm this week In-Reply-To: <199702071202.EAA13848@dfw-ix1.ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Prince's name before was, as it happens, Prince -- but there was more to it back then -- Some PBS stations are showing a documentary on W.E.B. DuBois this month ("DuBois in Four Voices" or some such title) that includes among the talking heads comments from the late Toni Cade Bambara -- Also, if you missed it this week, watch for a PBS rerun of the Great Performances episode featuring a BBC documentary on Gospel Music -- No, it's nowhere near as good as that gem _Say Amen Somebdoy_, BUT it includes commentary from Baraka, and when was the last time you saw ANYBODY bold enough to include Baraka in a program that anything to do with Christianity? Posthumous sighting of Ralph Ellison on Good Morning America this A.M. -- nothing like a new book to get a dead author on TV -- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:18:16 -0500 Reply-To: "Steven W. Marks" Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Steven W. Marks" Subject: "schools" and doubles Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Having wandered in what felt like poetic Siberia (and a partly self-imposed one), I don't mind being associated with a "school." I know the designations aren't accurate, but then we could say that all words are labels and slippery, and so remain mute. IMO, all communication is inaccurate, but it's all we got. I agree with Miekal, however, that you might want to ask the poet. I wouldn't be pleased if somebody read an Elizabethan sonnet I had published and decided I was a neo-formalist. (Not that there's anything wrong with neo-formalists!) I also like the zone idea of Jed Rasula. While we're discussing doubles (c. alexander and c. alexander), how many people have discovered that they live in the same SMALL town as a fellow list member? I discovered that Wendy Battin and I both live in the same real world. (Hello, Wendy! I even went to Conn. Coll. for a while in the early 70s before being put on academic probation.) Which brings me full circle. Maybe I'm not in poetic Siberia after all. Steven Marks __________________________________________________ Samples of reviews, criticism and poetry at http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 11:17:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: tv vs. film... Comments: To: amato MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Interesting point, Joe. I don't really find those shows all that compelling except in a shopworn Dickensian sort of way. I watch them, but I seldom stay with them. They're all so self-important. Esp. the X-Files. I confess I'd rather watch The Simpsons. I'm actually coming to believe that the TV commercial is the late 20th Century American art form par excellence: religious redemption/micro narrative that can't be beat for cognitive recognition/compression. Patrick Pritchett, who's taking off for the day to ride his mtn bike in the fresh snow. (Miekal, you've really started something here...) ---------- From: amato To: POETICS Subject: tv vs. film... Date: Friday, February 07, 1997 11:06AM about tv: i don't quite think it's what it used to be... 'nypd blue' or 'er' or 'murder one' are, to my mind, doing some pretty extraordinary things... both visually and structurally, they're outdoing many of the films around, and have the added advantage of serial length... easy to see this if you have cable: just watch 15 minutes or a half-hour of nypd blue, and then click around and have a look at the various films on the various networks (that is, if you can bring yourself to pull away---it's pretty addictive stuff)... anyway... just didn't want tv to take a complete and customary beating over and against (non-tv) film... though of course commercials continue to be a downer... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:10:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: The Lack now available, _Abacus #104_: _The Lack (love poems, targets, flags. . .)_ by Rod Smith orders to: Potes & Poets 181 Edgemont Ave Elmwood CT 06110 It's $4. Subscriptions to Abacus are $26. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 11:34:21 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: tv vs. film... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" patrick, i agree that such tv shows may be burdened by "self-importance"... but, again, i think the same could be said of many, many films these days... i'd argue that characterization on nypd blue is as complete, as subtle, as many hollywood releases... now whether one goes for same is probably a somewhat different matter... as to commercials: was a time i watched mtv just for the commercials!... but i haven't yet developed the cognitive skills to enjoy commercial interrupt at the rate, say, that i see on tnt... esp. not as the night wears on... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:53:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: More on labelling theory MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Actually, I had a second question in response to your posting, Michael, and forgot to include it: you mention "experimental" as a possible catagory, separate from LangPo---just who/what would you put into that? There was a really interesting thread about the use of words like "experimental" here, before my time but accessible in the archive. I've been party to several such exchanges, over the years, and still don't know how to handle the whole issue of describing, well, interesting poetry, except as: what I find interesting (or exciting); anything else tends to make you a party to the trivialization of your own taste and your own writing.. (As I said at first, I can understand Pub. Weekly doing labelling, as its reason for being is explicitly related to marketing; tho that doesn't keep me from being uneasy even so--But your posting got me thinking about how the rest of us relate to labels, as poets and writers and readers, and publishers and editors...) One of the best illustrations of how intractable this problem is (and one of the things that first got me thinking about it several years ago): many of the high-profile poets I admire (Bernstein, Silliman, Perelman, an others) would refer, in some essay or public exchange, to innovative or experimental or avant-garde poetry; and it would startle me, because it always seemed to me that such labels were strongly weighted toward allowing mainstream types to dismiss interesting writing. (As opposed to the phrase Language Writing itself, in its various permutations, which became part of a conscious effort to get certain work recognition in a stiffling institutional context, and that strategy of course worked.) But once I thought about it, I saw how hard it was to talk about things at all, without one of these labels as a handle...I myself am made most uncomfortable by the "a" word (avant-garde), which is especially loaded with baggage that's guaranteed to put people off and pinpoint a poet's work as special, beyond the pale, not to be taken seriously, under a sort of glass dome... Mark P. Atlanta ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 09:58:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: poetry "schools" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Gee, I bet I'm one of several hundred poets on this list whio don't fit into any of those categories. How about "don't like to join clubs" as an interest-oriented group? There's an appropriative subtext here. The world is divided into the smarmy-conservative, the retro-precious, politico/ethno/gender/erotico-based, and I guess everyone else is langpo? At the very least that dulls the blade. At 10:18 AM 2/7/97 -0600, you wrote: >it may be useful in this regard to consider jed rasula's account of current >poetic practice in _the american poetry wax museum_... rasula identifies >"four zones" of the contemporary american "poetry world": the associated >writing programs; the new formalism; language poetry; and "various >coalitions of interest-oriented or community-based poets" (440)... now i'm >not suggesting that one should adhere precisely to these "zones" in laying >out publishing or distributing criteria, only that such zones may be a >start in thinking about what poetry communities are 'out there'... > >best, > >joe > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:59:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: The Lack -Reply Rod -- cool. Will plan to pick up a copy at Bridge Street (or perhaps an upcoming local reading?) cheers, d.i. >>> 02/07/97 12:10pm >>> now available, _Abacus #104_: _The Lack (love poems, targets, flags. . .)_ by Rod Smith orders to: Potes & Poets 181 Edgemont Ave Elmwood CT 06110 It's $4. Subscriptions to Abacus are $26. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 09:43:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Film thread Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" John Sayles is certainly a goody-goody, but Matewan as agitprop? What would you have liked, a sympathetic view of the motivations of people who hire thugs to kill the defenseless? That was the American mining industry in the good old days of laissez-faire. Despite the sins that have been committed in its name, there was a reason for American radicalism to be born. It wasn't just a commie plot. Or maybe it's the notion that, at least at moments, disparate groups of people have been able to see their situation as similar enough that they could think to act together? It has been known to happen, although the benefits have often been stolen from them. At 04:12 AM 2/7/97 -0800, you wrote: >John Sayles has made several movies that are as one-dimensional as any >piece of agitprop (viz. Matewan), but Lone Star isn't one of those. >Rather, like Brother from Another Planet, it struck me as quite >transcendant of such values (they're there but sort of implicit >throughout and not really what the film hangs on). Lots of great >cameos, like Tony Ameandola's (sp?) Mexican used car dealer. If this is >equivalent to what's on TV, they must have better TV there than we get >in Philly. > >Hey, but then I liked the English Patient (it's an interesting >transformation from the book in that each treats a different level as >the frame story and a different level as "the focus"), but I admit to >being a sucker for its self-indulgences (both film and book, for that >matter). It'd make a great double bill with The Sheltering Sky (a truly >great film and book) and a triple bill (does any theater do that >anymore?) with Antonioni's The Passage. > >A truly bad film (violence as porn) might be The Missouri Breaks (was >that Pekinpaugh or Penn?) which treats the acts of killing in exactly >the same episodic method that a cheap porn flick would getting from one >sex scene to the next, each more violent than the one before. > >Last film I walked on was El Topo. Last video I turned off halfway >through was Bridges of Madison County (Meryl Streep in her same old >swedish accent posing as Italian immigrant: "Ja, Ve are Italian"). My >Cousin Vinny was the one before that. (A good rule: avoid anything that >might end up being shown uncut on a transcontinental flight.) > >Ron Silliman > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 13:19:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Paging Peter Gizzi In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I need some direct-means-of contact info for Peter Gizzi... can he or a friend backchannel me with his phone number, or even better, street address? All guaranteed legit. Girl Scout's honor. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 10:25:42 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: Names are not Objects MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ron Silliman wrote: > > Miekal, > > I've always wondered about the origin of your name. > > Names do seem particularly unstable with regards to people. & let's not forget that some of us have multiple personalities. my work with computer art, experimental botany, 'pataphysics, & noise all go under the name Amendant Hardiker. & of course many of us know the mad scientist "tenetively, a convenience", born Michael _____ Tolson & who now is known as appropriately enuf anonymous Liz Was, was Elizabeth Perl Nasaw when I met her, changed her name using the last 3 letters of her last name read backward. & who is once again in the process of changing her name to Elyxir Aveshya or just Lyx. & she has an alternate name for her work in the plant world, Pechulia Glim. & let's not forget Robert The, our friend who takes old hardcover books & cuts them prettily so prettily with a bandsaw & turns them into cutouts of handguns. & also on the note of names, I have seen every possible arrangement of letters with people guessing the spelling of my name, & every possible pronunciation, since, as they say, it not morphologically correct. have seen my own spelling once, in a czech underground film.... & my son Liaizon, was given his own last name, Wakest, when he was born, which is the simplest legal way to change a family name. no questions asked. for the poetix family tree yr shivering correspondent m and ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 13:26:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Coffey Subject: Re: poetry "schools" -Reply Comments: To: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU joe amato, you wrote "t may be useful in this regard to consider jed rasula's account of current poetic practice in _the american poetry wax museum_... rasula identifies "four zones" of the contemporary american "poetry world": the associated writing programs; the new formalism; language poetry; and "various coalitions of interest-oriented or community-based poets" who published that? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:43:08 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: Celebrating Tet in the dorm this week Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" the LATE toni cade bambara? have i missed something? >Prince's name before was, as it happens, Prince -- but there was more to >it back then -- > >Some PBS stations are showing a documentary on W.E.B. DuBois this month >("DuBois in Four Voices" or some such title) that includes among the >talking heads comments from the late Toni Cade Bambara -- > >Also, if you missed it this week, watch for a PBS rerun of the Great >Performances episode featuring a BBC documentary on Gospel Music -- No, >it's nowhere near as good as that gem _Say Amen Somebdoy_, BUT it >includes commentary from Baraka, and when was the last time you saw >ANYBODY bold enough to include Baraka in a program that anything to do >with Christianity? > >Posthumous sighting of Ralph Ellison on Good Morning America this A.M. -- >nothing like a new book to get a dead author on TV -- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 13:44:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Evans Subject: Matewan Defense Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks to Mark Weiss for defending Sayles's _Matewan_, and on just the right grounds. Maybe the List's ambient negative feelings towards the one IWW (Iowa Writers Workshop) have inadvertently spilled over onto the more noble organization that also bears that acronym. But how can I be trusted, I even liked the film-essay (done on a visibly diminished budget relative to the lushness of realist composition in _Matewan_) that Sayles made in 1991, _City of Hope_. Steve Evans Mark Wrote: >>John Sayles is certainly a goody-goody, but Matewan as agitprop? What would you have liked, a sympathetic view of the motivations of people who hire thugs to kill the defenseless? That was the American mining industry in the good old days of laissez-faire. Despite the sins that have been committed in its name, there was a reason for American radicalism to be born. It wasn't just a commie plot. Or maybe it's the notion that, at least at moments, disparate groups of people have been able to see their situation as similar enough that they could think to act together? It has been known to happen, although the benefits have often been stolen from them. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 13:40:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Coffey Subject: "schools" and doubles -Reply Comments: To: swmar@conncoll.edu steve markswrote: "Having wandered in what felt like poetic Siberia (and a partly self-imposed one), I don't mind being associated with a "school." I know the designations aren't accurate, but then we could say that all words are labels and slippery, and so remain mute. While we're discussing doubles (c. alexander and c. alexander), how many people have discovered that they live in the same SMALL town as a fellow list member? I etc." i'm glad someone wove together today's two threads, about poetry schools and personal names. they seem to intone some of the same themes, or the same theme, that people zealously guard their uniqueness, and the notion of being part of a school or, as maria damon offered, having another person of the same name at a writing program at brown, is , in maria's words, unnerving. someone suggested asking the poets themselves what school they would identitify with; someone asked me to do the same. so let me take that on, not than anyone out there knows what i've done or been doing but that won't matter much: i identitify, and have for some time, with lots of work, stevens first, zukofsiy second, stein third, then, thunderingly, mac low: after that, lots of the language folks, but further on, for reasons related to god knows what, my life, a few of the irish poets, muldoon and a few others, writing about place. but looking at my work, OBJECTIVELY, i icould not argue with someone who said it looked like language poetry, though i would not argue if someone said it was derivative of same, or just a mimicking of same, but in any case wouldn't care much, because I never wrote to an audience that had another poet in it. In the context in which this issue came up, i was and am only eager to have a bookseller know a good way to talk about someone's work and know how to associate it with someone else's work with which a prospective buyer might be familiar. as for my name, i was adopted, so name is chance (as it always is in some sense) so when i see other michael coffeys crop up on the trw reports denying me credit even though those others have condos somewhere they are or are not paying off, it doesn't unnerve me. I don't really feel unique, though i like to pretend i am, particularly to my son. i don't want him holding someone else's hand. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 10:50:02 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: More on labelling theory Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This is an interesting problem--we want to direct readers to the work, and we want the work noticed, but we don't want to be misrepresented. I suggest that the categories have to be broad to the point of stupidity--their only purpose is the least subtle form of marketing. Try this out--if a music store descided that "jazz" was too broad and imprecise a category it would probably wind up with more argumentative sub-categories than the store would have space to show. As it is, if I go to my local jazz section I know I won't find Rachmaninoff, but I may find what I'm looking for alphabetically, and someone who shares the same initial may seem worth a try as well. Broadness/dumbness of category is also at least not likely to become canonical (or cannonical) definition. I could live with "experimental" or "new" or "non-mainstream" because it doesn't try to shoehorn me too narrowly into uncomfortable limitations. Last night I backchannelled Michael Coffey as follows. You'll note my general disapproving tone (it may be necessary, but I don't have to like it). And I also suggest a few obvious problems that could present some comic possibilities. Do Brathwaite and Walcott lie down together? For these purposes, does it matter? If you must do this, keep it simple. Remember that now as in the past what looked like differences of substance were often differences of social circle. So, O'Hara and Olson attract overlapping audiences who don't read Jorie Graham, although the two guys didn't drink together. Maybe Formalist, Mainstream, New (or Experimental), and Special Interest (defined by gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity). Keep in mind that this is a slippery slope--in that last category or perfectly conventional lesbian/hispanic/black poets who would have nothing to do with their more experimental brethren and sistren, regardless of shared ancestry or proclivities. And there are those whose work falls into more than one camp. But if you parse this further you risk disintegration. At 12:53 PM 2/7/97 -0500, you wrote: >Actually, I had a second question in response to your posting, Michael, >and forgot to include it: you mention "experimental" as a possible >catagory, separate from LangPo---just who/what would you put into that? > >There was a really interesting thread about the use of words like >"experimental" here, before my time but accessible in the archive. I've >been party to several such exchanges, over the years, and still don't know >how to handle the whole issue of describing, well, interesting poetry, >except as: what I find interesting (or exciting); anything else tends to >make you a party to the trivialization of your own taste and your own >writing.. (As I said at first, I can understand Pub. Weekly doing >labelling, as its reason for being is explicitly related to marketing; >tho that doesn't keep me from being uneasy even so--But your posting got >me thinking about how the rest of us relate to labels, as poets and >writers and readers, and publishers and editors...) > >One of the best illustrations of how intractable this problem is (and one >of the things that first got me thinking about it several years ago): >many of the high-profile poets I admire (Bernstein, Silliman, Perelman, an >others) would refer, in some essay or public exchange, to innovative or >experimental or avant-garde poetry; and it would startle me, because it >always seemed to me that such labels were strongly weighted toward >allowing mainstream types to dismiss interesting writing. (As opposed >to the phrase Language Writing itself, in its various permutations, which >became part of a conscious effort to get certain work recognition in a >stiffling institutional context, and that strategy of course worked.) But >once I thought about it, I saw how hard it was to talk about things at >all, without one of these labels as a handle...I myself am made most >uncomfortable by the "a" word (avant-garde), which is especially loaded >with baggage that's guaranteed to put people off and pinpoint a poet's >work as special, beyond the pale, not to be taken seriously, under a sort >of glass dome... > >Mark P. >Atlanta > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 13:30:03 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: poetry "schools" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" mark, there may of course be problems with rasula's categories... but the claim for poetic autonomy (on the part of poets, i mean) seems to come with the territory, and is in many cases simply not so, when considering markets and such like... which latter realization has sobered me to the realities of my *own* poetry... just a way to begin laying out the field, like i say... not so much on the basis of aesthetics though, perhaps more in terms of power centers (in which case zone four represents a sort of dispersion of power)... but liking it or no may well have to do with how institutionally oriented one wants to be... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:40:08 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Names are not Objects MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > what's in a name? convenience. [or inconvenience]. my parents apparently thought my first name--christopher--unusual, based on queries to friends & acquaintances. ["do you know any--?" "no, no"]. but there were no less than 5 "chris"s in my preschool class. so much for the reliability of statistical/survey data. considered changing my name, but then thought why bother. the new name would still have the same (in-/convenient) limiting effect. up to now I've assumed, Miekal, that was the impetus behind the amount of play you seem to do with your own names. but then again maybe not. I have occasionally received mail & telephone solicitation for alex sander--dont ask me where that one came from. .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) "Philosophy is intellectual order, which neither religion nor common sense can be. It is to be observed that religion & common sense do not coincide either, but that religion is an element of fragmented common sense. Moreover common sense is a collective noun, like religion: there is not just one common sense, for that too is a product of history & a part of the historical process. Philosophy is criticism & the superseding of religion & 'common sense'. In this sense it coincides with 'good' as opposed to 'common' sense." Gramsci ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 13:53:43 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Provoking the stretch MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark Prejsnar wrote: > > Actually, I had a second question in response to your posting, Michael, > and forgot to include it: you mention "experimental" as a possible > catagory, separate from LangPo---just who/what would you put into that? first to answer your question Mark, Id put into experimental anything that didnt have a category of its own, visual/verbal, sound poetry or text/sound, performance poetry, text installation, computer & virtual language environments, bookart, collaborative, poetry as life (for instance one of the few poems Ive written in the last 5 years is a sign hanging over our dairy goat gateway that says "goats dreaming"....), & certainly the text creations of outsider artists as adolphi wolfi & howard finster deserve a place in the geneology of the text. as for the category "language" poetry, Ive never been comfortable with a notion that someone who questions the many contexts of the language of our time as being that separate from the spirit of poetry in general, even most mainstream poets have been known to burst out in florescences of "language"...is pound a language poet, is lewis carroll a language poet, why do these distinctions have to exist to perpetrate a critical nomenclature of pigeon holes & dusty compartments? so maybe my point isnt to question all the categories that have been carved out but to wonder out loud if all of us bright, creative, fuzzy people cant continuously invent ways to interact with the corpus of literature that defy, detourne, confuse & interbreed the will to commodify genre consciousness. miekal who has written "language poetry" since 1976 & has never once been included in a "language" anthology....because its in who ya know... that these machines of text posterity are calculated. -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 13:54:18 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: Names & Labels In-Reply-To: <199702071850.KAA26979@spain.it.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Despite a recent thread--no mention as yet of Visual Poetry and Sound Poetry--certainly a vast field of work all too often relegated beyond the back of the beyond . . . though world wide thousands of practitioners. Paul Metcalf often points out--as do his reviewers and interviewers--that his work does not fall into a category--and hence is difficult not only to "market"--but to gain attention for his work from critics hidebound by categories. (Paul frequently notes his work being found in travel sections.) He does note that he chose this path. It's an interesting paradox: to want one's name to be unique--and at same time to be recognized as part of a group. In tagging and some aspects of visual and mail art--there may be a distinctive signature--yet by whom it is made--is often enough known to but a very few. "To walk in hiddeness . . . " "Hide in plain sight" --dbchirot ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 14:06:36 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: Names are not Objects MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Christopher Alexander wrote: > > considered changing my name, but then thought why bother. the > new name would still have the same (in-/convenient) limiting effect. > up to now I've assumed, Miekal, that was the impetus behind > the amount of play you seem to do with your own names. but > then again maybe not. actually C, Lyx & I both actively cultivate very different parts of our personality as vital wholes, some people would call it life as art as life, regardless I prefer multiple personalities over issues of psych wards, mental health, scizophrenia, moodswings, obsession & desire, pharmaceutical behavior modification, therapy & counselling, & all the other late 20th century interventions into the inner life of humans living on planet earth. More is more, why limit ourselves? on the rail, then / therefore amendant hardiker the driftless academy of botanical apparitions ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:40:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Names are not Objects In-Reply-To: <199702071202.EAA13848@dfw-ix1.ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I have been wondering about that "Miekal", too. I presume that it is pronounced mee cal. Why didnt you change it to Meikal, so that at least it would still sound like "Michael"? You would still have solved the problem of the telephone book. 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 Feb 1997 12:43:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Names are not Objects In-Reply-To: <199702071528.IAA18302@pantano.theriver.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Now that The-Artist-Formerly-Known-as-Prince is married, is her name Mrs. The-Artist-Formerly-Known-as-Prince? And what if (shudder!!!)they were to have kids? 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 Feb 1997 12:42:44 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Names Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Jews name their kids for dead people, but there's some lattitude because of translation. Hebrew or Yiddish names tend to be identical with that of the deceased, but there's some slide when it comes into English. So I was named for my cousin Maurice who died as a baby the year before I was born. It became Mark because that was the fad name during the 2nd world war and my parents had not yet lost their sanity and given me a furrin name in those conservative, assimilationist times. By 1948, however, they had gone over the edge: they announced that my brother-to-be was to be named Sandor after my Hungarian grandfather. I brought to bear all of my 4 years of Brooklyn street-smarts and convinced them that Steven would be more appropriate. The reasoning was something to the effect that he'd be teased and taunted unto insensibility. The hidden agenda was that I'd be getting a lot of black eyes defending the little bugger, whose arrival I wasn't completely resigned to in any case. So Steven it was. I rarely think about my name. It became an issue in childhood only because it was hard to make into a nickname, and at one point having a nickname was a big deal. My grandfather, however (the one who was alive), got around this by using my Hebrew name in an exaggeratedly Yiddish pronunciation, so that it came out Moishiyizzik--Moses Isaac to the uninitiated. It occurs to me now that as Jews we carry secret names, like some tribal peoples who have a "real" name that only the individual and the shaman know. To know the name, they think, is to control its bearer. Maybe for Jews our secret names are supposed to carry the spirit of the dead. In fact, I only know of Maurice because my aunt, who drank a bit, told me about him once when she was in her cups. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:48:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Mitch Goodman In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" . "...after meeting a young English >poet, Denise Leverton, at a youth hostel in Geneva..." and later "But by >the time Miss Leverton had collected signatures from hundreds of artist and >writers for an antiwar advertisement...." > Ron, maybe not all name changes are voluntary! It's just another >reminder that someone we know and love as a household word more or less >doesn't ring any bells in the power centers. > > Sylvester Pollet I think the _Times_ was just trying to hint at their "on-again, ov-again" relationship. 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 Feb 1997 14:52:33 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: Names are not Objects MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit George Bowering wrote: > > I have been wondering about that "Miekal", too. > > I presume that it is pronounced mee cal. Why didnt you change it to Meikal, > so that at least it would still sound like "Michael"? You would still have > solved the problem of the telephone book. george yes, mee cal. spelt thus because I changed my name when I was 15 (actually changed is to miekal shalom first, but that is offrecord) & I was/am quite dsylxeci & a notorious "bad" speller, as those listees who double as proofreaders may have discoverd. meekl ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 12:52:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: tv vs. film... In-Reply-To: <199702071734.LAA15765@charlie.cns.iit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" TV commercials never bother me. I get time to read something during those minutes. 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 Feb 1997 14:50:48 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Film thread CONAN THE BARBARIAN Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ron Silliman writes: It'd make a great double bill with The Sheltering Sky (a truly >great film and book) and a triple bill (does any theater do that >anymore?) with Antonioni's The Passage. Is the last movie mentioned a slightly diffrent translation of the Antonioni I saw, "The Passanger", starring no less than Jack Nickelson? Whoever mentioned "above" in the list that the problem with "Lone Star" is the neatly sewn-up endings(I kind of agree)--"the Passanger" does not suffer from this! I don't remember all that goes on in it but I remember being delighted by the ending--a "trick" similar to the ending of "Blow Up" but IMO much more powerful in an exestential grandlytragic sort of way. For "The Sheltering Sky" (film version), which I largely disliked, I would substitue "Blue Sky," which has a little desert in it. >A truly bad film (violence as porn) ... I have heard on the radio three times this morning an advertisement for a newly released film (by "Sony Classics" I believe) about none other than Robert Howard, "inventor of Conan" and "the greatest pulp writer of all time" (the ad says that latter quote twice in 20 seconds). I'm not usually one for nostalgia, but when I get it its like the flu and won't go away. All morning I have seen in my mind's eye not any particular scenes from those paperbacks (though the crucifixation of Conan was really good) but the photo on the inside back cover. Bob Howard, balding with a drinking belly, standing barefoot on gray grass, holding a knife (a dagger) and a gun. That image terrified and fascinated me much of my teenage years. I wanted to be a writer--but not like that--he looked so depressed!--and the caption underneath ends with his suicide--but a little like that. What does the list think of Robert Howard? Of pulp? Matthias Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 15:58:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: tv vs. film... i didn't watch tv for years, literally did not have a tv for about 12 yrs. then a friend who watches ER and NYPD Blue got me to watch, and i am now totally hooked. oh, when i finally got a tv (to watch videos) i got hooked on Star Trek Next Generation and the PBS mystery series. what i've liked about ER and NYPD Blue is their unresolved issues and questions, the ambiguities, lack of a clear "good" guy and "bad" guy. i've also liked the multi-dimensional takes on things. now HERE is a whammy... i USED to think MASH was great. tender, complex, etc. then went to it the other night after ER. Blech! it WAS one of the newer MASH shows, but still... i'm scared to go back to Bob Newhart and Mary Tyler Moore (which got me through childhood in a small midwestern town). DID watch carol burnett a while ago, and it was still good... it's like when you used to read Mad magazine as a kid, and then you go back and see it and suddenly, it isn't funny... i wonder if i'll be that way about ER or NYPD Blue one day... e ps odes to miekel, i'm about to go off and winter camp in the mountains. this isn't as adventurous as it sounds -- i'll be in a state park -- but still, just me and the tent and the sleeping bag and a whole lot of bears... e ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 14:59:18 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: Names are not Objects Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >prince is/was his first name. maybe, this being 1997, she chose to keep >her own name? Now that The-Artist-Formerly-Known-as-Prince is married, is her name Mrs. >The-Artist-Formerly-Known-as-Prince? And what if (shudder!!!)they were to >have kids? > > > > >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 Feb 1997 15:13:37 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: Names Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" mark weiss: i love this kind of stuff. i have a friend who had a very difficult relationship w/ his cold, unloving mother. he ws the youngest of a number of boys. when he asked once, in despair, why she had given birth to him, she responded, your uncle so and so (lou, levy, something) died, so we needed someone with an L-name. Jews name their kids for dead people, but there's some lattitude because of >translation. Hebrew or Yiddish names tend to be identical with that of the >deceased, but there's some slide when it comes into English. So I was named >for my cousin Maurice who died as a baby the year before I was born. It >became Mark because that was the fad name during the 2nd world war and my >parents had not yet lost their sanity and given me a furrin name in those >conservative, assimilationist times. By 1948, however, they had gone over >the edge: they announced that my brother-to-be was to be named Sandor after >my Hungarian grandfather. I brought to bear all of my 4 years of Brooklyn >street-smarts and convinced them that Steven would be more appropriate. The >reasoning was something to the effect that he'd be teased and taunted unto >insensibility. The hidden agenda was that I'd be getting a lot of black eyes >defending the little bugger, whose arrival I wasn't completely resigned to >in any case. So Steven it was. >I rarely think about my name. It became an issue in childhood only because >it was hard to make into a nickname, and at one point having a nickname was >a big deal. My grandfather, however (the one who was alive), got around this >by using my Hebrew name in an exaggeratedly Yiddish pronunciation, so that >it came out Moishiyizzik--Moses Isaac to the uninitiated. >It occurs to me now that as Jews we carry secret names, like some tribal >peoples who have a "real" name that only the individual and the shaman know. >To know the name, they think, is to control its bearer. Maybe for Jews our >secret names are supposed to carry the spirit of the dead. In fact, I only >know of Maurice because my aunt, who drank a bit, told me about him once >when she was in her cups. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 17:00:10 +0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: Re: poetry "schools" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Dear members of the list: > >At publishers weekly, where I work, we are preparing a poetry feature >for an upcoming issue. The approach is to devise a piece that will assist >booksellers (and others) in knowing what the different >disciplines/schools/programs/ aesthetics are across the poetry spectrum >in the U.S, and connect, where possible, each segment to the houses >that publish them, the companaies that distribute them, the journals that >keep their authors' new work out there, or the writing programs that fuel >them, or the influences that are their foundation. > >At the moment, we are thinking of such segments as Language poets, >multicultural poetics, or latino and black and asian, gay and lesbian >poetries, spoken or performance poetry, St. Mark's of New York School, >formalist, mainstream perhaps, experimental maybe, classical, poetry in >translation, etc. > >Although I realize that some may see such reckoning and partitioning a >woeful disservice, i think that, for the purposes of knowing how to stock >a poetry section and keeping it both deep and contemporary, such an >approach can be helpful. > >I would appreciate hearing from anyone who agrees that this may be >useful, and who might have advice to offer on the various >camps/alliances etc. > >Of course, i welcome comments from those who wish to dissent as >well. What about the Naropa Institute/Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.... Call 'em (303) 444-0202 Bil ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 16:01:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Names are not Objects Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" If the local "Star Gazer" section of the Chicago Trib. serves me right, the un-named and un-namable Prince and whosoevershemaybe did have a child not long ago; it was born with a cloven skull and died soon thereafter. I believe he's doing a charity tour these very days to benefit The Fight Against Birth Defects. Matthias >>prince is/was his first name. maybe, this being 1997, she chose to keep >>her own name? > >Now that The-Artist-Formerly-Known-as-Prince is married, is her name Mrs. >>The-Artist-Formerly-Known-as-Prince? And what if (shudder!!!)they were to >>have kids? >> >> >> >> >>George Bowering. >> , >>2499 West 37th Ave., >>Vancouver, B.C., >>Canada V6M 1P4 >> >>fax: 1-604-266-9000 >>e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca > > Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 17:02:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Go ahead, make my name MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Isn't there something about proper names and secret names in Of Grammatology? I think the big D was unravelling something Levi-Strauss was doing with tribal names in Tristes Tropiques...the circulation of names and the presence of the anthropologist...the Other setting in motion the dispersal of names...authority and policing and all that. Of course the final authority on the business of names is Lewis Carroll aka Humpty Dumpty, alias... what is he called? No, what's his name? I mean, who's on first? I dream of an anthology with no names...found as yet only in the Library of Babel... Gary R who has succumbed to the recent habit of attaching real words to the fake ones that stand for him ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 17:19:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: poetry "schools" In-Reply-To: <199702071618.KAA23120@charlie.cns.iit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sure: though it seems to me that the (falsely named) new formalism is do dead and tiny that it hardly qualifies as a zone: and having myself graduated from the Brown University MFA program in poetry it seems to me that the distinction between writing programs (aren't I sending this to Buffalo) and language poetry is fast becoming hard to assume: in other words, Brown is a writing program profoundly engaged with language poetry: other programs are as well and more and more are, it seems, likely to. I mention this not to dispute anything Joe says below only to suggest that if we are interested in using zones as a descriptive term rather than schools we better think of them as very liquid. On Fri, 7 Feb 1997 amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU wrote: > it may be useful in this regard to consider jed rasula's account of current > poetic practice in _the american poetry wax museum_... rasula identifies > "four zones" of the contemporary american "poetry world": the associated > writing programs; the new formalism; language poetry; and "various > coalitions of interest-oriented or community-based poets" (440)... now i'm > not suggesting that one should adhere precisely to these "zones" in laying > out publishing or distributing criteria, only that such zones may be a > start in thinking about what poetry communities are 'out there'... > > best, > > joe > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 15:14:29 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: Re: Names are not Objects MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I haven't come across any other Tom Beard's - the name doesn't seem to be particularly common. I'm adopted, too, so I'm not sure what I might have been called - although my birth father was Dutch, so it would probably have been even more uncommon. I have noticed that my name kept me for some time from experimenting with facial hair. My father had a beard for a while, and the jokes were truly attrocious. Having had a goatee for about a year now (and I hate the whole grunge/Gen X thing - I was inspired more by the 2nd series of Black Adder), whenever anyone has difficulty spelling my name, I point at my chin and say "mnemonic device". One would think that my name would be easy enough to spell, but people often write it down as "Baird". This is a more common name, but the main reason seems to be that some NZers pronounce "air" as "ear". No, I haven't seriously thought about changing my name, although I always use "TRB" for my initials (the reason for which will be left as an exercise for the reader). ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 13:11:11 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "F.A. Templeton" Subject: Re: Categories In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII If bookstores have categories within poetry, who'll decide who goes where? St Mark's shunted my YOU-The City around the store so that nobody could ever find it and then didn't restock on the basis that nobody looked for it. Was someone watching? How about an impure category? Fiona ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 15:44:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: grand larceny MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII (Stolen style producing traditional poem or real poem. Jennifer.) magic a text, one of several thousand hopeless, eh sometimes i close my eyes and think ill never have to open them again blindness can pervade every organ thinking off lamps going out all over europe my writing is my hell disentangled from the matrix that produces it as if there were a nipple were in the middle of this black bleak space were there for example downing aircraft were there driving out villagers by means of ravaging floods deprivations cholera foodstuffs disappearing like the banks droughts nuclear devastations reservoirs of viral technologies it might be a single o cross of t dot on i or j as if id be dead when you reached the end of this sentence ill be dead when you reach the end of this sentence fooled you cant fool you for long can i were there firestorms over forests and cities firestorms across the plains radiations everywhere third arm breaks out through my chest third eye closes for the last time legs wilt it wont be long now my last prediction brakes are on cars in reverse embankment looms downhill looms in the middle very middle of the air very air im holding on that o or cross of t dot on j or i its down there fiery black of the screen death white of the screen sucking sucked away lips bared teeth against one or another bitter letter hopeless eh should have dropped out years ago letter clanks at the bottom of the page theres no bottom no sound hallucinations setting in schizophrenias schizzing jagged x across the chest eyes mouth ears didnt fool you this time did i cant keep this up forever ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 13:55:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: 'names are not double,' school objects Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Missed a few digests, please forgive any redundancy. --Steven Marks: Pleased to meet. I'm over in Mystic, but close enough. Re "the zone idea of Jed Rasula," I wonder if categories like that have to be posthumous to be accurate. (As I recall, Rasula was looking at marketing rather than making.) Wonder also, as a serial refugee & stateless poet, if all the random collisions on the internet can unhinge the school/ tribal impulse. Or is it just hard-wired into primates? At some gut level my working model of cyberspace seems to be The Zone from _Gravity's Rainbow_. --If your name's clunky enough it's likely to be singular. I haven't discovered any other Wendy Battin. (Welsh for "dweller under the sign of the bat," I gather, & assume my forebears were pub keepers rather than witches or guano-farmers.) --Ron: Loved "Sheltering Sky," and that might have been part of my dissatisfaction w/English Patient, which seemed empty & clock- workish, and a slow clock too. (Talking about the movie, not the book.) --Multiple Miekal, let me know if you're interested in contributing to the Multiple Poetics Project, http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/5471 Wendy aka others --------------------------------------------------- "It is not the crocodile's job to yell "Watch out for the crocodile!"--Henri Michaux ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 14:53:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Film thread CONAN THE BARBARIAN Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" People who are in substantial agreement about the other arts often disagree violently about films. The Sheltering Sky, for instance, is right near the top of my list for all-time worst (I usually like to look at Debra Winger, but in this case I found myself groaning, "Debbie, put your clothes on," so even that minor satisfaction did nothing for me), and I could have ju justified that opinion in great detail before memory decay set in. But I'm aware that Ron or another of its admirers could probably be just as detailedly convincing on the other side. Why this peculiar phenomenon? My guess--it's only that--is that the suggestive associative nature of film is in some way like the way we record strong visual and motion memories (dreams tend to have a filmic structure, full of bold cross-cutting and changes of local), and a particular image or gesture may resonate so powerfully for me that I surrender to an otherwise horrendous or manipulative film. So if we all dreamed the same we'd all hate the sheltering sky. QED. At 02:50 PM 2/7/97 -0600, you wrote: >Ron Silliman writes: > >It'd make a great double bill with The Sheltering Sky (a truly >>great film and book) and a triple bill (does any theater do that >>anymore?) with Antonioni's The Passage. > > Is the last movie mentioned a slightly diffrent translation of the >Antonioni I saw, "The Passanger", starring no less than Jack Nickelson? > Whoever mentioned "above" in the list that the problem with "Lone Star" >is the neatly sewn-up endings(I kind of agree)--"the Passanger" does not >suffer from this! I don't remember all that goes on in it but I remember >being delighted by the ending--a "trick" similar to the ending of "Blow Up" >but IMO much more powerful in an exestential grandlytragic sort of way. > For "The Sheltering Sky" (film version), which I largely disliked, I >would substitue "Blue Sky," which has a little desert in it. > >>A truly bad film (violence as porn) ... > > I have heard on the radio three times this morning an advertisement for >a newly released film (by "Sony Classics" I believe) about none other than >Robert Howard, "inventor of Conan" and "the greatest pulp writer of all >time" (the ad says that latter quote twice in 20 seconds). > I'm not usually one for nostalgia, but when I get it its like the flu >and won't go away. All morning I have seen in my mind's eye not any >particular scenes from those paperbacks (though the crucifixation of Conan >was really good) but the photo on the inside back cover. Bob Howard, balding >with a drinking belly, standing barefoot on gray grass, holding a knife (a >dagger) and a gun. That image terrified and fascinated me much of my teenage >years. I wanted to be a writer--but not like that--he looked so >depressed!--and the caption underneath ends with his suicide--but a little >like that. > > What does the list think of Robert Howard? > Of pulp? > > Matthias > >Matthias Regan >Northwestern University >Department of Chemistry >Phone: 847/467-2132 > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 17:01:10 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: Names are not Objects MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit this is Elizabeth Was here making my first (official?) appearance on this list, hopefully more will follow, (altho i'm admittedly especially & morely excited about the visual poetry list). i'd like to correct Miekal's spelling of (one of) my names, it's Elixir Aveshya. At first this ws going to be a private erotic name known & circulated only amongst my closest of friends. after having used it as author of my first erotic short story "Victoria & Melampus", it looked so good in print & sounded so much like a 15th century alchemical erotic androgynous philosopher erudite that've become fond of it in print. however, in spoken form it sounds too formal & pretentious, so i don't like introducing myself as such. as such i shortened it at first to "Lix". i'd tell people, just change the "z" to an "x" to get my new name. it tickled my long and equal fascination with "z"'s & "x"'s, as well as my fascination with a young man whose last name is "Nix". but then i'd been referring to him with a "y" as in Nyx, the goddess of night (with occasional added reference to the water sprites known as "nixies" which in turn reminds one of the more earth-based sprites known as "pixies"). well then this same young man went ahead & printed my name on a roster of performers for an event he co-sponsored as simply, "Lyx". Again i was tickled in new places & now finally almost 2 years after only sort of changing my name i have finally settled on telling people my name is "Lyx". (except in cases such as the first sentence of this here note, where i introduce my old name, so those on the list who have heard of me have something to recognize) Problem: now everyone thinks I am Lyx Was. Well Lyx Was i am not, I hate the sound of it, yuch. Lyx Aveshya doesn't work either. I am in the process of considering "Lyx Ish" although this might entail putting more than one space between the first & last name: Lyx Ish. thus i will have gone from a past tense noun to an adjectivial ending. i like its jewishness, having been born into a jewish family. give me some feedback. what more secrets shall i tell the lot of you? ah, no more, there are personas of mine i'm afraid you'll never appelle. till next time, Liz Was, I mean. . . . -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 18:08:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 5 Feb 1997 to 6 Feb 1997 Dear David Bromige: WHAT academic doors have I darkened? Do you know something (about this) I don't? They (the doors) may be locked for the time being, and I am trying to cast myself into a role different than the one who is begging to be let in (and hence the off-again on-again romance with a posture of indifference), but is this a darkening? (answer: yes, virginia, there is a santa claus).... well, i currently teaching COMPOSITION again (and asked my students to write: "If the LAND (that has been raped and pillaged) could speak, what would it say?"---- but ENGLISH as a "field" is really bizarre..... The "coalition" it makes between "composition" and "literature" should perhaps be BROKEN down..... being that poetry, etc. for me has less in common with comp. than with other non-ENGLISH things (it isn't academia per se that's the problem, but "package deals") and teaching literature is more like teaching "decomposition" (which I long for.....even if it still pays adjunct). darkly, chris ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 18:16:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: manny savopoulos Subject: Fw: Internet Taxation Comments: To: film-philosophy , graduatites MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit in some instances this might not be appropriate, but one must do what one can. ---------- > From: Jackson Mac > To: lokisavo@acmenet.net > Subject: Internet Taxation > Date: Friday, February 07, 1997 4:17 PM > > >Return-Path: PZap@aol.com > >From: PZap@aol.com > >Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 01:55:09 -0500 (EST) > >To: scrump@earthlink.net, 0003314560@mcimail.com, interact@panix.com, > > starchy@cam.org, allan@nauticom.net, bobby@ccrma.stanford.edu, > > tarmac@pipeline.com, matt@lo-cal.music.wesleyan.edu, teitelba@bard.edu > >Subject: Internet Taxation > > > >Hi, > > > >I received the following mail and thought that it would be of interest to > >everyone if you hadn't alredy heard. > > > >Keep in mind that the deadline is Feb. 13th. > > > >-Peter > > > >> Hi from Tim (Badge) on IRC Cops I am writing you this to inform you of a > >> very important matter currently under review by the FCC. Your local > >> telephone company has filed a proposal with the FCC to impose per minute > >> charges for your internet service. They contend that your usage has or > >will > >> hinder the operation of the telephone network. It is my belief that > >> internet usage will diminish if users were required to pay additional per > >> minute charges. The FCC has created an email box for your comments, > >> responses must be received by February 13, 1997. Send your comments to > >> isp@fcc.gov and tell them what you think. Every phone company is in on > >> this one, and they are trying to sneak it in just under the wire for > >> litiagation. Let everyone you know here this one. Get the e-mail address > >to > >> everyone you can think of. > >> > >> isp@fcc.gov > >> > >> Please forward this email to all your friends on the internet so all our > >> voices may be heard! > >> > >> Jim Cashatt > > > > > > > Jackson Mac Low > > tarmac@pipeline.com > Tel/Fax +1 212 226-3346 > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 18:20:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Prevallet address? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" anyone know how to reach Kristen Prevallet? i'm trying to clear up the story about her work in Brenda Knight's _Women of the Beat Generation_. the editor at conai press was most unhelpful. lbd ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 19:43:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Forrest Gander Subject: Re: poetry "schools" What about them radical mavericks? A lot of the writers I like most-- Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Arthur Sze, Phillip Foss, James Thomas Stevens, Michael Palmer, C. D. Wright, William Bronk, Cole Swensen, Fanny Howe, Kamau Brathwaite, Nate Mackey, John Taggart, Gustaf Sobin, Peter Cole-- fall outside of "schools." Is Ann Lauterbach's new work LANGUAGE poetry or New York School? Barbara Guest was a New York School poet, but what is she now? The notion of schools seems to me clubby and limiting. At the same time, of course, I too want to see more representation in bookstores. Representation comes through distribution. I think what is most needed is an effective distribution network, something the NEA and the CCLM, if lobbied, might initiate together. Even the notion of supporting publishing houses seems less constrictive than that of supporting "schools." New Directions, Stone Bridge, Firebrand, Lost Roads, Burning Deck, Talisman House publish a range of writers and aesthetics. Presses like Sun and Moon or Kelsey Street, associated with schools of writing, also publish important books that fit into no predefined niche. It's the ones without handles would be lost in your scheme. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 16:24:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: On the confusion of names Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I can't vouch for the truth of what follows, but I did read it somewhere once upon a time. It seems that until the mid-nineteenth century there were no family names in Norway--everyone was Lief Ericsson or Eric Liefsson or Jon Jonson (sorry about the spelling). The Norwegian powers that be declared that everyone had to choose a last name--and everyone did (I think it was male heads of households who decided)--they chose the names they already went by. So there were an awful lot of Jonsons and Ericssons and Olsons. Sort of like the mythical country in WC Fields' Million Diollar Legs, where all the men are named George and all the women are named Angela. Some years ago I received an offer of a copy of the Weiss family history. The publisher claimed that Weiss was a rare and aristocratic name. There are four pages of Weiss's in the Manhattan phonebook. And as for aristocrats, the pub must have known that most US Weiss's are eastern european Jews (my understanding is that Weiss is a mostly Christian name in Germany and mostly Jewish in Austria and its former dependencies). She offered to send a copy of our heraldic shield along with the book. My guess is that there are Jewish families with copies of this document hanging over the fireplace, unaware that it was lifted from some minor Junker noble whose family motto, if translated from Latin or Gothic, probably means: Who'd you call Jewish? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 22:30:31 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: possession julian and cloud author were deep inspirations in college...do they address "performance" in the sense of glossolalia? seems more a private, inner experience then narrated for others...diff possessions wd, it seems, be inflected by diff cultural traditions. i used one of julian's sentences (i prayed to feel what it wd be like to actually die...or something like that) as an epigraph for a novella i wrote some time back, in grad school, that's been sitting in a closet cuz the first scene needs to be "tightened," according to the writing group i was in a few years ago. In message <199702061519.KAA363032@faraday.clas.Virginia.EDU> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > since ms. moriarty mentions margery kempe and robert gluck's > very good and at times sublime re-imagining of kempe -- > > julian of norwich's writings, what are called =revelations of > divine love=, are often marvelous, particularly in her > measuredly ecstatic jesus-visions, her desire to "one" with > god, and her revelation about the meaning of the lord and the > servant parable (in the long text). > > and see =the cloud of unknowing= and its (unknown) > author's talk of the "sharp dart of longing love" etc. > > and with all the talk of freud, how about andre breton's > =communicating vessels=, with its contention that dreams and > writings are =predictive= forces, oracles of the future, rather > than psychologically =descriptive= ones? > > lisa s. > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 23:47:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: Fwd: Internet Taxation --------------------- Forwarded message: From: tarmac@pipeline.com (Jackson Mac Low) To: AERIALEDGE@aol.com Date: 97-02-07 15:47:53 EST >Return-Path: PZap@aol.com >From: PZap@aol.com >Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 01:55:09 -0500 (EST) >To: scrump@earthlink.net, 0003314560@mcimail.com, interact@panix.com, > starchy@cam.org, allan@nauticom.net, bobby@ccrma.stanford.edu, > tarmac@pipeline.com, matt@lo-cal.music.wesleyan.edu, teitelba@bard.edu >Subject: Internet Taxation > >Hi, > >I received the following mail and thought that it would be of interest to >everyone if you hadn't alredy heard. > >Keep in mind that the deadline is Feb. 13th. > >-Peter > >> Hi from Tim (Badge) on IRC Cops I am writing you this to inform you of a >> very important matter currently under review by the FCC. Your local >> telephone company has filed a proposal with the FCC to impose per minute >> charges for your internet service. They contend that your usage has or >will >> hinder the operation of the telephone network. It is my belief that >> internet usage will diminish if users were required to pay additional per >> minute charges. The FCC has created an email box for your comments, >> responses must be received by February 13, 1997. Send your comments to >> isp@fcc.gov and tell them what you think. Every phone company is in on >> this one, and they are trying to sneak it in just under the wire for >> litiagation. Let everyone you know here this one. Get the e-mail address >to >> everyone you can think of. >> >> isp@fcc.gov >> >> Please forward this email to all your friends on the internet so all our >> voices may be heard! >> >> Jim Cashatt > > Jackson Mac Low tarmac@pipeline.com Tel/Fax +1 212 226-3346 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 11:58:33 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: ero-text MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit While at Maria Professorina's house amid her massive library (including piles of books by many people on this list) I came a cross a hot little erotic collaboration between Bob Harrison & Dodie Bellamy. Titillating at least, Id like to see if there was a way of getting ahold of it, (title & publisher have slipped my mind, but Ive retained some of the graphic text, no surprise!). In particular Id like to see if I could trade a copy of Lyx's & my 1982 collaboration EROTIC LOGIC, which is similar in spirit tho perhaps more languagey. have safe eroticatalia, mr miekal ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 16:52:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brigham Taylor Subject: Baraka/DuBois Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I caught the PBS show on DuBois. It was in 4 parts, and conceived/produced/overseen by Bambara; however each part was written and narrated by a different person. The last part was by Baraka, and it dealt with DuBois's radicalism in the face of McCarthy and the Cold War. It was excellent: clear, piercing, exceedingly moving. At the end of the credits was an IMO for Bambara, which was the first I'd heard of it as well. Brigham ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 23:36:56 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "linda v. russo" Organization: University of Utah Subject: Re: Names are not Objects MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > > what's in a name? for no other reason than to jump in after a long absence: dad named me linda after an old girlfriend, this bit of news shared apparently for this first time in my parents' 30+ yr marriage over thanksgiving dinner a few years ago The v. stands for valerie -- mom's pick -- was my babush's name my babush on the other side of my family is my nunna, mary fudge as maidennames go -- was fruggi before they got to immigration my greatgreatgrandparents on my father's grandfather's side were both love children & so orphans -- so my last name anyway isn't my last name really i have an uncle yosh -- linda v. russo linda.russo@m.cc.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 22:48:50 -0500 Reply-To: Jordan Davis Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Matewan Defense etc In-Reply-To: <199702071844.NAA15291@brown.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII hopping on the matewan wagon.. that and city of hope are two of the few movies I can stand to think about.. maybe I just have unresolved feelings for James Earl Jones? Sayles isn't perfect but he was independent before that got anybody anywhere, also he plays mean softball address lookups are easy with www.555-1212.com Toni Cade Bambara died in 1996, I believe .. Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 18:55:18 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: more re: Fwd: "New rules on internet access" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Esteemed Listserv Denizens -- Yesterday, I posted to you'all (SAasiaLit & Poetics lists) information I'd received from another listserv regarding some alleged current legisilation that could lead to new charges for internet use. According to new info received today, that earlier message was a mere hoax. I'm a gullible guy. Presuming this new info is in fact legit -- my humble apologies. yours, d.i. p.s.: see the appended for details p.p.s.: I tried to take a look at the EFF homepage & see about verifying the "mythical" character of the alleged FCC deal, but frankly lost patience w/ the download. (Maybe I'll look later.) ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 11:23:14 -0800 . . . . Dina, you ninny, This is one of the urban myths of the Net, a variant of the Modem Tax. It's a hoax, to coin a term. [This fellow says that, seems, bec. I'd invented the term "joax" -- cross between a hoax & a joke. - d.i.] Any concerns about Net access and 1st Amendment rights can always be checked out thru the Electronic Frontier Foundation: http://www.eff.org They're a super organization, and their web pages are clearly organized. Tons of useful info, the best library there is regarding any online issues. I'd hate to be at that e-mail address, if it's a live one. . . . [etc.] ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 22:58:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: question Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Anyone noticing the transparency of the net & web? ie, how all creative problems reduce almost instantly to the techne? This isn't a question about the depth of work & the surface of presentation; more, I guess, it's about doing away with the publisher, and how that throws design & formal issues back to the writer. Wendy, who has obvious fondness for the obvious, where everything's hidden --------------------------------------------------- Wendy Battin wjbat@conncoll.edu (home) http://camel.conncoll.edu/ccother/wjbat/ (CAPA) http://shain.lib.conncoll.edu/CAPA/capa.html Multiple Poetics: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 23:36:56 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "linda v. russo" Organization: University of Utah Subject: Re: notley/epic MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > > also dont forget to check the Talisman back list--there's an issue on > Notley back there somewhere I know. Linda knows which one. Linda? > It's number One. Fall 1988 avail. for $5 unless i bought up the last one. There's a great interview in there, somewhat of an epic at 11.5 pages, somewhat related to epic inquiries, perhaps. There's a good bit of autobio which is very interesting and entertaining, as one would expect. & Notley talks about line length and how you know when a poem is over, which is "well, you know when it's over when it's over." is that how you know when an epic's over? -- linda v. russo linda.russo@m.cc.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 23:36:56 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "linda v. russo" Organization: University of Utah Subject: Re: poetry "schools" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT A very interesting addendum to a very interesting parallel: as recently as 7 months ago i lived in boston & heard tell that the Grolier Poetry Bookshop's langpo section was the fastest moving in the store -- also, there was some crossover when the # of copies allowed: i remember specifically that Michael Palmer was cross-sectioned. (sounds painful!) & while i'm in the area let me express my sincere sense of shame twds harvard sq for destroying the only decent place to sit down at 3 am & get a laugh out of the redline menu (basicly one item: bacondoublecheeseburger) & talk to a bunch of people that'd you'd maybe see around and never even think to see. A very interesting parallel to what you-all are doing: in the 1980's I > lived in Boston; the famous poetry bookshop Groliers had a good selection > of LangPo books & chapbooks; but they had them on a separate shelf > labelled (literally) "Language Poetry." Now on the one hand many area > poets thought that was an absurd ghettoization intended to keep this > stuff (which somehow wasn't real) from infecting the rest of the 15,000 or > whatever volumes in the store. ALL the rest, you see, were in a single A > to Z sequence. On the other hand, several young poets I knew found this a > useful way to find out who & what LangPo was, when they hadn't had direct > contact with anyone who could tell them; and while they saw in principle > what was wrong, the arrangement helped them at a crucial point of > exploration... > Mark P. > Atlanta > -- linda v. russo linda.russo@m.cc.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 22:24:55 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Uh oh! More Cyberproblems! (fwd) Comments: To: egg-l Comments: cc: grow-l , mot-l , ulu-l@hawaii.edu, wom-l , story-l@hawaii.edu, poetics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: T.J. Glasscock, 76563,530 Hello All, A friend just forwarded this to me -- seems the phone companies can't bear the possibility of letting a chance for exploitation slip away. ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- [headers deleted] > Please let the FCC know your feelings on this one. I realize you may have > received it before but wanted to make sure to let everyone know. The contact > info for the FCC is at the bottom. Also pass it along to others. > > I am writing you this to inform you of a very important matter > currently under review by the FCC. Your local telephone company has > filed a proposal with the FCC to impose per minute charges for your > internet service. They contend that your usage has or will hinder the > operation of the telephone network. > > It is my belief that internet usage will diminish if users were > required to pay additional per minute charges. The FCC has created an > email box for your comments, responses must be received by February > 13, 1997. Send your comments to isp@fcc.gov and tell them what you > think. > > Every phone company is in on this one, and they are trying to sneak > it in just under the wire for litigation. Let everyone you know here > this one. Get the e-mail address to everyone you can think of. > > isp@fcc.gov > > Please forward this email to all your friends on the internet so all > our voices may be heard! > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 10:55:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Clothes Make the Man Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear Mr Bromige, I am writing to you in your capacity as resident fashion consultant and haberdasher to the poetics list. I'll be in New York later this week (on my way to Texas) & thought I'd go to hear Kathleen Fraser & Charles Borkhuis read at the Ear on Saturday, but I'm unsure how to dress for the occasion. I mean, I'd hate to show up in my usual Seattle grunge attire only to find that the NY scene has moved onto retro-Victorian-Beatnik clothing or some such. At the very least I need to know whether to wear my baseball cap with the visor over my face or over my neck. Do you have a long-range forecast for this accessory that's good through next weekend? I hope I'm not expected to wear the visor to one side or the other at a jaunty angle. I really hate that. Please advise (& don't let anyone know I've asked for you counsel in this matter. People like Bowering can be so cruel sometimes.) From one basement to another, all the best, Herb Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 14:19:21 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KYLE CONNER/LRC-CAHS Subject: Re: Bandit Queen In-Reply-To: <199702052143.QAA04718@toast.ai.mit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Eliza- I think you're right in identifying the source of the *feel* of violence in a rape scene as deriving largely from the gaze of the camera, i.e., a rape scene filmed from POV of the rapist or anyone looking over the rapist's shoulder as opposed to POV of one who is raped. Any view outside that of the victim has the potential to be an exploitative and oppressive one, and yes, this could be considered a "male" gaze, even if the rapist were a woman (since historical male-domination of females has saturated every level of society, so this gaze can be appropriated for a female character co-opted in a male structure or by a female director in same structure--has Penny Marshall filmed a rape scene yet?). Hollywood has a particularly dreadful record of this kind of exploitation. There is a particularly reprehensible scene in the film "Strange Days" where a rapist wears a device which allows him to experience the emotions of whomever he hooks it up to. He proceeds to enter a woman's apartment, sedate her with a taser, rape and strangle her while experienceing her own experience of this vicariously. The whole scene is shot from his perspective, and is relentlessly, nauseatingly vicious-- I think you could even see the outline of his facemask around the edges of the frame. In essence, the viewer is forced to assume the viewpoint of the rapist--to BECOME the rapist, and either to accept tacitly the act, or, short of leaving the movie, fight against this positioning, which I did by looking away. The scene is completely unsympathetic to the woman and clearly pruriently sadistic in its intention. Isn't it great to know that Hollywood largely espouses the oppression of women? And here we thought things were beginning to equalize somewhat between the sexes. The important thing is to be aware that this kind of crap and attitude is STILL out there and to resist or fight against it any way one can. -Kyle Conner ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 16:08:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski Subject: names are not Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" al my writing and performance is done as dan raphael. my original last name of dlugonski (dwoo goyn' skee) seemed too wierd. my original middle name, raymond, got transformed first, moving to raphael because of readings in kaballah and such i was doing, and coz raymond was my dad's name, and we werent on friendly terms at the time. dan raphael is a year and a month older than dan dlugonski; his middle name is ambrose. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 22:39:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: the texts, Jennifer pleading isolation and poverty MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII to explain to Poetics - why I send poems/texts to this list - and that poetry is expensive.* I haven't been able to buy such (I am not working towards definition here) for years (sometimes 2nd-hand); I stopped around the time I found out I couldn't afford Susan Howe, who I read in Segue's stockroom (or Roof's). Nor am I published by any poetics/literary press, not having contacts (which is a matter of the social, something I fare poorly at). So that here there is a loosening of literary institutions, allowing a different/difficult form of dissemination. That there is no forfeit on anyone's part in the reading/writing/deleting. Which also depends on balance, the swerve of it. A sensitivity. And to the current state of threading/weaving. So such writing is a flesh in the pan, not stance of noise/introjection, an other's way of mistressing theory. Which is why I felt compelled (Jennifer) *we should think of this, the _economics_ of reading; nothing is free, nothing, in my world. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 09:34:19 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco Subject: fyi: transcendental dead MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain Groundwater pools in the valley separating the ridge where Daniel Chester French "rests" from the rocky hill holding the rest of Hawthorne, the Thoreau family, Emerson and the Alcotts. William Ellery Channing has a newer headstone than the rest, but we forget who he is (was). The ice in that valley is thick enough to skate on. That would be disrespectful. And we have no skates with us. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 18:16:57 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: Re: poetry "schools" MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sorry to join this discussion late -- just got my e-mail back after a three-day technical meltdown and a trip out of town. I think it was Isaiah Berlin who said that the world was composed of two two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't. I propose a division of poetic schools along the same grounds -- we could divide poets into those who divide poetry into schools and those who don't. I suspect the latter group would contain most of the poets I find most interesting. Robert Archambeau ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 13:58:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: names of the dead In-Reply-To: <199702072058.PAA09416@toast.ai.mit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII We Danish-Afro-Baptist-LapsedCaucasian-Nebraska Urbanites name our children after the not yet born -- Maria -- Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings -- Thought you already knew -- Bambara died last year -- There was an MLA session on her work chaired by Wahneema Lubiano -- and there has just appeared a collection of her previously uncollected works -- I was never a huge fan of her writing (though I LOVE still the title "Gorilla My Love") -- but Bambara herself was a wonderful person -- From the what's in a name desk -- Here at San Jose State the university book store has recently set up sections marked "African-American Interest," "Native-American Interest" etc -- Naturally, they have filed the books of Toni Cade Bambara in the "Latin American Interests" section -- Around the same time I received word that my old college mate Essex Hemphill, who published one of my first sorry poems in his journal _Nethula_, had died of AIDS -- Not long afterward I was told by a "scholar" in Los Angeles that the British author Essex Hemphill had passed away -- When I told him Essex was from DC, he said that he must have made the mistake because he'd seen Essex in a film by Isaac Julien -- but of course the film he had in mind was made by Marlon Riggs -- Hard to keep those Anglo-Afro-American-Gay-Writer-Filmpeople straight, eh? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 10:50:40 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Prevallet address? i cant tell you kristen's address, but those of you who know her, please suggest to her that she become a member of the National Writers' Union. they handled a grievance case of mine that involved somewhat similar issues and they were exemplary in their helpfulness. i feel satisfied with the resolution i got from the publisher, who had (as you may recall) solicited an essay of mine for publcation, dropped the essay without tellng me, and lifted material from it for their (uncredited) backcover promotional material. maria d In message <199702072321.SAA06822@csu-e.csuohio.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > anyone know how to reach Kristen Prevallet? i'm trying > to clear up the story about her work in Brenda Knight's > _Women of the Beat Generation_. the editor at conai > press was most unhelpful. > > lbd > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 08:57:14 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Knight Matters In-Reply-To: <199702072321.SAA06822@csu-e.csuohio.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII LBD -- I'm told that Knight is not only a Conari author, but also an employee -- This may account for responses people get when they raise this issue with the press -- Finding that talks were underway to have her at San Jose State in the Fall (along with several people who write their own words), I made copies of the relevant texts and passed them along to El Supremo -- We'll see what transpires -- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 10:58:18 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: On the confusion of names In message <199702080024.QAA15422@norway.it.earthlink.net> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > I can't vouch for the truth of what follows, but I did read it somewhere > once upon a time. It seems that until the mid-nineteenth century there were > no family names in Norway--everyone was Lief Ericsson or Eric Liefsson or > Jon Jonson (sorry about the spelling). The Norwegian powers that be declared > that everyone had to choose a last name--and everyone did (I think it was > male heads of households who decided)--they chose the names they already > went by. So there were an awful lot of Jonsons and Ericssons and Olsons. .. as a halfDane i can vouch for this. my parents got a lot of humorous mileage out of an article in the Dentists' Journal of Denmark authored by Pedersen, Pedersen, Pedersen, Pedersen and Pedersen. as indicated, my cousins and relatives names are larsen, thomsen, frederiksen, rasmussen, etc. My guess is that there are > Jewish families with copies of this document hanging over the fireplace, > unaware that it was lifted from some minor Junker noble whose family motto, > if translated from Latin or Gothic, probably means: Who'd you call Jewish? i like this. i've often whondered what i'd find if i went to the mormon geneaological database; would they know that damon had been diamond and that consequently i have no related damons to my name? or would they hook me up with the mayflower damons? > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 12:08:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Fwd: Internet Taxation Chapter 3 (or, post #3) re: internet-charge issues, from me -- #1 said, this is evidently a real issue, #2 said, hmm, I'm told it's bogus; so, the #3 say -- oops, looks like it is real. (the mountain is a mountain ; the mountain isn't a mountain; the mountain is a mountain -- sorta ?) Rec'd this today: <<< Dina's recent alert about phone bills possibly going up in the future seems to have validity, despite another's reply that the report was a hoax. Early this morning on C-Span I saw the delayed telecast of a speech made at the National Press Club on February 4. Robert Allen, CEO of AT&T was asked about all the phone traffic due to online time. He said that the telephone industry was looking at that, for it "doesn't make much sense" not to charge customers more than a just a flat rate if their phone line is open for hours. Some new rate structure based on usage seemed to be the only fair thing, he thought. "The industry is looking at that." >>> Also have noted Jackson Mac Low (via Rod Smith) & others on this ... just to say, sorry (etc.) for confusion -- looks real after all. d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 12:16:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: RaeA100900@AOL.COM Subject: Re: for db: initializing, establishing, and authentication Dear Rachel, Sorry to send this message through the list, but I've tried to answer you twice and my "system" keeps telling me something on the order of "Don't go there!' It really said that Mail cannot be sent there" once. So anyway, just thanks for forwarding that post from Stephen Burt. Interesting. Rae Armantrout ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 12:17:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: List Service Problems Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The University at Buffalo mail server has not been operating this weekend due to a hardware failure of some sort and this has caused a disruption of the Poetics List mail. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 09:30:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: the future of an illusion MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I know the original impetus for this is some time ago now, but I noticed some posts several weeks back were arguing that any truly effective poetry in the present moment would transcend the supposed "limits" of a poetry oriented to the page by 1) involving other media 2) becoming more performative, and thus more "entertaining" to an audience who is tired of watching poets flip pages and mumble through their readings. There's really crucial work being done in multi-media work and performance art, many by people on this list (Miekal And may not be in any language poetry anthology, but anyone at the Writing From The New Coast conference in Buffalo 1993 has never forgotten Miekal's performance/visual art/ poetry, as just one for instance). But I do think, however, that statements to the effect that poetry somehow MUST mutate in some direction or other actually end up doing a disservice to the range of work that's actually happening. It is, I suppose, a fantasy to imagine a circumstance in which poets might be taken by more than a small group of people as individuals who have GOOD REASONS FOR DOING THE THINGS THEY'RE DOING--but obviously, all sorts of poetry arises from intellectual and other kinds of notions that can be found suspect. Nonetheless, when I hear statements to the effect that "poetry must become this and that in order to remain viable in a culture of this or that kind, etc" I can't avoid thinking of the ways in which exploration in poetry both remains under the thumb of this kind of pronouncement, but also the ways in which poetry refutes such judgements, renders them often just so much table-pounding. I'm afraid that I think that all such statements as "only this kind of work will be legitimate in the future" simply CAN'T be true--the value of making such statements seems often little more that the desire to assert that one's own questions are the ones that matter, unless you can imagine someone saying that poetry must move in a direction that they themselves are not practicing. The point I'm trying to make, I think, is that the creative mind can continue to work in all sorts of mediums, as long as self-awareness remains about the historical and material conditions of those mediums. Is there anyone who REALLY imagines that there will be a point in time when no creative poets think of the page as a usable medium. Is it not more likely that the moment a whole culture determined that a page had no value, one poet or maybe even more would begin using the page again? Obviously, the performance/visual aspects of poetry enable much variety of artistic practice, and much opportunity for "hybrid" or other kinds of non-singular media forms. But I think it's important that this complexity should NOT be reduced to the idea that poetry somehow needs to be more ENTERTAINING. I find poetry entertaining often, sometimes even poetry I don't like that much, but THERE'S NO SHORTAGE OF ENTERTAINMENT IN CONTEMPORARY CULTURE, and the hegemony of the "entertainment industry" is playing a major role in the contemporary disenfranchisement of broad areas of human communities. Will the person going to a poetry reading looking to be entertained be DISAPPOINTED? In some cases I'd like to say "let's hope so--the poetry wasn't written to entertain." I don't mean that a poetry reading should be BORING--I mean that values other than entertainment are at stake, and the person at a poetry reading who's disappointed because they're not entertained is, perhaps unintentionally, imposing the values of capitalist entertainment hegemony on an art form that does not intend to be restrained by those values. The idea that poetry "must move in this or that direction" certainly bears a great deal of responsibility for the modern notion of the poetry school, and "schools" of poetry are by no means a negative phenomena, since they can allow groups of similarly interested writers to form networks and communities that enable their writing to reach others in ways it otherwise wouldn't. The conviction that poetry "must" move a certain way can often be an incredibly generative basis for the creation of new work. "Schools" have their negative aspects also--the inevitable exclusion of certain "marginal" figures, however determined, being one of the most obvious, as well as the tendency to dismiss other "schools" of work without a full examination of their concerns. My own sense is that some "schools" do need to be at least critiqued, if not dismissed--I DO have a problem with neo-formalism in a way that Steven Marks perhaps does not. I agree with Joe Amato, though, that the writer who claims to be a "free player" (I'm not a member of anything but my own authentic practice!) probably is not recognizing the way group interaction has helped form his or her aesthetic. But the problem, again, of telling poets what they MUST do, or of dictating what poetry MUST be, is that poets seldom do what others tell them they must, and almost always what their own sense of their work tells them they "must," if one could put it that way. mark wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun | | to go to extremes" | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 09:34:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: Dlugos reading (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 09:33:31 -0500 (EST) From: MARTINA DARRAGH To: mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu Subject: Dlugos reading ANNOUNCEMENT: Ruthless Grip Art Project (1508 U Street, NW, Washington DC) will be the site of a book party and reading on March 8, 1997 at 7:30 PM, to celebrate the publication of Tim Dlugos' Powerless: Selected Poems 1973-1990 (London and New York: High Risk Press, 1996, 115 p.). Powerless was edited by David Trinidad and introduced by Dennis Cooper, two poets who acknowledge the influence of Dlugos' work and life on their own writing/lives and on that of a wide variety of writers and artists across the country. The poems in the collection are arranged chronologically in three sections: work published while he was alive (some of which was written while he lived in Washington, DC), poems from Strong Place (published in New York in 1992 by Amethyst Press, which ceased publishing/distributing books soon thereafter), and the manuscript he compiled shortly before his death from AIDS in 1990. This last section includes the poem "G-9", named for the wing devoted to caring for people with AIDS at St. Luke's - Roosevelt Hospital in New York City. A copy of "G-9" has been "enshrined" at that hospital as a special memorial, and has been anthologized widely. Dlugos, who for a time lived at a Christian Brother novitiate near Philadelphia, was studying to become an Episcopalian priest at the time of his death. As David Lehman said in a review of Powerless published in the Washington Post Book World last December, "[Dlugos] wrote with heartbreaking grace about his illness and impending death." This grace was the grounding of Tim's life as a whole, what Cooper calls in the introduction "his ravenous fascination with the innumerable ways in which grace could be represented through artfulness." The evening will feature a reading of Dlugos' work by local poets and writers including Bernard Welt, Beth Joselow, Richard McCann, P. Inman, and Lynne Dreyer. Copies of Powerless will be available for purchase (checks preferred). There is no admission fee. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 12:50:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Rasula and poetry zones Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Pardon the lengthy description of my own work. I post this here because it is relevant to the discussion, and also because I'd like to hear from folks who object to my account, so as to strengthen it. So here goes: Although I find Rasula's account of the four "zones" of poetry compelling, Joseph Lease and Forrest Gander rightly point to problems with zones as an operative category. Assigning particular poets to one or another zone is only one of these problems. There are always exceptions, such as Lauterbach and Gander himself, and the New Formalism seems, as Lease pointed out, a blip on the poetic horizon, fast becoming (if it hasn't already become) insignificant. Rasula has his finger on something important, however. In my own work-in-progress on the poetic field (for an abstract, see "http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/sri.html"), I conceive these zones as abstractions, POLES OF VALUE within the contemporary construction of poetic practice. (This work is obviously indebted to Pierre Bourdieu in ways that I don't have time to explain right now.) What Rasula identifies as the MFA school corresponds more or less to a poetry predicated on uncomplicated representations of Self. Against this obviously is the poetry of social conflict, community building, identity politics, etc. Call the struggle between these two poles the horizontal (social) axis of the poetic field. Appeal to one or another of these sources of value has little to do with form as such. What I call the formal, or "vertical" axis of the poetic field comprises both NF and LP, but without naming them. While the New Formalism is fading fast, the appeal to "tradition" still operates within a lot of contemporary poetry, even language poetry as it becomes canonically interesting. (I am speaking sociologically; I don't mean "interesting" as an evaluative comment.) Against the appeal to "tradition" one could place an appeal to "innovation." So that the contemporary poetic field looks more or less like this: TRADITION --------------------------------------- | | | | SELF | [the poetic field] | COMMUNITY | | | | --------------------------------------- INNOVATION It seems to me that this kind of a model is more flexible than a model which operates in terms of "zones" or "schools." As New Formalism fades, the appeal to tradition is still operative. As language poetry becomes (to paraphrase Ron Silliman) more of a moment than a movement, other possibilities begin to inhabit the arena close to innovation. Obviously much language poetry would still be placed close to the "innovation" pole, but individual poets' work could be read at various places within the field. Moreover, poets might _move_, or be moved, as the vicissitudes of canonization affect perception and reading. (Charles Bernstein's work seems a lot more "traditional" now -- what with various historical accounts of language poetry by Beach, Perelman, etc., and what with the recovery of Stein and Zukofsky, and _The Tennis Court Oath_ for a broader audience in various critical accounts -- than he did in, say, 1980. Also, Bernstein's own criticism has helped create the traditional context for his work.) One could also place individual poems, "schools" (Iowa, Brown, Buffalo), and institutions at various points within the field. Well, whaddaya think? Does this account via poles of value escape some of the problematics of the zone/school? Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg kellogg@acpub.duke.edu Box 90023, Duke University (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. --Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 15:47:07 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: Re: Provoking the stretch MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > as for the category "language" poetry, Ive never been comfortable with a > notion that someone who questions the many contexts of the language of > our time as being that separate from the spirit of poetry in general, > even most mainstream poets have been known to burst out in florescences > of "language"...is pound a language poet, is lewis carroll a language > poet, why do these distinctions have to exist to perpetrate a critical > nomenclature of pigeon holes & dusty compartments? I agree whole-heartedly with miekal here. I also find the term "linguistically innovative" rather insulting to any poet who doesn't identify with that movement - to me, any good (loaded word) lyric poem is linguistically innovative. Is Bill Manhire "linguistically innovative"? How about Edwin Morgan, Phyllis Webb or Geoffrey Hill? To me, they all use language in ways that are often surprising, dislocating and/or playful, but I doubt that they'd align themselves with langpo. I guess I prefer Jackson Mac Low's term, "perceiver centred" (or "reader centred" for written arts) - an acknowledgement of the fact that meaning is created in the act of perception/reading - works that provide the perceiver/reader with fertile ground for meaning creation. Of course, one could take this to mean that there are no reader-centred writers, only reader-centred readers - it doesn't matter whether the author has read Derrida or Olson; one could read Baxter in the same way that one might read a language poet. How much fun that might be is a different question. That phrase "fertile ground" is crucial, of course. What makes one slab of language any more "fertile" than another? That of course depends upon the reader, and so one has to make assumptions (with the inevitable ideological and cultural bias that they entail) about the reader(s). I'm quite happy to do that (although I like to think that I question my assumptions in the process) if it is going to result in a more "fertile" piece of writing. That may be why I'm still attracted to lyric poetry, albeit a lyric poetry that's more influenced by Oppen, Creeley, Wedde, Hawken and Neidecker (?sp) than by Keats or whoever. For me, the "lyre" that the words play to accompany their meanings, the dance of signifier and signified, the hesitations of line breaks and the webs of connotations all provide fertile ground for linguistic innovation. Tom Beard. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 16:13:34 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: per-min email charges MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT just an update on the earlier post regarding per-minute charges for email use. I sent to the FCC & rec'd this reply. c. ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Fri, 07 Feb 1997 16:34:04 -0500 From: ISP To: calexand@alexandria.lib.utah.edu Subject: service charges -Reply This is an automated response to the message you sent to ISP@fcc.gov. Thanks for taking the time to write. We have established this mailbox for informal comments about usage of the public switched telephone network by Internet access and information service providers. More information on this subject is available at We appreciate your input. This mailbox is th FCC point of contact for informal e-mail comments on this proceeding, so you do not need to send copies of you Look for more features and announcements on our Web site, , in the future! .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) "Philosophy is intellectual order, which neither religion nor common sense can be. It is to be observed that religion & common sense do not coincide either, but that religion is an element of fragmented common sense. Moreover common sense is a collective noun, like religion: there is not just one common sense, for that too is a product of history & a part of the historical process. Philosophy is criticism & the superseding of religion & 'common sense'. In this sense it coincides with 'good' as opposed to 'common' sense." Gramsci ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 8 Feb 1997 22:38:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: brushback beanball hbp In-Reply-To: <970206101518_1727784862@emout06.mail.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Bill you could get yourself called Luis Tiant instead of mazeroski (or mazilli) doing that --it's great to play for a wiener-- J On Thu, 6 Feb 1997 Maz881@AOL.COM wrote: > he > and his boyfriends, so called alternative comics (mark marron, todd berry, > dave atell), would sometimes try to make their audiences walk by being > intentionally unfunny and/or sick and they would count the number of people > who left. i've been influenced to think that to walk the audience at a > poetry reading would be well the best thing you could do. > > bill > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 13:29:40 -0500 Reply-To: kellogg@acpub.duke.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Organization: Duke University Subject: Stein at Slate MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear POETICS folks, In case anyone's interested in how the avant-garde is faring around the political Web, there's an article on Gertrude Stein as a Republican in the latest issue of SLATE, Bill Gates's vanity press. Slate is at "http://www.slate.com/". Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg kellogg@acpub.duke.edu Box 90023, Duke University (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. --Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 13:32:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: new Adorno, Bernstein, Killian, Nielsen etc. @ B St More of what's new at Bridge Street. Ordering instructions at the end of the list. 1. _Aesthetic Theory_ by Theodor W. Adorno, newly translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor, U Minnesota, $39.95. Woop, de it is. "That old and silly cabaret phrase, 'Love, it's so erotic' provokes the variation: 'Art, it's so aesthetic': this is to be taken with deep seriousness as a momento of what has been repressed by its consumption." 2. _Boundary 2 V. 23 #3_ featuring "Charles Bernstein: A Dossier," Duke, $12. 70 pages from Mr B: "Selected Poetry," "An Autobiographical Interview" conducted by Loss Glazier, a conversation "On Poetry, Language, and Teaching," & those fabulous "Experiments." Lots else here from others including Retamar's "The Enormity of Cuba," & new translations of Ho Chi Minh by Steve Bradbury. Get your dossier while it's hot. 3. _Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas_, Critical Art Ensemble, Autonomedia New Autonomy Series, $8. "While the US may have some pockets of what could be called community, such a social phenomenon is extremely limited. As with public space it must be asked: What community!?" 4. _Soft Subversions_ by Felix Guattari, Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Series, $8. "Destiny is not inscribed in an infrastructure." 5. _Little Men_ by Kevin Killian, Hard Press, $12. "Kevin Killian writes like a bent angel who wants to inflict pleasure and delection." --Robert Gluck 6. _The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative American Poetry: 1994-1995_ ed. Douglas Messerli, Sun & Moon, $14.95. As good or better than the last volume in this series. Too many names to list, you know a lot of them. 7. _Black Chant: Languages of African-American Postmodernism_ by Aldon Lynn Nielsen, Cambridge, $18.95. "Aldon Nielsen's knowledgeable, pathbreaking study brings long overdue attention to avant-garde work in African-American poetics during the post-World War II period. . ." --Nathaniel Mackey 8. _October 79: Guy Debord and the Internationale situationniste: A Special Issue_, Thomas F. McDonough ed., $10. Articles by Mc Donough, Clark and Nicholson-Smith, Gilman, Kaufman, interview with Henri Lefebvre on the Situationists by Kristin Ross, and "Situationist Texts on Visual Culture and Urbanism: A Selection." "We require adventure." 9. _Machine Art and Other Writings: The Lost Thought of the Italian Years_ by Ezra Pound, ed. Maria Luisa Ardizzone, Duke, $16.95. Previously unpublished and rare writings from the late 20s to the early 40s. "I am not sure that people understand even here how the mechanism works or wrecks to best advantage." 10. _The Lack (love poems, targets, flags . . .)_ by Rod Smith, Abacus #104, $4. 11._History or Messages from History_ by Gertrude Stein, Green Integer, $5.95. "They were quietly expectant but a little irritable." 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. We must charge some shipping for orders out of the US. Bridge Street Books, 2814 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Wahsington, DC 20007. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 13:34:41 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: the future of an illusion In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 10 Feb 1997 09:30:29 -0500 from Bravo, Mark. The "techne", as Wendy called it, is changing all the time, but techne is not the thing. I am reminded of Proust's musings (or his character's) at the end of _Recherche du Temps_ (c'mon folks, you can read that far too - follow me!). We are all immersed in a much deeper "techne" - Time itself and the desolations/voids/returns that Time brings. Proust's narrator declares that he finds his writerly vocation and the creation of his gigantic Oeuvre in a particular effect of time: the sudden, unsought-for juxtaposition of an ordinary present sensation with a SIMILAR sensation (not the same, but similar, echoing) from the ancient past, which brings memory to life & restores the actual "feel" of time & existence. And that this perception is an aesthetic phenomenon: it's not ordinary life now or then, but the conjunction of the 2, a new amalgam; which he links overtly both to the workings of metaphor in poetry and to the workings of the thinking mind in general (finding similarities between disparate things). He talks about the aesthetes or "artists in embryo" as those who overvalue the art work per se and remain on the surface of OTHER's work, rather than immersing themselves in the realities of their own experience & making something new and fruitful. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 13:46:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark W Scroggins Subject: Re: the future of an illusion In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Mark-- good comments there, on the whole, & thoughtful, tho I'm put off by a curious strain of neo-puritanism implicit in your dismissal of "entertainment" value in poetry readings--yes, there is plenty of entertainment out there wherever one turns, but I'm not convinced a human impulse to be entertained is necessarily a product of capitalism (tho certainly our culture's saturation in entertainment has something to do with late capitalism). How would you react were one to replace the word "entertainment" in your post with the word "pleasure"? I guess I'm just registering suspicion that we seem to be rejecting the fun half of Horace's pleasure & instruction. Best, Mark ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 13:10:09 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: the future of an illusion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i've got to agree with mark wallace's last post on must-ing in poetry... the problem, or controversy, stems from those who are feeling persistently neglected in specific circles... and what to do about such neglect, assuming for a moment that it's *real*... which goes to the question of "schools" of poetry... i think joseph lease is quite correct in pointing to the fluidity of zones... marketing zones, not aesthetic zones -- as wendy battin indicates... but we all know, right?, how distribution, publication, marketing can back-pressure aesthetics... and in some crucial aspects, these zones are not esp. fluid... to take but one example: until andrew levy's appearance here at iit, where i teach, in 1992 (which coincided with my arrival as well), no undergrad. at iit had been exposed to much if anything in the way of contemporary poetry for a good long time... certainly nothing that would constitute zones 3 or 4 of rasula's analysis, and certainly nothing from these zones could even have seeped in accidentally, not to say, programmatically, things here were that stuffy... and things at K-12 are undoubtedly stuffier... of course we don't have any english majors here at iit any longer (had about a half-dozen then maybe)... but the point is that i don't gauge the pertinence of "schools" with whether they correspond to mfa programs -- that is, "schools of poetry" do not necessarily correlate with "grad. schools of poetry" (many of which i suspect are gradually getting the picture, if only in retrospect, and many of which seem to me to be set up to house perhaps two competing "camps," if that)... one would still have to contend with the status of "craft" in creative writing classrooms in general, and how this is supported by and supports most popularly renowned writing and writing venues (and note that the upcoming u of denver conference is constructed in a crucial way around this notion of "craft" -- i'll be speaking there to this question by addressing "craft" in somewhat unorthodox terms)... anyway... of course the aesthetic reality is much more diverse and messy than ANY notion of "zone" or "school" might suggest... but the problem -- if there's a problem here, and i think there is--- has primarily to do with how zones and schools play out in the marketplace, in our institutions... which, again, is why i make the case that, whatever the requisite autonomy or solitude of a writer's art, once that art enters into the social world, a somewhat different perspective is necessary to understand what's going on in practical terms... that is, unless one is willing to hallucinate about the social sphere, i think one MUST accept this---ergo something like the paradox that mark unpacks, but here a function of critical position as opposed to aesthetic production... it may be that this is the proviso lurking in the difference between such practices... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 14:03:52 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: email query (Baratier) Dave Baratier, are a you listenin? Otherwise - could some please BACKCHANNEL his email address to me? Thanks - Henry_Gould@brown.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 08:16:34 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: Bandit Queen Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" There is a particularly reprehensible >scene in the film "Strange Days" where a rapist wears a device which >allows him to experience the emotions of whomever he hooks it up to. He >proceeds to enter a woman's apartment, sedate her with a taser, rape >and strangle her while experienceing her own experience of this >vicariously. The whole scene is shot from his perspective, and is >relentlessly, nauseatingly vicious-- I think >you could even see the outline of his facemask around the edges of the >frame. In essence, the viewer is forced to assume the viewpoint of >the rapist--to BECOME the rapist, and >either to accept tacitly the act, or, short of leaving the movie, fight >against this positioning, which I did by looking away. The scene is >completely unsympathetic to the woman and clearly pruriently sadistic in its >intention. I largely agree, but have to wonder whether it is perhaps a good thing that 'we' as audience had to turn away. At least for once we were shocked and horrified by a cinema rape. And Strange Days, one of the few by a woman. Dan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 08:16:31 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: Names are not Objects Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I just say as in fish. (Don't know why people always laugh) Dan Salmon >whenever anyone has difficulty spelling my name, I point at my chin and say >"mnemonic device". > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 15:02:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: Re: Names are not Objects In-Reply-To: <199702090636.XAA22023@gos.oz.cc.utah.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Jennifer named me "Alan" after "Alwyn" supposed Welsh heritage. Alan (Jennifer) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 13:05:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: ero-text Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Miekal -- this is a Meow Press publication. You should be able to contact Meow at kuszai@ACSU.Buffalo.EDU charles At 11:58 AM 2/8/97 +0100, you wrote: >While at Maria Professorina's house amid her massive library (including >piles of books by many people on this list) I came a cross a hot little >erotic collaboration between Bob Harrison & Dodie Bellamy. Titillating >at least, Id like to see if there was a way of getting ahold of it, >(title & publisher have slipped my mind, but Ive retained some of the >graphic text, no surprise!). In particular Id like to see if I could >trade a copy of Lyx's & my 1982 collaboration EROTIC LOGIC, which is >similar in spirit tho perhaps more languagey. > >have safe eroticatalia, > >mr miekal > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 15:29:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: the future of an illusion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'll throw this into the mix--it's a quote from Matthew Sweney, who's been working with Petr Mikes at Votobia Publishers in the Czech Republic: "Poetry [in the C.R.] doesn't sell now because it's no longer controversial. Everyone was writing and buying poetry before because it was illegal, a sort of rebellious act, but now that Socialism is gone, poetry has lost its attraction. People watch Schwarzenegger videos on their new VCRs instead." ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 17:29:10 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: notley/epic MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > is that how you know when an epic's over? I think its when they sailed off again or something. no, no--its when we no longer have enough of a cultural consensus to have one voice speaking for us. funny, that's what I've always heard about the epic genre, or anyway why we can no longer have epic. but it sounds sort of silly to me now. I mean--did the ancient greeks or the romans really have that kind of social accord. unlikely. reminds me of brecht talking with benjamin about socialist realism: "if they write a poem without the word Stalin in it, its taken as deliberate." hmph. chris. .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 14:42:11 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Reper-mim ail car ges (in 2 parts) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >This is automated message response >Thanks for time to write. taking for We have established informal usage of the public switched teleph one network Internet access and information servic e providers. this subject >your input. This mailbox > We appreciateis th point of contact f >cominformal e-mailments on you do not need send copies of you this proceeding, so in the future! ("Philosophy is intellectual this proceeding, soeither religion nothis proceeding, sor common sense s to be observed that religion & common sense do not coin >either, but that religcide ion is an element of fragmented common . Moreover common sense sense is common a collective noun, like : there is not just one oo is a pro-tory & a parreligiont of the hist >proceoricalss. Philosophy is & the superseding of religion & 'common . In this sense it coincidesense's with 'good' as opposed to 'common'.) Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 15:50:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Amiri Baraka Did anyone in the aBay Area catch baraka when he recently performed at Koncepts w/ Charles Mingus' grandson? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 10:54:33 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Pam Brown Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello Poets... Can anyone help Damien Broderick in Australia with this query ? I recently asked after the credentials of somebody I'm currently reviewing, and got back this interesting reply: `My doctorate is from LeSalle University in Mandeville, LA. It is not a conventional doctorate, and I did not take three years of my life to attend a resident course of study. LeSalle is an extension university that is acredsited by the state of Lousiana. My doctorate is in Education Administration; my dissertation titled: "The Theory of Multiple Intelligences: Understanding Diversity in Education." I did not simply buy my degree--believe it or not, I had to work for it. I apologize if I sould a bit synical, I don't mean to be.' Alta Vista didn't help. Anyone know if this is an arm of the Bob Jones Center for Advanced Creation Studies or the Pizza Hut University, or is it a rooly truly degree joint like all of us synical people went to? Feel free to email me direct rather than bother the list any further... Damien ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Damien Broderick / Associate, Dept. English and Cultural Studies University of Melbourne, Parkville 3052, AUSTRALIA @: damien@ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au bio/biblio: http://www.vicnet.net.au/~ozlit/broderic.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Can you email him directly please. Thanks Pam Brown ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 19:28:54 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Names are not Objects In message <32FB51A9.107F@mwt.net> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > this is Elizabeth Was here making my first (official?) appearance on > this list, ... hi lyx. you missed an exciting show last wednesday (one grad student referred to it as "electrifying"; a faculty member's words were "way hot!"), but i'm sure you've seen it before. give me some feedback. on yr name(s)? sounds like fun to me. I like lyx ish, but why is it more jewish than lyx was? what more secrets shall i tell the lot of you? anything you want. ah, no more, there are personas of mine i'm afraid you'll never appelle. oh you tease! and furthermore, how do you know? another coupla posts and you may be dying to tell us something you could never have predicted wanting to share with us. we're a fun bunch, not to be underestimated. xo, md ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 13:11:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: Re: Seeing Eye Books Comments: cc: djmess@sunmoon.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Dear Friends, I'm happy to tell you of the wonderful new publishing venture by Guy Bennett, Sun & Moon Press's typographer and (often) translator. Guy is beginning his own venture (while re- maining at Sun & Moon) called Seeing Eye Books Seeing Eye Books is pleased to announce a new chapbook series dedicated to contemporary American=20 international poetry. Four titles will be published each year, including original work by both new and established writers as well as translators. In 1997 we feature the poetry of Lyn Hejinian, Mohammed Dib (Grand Prix de la Francophonie de l'Acad=E9mie Francaise, 1994), Joe Ross, and Catriona Strang. This series is available BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY. To subscribe, please sned a check or money order for $25.00 made out to Guy Bennett, 12011 Rochester Avenue #9, Los Angeles, CA 90025. Please indicate a shipping address if different than that on the check;=20 the cost of shipping is included. You will receive the first book in March 1997, the others will follow at three month intervals. Please remember, this series is by subscription only. Douglas Messerli ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 17:41:53 +0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: Re: per-min email charges Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This seems to be the FCC's reply to the current thread, via thier web-page: <> Just thought everyone wd like to know. It is tentively in the recycle bin... the FCC will not charge service providers, this seems to mean that service providers are exempt, meaning that we will prolly be exempt (I know a few ppl working as service providers and they are just like us... they just have a T1 or so...). Bil Brown ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 20:01:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: Rasula and poetry zones In-Reply-To: <9702101908.AA02682@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 10 Feb 1997, David Kellogg wrote: > What Rasula identifies as the MFA > school corresponds more or less to a poetry predicated on uncomplicated > representations of Self. Against this obviously is the poetry of social > conflict, community building, identity politics, etc. David, could you say what's "obvious" about this? I'd have thought there were other alternatives to "uncomplicated representations of Self" (complicated ones? nonrepresentational ones? zen observation?) that don't partake very directly of identity politics. Wendy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 12:59:12 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: poetry "schools" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT forrest gander wrote: > At the same time, of course, I too want to see more representation in > bookstores. Representation comes through distribution. as would I. but all of this, of course, assumes that bookstores *want* to represent the poetry that falls into whatever categories you (anyone) choose(s)--something I'd like to believe but--. if poetry sections are, as they are, increasingly small & usually written off as a loss even when they focus on the writers showcased by 'mainstream' literary publications, well--. of course much of this has to do with us & our buying habits--a topic that's been discussed here before. > Even the notion of supporting publishing houses seems less constrictive than > that of supporting "schools." it's a possibility that hadn't occurred to me, but it does seem like it might be a worthwhile thing--to represent smaller presses by turns rather than try to carve poetry into recognizable sections [flank, head, buttocks]. after all, once the books are on the shelves of most bookstores, theyre arranged alphabetically anyway. chris .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 21:26:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KYLE CONNER/LRC-CAHS Subject: Re: Provoking the stretch In-Reply-To: <32FB25A1.6191@mwt.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII on Feb. 7 Miekal And wrote: "so maybe my point isnt to question all the categories that have been carved out but to wonder out loud if all of us bright, creative, fuzzy people cant continuously invent ways to interact with the corpus of literature that defy, detourne, confuse & interbreed the will to commodify genre consciousness." Miekal, I'm curious to hear more about this. I understand what you propose here, but wouldn't it work against the dissemination (through major marketers, at least) of work because of resistance to genre-labelling that same marketers (and consumers?) demand? i.e, would grunge music be near as big if not for the commercialization and mass identification/appeal of the term "grunge" (I guess your investment in my example depends on your opinion as to the importance & enriching of the world by grunge music- grunge-enriched? is that a soil type?) Then again, maybe this wouldn't have been a bad thing. It would have saved us from all the rip-off bands and allowed the true/original music to continue without being exploited. But then again, if something's good, shouldn't it (deserve to) be exposed to as many people as possible? I really like your idea in theory, Miekal, but it seems to get murky when you apply to real (market) situation. Maybe I've become too jaded to believe that something as huge as the literary corpus can be detourned or interbreeded. Why do we have to play with them anyway? Ideally, we'd all be selfless poets who could be happy enriching the lives of our immediate community-those we know and care about, our town/city- and this interbreeding and networking would eventually intervine its way through the whole world-- or would it?--spreading the fruits of our hard work and hard-won humanity to people of all plces and cultures? is that what we want anyway? would the whole world be better or not without the mass production of Frost, and, hence, Frost? Do we have to sacrifice global communing/ication of poetry/culture for a closely networked community of readers and creators? What does the poet want as opposed to what the market wants and should the poet care? I've reached the end of my moebius trip...Maybe Charles Bernstein could step in and reiterate his idea in_a poetics_ about poetic communities learning how to communicate amongst themselves before they begin communicating interculturally? (The computer seems to play into this somehow...) Kyle Conner ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 18:51:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Suspended Music (shameless plug) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This is a little longer than most of these announcements run, but I thought the non-poetic content might need some context. Hope to see some of you at the CD release parties: Announcing the release of the first CD on my new label Periplum, Suspended Music - Deep Listening Band & Long String Instrument, presenting first recordings of new music for these combined ensembles, composed by Pauline Oliveros and Ellen Fullman. Some of you may be familiar with Deep Listening Band (a collaborative ensemble with Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, and David Gamper) from their recordings made in unusual acoustic spaces, including a cistern on the Olympic Peninsula with 45 seconds of natural reverberation. Some of you may be familiar with other, earlier projects by Oliveros and/or Dempster, who have a long history of new music activities together and separately. Fewer folks are probably familiar with Ellen Fullman and her Long String Instrument. Since the mid-1980s, Fullman has been refining this instrument and composing music for it. The current incarnation of the instrument is a little less than 100 feet long, with several courses of piano wire (between 60-80 strings in all) strung about waist-high. It's played by walking along the strings and rubbing them longitudinally, rather than plucking or bowing the strings across their length. It sounds great, and not like anything you've ever heard before. I'm making a special introductory offer to members of this e-mail discussion list: until March 1st, the semi-official release date of Suspended Music, you can order the CD for US$15 including tax & shipping from: Periplum P O Box 95678 Seattle, WA 98145 It'll be about $16-17 in stores (& it will be in stores eventually, now that the disc is in hand, I'm spending the next month or so trying to find distribution. There's nothing like SPD for new music, so this is a real adventure). E-mail responses are welcome, but PLEASE respond back channel, rather than to the whole list. The CD will also be available on line from Deep Listening Catalog: (They have other recordings, scores, etc. available there as well.) &, hey, if you want to help celebrate the release of the CD, choose from one of these four new release parties: February 22, 1997 4-7 pm The Candy Factory 1513 Manor Road Austin, TX March 10, 1997 4-7 pm Speakeasy Cafe 2314 2nd Avenue Seattle, WA 98121 March 14, 1997 5-7 pm The Gallery at Deep Listening Space 74 Broadway Kingston, NY 12401 March 15, 1997 4-7 pm Roulette 228 West Broadway, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10013 Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 15:10:35 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Remin e charge: per-mail (Part III) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear C. What I'm suggesting is a sort of e-mail exquisite corpse. I've seen as I expect you have those ones some websites have tried to initiate, and they are IMO by and large godawful. They operate like normal e-corpses, with each person adding on to what was. But I would suggest that this wordprocessing technology is geared to delete, not add, and so that aspect of the technology should be employed as well: namely, the proper e-corpse would involve each person both adding text and deleting the pre-existent text. We would have to develop a technique by which a certain portion of the "message" could be changed everytime, but some ever-growing part of it could not be changed. My reasoning for this being that if changes could always be made to the entire text, then the movement toward a settled and monologic voice would be more likely than if, as in the paper corpses, some part had to be left untouched every time. I just sent you a rewriting of your message to poetics using my new technique (new for me) that works only on a computer: working quickly through a piece of text with the cursor, cutting and pasting, but never adding and only occasionally deleting. ( I deleting too much in my last one.) I originally tried this on paper a couple years ago by cutting up articles from NY times stories and than rearranging them. I like working with an obviously limited vocabularly since we all do anyway. I still have not finished your long and eloquent messages to me. I am impressed with your research. I will send some responses when I can. Do you want me to send you that paperback book thing? I just recieved an e-mail from Jenny M. She is a full professor at the city college she was working at before and makes an annual salary and seems fairly committed for the time being and quite happy. She is continually biking and preparing for the next AIDS ride next summer. Perhaps you knew all this! love, M (onday) ________________________________________________ "Automated Response" >This is an automated response to the message Bravo, The "techne", , is changing time, but techne is not the thing. I usings (or his at the end (c'mon folks, you can read We are all immersed in a much deeper "techne" - Timeam reminded of Proust's m itself desolations/voids/returns that Time brings. Proust's narrator he finds his writerly and the creation a SIMILAR sensation (not the same, but similar, from the ancient past, wechoing) brings memof his gigantic Oeuvof in a particular effect of time: unsought-for juxtarethe sudden,position of an ordinary present sensation withory tthat far too - follow me!). o life the sudden, existence. And that far too - follow me!). that this perception is an aesthetic phenomenon: it's not ordinary life now or then, but the sudden,the conjr taking time write. We have established. information Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 14:12:30 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: names of the dead Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" thanks for the info aldon, wahneema being an old grad school mate of mine... essex died quite a while ago, didn't he?--md >We Danish-Afro-Baptist-LapsedCaucasian-Nebraska Urbanites name our >children after the not yet born -- > >Maria -- Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings -- Thought you already >knew -- Bambara died last year -- There was an MLA session on her work >chaired by Wahneema Lubiano -- and there has just appeared a collection >of her previously uncollected works -- I was never a huge fan of her >writing (though I LOVE still the title "Gorilla My Love") -- but Bambara >herself was a wonderful person -- > >>From the what's in a name desk -- Here at San Jose State the university >book store has recently set up sections marked "African-American >Interest," "Native-American Interest" etc -- Naturally, they have filed >the books of Toni Cade Bambara in the "Latin American Interests" section >-- > >Around the same time I received word that my old college mate Essex >Hemphill, who published one of my first sorry poems in his journal >_Nethula_, had died of AIDS -- Not long afterward I was told by a >"scholar" in Los Angeles that the British author Essex Hemphill had >passed away -- When I told him Essex was from DC, he said that he must >have made the mistake because he'd seen Essex in a film by Isaac Julien >-- but of course the film he had in mind was made by Marlon Riggs -- Hard >to keep those Anglo-Afro-American-Gay-Writer-Filmpeople straight, eh? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 16:26:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Message ("The distribution of your message dated Mon, 10...") Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Charles/Loss, is it time to raise the bridge? Or lower the bridge? What's the limit to the 21st Century? What's the price of a Buffalo nickel? >Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 15:25:43 -0500 >From: "L-Soft list server at University at Buffalo (1.8c)" > >Subject: Message ("The distribution of your message dated Mon, 10...") >To: pollet@MAINE.MAINE.EDU > >The distribution of your message dated Mon, 10 Feb 1997 15:29:56 -0500 with >subject "Re: the future of an illusion" has been postponed because the daily >message limit for the POETICS list (50) has been exceeded. No action is >required from you; your message will be reprocessed automatically once the >list owner releases the list. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 14:53:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: notley/epic In-Reply-To: <199702090636.XAA21996@gos.oz.cc.utah.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Re: "is that how you know when an epic's over?" If an epic is a poem including history, then it's only over (let alone "Do not move / let the wind speak / that is paradise") when history is and that ain't now, Francis Has anyone read (by the way) Harold Bloom's new book _Omens of Millenium_? I found it a pretty good read, some valuable information on gnosticism, which isn't exactly "spirit possession," but close. Joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 22:03:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Clothes Make the Man In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Herb Levy (often seen on 5th and Seneca in Seattle in jodhpurs) reminded me of a trip I took to NYC in 1970, to hear Pharoah Sanders at Slugs's Bar. I thought I would just wear my regular clothes, so I wd appear hip and not get mugged. So I wore a toque (Canadian for knitted cap) a shirt made of some viscous material in green and black stripes a maroon sweater knitted by my mother a serge cape once worn by a City Of Westminster police constable yellow jeans logging boots big knitted red socks electricians gloves (you know, stripes of grey, red and blue long stringy hair a moustache dark glasses a cheapo cigar with a plastic tip I didnt get mugged. Not even an offer. Not even in front of Peace Eye Books. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 22:18:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: IMBURGIA Subject: Re: new Adorno, Bernstein, Killian, Nielsen etc. @ B St MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="---- =_NextPart_000_01BC17A6.9E4A2300" ------ =_NextPart_000_01BC17A6.9E4A2300 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable YES, i want, no, i am compelled to buy the boundary 2 V.23 #3, and, = hmmm... need something for $8 to get that free shipping, how about "soft = subversions" by guattari. send em out quick as damn skippy and i will = pay if costs more. thanks,=20 dan imburgia 2416 sanctuary lane langley wash. 98260 More of what's new at Bridge Street. Ordering instructions at the end of = the list. 1. _Aesthetic Theory_ by Theodor W. Adorno, newly translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor, U Minnesota, $39.95. Woop, de it is. "That old and silly cabaret phrase, 'Love, it's so = erotic' provokes the variation: 'Art, it's so aesthetic': this is to be taken = with deep seriousness as a momento of what has been repressed by its = consumption." 2. _Boundary 2 V. 23 #3_ featuring "Charles Bernstein: A Dossier," Duke, = $12. 70 pages from Mr B: "Selected Poetry," "An Autobiographical Interview" conducted by Loss Glazier, a conversation "On Poetry, Language, and Teaching," & those fabulous "Experiments." Lots else here from others including Retamar's "The Enormity of Cuba," & new translations of Ho Chi = Minh by Steve Bradbury. Get your dossier while it's hot. 3. _Electronic Civil Disobedience and Other Unpopular Ideas_, Critical = Art Ensemble, Autonomedia New Autonomy Series, $8. "While the US may have = some pockets of what could be called community, such a social phenomenon is extremely limited. As with public space it must be asked: What = community!?" 4. _Soft Subversions_ by Felix Guattari, Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents = Series, $8. "Destiny is not inscribed in an infrastructure." 5. _Little Men_ by Kevin Killian, Hard Press, $12. "Kevin Killian writes = like a bent angel who wants to inflict pleasure and delection." --Robert = Gluck 6. _The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative American Poetry: 1994-1995_ = ed. Douglas Messerli, Sun & Moon, $14.95. As good or better than the last = volume in this series. Too many names to list, you know a lot of them. 7. _Black Chant: Languages of African-American Postmodernism_ by Aldon = Lynn Nielsen, Cambridge, $18.95. "Aldon Nielsen's knowledgeable, pathbreaking study brings long overdue attention to avant-garde work in African-American poetics during the post-World War II period. . ." --Nathaniel Mackey 8. _October 79: Guy Debord and the Internationale situationniste: A = Special Issue_, Thomas F. McDonough ed., $10. Articles by Mc Donough, Clark and Nicholson-Smith, Gilman, Kaufman, interview with Henri Lefebvre on the Situationists by Kristin Ross, and "Situationist Texts on Visual Culture = and Urbanism: A Selection." "We require adventure." 9. _Machine Art and Other Writings: The Lost Thought of the Italian = Years_ by Ezra Pound, ed. Maria Luisa Ardizzone, Duke, $16.95. Previously = unpublished and rare writings from the late 20s to the early 40s. "I am not sure = that people understand even here how the mechanism works or wrecks to best advantage." 10. _The Lack (love poems, targets, flags . . .)_ by Rod Smith, Abacus = #104, $4. 11._History or Messages from History_ by Gertrude Stein, Green Integer, $5.95. "They were quietly expectant but a little irritable." 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. We must charge some shipping for orders out of = the US. 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Zoos Comments: cc: rsillima@NS.tssc.com David, I'm a sufficiently unreconstructed structuralist to find your box below enormously elegant and lovely to think about (and I shall for some while to come, actually), but in some ways I think it replicates the same sort of problem I find with Rasula's concept of Zones, which is a spatialized implication that the categories about the box are in any way equivalent and function in a (however rough) like manner. In fact, each opens onto radically different dynamics, and it is precisely the interaction of those dynamics that turns a simple discussion like this one into something far more complex (akin to defining the butterfly effect in Mongolia vis a vis a *specific* gust of wind off Lake Michigan). Consider, for example, how an Althusserian conception of ideology (that interpellation of identity: "Hey, you") functions within each category. In some sense, that is why the diagrams of Spicer's (from, I believe, the Magick Workshop) are so appealing. It is precisely the constellative play that needs to be brought forward. I've argued before, and I'll argue again, no doubt, that what is described in your box as Innovation is, ultimately, no such thing but is felt need, a sense of lack, that drives one (rather blindly) toward something the individual cannot name but must use her/his writing to uncover/discover for her/himself. How does this solve the problem of where St Marks Books ought to place Fiona's book, or whether Rosmarie Waldrop should have labelled My Life as a "novel" or the befuddlement booksellers everywhere felt towards the collaborative project that was Leningrad (travel book, poem, memoir, current events?). In your diagram, genre is (or at least seems to be) some intersection between community and tradition. But what, precisely, is tradition if it ain't community?? Is we a lion or is we a moose? Consider, for example, that non-group posed by Forrest Gander. Several of the folks on that list--Taggart, Cole and Sobin, say (and to some degree Palmer)--all share enough features to compose a group of their own except that the Loner status with all its aching pretentiousness is one of its major preconditions. All of them are male second generation Black Mountain poets whose work is notably more timid than that of their elders. And all of them are too much in love with a certain codified sense of Beauty, tho it plays out in very different ways from person to person (except that for all it comes across as some variant of nostalgia). We could build a slightly larger circle here and toss in some other folk who fit the category, such as Augie Keinzhaler, George Evans, Eliot Weinberger. What keeps these folks from being a group is precisely the AntiGroup politics they pursue. Which has an interesting political edge to it, especially when as in Eliot's case it comes across sounding ultraleftist with an echo of Pat Buchanan. Another cluster of writers who could be legitimately grouped would be poets who were trained ("educated" in the most literal sense) within the academic poetics of the free verse '60s mode who have sometimes been associated with langpo, largely because they have very lively minds and can't keep their work from having lots of snap and pop at all points: Gander himself is an example, as are C.D. Wright, Jorie Graham, Ann Lauterbach and Bob Hass. These writers (and here is where Palmer would come in again) have a more complicated relation to questions of community and tradition and a very ambivalent stance toward innovation. Now, as a thought experiment, if we built these two clusters as poles or horizons of what might be possible, where on a map might we place them and how would we then triangulate the writing, say, of the recent work of Bob Perelman? While I agree that Charles' work is in many ways extremely traditional, Perelman's recent pieces (e.g. The Manchurian Candidate, the poems from The Marginalization of Poetry, The False Dreams) seem to arrive at a traditionalism felt precisely as that lack I was talking about above. In this sense, Bob seems a case (not the only one--Frank Stanford's interesting to think about in so many of these terms because he may be the one real outsider of the past 50 years in US poetry) in which the categories have all been stood on their head. No? Ron Silliman ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 12:50:52 -0500 From: David Kellogg Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Provoking the stretch In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Tom Beard (& others): the original LangPo label (in all its permutations: language writing etc.) was really initially a tactic, used by a loose group, to call attention to certain things...It's still useful, in reference to that group. Nobody's gonna come along & forcibly conscript you into the language army! Mark P. Atlanta ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 12:38:29 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Names are not Objects MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT linda russo wrtes: > i have an uncle yosh you also have an uncle shiny & an uncle bougie. not sure about the spelling. my granny's name (mother's side) is mavis collins was mavis hawin before marriage; her sister's first & middle name are madeline rivers. I'm told that their mother always chose names from the novel she was reading at the time--not unlike the way some of my poems are made. its probably just as well that none of them knows what novel their name comes from--they were probably terrible. I used to have an aunt aida. c. .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) "Philosophy is intellectual order, which neither religion nor common sense can be. It is to be observed that religion & common sense do not coincide either, but that religion is an element of fragmented common sense. Moreover common sense is a collective noun, like religion: there is not just one common sense, for that too is a product of history & a part of the historical process. Philosophy is criticism & the superseding of religion & 'common sense'. In this sense it coincides with 'good' as opposed to 'common' sense." Gramsci ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 15:21:54 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Apology! (Read me before you read the other messages from Matthias Regan!) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear List: Sorry for the two previous messages (titled: "Reper-mim ail car ges (in 2 parts)" and "Remin e charge: per-mail (Part III)") from me which were intended for a member of the list, not for the entire list! Its ok if you read them (as though there were a choice!) but I think you won't be so interested in what certain subjects of the message are up to as C. and I would be. Sorry for the confusion, chaos, etc! Matthias Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 09:41:03 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: AWOL: OVERLAND 145 (fwd) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 06:39:52 +1000 >To: awol@ozemail.com.au >From: awol@ozemail.com.au (AWOL) >Subject: AWOL: OVERLAND 145 > >OVERLAND 145 is available now from the AWOL Virtual Bookshop. > >Poetry by Bruce Dawe, john malone, Marguerite Varday, Emma Lew, Michael >Crane, Libby Robin, Phil Ilton, Clive Faust, Graham Rowlands, Jean Thorton >& Kieran Carrol. Anthony Weare on Port Arthur, Brian Matthews on the >Millennium, Julie Lewis on Mary Martin's Bookshop. Plus fiction, the usual >high quality OVERLAND reviews and much much more. > >If your favourite bookshop does not stock OVERLAND tell them to contact >AWOL and order you a copy. Or order it yourself through AWOL's Virtual >Bookshop. Simply hit the return button on your email program (if you >received this post through Auslit or another list make sure you send the post to >awol@ozemail.com.au and not back to the list). We will send you an invoice >for $8 plus $1 postage. You mail your payment to AWOL, together with your >postal address and OVERLAND could be in your mailbox within a few days. > >And don't forget to visit our website and check out the other magazines >available through our Virtual Bookshop. > > > > >AWOL >Australian Writing On Line >awol@ozemail.com.au >http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol >PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137 Australia >Phone 61 2 7475667, Mobile 015063970 >Fax 61 2 7472802 > > > > Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer & User Representative SIS Team. Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Phone 93517710 Mobile 015063970 Fax (02) 9351 7711 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 16:47:06 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: The tracts, Jennifer perusing invocation and projection MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Alan Jen Sondheim wrote: > > to explain to Poetics - what category can anthologies stick you in alan? why I send poems/texts to this list - a leg over & into >and that > poetry is expensive.* trading works ifn you know the right people >I haven't been able to buy such (I am not working > towards definition here) for years (sometimes 2nd-hand); Do you have kids, Alan. Having kids & buying poetry dont go hand in hand. There's needs & then there's poetry. >I stopped around > the time I found out I couldn't afford Susan Howe, who I read in >Segue's > stockroom (or Roof's). Brother, do have a >Nor am I published by any poetics/literary press, > not having contacts (which is a matter of the social, something I >> >fare > poorly at). So that here there is a loosening of literary >institutions, > allowing a different/difficult form of dissemination. Alan, we will publish you in a minute, but then maybe we arent a poetics/literary press either >That there is no > forfeit on anyone's part in the reading/writing/deleting. backspace. caution! remark? > Which also depends on balance, dogeared, rehearsed equiliberated >the swerve of it. arc is described by velocity > A sensitivity. reading thru reading >And to the > current state of threading/weaving. in hypertext, the word clicked on should dissolve/explode/fade into its destination > So such writing is a flesh in the pan, "I found my epik in the dumpster" not an old cowboy song not heard while riding a greyhound > not stance of noise/introjection, an other's way of mistressing theory. here Alan, I hafta disaggree, refer to my hypertext POLYNOISE whose premise is that noise is the most unused resource on this planet & as such an abundant & necessary expanding edge > Which is why I felt compelled Which is why I felt comspellingly trilled > (Jennifer) > > *we should think of this, the _economics_ of reading; or me thinking of how many lifetimes Ive put into networking, writing letters, pasting stamps on envelopes, waiting in line at the post office, spending all my extra money for postage... >nothing is free, > nothing, in my world. ya get out of it what ya put in to it miekal on the occasion of longtime friend & lover, Jennifer, visiting today. -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 15:56:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: for db: initializing, establishing, and authentication In a message dated 97-02-06 18:05:41 EST, you write: << Authentication. To do with computer security ---- is Mr. DB at the end of the line really Mr. DB, or some other sinister influence? How would the system know? How would we ever know? The protocol for authentication usually involves exchange of protected/encrypted data, such as passwords. >> Does David know? What's your password David? Are you sure it's *yours*? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 09:06:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Names are not Objects Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mother: Bessie Meryle (she dropped the Bessie early) Her twin brother: Jessie Earl (he became "Buddy") Other aunts & uncles: Elmo Moddybelle Allie Millie Goldie Archibald Ivory (and then the assorted really odd ones, like Joe, Paul, Bob, George, etc.) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 10:16:57 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" like ron, i see a problem with *any* spacialization of diverse human practices, such as "zone" would imply... but let's do recall that rasula offered such zones as: (1) configured in accordance with the "genealogical contours of contemporary american poetry"; and (2) that he was clear in arguing that these zones were "utterly disproportionate in terms of size, material resources, and internal stability"... now in fact the spatial metaphor permeates rasula's text---a museum is a space that serves in effect to freeze time... this negative reading of historical-institutional space is what informs rasula's polemic... so while it's true that we may be able to come up with more fluid or diachronic metaphors to describe the various poetry alliances (or "institutional consolidations," to use another of rasula's terms) out there---if we're so inclined, i mean---it's likewise the case that something has to "explain" the wax museum effect rasula has spent so many pages detailing... unless of course one doesn't see things (t)his way... i do, for reasons i've detailed mself elsewhere... yet i can imagine other readings of poetic practice over the past fifty years, readings that might emphasize other sorts of effects... and i do believe that recent developments online and in slam quarters have complicated the scenario of zone 4 as such... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 11:51:55 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keith Tuma Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 11 Feb 1997 03:55:05 -0800 from Very subtle, Ron, those projections of value you offer to counter Kellogg's grid as it (in your view) creates equivalences (equal valences). So we're to believe that Taggart and Sobin are nostalgic, and pretentious to boot? Second generation watered down Black Mountain? (And Cole Swensen got accidentally tossed in THAT pile). On the other hand Hass and Graham etc. are like langpo in that they "can't help" from having "snap and pop"? Langpo charges the mountains of the MacArthur? Add some crackle to that snap and pop so we're SURE you're not just spillin milk. "Lively minds" indeed. And blunt polemic. And what exactly do you mean by saying that "traditions"--practices--are the same thing as "community"--those bound together however loosely and with whatever opportunity for innovation and transformation or resistance etc. BY a whole BUNCH of practices/traditions? You'll have to explain that one to me. best, Keith Tuma ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 10:29:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: entertainment and pleasure MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hello Mark Scroggins: Good to hear from you on the list--I saw your announcement several weeks ago about your U-Alabama book on Zukovsky. Is the book now available? You ask me if there's a "puritan strain" in my critique of entertainment, and wonder what would happen if I had used the word "pleasure" instead of "entertainment"? But in fact the words seem to me CRUCIALLY DIFFERENT words. Actually, I don't think I rejected the notion of entertainment, but just the notion that EVERYTHING MUST BE ENTERTAINMENT when it is not economic work, and I think very clearly that it was the modern media environment suggests--there is a time for profit making, and a time for entertainment. But "entertainment" is only one aspect of pleasure, even of play--that there might be more complex elements of pleasure and play than that simply of casual entertainment is something that the modern media complex does not wish its subjects to know. Hey, I love entertainment, but not when it's the only kind of "pleasure" that's made widely available. I suppose entertainment does have its active elements, but a more thorough notion of play might suggest that play involves the ability to radically reformulate identity in the name of what gives pleasure, whereas entertainment represents the more limited notion of "relaxing"--i.e., taking time off from the labor that you have had at best limited choice in undertaking. Please excuse typos-this modem won't let me correct them today! Actually, Mark, on another subject--I'd be interested to hear a brief description of what you take to be the central issues to Zukovksy criticism at the moment. Yes, I'm sure it's in the book, but a preview here would be most welcome... mark wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun | | to go to extremes" | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 09:43:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Names Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "Names are frozen laughter." who wrote that? Adorno? "Beard by name and beard by nature." One can imagine! 'Bromige" which can be fromage or bromide to schoolboys & their sense of humor,might be a topologico-botanical derivation, "the ridge with the yellow broom(e) on it." But the closest I found in the UC Bkly cardcatalog was "Bromig," a yugoslav (as there then were) who wrote about chemistry. But we have a David Bromwich at Yale, I think, whose direction is quite other than mine from the little i know. I was twice mistaken for him, the funnier time being when i was invited to read at a soCal college (at the instigation of a friend who taught there)by the person responsible who then introduced me as the author of many fine essays. Well, and so i am, but they havent been collected, and too fugitive i wd have thought to be known to this young man. It unraveled slowly. My name is hard to establish pronunciation of--our branch said "Brahm-idge" and so do i. If i had it to do over, i'd use my middle name, Mansfield, as a surname. "Take my advice, you still wellnigh anonymous persons out there" coin yr own name (e.g. Miekal And, Jay Gatsby, Bob Dylan. . .). Engleburt Humperdinck rmeains one of the more attractively outrageous handles, but cd hardly have been invented? For many years, Bob G R E N I E R shared a house with Larry E I G N E R. (That wd be the Grenier who wrote the short poem PTOLEMY/ TUOLOME .) Imagine having the cosmic good fortune as a poet to be born a Wordsworth. db. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 12:02:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Notley redux MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Does anyone out there in List Land know where I can obtain a copy of Alice Notley's _Selected Poems_ (or anything else by her other than _Alette_)? Can I order direct from Talisman? I'm tired of lugging these library copies around... Backchannel, please. Thanks, Patrick Pritchett pritchpa@silverplume.iix.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 12:15:20 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: illusion futures exchange MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU wrote: > the problem, or controversy, stems from those who are feeling persistently > neglected in specific circles... and what to do about such neglect, > assuming for a moment that it's *real*... from my vantage point, perched here on the verdant edge of institutionalia, Im personally less concerned about the practices & intellect informing the consumers & the commidifers of poetry & have been more participant in the endlessly unfolding social sphere amid the actions of poetry itself, writing, publishing, NETWORKING, trying to be moderately responsible for helping to distribute a tiny segment of others in my networks who are working in similar streams. with editing xexoxial editions we have tried to purposefully chose each title as if it represented its own territory, its own category & put it along side of something that may seem contradictory in context, for instance where does the work of Bruce Andrews intersect the work of Bern Porter. in writing our way forward toward less stringent collectivity, these threads & pathways should be hyperwebs threading themselves in & out of every possibility. so for me, even david kellog's diagram of the virtual field of poetry is still too foreground & flat to accurately depict all the uncategorizable layers of languaging. (tho such an open field over staid categories, is muchly preferable.) miekal ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 11:12:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >now in fact the spatial metaphor permeates rasula's text---a museum is a >space that serves in effect to freeze time... This is just an aside to this thread, but I find this statement an unfortunate stereotype, although one I understand. Seems to me that most good contemporary museums (or those trying to be good and better) are acting these days as community art centers, art activists, and more. The definition of "museum" is not at all stable. And certainly the "buildings" are not necessarily what constitute the museum as an organization or entity. While I have argued specifically with every museum I've ever been around, about exhibitions, particular programs, and more -- I have immense admiration for the people in them and their attempts to make art a part of people's lives in engaging, challenging ways. Unfortunately I have not yet read Jed Rasula's book, but perhaps a reading of his museum as part of this wider movement which includes "museums without walls" and more, would serve him well. charles alexander ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 13:44:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSchu30844@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Amiri Baraka Who is Charles Mingus's grandson? (I'm a huge Mingus fan these days; loved the idea of teaching him and Hart Crane at the same time.) sms ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 13:10:10 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: NOISE news #2 (fwd) Thought I'd forward this to list. Sondheim (tho I know nothing at all about him/her) is involved in creating all kinds of interesting stuff on the Fiction of Philosophy list. Kent ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 13:34:55 -0500 Send reply to: FOP-L From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: NOISE news #2 (fwd) Originally to: Cyb To: Multiple recipients of list FOP-L @@@ @@@ @@@@@@ @@@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@@@ @@@@ @@@ @@@@@@@@ @@@ @@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@ @@!@!@@@ @@! @@@ @@! !@@ @@! !@!!@!@! !@! @!@ !@! !@! !@! @!@ !!@! @!@ !@! !!@ !!@@!! @!!!:! !@! !!! !@! !!! !!! !!@!!! !!!!!: !!: !!! !!: !!! !!: !:! !!: :!: !:! :!: !:! :!: !:! :!: :: :: ::::: :: :: :::: :: :: :::: :: : : : : : :: : : : :: :: "The bit of noise, the small random element, transforms one system or one order into another." You may remember that all perforations 'issues' are now ongoing sites of activity. New additions include: in P12-- *Severed Head / Great Skull Zero *Fractured Mirrors / A. Sondheim *ART ORIENTE objet (AOo): biotechnology in the gallery / J. Nechvatal in p11-- *The Learning Curve/D. Cole !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! call for submissions to p e r f o r a t i o n s 13: !!!SEX!!! You love it, you hate it, you can't get enough of it, you wish you'd never even heard of it, it's all you think about, you wonder what all the fuss is about . . . whatever the case (and at times it seems that all the above is the case, sometimes apparently simultaneously!) it is the case that SEX, with capital letters, is in our face, at least those of us who are infomaniacs, almost continuously. And not 'gender' and not 'sexuality' but SEX, the grinding, moaning, messy, sheer horniness of whatever the hell it is, the cultural environment is saturated with it. You can't turn on the television without it steaming up the place, news, sitcoms, drama, talk shows. It has become the cover story of seemingly every magazine (and lets face it, most times, for most magazines, it's the cover story, de facto--you want the best way to get some attention? you got two choices: blow somebody away or blow somebody. And do it in public if you possibly can.) And the net . . . well, that's what got this issue of Perf going. Your humble collator happened to be cruising porno sites (it's none of your damn reason why) and he was even more humbled by the sheer mass of sex materials of every kind. And yes he is aware that each emergent info tech seems to be cuddled up to SEX, and of course the body, before anything else whether the medium be cd-roms, photography, movies, video, etc. And the new rage in academic circles is --- the BODY! and, increasingly, the sexed body. It's almost as if the human race has suddenly decided (relatively speaking anyway), in the agora as well as the grove, no less, that, WOW! humans have this thing called a body and if you do these things to it certain other things happen, usually 'pleasurable' (those scare quotes indicating a certain indeterminacy as regards the pleasure/pain stroke). What's going on? Is it simply that systems of representation have gotten so sophisticated that capital flow can now fully exploit the most primal human current(cies)? That's not a particularly new or original thought but.. . . why then did he have the feeling that a new plateau had been reached, some new border breached within the last few years? He thought in terms of one of his favorite--let's call it Foucaultian--stories of the Victorians, being collectors generally and plant fanciers especially, bringing in tons of orchids around the turn of the century. Not knowing all of their requirements but thinking: orchids--> tropics---> hot-----> monus ponens, bony marony, good for plants! Especially when they flowered profusely in their hothouses (ie, greenhouse), stoked to the max, the plants trying desperately to reproduce themselves (and the victorians thinking Ahh! Success! Flowers!) --- before they died en mass in due course, all orchids in fact not having the same requirements. A form of 'reproductive confessional' if you will. Perhaps you catch my drift, genetic and otherwise. So, pick your target: fetish, s/m, dna, hetero, homo, repro, sublimation, consumation, conflagration, the gaze, the Look, the lock, the haves, the have-nots, the cunts, the cocks, teledildonics, Freud, fraud, fried, freak, implant-love, border-crossers, cross-dressers, sex-changers, chicken-sexers (can't tell'm apart -- chickens that is-- w/o yer manual), celebates, cerebrates, celebrant swinger/orgy/baccanaliasts, one-handers, lonely-hearts, no-hearts, mechanical hearts, (oops, no sex there! hmm....), cyber-sexo-tekno-oedipo-shmedipo, elektric, tantroid, latex-dipped, mutant futur-phreaks--- you tell us. You know where we are, you know what we do. Help allay our confusion or: confuse us even more. We await your orchid. ******************* As always, new and inovative approaches to the arrangement of knowledge/information welcomed. http://www.pd.org general information: info@pd.org p e r f o r a t i o n s: zeug@pd.org Public Domain, Inc./perforations POB 8899 Atlanta, GA 30306-0899 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 13:58:42 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: entertainment and pleasure In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 11 Feb 1997 10:29:27 -0500 from entertainment = ethos(accepted values) + pathos(feeling) - logos(:meaningless) propaganda = pathos + logos(meaning/originality) - ethos(:false values) art = ethos + logos + pathos (courtesy of Aristotle) - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 14:11:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: Rasula and poetry zones In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 10 Feb 1997, Wendy Battin wrote: > On Mon, 10 Feb 1997, David Kellogg wrote: > > What Rasula identifies as the MFA > > school corresponds more or less to a poetry predicated on uncomplicated > > representations of Self. Against this obviously is the poetry of social > > conflict, community building, identity politics, etc. > > David, could you say what's "obvious" about this? I'd have thought there > were other alternatives to "uncomplicated representations of Self" > (complicated ones? nonrepresentational ones? zen observation?) that > don't partake very directly of identity politics. Alternatives, yes. Oppositions, I'm not sure. I should have spelled it out more clearly. Let's see. I didn't mean to limit the Self as a pole of value to "uncomplicated" representations; rather, I was trying to stress that such representations (the product of MFA programs and post-confessionalism) currently dominate that end of the social axis. Nonrepresentational or complicated representational investments in the self might be situated somewhere in the corner where self and innovation meet. Zen observation might be read as innovative in some communities and traditional in others. It might also be seen as invested in the Community pole, which is not limited to identity politics. These are not fixed categories; they are meant descriptively to account for some of the ways in which poetic oppositions get socially represented (and also to describe the academic process of contemporary canon- and value-construction). I think you're right, however, to point to the Community pole of value as the wink link in my account, and the most tentative. A bunch of disparate stuff must necessarily get thrown in there. I'm trying to figure out a way of mapping my sense that various resistances to the Self as a source of value have something in common. One could present it in terms of a Greimas square (Self, Tradition, Not-Self [Community], Not-Tradition [Innovation]). But I'm not sure where it would go from there. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 14:20:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos In-Reply-To: <199702111155.DAA06240@dfw-ix2.ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Ron, Thanks for your response. Let me first try to identify what I am after, so as to address your invocation of the Butterfly effect (chaos theory was an early inspiration for this project, actually -- as were various other scientific concepts, Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 14:31:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" miekal -- you articulate well what one response to poetic practice --- through publishing and distribution -- might be... and as you might guess, it's one with which i'm entirely sympathetic (if this don't sound condescending i mean)... charles a. -- yo, i didn't mean to slam "museums" as such... rasula in fact invokes a *wax* museum, but (to simplify) he does use associated theorizing that tends to regard the museum impulse as partipating in the general drift of (other) carceral institutions (think foucault)... still, i would of course have to agree that not all museums are created equal... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 15:35:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: the future of an illusion Comments: To: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU In-Reply-To: <199702101910.NAA21110@charlie.cns.iit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit just want to add that I certainly agree that in some crucial respects the zones are not escpecially fluid: I can think of many many many examples of great poets whose treatment or lack thereof by any of the various zone authority stuctures makes me wanna holler. Of course. my point was that any description of zones of aesthetics and politics does provide us with several chances: the chance to describe some of the particulars through which aesthetics and politics are interconnected the chance to acknowledge that the sociology of poetry can change (though it may remain frustrating to those who long for real conversation) more soon Joseph On Mon, 10 Feb 1997 amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU wrote: > i've got to agree with mark wallace's last post on must-ing in poetry... > > the problem, or controversy, stems from those who are feeling persistently > neglected in specific circles... and what to do about such neglect, > assuming for a moment that it's *real*... > > which goes to the question of "schools" of poetry... i think joseph lease > is quite correct in pointing to the fluidity of zones... marketing zones, > not aesthetic zones -- as wendy battin indicates... but we all know, > right?, how distribution, publication, marketing can back-pressure > aesthetics... and in some crucial aspects, these zones are not esp. > fluid... > > to take but one example: until andrew levy's appearance here at iit, where > i teach, in 1992 (which coincided with my arrival as well), no undergrad. > at iit had been exposed to much if anything in the way of contemporary > poetry for a good long time... certainly nothing that would constitute > zones 3 or 4 of rasula's analysis, and certainly nothing from these zones > could even have seeped in accidentally, not to say, programmatically, > things here were that stuffy... and things at K-12 are undoubtedly > stuffier... of course we don't have any english majors here at iit any > longer (had about a half-dozen then maybe)... but the point is that i don't > gauge the pertinence of "schools" with whether they correspond to mfa > programs -- that is, "schools of poetry" do not necessarily correlate with > "grad. schools of poetry" (many of which i suspect are gradually getting > the picture, if only in retrospect, and many of which seem to me to be set > up to house perhaps two competing "camps," if that)... one would still have > to contend with the status of "craft" in creative writing classrooms in > general, and how this is supported by and supports most popularly renowned > writing and writing venues (and note that the upcoming u of denver > conference is constructed in a crucial way around this notion of "craft" -- > i'll be speaking there to this question by addressing "craft" in somewhat > unorthodox terms)... > > anyway... of course the aesthetic reality is much more diverse and messy > than ANY notion of "zone" or "school" might suggest... but the problem -- > if there's a problem here, and i think there is--- has primarily to do with > how zones and schools play out in the marketplace, in our institutions... > which, again, is why i make the case that, whatever the requisite autonomy > or solitude of a writer's art, once that art enters into the social world, > a somewhat different perspective is necessary to understand what's going on > in practical terms... that is, unless one is willing to hallucinate about > the social sphere, i think one MUST accept this---ergo something like the > paradox that mark unpacks, but here a function of critical position as > opposed to aesthetic production... it may be that this is the proviso > lurking in the difference between such practices... > > best, > > joe > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 15:35:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: poetry "schools" In-Reply-To: <1AAD1C869B9@alexandria.lib.utah.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Chris Alexander has a good point--I was willing to cut Publishers Weekly some slack on the idea of named "camps" on the ground that they're involved with marketing, & however much I'm not personally in sympathy with the bulk of commercial trade publishing & its marketing mechanisms, I see that given our actually-existing-capitalist-culture they're almost predestined to use catagories like this....But Chris's point is I think vital: in general, the most appallingly inert workshop verse is considered commercially marginal, increasingly, by the retail book trade. (This has alot to do with the drive toward chain monopolization; to some extent it's cause & effect, to some extent they are both outcomes of the same homogenization/centralization mechanisms acting in culture, in tandem with rightwing social agendas) To what extent is identifying nonmainstream trends, giving 'em labels & profiles, simply helping much of the book trade pinpoint what they don't want to stock, what won't help them in theri increasingly single-minded drive to maximize profits at the cost of social and cultural values? Mark Prejsnar ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 15:37:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: more entertainment value (here we are now) In-Reply-To: <970211.120231.EST.KWTUMA@miamiu.muohio.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII so is there are there an audience keeping score of these remarks. sorry, this modem won't let me think -- not our photographs, but the map, is that how we are to be beautiful. Now what is the zinfandel. You are a really beautiful map. Why is it important to relax. I/They. Because nobody's driving the state brown decades. who can do the palace of those outside. Pressure is substituted for a rain. Close up and save your work the powers that acknowledge our shifts must give me a house I am interested. Helmet head. Political nice guy, reprise your sleepy value. My name. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 15:42:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos In-Reply-To: <199702111155.DAA06240@dfw-ix2.ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit the social fact is that either all poets are outsiders or no poets are outsiders or all poets are outsiders in some ways at some times: yes this is a politics though not in a particularly Althusserian way: it's ethically wrong to accuse poets who start from where they are rather than a neomarxist meta-narrative (progressivist, foundational) of being some emotional tonality one wants to dispraise since emotional tonalities appear across the board in various political camps I'd like to know if Ron Silliman agrees with Foucault that identity is plural and the purpose of effective history (counter history, radical history) is to dissipate it: this position is in severe conflict with Althusser On Tue, 11 Feb 1997, Ron Silliman wrote: > David, > > I'm a sufficiently unreconstructed structuralist to find your box below > enormously elegant and lovely to think about (and I shall for some > while to come, actually), but in some ways I think it replicates the > same sort of problem I find with Rasula's concept of Zones, which is a > spatialized implication that the categories about the box are in any > way equivalent and function in a (however rough) like manner. In fact, > each opens onto radically different dynamics, and it is precisely the > interaction of those dynamics that turns a simple discussion like this > one into something far more complex (akin to defining the butterfly > effect in Mongolia vis a vis a *specific* gust of wind off Lake > Michigan). Consider, for example, how an Althusserian conception of > ideology (that interpellation of identity: "Hey, you") functions within > each category. > > In some sense, that is why the diagrams of Spicer's (from, I believe, > the Magick Workshop) are so appealing. It is precisely the > constellative play that needs to be brought forward. > > I've argued before, and I'll argue again, no doubt, that what is > described in your box as Innovation is, ultimately, no such thing but > is felt need, a sense of lack, that drives one (rather blindly) toward > something the individual cannot name but must use her/his writing to > uncover/discover for her/himself. > > How does this solve the problem of where St Marks Books ought to place > Fiona's book, or whether Rosmarie Waldrop should have labelled My Life > as a "novel" or the befuddlement booksellers everywhere felt towards > the collaborative project that was Leningrad (travel book, poem, > memoir, current events?). In your diagram, genre is (or at least seems > to be) some intersection between community and tradition. But what, > precisely, is tradition if it ain't community?? Is we a lion or is we a > moose? > > Consider, for example, that non-group posed by Forrest Gander. Several > of the folks on that list--Taggart, Cole and Sobin, say (and to some > degree Palmer)--all share enough features to compose a group of their > own except that the Loner status with all its aching pretentiousness is > one of its major preconditions. All of them are male second generation > Black Mountain poets whose work is notably more timid than that of > their elders. And all of them are too much in love with a certain > codified sense of Beauty, tho it plays out in very different ways from > person to person (except that for all it comes across as some variant > of nostalgia). We could build a slightly larger circle here and toss in > some other folk who fit the category, such as Augie Keinzhaler, George > Evans, Eliot Weinberger. What keeps these folks from being a group is > precisely the AntiGroup politics they pursue. Which has an interesting > political edge to it, especially when as in Eliot's case it comes > across sounding ultraleftist with an echo of Pat Buchanan. > > Another cluster of writers who could be legitimately grouped would be > poets who were trained ("educated" in the most literal sense) within > the academic poetics of the free verse '60s mode who have sometimes > been associated with langpo, largely because they have very lively > minds and can't keep their work from having lots of snap and pop at all > points: Gander himself is an example, as are C.D. Wright, Jorie Graham, > Ann Lauterbach and Bob Hass. These writers (and here is where Palmer > would come in again) have a more complicated relation to questions of > community and tradition and a very ambivalent stance toward innovation. > > Now, as a thought experiment, if we built these two clusters as poles > or horizons of what might be possible, where on a map might we place > them and how would we then triangulate the writing, say, of the recent > work of Bob Perelman? While I agree that Charles' work is in many ways > extremely traditional, Perelman's recent pieces (e.g. The Manchurian > Candidate, the poems from The Marginalization of Poetry, The False > Dreams) seem to arrive at a traditionalism felt precisely as that lack > I was talking about above. In this sense, Bob seems a case (not the > only one--Frank Stanford's interesting to think about in so many of > these terms because he may be the one real outsider of the past 50 > years in US poetry) in which the categories have all been stood on > their head. No? > > Ron Silliman > > ------------------------------ > > Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 12:50:52 -0500 > From: David Kellogg Subject: Rasula and poetry zones > > Pardon the lengthy description of my own work. I post this here > because it is relevant to the discussion, and also because I'd like to > hear from folks who object to my account, so as to strengthen it. So > here goes: > > Although I find Rasula's account of the four "zones" of poetry > compelling, Joseph Lease and Forrest Gander rightly point to problems > with zones as an operative category. Assigning particular poets to one > or another zone is only one of these problems. There are always > exceptions, such as Lauterbach and Gander himself, and the New > Formalism seems, as Lease pointed out, a blip on the poetic horizon, > fast becoming (if it hasn't already become) insignificant. > > Rasula has his finger on something important, however. In my own > work-in-progress on the poetic field (for an abstract, see > "http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/sri.html"), I conceive these zones as > abstractions, POLES OF VALUE within the contemporary construction of > poetic practice. (This work is obviously indebted to Pierre Bourdieu > in ways that I don't have time to explain right now.) What Rasula > identifies as the MFA school corresponds more or less to a poetry > predicated on uncomplicated representations of Self. Against this > obviously is the poetry of social conflict, community building, > identity politics, etc. Call the struggle between these two poles the > horizontal (social) axis of the poetic field. Appeal to one or another > of these sources of value has little to do with form as such. What I > call the formal, or "vertical" axis of the poetic field comprises both > NF and LP, but without naming them. While the New Formalism is fading > fast, the appeal to "tradition" still operates within a lot of > contemporary poetry, even language poetry as it becomes canonically > interesting. (I am speaking sociologically; I don't mean "interesting" > as an evaluative comment.) Against the appeal to "tradition" one could > place an appeal to "innovation." So that the contemporary poetic field > looks more or less like this: > > TRADITION > --------------------------------------- > | | > | | > SELF | [the poetic field] | COMMUNITY > | | > | | > --------------------------------------- > INNOVATION > > > It seems to me that this kind of a model is more flexible than a model > which operates in terms of "zones" or "schools." As New Formalism > fades, the appeal to tradition is still operative. As language poetry > becomes (to paraphrase Ron Silliman) more of a moment than a movement, > other possibilities begin to inhabit the arena close to innovation. > Obviously much language poetry would still be placed close to the > "innovation" pole, but individual poets' work could be read at various > places within the field. Moreover, poets might _move_, or be moved, as > the vicissitudes of canonization affect perception and reading. > (Charles Bernstein's work seems a lot more "traditional" now -- what > with various historical accounts of language poetry by Beach, Perelman, > etc., and what with the recovery of Stein and Zukofsky, and _The Tennis > Court Oath_ for a broader audience in various critical accounts -- than > he did in, say, 1980. Also, Bernstein's own criticism has helped > create the traditional context for his work.) One could also place > individual poems, "schools" (Iowa, Brown, Buffalo), and institutions at > various points within the field. > > Well, whaddaya think? Does this account via poles of value escape some > of the problematics of the zone/school? > > Cheers, > David > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > David Kellogg kellogg@acpub.duke.edu > Box 90023, Duke University (919) 660-4357 > Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 > http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ > > There is no mantle > and it does not descend. > --Thomas Kinsella > > ------------------------------ > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 13:01:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Rasula and poetry zones In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII with "wink link" David Kellog has gifted us with the most intriguingly poetic typo of the week (assuming it is in fact an error) powerfully descriptive -- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 09:24:36 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: Re: Provoking the stretch MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > the original LangPo label (in all its permutations: > language writing etc.) was really initially a tactic, used by a loose > group, to call attention to certain things...It's still useful, in > reference to that group. Nobody's gonna come along & forcibly conscript > you into the language army! Nope, I don't feel in any danger of conscription (though I've played around on the avant-garde assault course for a while, and toy with the idea of joining the territorials). I just get the feeling sometime (and this may be a wrong impression on my part) that some people use the terms "language writing" and "linguistically innovative" interchangably, and I didn't like the implication that non-"language" writing couldn't be linguistically innovative. Cheers &c, Tom. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 14:26:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Tabula Rasula MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: > > with "wink link" David Kellog has gifted us with the most intriguingly > poetic typo of the week (assuming it is in fact an error) Speaking of Kellogg's "wink link," we've got "snap and pop" from Silliman--can crackle be far behind? Rachel ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 13:37:37 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos In-Reply-To: <970211.120231.EST.KWTUMA@miamiu.muohio.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:51 AM -0500 2/11/97, Keith Tuma wrote: >So we're to believe that Taggart and Sobin are nostalgic, and pretentious to >boot? Second generation watered down Black Mountain? (And Cole Swensen got >accidentally tossed in THAT pile). Oddly, Keith, I thought that Ron meant Norma Cole in his list: >Consider, for example, that non-group posed by Forrest Gander. Several >of the folks on that list--Taggart, Cole and Sobin, say (and to some >degree Palmer)--all share enough features to compose a group of their >own except that the Loner status with all its aching pretentiousness is >one of its major preconditions. I don't think Ron would fall into the trap of naming men by their last names and then slip to a first name basis for a woman--I think Ron is much too aware for that. But then he added: >All of them are male second generation >Black Mountain poets whose work is notably more timid than that of >their elders. So I figured it must be some male Cole that I'm not familiar with. Who is this mysterious Cole? Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 18:51:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: Rasula and poetry zones In-Reply-To: <9702112227.AA18577@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII David, Thanks for the clarification. I too love "wink link" and wish I had a way of looking at "community" without missing so many frames. What do you do with value placed not in poet's self but in other selves who wouldn't necessarily identify as a community? Message-in-a-bottle writing, I suppose. And there's poetry-of-self that's remarkably effective at a kind of community-building (thinking of the huge audiences Sharon Old's draws, for example, among people who don't pay much attention to poetry. Bly, too.) Just wondering out loud here, & your thoughts wd be welcome. > One could present it in terms of a Greimas square (Self, Tradition, > Not-Self [Community], Not-Tradition [Innovation]). But I'm not sure > where it would go from there. That's hard. Too many wd say tradition is community, I think. (& innovation is tradition, too.) But I'm not clear on any of these terms & shd shut up. Wendy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 16:14:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Rasula and poetry zones David Kellogg suggests -- <<< Nonrepresentational or complicated representational investments in the self might be situated somewhere in the corner where self and innovation meet. . . . >>> (in the half-light there, below the window ledge, ya mean?) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 18:46:06 -0500 Reply-To: landers@frontiernet.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pete Landers Organization: SkyLark Publishing Company Subject: Re: Names are not Objects MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit There is another guy in my town with my name. Peter Landers bids on houses that are being auction off by banks. One day Peter Landers saw his own name on the list of mortgagees whose homes could be his. Peter Landers was shocked and looked through his property list but did not see the address there. Peter Landers called the bank and they were both confused until they looked Peter Landers up in the phone book. Peter Landers finally met the guy whose calls he has been getting for years. Peter Landers didn't buy Peter Landers' house. We now both use our middle initials. Peter D. Landers ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 16:55:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Amiri Baraka In a message dated 97-02-11 15:10:26 EST, you write: << Who is Charles Mingus's grandson? (I'm a huge Mingus fan these days; loved the idea of teaching him and Hart Crane at the same time.) sms >> The Bridge meets Pithecanthropus Erectus? Kevin Mingus is a 20 or 21 year old student at UC Berkeley, who was given his first bass by LA reed master Buddy Collette. Kevin, along with a young Indian_American pianist, Vijay Iyer (who's described as drawing on a mix of South Asian music/Ellington/Monk/Taylor), accompanied Amiri Baraka & some other poets last November or December in Oakland. The event got good reviews; I was wondering if any poetix ears had caught it as I was unable to attend. Charles ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 17:15:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: Names MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark Weiss wrote: > Jews name their kids for dead people, but there's some latitude because of > translation. Hebrew or Yiddish names tend to be identical with that of the > deceased, but there's some slide when it comes into English. So I was named > for my cousin Maurice who died as a baby the year before I was born. And Maria D. wrote: "mark weiss: i love this kind of stuff. i have a friend who had a very difficult relationship w/ his cold, unloving mother. he ws the youngest of a number of boys. when he asked once, in despair, why she had given birth to him, she responded, your uncle so and so (lou, levy, something) died, so we needed someone with an L-name." Hmm, this unravels a mystery. Was always told by my father that I was named (in part) for my grandmother, who died when my father was seven. Since her American name was Rose, this never made a lot of sense till now. (Who knows what her name had been in Russia, where she was born.) But there was also talk of my being named for a great great grandmother on my maternal side, Rachel Leet Wilson, who married Richard Harding and gave birth to Rebecca Harding (later Rebecca Harding Davis, author of _Life in the Iron Mills_, for you Am Lit trivia mavens). Loden is a made-up name (1972 vintage). Long, exhausting story, as I'm sure is true of many (esp. women's) last names. Rachel ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 18:34:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Rasula and poetry zones / wink link Aldon L. Nielsen notes -- <<<< with "wink link" David Kellog has gifted us with the most intriguingly poetic typo of the week (assuming it is in fact an error) powerfully descriptive -- >>>> yes, I noted that -- if you locate your metaphorical cursor on the wink link, it can oftentimes take you places -- (perhaps someone, somewhere may eventually compile email clips analogous to Joan Retallack's artful / chanceful erratum volume?) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 21:00:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos In-Reply-To: <199702111155.DAA06240@dfw-ix2.ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Ron, Sorry -- sent that last message unfinished. Anyway, I hope it should be clear that I'm not trying to say _everything_ about the field, and that my model is meant to be comrehensive (toward comprehending) rather than totalizing. I'm most interested in the macro-effects of reading and evaluation. But I think things can work pretty well on a local level too. I think in fact that these abstractions, as poles of value, _do_ interpellate us, in a real sense. I won't argue with you about whether there is any such thing as Innovation (or tradition, or the self, or community for that matter); what I'm getting at is precisely the idea that these concepts exist as horizons in the contemporary construction of poetic value. Nor does it solve any of the problems you've addressed re: St. Marks Books, or the response to Leningrad. It _does_ suggest that the problems with the reception of Leningrad may have something to do with the inability of many readers to respond to work that partakes of -- actually creates -- a number of communities via collaboration and cross-national investigation and that _also_ appeals to an unstable sense of literary innovation. One thing that I want to make clear is that this description is not evaluative, and that therefore it has nothing to say about whether this or that poet might be "too much in love with a certain codified sense of Beauty". On the other hand, it does suggest that the relative prominence of, say, Palmer among the people you mention may have to do with some critics' perception (misperception?) that he has _resolved_ some of the dichotomies between formal innovation and Beauty as an appeal to traditional (i.e., codified) standards. So one would have to work out reviewers' positive responses to Palmer and less positive responses to some of the others you've mentioned in terms of how they perceive the mechanisms of "transcendence" versus "contradiction." The difference between the androgyne and the hermaphrodite is a matter of such perceptual constructions. One issue that your post raises is the question of groups. Now, I really don't have an interest in creating new groups per se, even if I had the power (don't). But how would groups be represented here? Seems to me that a group occupies a position in the field, but that that position is changeable in a variety of ways. For example, "Black Mountain" probably opens somewhere toward the right-hand corner of my model (tho it seems to me, in passing, that the anthology wars of the sixties suggest a conflation at the time of community/innovation and self/tradition as value-poles: the field almost loses a whole dimension). By the nineties, it has certainly moved "up," toward tradition, in the sense that an engagement with BM can be seen as grappling with traditional forbears and through them, with Pound etc. It has also become more diffuse, wider, and by the same token individual poetic figures eclipse Black Mountain as such as points of alliance. What I mean is that it makes no sense on some level to call oneself a poet who learns from this "school", given the emergence of full-blown poetic careers in Olson, Duncan, Creeley, and related figures such as Jones/Baraka, Levertov, even (god help us) Dorn, all of whom have more concrete meaning as points on the field right now. Where I would place this or that poet is not really the point. My placement would differ from yours; my reading of individual poems would change, depending on my own context of reading and development (I am not separate from the field, even as critic -- critical statements are themselves interventions and carry weight). Gotta go bathe the baby. Picture's on my web site, if anybody's interested. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 21:04:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Diacritics in! Copies of article out soon... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I got my copies of _Diacritics_ today. Those who requested copies of my article on Marjorie Perloff will get 'em soon. But really, as I said, you should all get the whole issue. Much more significant stuff than mine in there: work by Perloff, Bernstein, Waldrop, Lauterbach, Perelman, and Aldon Nielsen (whose Black Chant, I want to announce publicly, is a mindblowing achievement). Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 21:56:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: entertainment and pleasure In-Reply-To: <9702112032.AA27809@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The Collingwood formulation is that art requires discipline at the beginning and gives pleasure at the end, while entertainment requires no no discipline but gives no nourishment (fake fat? diet coke?) I like Bateson's formula better: that entertainment is the food of depression, the absence of joy that feeds the absence of feeling. Wendy On Tue, 11 Feb 1997, henry wrote: > entertainment = ethos(accepted values) + pathos(feeling) - logos(:meaningless) > > propaganda = pathos + logos(meaning/originality) - ethos(:false values) > > art = ethos + logos + pathos > > (courtesy of Aristotle) > > - Henry Gould > --------------------------------------------------------------------- Wendy Battin (home) http://camel.conncoll.edu/ccother/wjbat/ (CAPA) http://shain.lib.conncoll.edu/CAPA/capa.html (Multiple Poetics) http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/5471/index.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 20:44:38 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "linda v. russo" Organization: University of Utah Subject: ironwood query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT does anyone know what michael cuddihy is doing these days? does he still have backissues of ironwood? is he still at box 40907, tuscon? or online? why did ironwood fold? is there some archived info i can turn to? also, i'd be interested in a list/stories abt small yet substantial -- say a couple to several years running -- poetics/poetry journals that folded in the past oh, 20 yrs. backchannel o.k. thx. linda. -- linda v. russo linda.russo@m.cc.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 18:31:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Franklin Bruno Subject: zones, etc. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" David Kellogg wrote: >What Rasula identifies as the MFA >school corresponds more or less to a poetry predicated on uncomplicated >representations of Self. Against this obviously is the poetry of social >conflict, community building, identity politics, etc. Call the struggle >between these two poles the horizontal (social) axis of the poetic field. >Appeal to one or another of these sources of value has little to do with >form as such. But how little? I would associate with Hejinian, Bernstein, and, a bit later, Leslie Scalapino, among many others, a position that would claim that formal issues have -a lot- to do with the way the self is constructed through the poem's formal strategies, the general idea being that fragmentation of the narrative (even the referential) effects of language serves to foreground the making-up-of the self from somehow analogous fragments. Maybe what I think is that the minute you talk about 'representations' (not just of Self) you're talking about, among other things, form. I'm sure that others here could put this more clearly/insightfully. Also, Bill Manhire has come up here a couple of times. I highly recommend his witty collection of short stories, published in the U.S. as -The New Land- (can't recall the publisher, sorry). Are there any of his poems readily available in this country? The UCLA library has a selection of NZ poetry, but it peters out in the early 90's. Finally, is no one here going to tell me how to contact Joel K. Meow? fjb ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 01:08:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: HOW BRIEF THE HUMAN SPAN.... Today on east 13th between first and second (this seems childish) I found many soggy and dusty (not quite mildewed, musty) copies of a literary magazine called "feed"--- Issue 1 (fall 1993) and the double issue, 2/3 I don't know if it still exists. I didn't recognize the names of any of the contributors and didn't have time to read any of the pieces. I did however hear of De Boer who distributed it and Joey Ramone and David Trinidad who are thanked or at least acknowledged for being themselves..... (Chris Stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 01:42:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: JDHollo@AOL.COM Subject: Michael Coffey / poetry "schools" Michael, the categories you suggest in your initial post sound good to me--with some exceptions: Scratch "Language poets"--term meaningless to Barnes & Noble audience; Multicultural (not poetics--poetics is something else)--fine (and there's really no need to break that down0; spoken or performance poetry--why not simply Performance Poetry; St. Mark's of New York School--as with "Language," overly pseudo-specific; Formalist--old hat (= Old Hat, in fact, but you don't want that); same goes for "mainstream" etc.: why not Traditional, and Open Form; Classical--OK, I guess; Poetry in Translation --OK. So, then, this would be my list: Traditional Open Form Multicultural Performance Classical In Translation The first four, of course, overlap in a multitude of ways, but a simple way to distinguish Trad from Open Form would be--for starters--to put the books reviewed in the New York Times, NY Review of Books, New Yorker, etc., in Trad, and then take a look at the rest. Anselm Hollo ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 00:33:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: door-darkening Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Chris, oh dear, no, dont think i meant anything. as i recall, i was listing names of poets whose readings at UNH i really enjoyed, and i was pointing out that each had some academic connections. . . . i was responding to someone on the list who had sd that academics (or some similar term) cldnt write poetry. And you see, i thought you taught or had taught college. It was the requirement of symmetry, to which i had obliged myself, that after each poet i named, there would be a parenthetic "Time magazine" phrase indicating that this one, too, had college connections ; i guess i picked "darkened doors" for you because i thot it wd amuse you, the campy melodrama of it. i never supposed you wd connect with it as my (or anybody i know's) honest opinion of you. it was flip, and i apologize if it has been disturbing you. You can darken m y door anytime you want, compadre. db ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 00:54:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Telephone companies cashing in on the internet Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear listmembers: given the clout of phone companies, and given the times we live in, i should think they stand a good chance. i have written to isp@fcc.gov,to let them know that i object to this proposed legislation. It would make e-mail unaffordable to me, and it would make me disinclined to play into the phone companies' hands by calling long-distance instead. I told isp that i would go back to snailmailing. And i would hope tens of thousands of others would do so. db ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 18:37:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski Subject: names and schools Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" enjoying the parallel discs on names and poetry schools, arose by any other name, the power of labels aof names, numerologically and other logics. to have a name to change. to group under a name so as to better understand or at least contain. as my own poetry cuts across lables, incorporates, a real eclecticism, a pastiche trying to organically combine. and poets i feel closest to dont let me in. so we stride. a name i'll never be called by. my name the way a dog would say it. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 20:44:38 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "linda v. russo" Organization: University of Utah Subject: Re: Names are not Objects MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > you also have an uncle shiny & an uncle bougie. > not sure about the spelling. shiney b/c when he was born nunno said that he was shiney as a piece of coal (this was schukyll county, PA) how did you know the word 'bougie'? do you did they used to use candles to dilate body canals? i think he'd rather be uncle buschzy! -- linda v. russo linda.russo@m.cc.utah.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 21:13:09 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Names In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >Imagine having the cosmic good fortune as a poet to be born a Wordsworth. db. Or Poe. The job fitted him to a T George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 00:06:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brigham Taylor Subject: Essex Hemphill Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" on 7 Feb Aldon Nielson wrote: Around the same time I received word that my old college mate Essex Hemphill, who published one of my first sorry poems in his journal _Nethula_, had died of AIDS -- Not long afterward I was told by a "scholar" in Los Angeles that the British author Essex Hemphill had passed away -- When I told him Essex was from DC, he said that he must have made the mistake because he'd seen Essex in a film by Isaac Julien -- but of course the film he had in mind was made by Marlon Riggs -- Hard to keep those Anglo-Afro-American-Gay-Writer-Filmpeople straight, eh? Perhaps the confusion is due to the fact that Essex Hemphill appeared in both Marlon Riggs's "Tongues Untied" AND Isaac Julien's "Looking for Langston." In any event Essex's death is a major loss to poetry, queer studies, gay literature, African American literature, American literature, English language literature, and the planet in general. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 03:47:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: A Lease on History Joe Lease queries: >I'd like to know if Ron Silliman agrees with Foucault that identity is >plural and the purpose of effective history (counter history, radical >history) is to dissipate it: this position is in severe conflict with >Althusser > Yes I do and no it's not. History doesn't have a "purpose." We might assign one, but that's another story. Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 18:49:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Clothes Make the Man Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" George, No wonder you didn't get mugged. Dressed like that, people probably thought you were in one of Sun Ra's Astro-adjectival Arkestra's of the period. >Herb Levy (often seen on 5th and Seneca in Seattle in jodhpurs) reminded me >of a trip I took to NYC in 1970, to hear Pharoah Sanders at Slugs's Bar. I >thought I would just wear my regular clothes, so I wd appear hip and not >get mugged. So I wore > >a toque (Canadian for knitted cap) >a shirt made of some viscous material in green and black stripes >a maroon sweater knitted by my mother >a serge cape once worn by a City Of Westminster police constable >yellow jeans >logging boots >big knitted red socks >electricians gloves (you know, stripes of grey, red and blue >long stringy hair >a moustache >dark glasses >a cheapo cigar with a plastic tip > > >I didnt get mugged. Not even an offer. Not even in front of Peace Eye Books. > Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 13:00:28 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: 9448721P@ARTS.GLA.AC.UK Organization: Glasgow University Subject: OBJECT PERMANENCE #8 OBJECT PERMANENCE #8 is now available, featuring New Writing by Bruce Andrews, John M. Bennett, Andrea Brady, Adrian Clarke, Clark Coolidge, Peter Finch, Pierre Joris, Peter Middleton, Carlyle Reedy, Robert Sheppard, Fiona Templeton, Lawrence Upton/Bob Cobbing, and Johan de Wit. Also 14+ pages of reviews (inc. primary trouble anthology, Raworth`s Clean And Well Lit, McCaffery`s The Cheat of Words, Jarnot`s Some Other Kind of Mission...) and listings. Available from Peter Manson Flat 3/2, 16 Ancroft Street, Glasgow Scotland G20 7HU Payment in UK by cheque/PO payable to Object Permanence, overseas by Sterling IMO if possible (orders in equivalent local currency are okay, but a Sterling draft drawn on a UK bank is best - we lose a lot on dollar cheques). stlg2.50 inc. postage in UK; stlg3 surface mail abroad; stlg4 airmail. This is the FINAL issue of OBJECT PERMANENCE. Thanks to all those who contributed work or read the magazine. Contributors` copies are on their way. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 08:06:25 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: poetry "schools" In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 11 Feb 1997 15:35:18 -0500 from On Tue, 11 Feb 1997 15:35:18 -0500 Mark Prejsnar said: To what extent is identifying nonmainstream >trends, giving 'em labels & profiles, simply helping much of the book >trade pinpoint what they don't want to stock, what won't help them in >theri increasingly single-minded drive to maximize profits at the cost of >social and cultural values? The audience for poetry is small. Most of us would rather relax with a carefully-constructed (fictional) artificial paradise and a beer, than read some poverty-stricken poet's feeble translation of real paradise, drinking our cup of water with Milton. There is a connection(s) between aesthetics and politics, but we might ask, what's criticism for? Baudelaire wrote a short essay on this in which he said that trying to follow the sober analytical critics to poetry is taking the long way around (if it's a way at all). Study, for the poet, he said, remains in the studio. The prime relation is between the artist and the audience. The honest critic will (paradoxically) partake of the enthusiasm and inspiration of the artist h/she critiques. Poetry is a kind of human fire, but it's not spread by a new analytical approach to language or technique. It's imaginative fire (the longing for paradise) tempered by experience (fire tempered by the sword). Pound was right, I think, to imagine that the potential for paradise on earth is reflected in the past, underneath all the tragedies and insanities. The age of gold is buried in the Gilded Age. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 09:13:44 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: Incorrect or incomplete address field found and ignored. From: Pam Brown Subject: Re: uni query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello Potics Poets - Damien has his answer Thanks Pam Brown >Return-Path: >Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 17:47:37 +1000 >Date-Warning: Date header was inserted by muwayb.ucs.unimelb.edu.au >From: Damien Broderick >Subject: Re: uni query >X-Sender: damien@ariel.its.unimelb.edu.au >To: Pam Brown > >At 10:57 AM 2/11/97 +1000, you wrote: >>Hello Damien Broderick - >>I've sent your query on to the US Poetics list > >Hi Pam. Thanks. The mystery is now solved - he'd spelled his own alma >mater incorrectly. Hmm. Would you mind posting this happy conclusion to yr >poet mates, so they can call of their diligent bloodhounds? > >Regards, Damien > > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 22:30:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Calling Interlochen MI I have a high school age student from California going back to Interlochen, MI. She's worked with writers here, has the bug etc. Could you please send name of any community oriented writing program/workshop in which she might participate before end of week. She's about to be, so to speak, "released." Wd be great if she had some stable lit support. Back channel will be appreciated. Cheers, Stephen Vincent Steph4848@aol.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 10:11:16 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: review (very short) There must be something roughly paradise-like about Our World if there's a little press in the Canary Islands called Zasterle that publishes little books like the new _Light Street_ by Nick Piombino. I don't know who he is but he writes beautiful poems. Maybe somebody else can take a turn doing a review, this little book deserves one. I'd quote but I don't have it in front of me & I'm still reading it. I showed it to Savage Reader and even she was won over. (Jack Spandrift just snarled - but I think he's jealous.) Nick Piombino, _Light Street_, Zasterle Press, 1997 - Henry Gould (chauffeur to Savage Reader) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 11:07:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark W Scroggins Subject: Re: entertainment and pleasure In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Mark W: actually, I'm not sure I wondered whether there was a "puritan strain" in yr. post, but rather suspected one--as I all too often suspect one in many poker-faced condemnations of maypoles and frolics--but your posting here does much to clarify what you said, and I agree with you here wholeheartedly. Yes, the LZ book is out and shd. be in stores as we speak. The main issues of Zukofsky criticism? 1) (really an issue of LZ scholarship)--to establish and get into print the texts themselves--the "A" we have is rife with typos, the Complete Short Poetry simply isn't complete and has its own textual problems, the Apollinaire book, "First Half of "A"-9," and "Arise, arise" are out of print. 2) to think about Zukofsky as a "usable past," as an influence on younger poets than him--everybody knows Creeley read LZ, Duncan read LZ, etc. etc., but no-one to my knowledge has thought really carefully about precisely what they learned from his work and where they took it--and this goes double for poets of the "language" generation, who were growing up reading LZ, many of them. I'm not talking simple influence study, but a thoughtful consideration of what remains productive and instigative about the work, and what might have to somehow be relegated to the dustbin of "high modernist" practice. I realize this sounds pretty dry, but once I put on that critic's hat, I turn pretty dry... best, Mark S On Tue, 11 Feb 1997, Mark Wallace wrote: > Hello Mark Scroggins: > > Good to hear from you on the list--I saw your announcement several > weeks ago about your U-Alabama book on Zukovsky. Is the book now > available? > > You ask me if there's a "puritan strain" in my critique of > entertainment, and wonder what would happen if I had used the word > "pleasure" instead of "entertainment"? But in fact the words seem to me > CRUCIALLY DIFFERENT words. Actually, I don't think I rejected the notion > of entertainment, but just the notion that EVERYTHING MUST BE > ENTERTAINMENT when it is not economic work, and I think very clearly that > it was the modern media environment suggests--there is a time for profit > making, and a time for entertainment. But "entertainment" is only one > aspect of pleasure, even of play--that there might be more complex > elements of pleasure and play than that simply of casual entertainment is > something that the modern media complex does not wish its subjects to > know. Hey, I love entertainment, but not when it's the only kind of > "pleasure" that's made widely available. I suppose entertainment does have > its active elements, but a more thorough notion of play might suggest that > play involves the ability to radically reformulate identity in the name of > what gives pleasure, whereas entertainment represents the more limited > notion of "relaxing"--i.e., taking time off from the labor that you have > had at best limited choice in undertaking. > > Please excuse typos-this modem won't let me correct them today! > > Actually, Mark, on another subject--I'd be interested to hear a > brief description of what you take to be the central issues to Zukovksy > criticism at the moment. Yes, I'm sure it's in the book, but a preview > here would be most welcome... > > mark wallace > > > /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ > | | > | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun | > | to go to extremes" | > | GWU: | > | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | > | EPC: | > | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | > |____________________________________________________________________________| > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 08:34:15 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Teaching Coalition Conference (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 3 Jan 1997 08:32:52 -0800 From: Christine A. ASCHAN To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Teaching Coalition Conference ************************************************************ * UC/CSU TEACHING COALITION CONFERENCE* ************************************************************ TEACHING THE HUMANITIES TODAY On Friday, February 2l, faculty in the humanities from the University of California and the California State University will hold a conference to discuss common problems in teaching in the humanities. The conference has emerged from two exploratory meetings hosted by the Humanities Research Institute in 1995. It will take place at the Henry H. Huntington Library in San Marino, California; Robert Ritchie, the Library's Director of Research, and Professor of History at UCLA, will open the session. The event is co-sponsored by the HRI and by the Division of Academic Affairs, Office of the Chancellor, California State University. William Weber, Professor of History at CSU Long Beach, has planned and organized the meeting. Faculty will come from campuses of the two systems to discuss issues involved in teaching popular culture, framing lower-division core programs, and making pedagogical uses of technology. There is a $12 charge for lunch. If you are interested in attending, contact Bill Weber, (310) 985-4426, for further information. ************************** Session I 10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. ************************** POPULAR CULTURE IN THE CLASSROOM? Chair: Aldon Nielsen, English, San Jose State University Susan McClary, Musicology, UCLA Robert Coleman, English, Sonoma State University Peter Euben, Politics, UC Santa Cruz Richard Simon, English, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo *********************** Session II 1:30 p.m.-3:00 p.m. *********************** TEACHING THE HUMANITIES AS A CORE Chair: Dorothy Abrahamse, Dean, College of Liberal Arts, CSULB John Smith, Director, UCI Humanities Core Curriculum Brook Thomas, English, UCI Les Adler, Director, Hutchins School of Liberal Studies, Sonoma State University ********************** Session III 3:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m. ********************** DISTANCE LEARNING: HOPES AND FEARS Chair: Brian K. Smith, Religious Studies, UC Riverside William Herbrechtsmeier, Religious Studies, CSU Humboldt Katherine Hayles, English, UCLA Walter Oliver, Spanish, CSU San Bernardino Richard Hecht, Religious Studies, UCSB ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 10:04:46 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: per-mail (Pear tree MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT M writtererng: > What I'm suggesting is a sort of e-mail exquisite corpse. I've seen as > I expect you have those ones some websites have tried to initiate, and they > are IMO by and large godawful. really I love the one at EPC, especially when high school kids & the like get on there. its fascinating, the kind of stuff I would love to be able to include in my work from time to time but just cant produce--that clumsy sentiment in awkward lines. I'm reminded of Cage's story in SILENCE of being at a cocktail party where the host & hostess gave a wretched performance of the entire score of a second-rate operetta. there was a buddhist monk in attendance, & part-way through Cage looked over to see how he was taking it. as I recall, Cage says something like "The look on his face was beatific." you know, Duncan insists that there is no good or bad poetry. I'm not inclined to agree, but--well, it bears some thought. I mean, what one considers "le bad" has its uses & even a strange sort of beauty in the right context. I only wish I had earlier work (like from h-s) of this nature to draw from--forlorn love poems, poems addressing friendships in peril, that sort of thing. malheureusement, I was far more serious in that embarassing romantic sort of way--as I recall, my early notebooks are replete with the familiar awkward gestures of the Romantic--despair & solitude, phrases ending with "of emptiness", lots of "empty" & "emptiness" throughout--coupled, oddly enough, with infantile gestures of explicitly political rebellion which seem to range over all territories--facsism, marxism, even democracy movements. I distinctly remember being enamored of the graphic used by the american news media to signify the Polish democracy movement Solidarnosc (sorry no diacretc)--that sort of silk-screened looking red banner. too, I had read both The Communist Manifesto & parts of Mein Kampf by the end of 6th grade, with apparently little grasp of either outside of the rhetoric, & had an early fascination with the figure of Mussolini & the austere grandeur of fascist art & architecture. you can imagine the jumble all of these make in the notebooks. I havent looked at them in years--its amazing to me that I remember this much. I shall have to bring them back next time I head east, or maybe have them sent. > I would suggest that this wordprocessing > technology is geared to delete, not add, and so that aspect of the > technology should be employed as well: namely, the proper e-corpse would > involve each person both adding text and deleting the pre-existent text. We > would have to develop a technique by which a certain portion of the > "message" could be changed everytime, but some ever-growing part of it could > not be changed. My reasoning for this being that if changes could always be > made to the entire text, then the movement toward a settled and monologic > voice would be more likely than if, as in the paper corpses, some part had > to be left untouched every time. yes yss I like this. we could do a collaborative project by email with this sort of technique. one thing I should like to stipulate, though, is that the length of the work be cut down considerably, say, to 20 lines. this is simply because I will have to do my part of the work (reading & manipulation) here at work, & with the size of the samples youve sent thus far that would be unmanagable. I'm wondering what kind of shape this method could take. I mean, if we have to start with smaller texts & delete, your suggestion of some kind of stricture for maintaining portions of those texts becomes crucial. one possibility might be simply an approximate ratio to be retained; for instance, we could establish that no more than 1/4 of the text may be changed in a sitting. further, I might suggest that no more than 1/4 of the already-transformed material be changed, if thats not too complicated. what wed have then is something like a diminishing realm of action, & that would also give us an established stopping point thats a bit more random than, say, an established number of rounds or entries per person. the changes may be hard to spot at times so of course I think these rules should be loose in their application, meaning I probably wouldnt challenge you if you were to make what might otherwise (in Monopoly) be thought of as an "illegal" move/change. hmm--strange thqt a sort of negative image of the rhetoric of gamesmanship should crop up here. oh--make sure you cut off those little darts > each time you work on the poem--otherwise well accumulate too many. unless of course you want them as part of the work yr doing. >Do you want me to send you that paperback book thing? oh yes absolutely yes. > Perhaps you knew all this! no I'm afraid j & I are not in contact. this is not a source of disappointment to me--we did have a sort of falling out, though I couldnt attach an exact moment or event to that feeling. I can say, though, that it had to do with her increasing involvement with erin & gail--& her tendency to turn her back on linda & I at parties & receptions where it would be possible/more profitable to associate with them. partly that has to do with friction [mildly] between linda & erin; partly to do with j's--personality. in any case, I honestly dont have much respect for her either as an artist or a person. knowing as you do my poetry-poetics-politics, can you imagine j & I across a table from one another, even over a guinness? & thats not even considering the personal so-called baggage that conversation would have to carry. "oh, dont end so heavy" says. well--heres my first cotntribuation (I cut it to 20 printed lines if thats ok). love c. ________________________________________________ "Automata pense" This is an automated ponse to message Bravo, T"techne" , changing time but techne is not the thing. I usings (or his at the end (c'mon folks, you can read We are all immersed in a much deeper "techne" - Timeam reminded Proust mitt self desolations/voids/returns tha Time brings. Proust's narrator he finds his writerly and the creation a SIMILAR sensation (not the same, but similar, from the ancient past, wechoing) brings memof his gigantic Oeuvof in a particular effect of time: ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 12:26:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Vincent S Gregory Subject: LINEbreak MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > > > > L I N E b r e a k > > > ____________________________________________________________________ > > > The LINEbreak radio series with Charles Bernstein is now > available on tape. Each tape contains two thirty-minute > interview/performances. Cassettes are $11 plus shipping; DATs are $22 plus shipping. > > > INTERVIEWS AND PERFORMANCES FROM THE LITERARY EDGE > FROM FALL 1996: > > > Tape one- Tape eight- > A: Cecilia Vicuna A: Peter Straub > B: Dennis Tedlock B: Peter Straub > > Tape two- Tape nine- > A: Ray Federman A: Carla Harryman > B: Lance & Andrea Olsen B: Paul Auster > > Tape three- Tape ten- > A: Ted Pearson A: Luci Tapahonso > B: Ken Sherwood & Loss Glazier B: Bruce Andrews > > Tape four- Tape elevan- > A: Lyn Hejinian A: Luci Tapahonso > B: Ron Silliman B: Ben Yarmolinsky > > Tape five- Tape twelve- > A: Robert Creeley A: Karen MacCormack > B: Robert Creeley B: Ben Friedlander > > Tape six- Tape thirteen- > A: Jena Osman A: Barbara Guest > B: Fiona Templeton B: Susan Howe > > Tape seven- > A: Steve McCaffery > B: Steve McCaffery > > The full set of 13 tapes is offered on cassette for $125 and on DAT for $260 (plus shipping). U.S. residents add $3 for shipping. Non-U.S. residents add $5 for the 1 to 4 tapes and $12 for 5 or more tapes. > > Please include tape #('s) & make checks payable to Vincent S. > Gregory. Send to UB English Department, ATT: Vincent Gregory, 302 Clemens Hall, SUNY @ Buffalo, Bflo., NY 14260. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 12:49:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Re: Michael Coffey / poetry "schools" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The more I think about all this agony over categorization, the more I think we've strayed far from the original intent of Michael's posting, which I interpret as simply a call for a strategy to make bookstore managers/buyers aware of the range of poetry available to them, and disabuse them of the too-prevalent assumption that the only poetry worth stocking is what comes out of Norton, Knopf, and (if they're feeling really adventurous) Wesleyan and Pitt. I don't think it serves poetry's readership to subdivide via shelf labeling what are already pitifully small poetry sections in most bookstores; the interpretive spectrum of categories -- while interesting to discuss in a listserv -- is too large and abstract and overlapping to inflict on a readership that simply wants to browse and make its own decisions, thank you. The bookstore managers just need to be aware that Sun & Moon, Roof, O Books, Hard Press, etc. have readerships every bit as interested and devoted as any other literary press, and that the store is just as -- if not more -- likely to sell one or two copies of, say, Michael's book from Sun & Moon, as it is the latest Alice Quinn-annointed newcomer. It's not so much a question of educating poetry readers via shelf labels as it is educating poetry providers through articles in trade journals (like PW) which they as business professionals are required to read. *********************** Fred Muratori "The spaces between things keep (fmm1@cornell.edu) getting bigger & more Reference Services Division important." Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries - John Ashbery Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 10:50:01 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Names are not Objects MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > how did you know the word 'bougie'? > do you did they used to use candles to dilate body canals? of course I know the word bougie, both of them. dunno about the body canals--seems like a candle is sort of--a hard surface. some damage could be done if youre not careful--kids, dont try this at home. .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 12:52:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Re: review, Piombino Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Nick Piombino is also the author of that wonderful, weird essay collection, _The Boundary of Blur_ from Roof Books. I'll certainly seek out the poetry. >There must be something roughly paradise-like about Our World if there's >a little press in the Canary Islands called Zasterle that publishes little >books like the new _Light Street_ by Nick Piombino. I don't know who he >is but he writes beautiful poems. Maybe somebody else can take a turn doing >a review, this little book deserves one. I'd quote but I don't have it in >front of me & I'm still reading it. I showed it to Savage Reader and even >she was won over. (Jack Spandrift just snarled - but I think he's jealous.) > >Nick Piombino, _Light Street_, Zasterle Press, 1997 > >- Henry Gould (chauffeur to Savage Reader) *********************** Fred Muratori "The spaces between things keep (fmm1@cornell.edu) getting bigger & more Reference Services Division important." Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries - John Ashbery Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 11:32:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: review (very short) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'll second this, at least the part about the book. Don't know much about paradise, but I'd suppose Zasterle would be something to help compose one. And certainly if you want to know more about Nick Piombino, also read his essays in The Boundary of Blur, a book published a few years ago by Roof, which is marvelous. I do have LIGHT STREET in front of me after recently finishing it. I don't find it very excerptable in really short bits, but I do like the sections of the title poem a lot, so here is section 3 from "Light Street." 3. Learn to wait. Stroke the velvety silence. Time's furry coat. Not even a step, no move at all. Blank? Good. Impatient? Sorry. Describing it is o.k. One watery cup. Reading. Mending. Going back. Someone came between. But this one also drifted away. I also love the "book-ness" of this book, its size and shape and other characteristics, and particularly the cover design by Rosa Ventura. But then I'm always taken by these Zasterle books put out by Manuel Brito. charles alexander At 10:11 AM 2/12/97 EST, you wrote: >There must be something roughly paradise-like about Our World if there's >a little press in the Canary Islands called Zasterle that publishes little >books like the new _Light Street_ by Nick Piombino. I don't know who he >is but he writes beautiful poems. Maybe somebody else can take a turn doing >a review, this little book deserves one. I'd quote but I don't have it in >front of me & I'm still reading it. I showed it to Savage Reader and even >she was won over. (Jack Spandrift just snarled - but I think he's jealous.) > >Nick Piombino, _Light Street_, Zasterle Press, 1997 > >- Henry Gould (chauffeur to Savage Reader) > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 11:32:38 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > even (god help us) Dorn, This Dorn fellow seems to be reviled by many right now, for reasons I understand. But are things he has done even worse than Pound, or Adorno (a not too-long-ago thread here), that the mere mention of his name requires a prayer? And are people still reading his work, some of which I still find insightful and quite brilliant? charles ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 13:36:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: A Lease on History Comments: To: Ron Silliman In-Reply-To: <199702121147.DAA21585@dfw-ix1.ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Dear Ron Silliman, Perhaps I should have said historiography: obviously Foucault means and I meant history the discourse not history the gooey stuff we all walk around in all the time and from which there is no escape (yawn). Foucault seems to have been a kind of dervish of post-historical carnival. His commitment to dissipating the idea of a unitary identity was ethical, obviously political in the broadest sense: like a law that would make all prisoners judges. I agree that Foucault uses counter-history as a Telos: he celebrates it even when he says there is nothing to celebrate. Much the way Jameson celebrates Perelman in utterly romantic (apocalyptic) terms in the pomo tome. So the problem comes in for Althusserians this way: if subjectivity is created by hailing, where is that critique located and what does it generate. I think that in your Leningrad piece (the piece on the task of the collaborator) you say that structuralism and poststructuralism taught poets that individuals don't exist. There's a severe conflict between Althusser's certainty (the opposite of Cezanne's doubt?) and Foucault's belief that individuals do exist emeshed in culture and history and power and multiple multiple multiple identies and because they exist they can chart culture and politics in a more effective way than they could if they didn't exist. This question is not directly (as in the fallacy of imitative form) related to choices about how to write: how much representation and what kinds how much abstraction and what kinds. But Foucault, like Lyotard, is deeply suspicious of old-boy meta-narratives. For example, a marxism that takes John Asbhery's you can't say it that way anymore and tries to give it historical determinist messianic force. You once referred to the wounded-Buffalo school of romantic second-generation Black Mountain outsiders: that's in the same Leningrad memoir (a very subjective and personal reminsicence): my point here is not to defend individual poets but to locate the discussion of poetry zones, which discussion usefully opens the sociology of poetry and defnition and production, within an awareness of specific writing practices . . . with all their textures, all their graniness, tangy, palpable, audible, differences. All best, Joseph Lease On Wed, 12 Feb 1997, Ron Silliman wrote: > Joe Lease queries: > > >I'd like to know if Ron Silliman agrees with Foucault that identity is > >plural and the purpose of effective history (counter history, radical > >history) is to dissipate it: this position is in severe conflict with > >Althusser > > > > Yes I do and no it's not. History doesn't have a "purpose." We might > assign one, but that's another story. > > Ron Silliman > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 13:33:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: SOLIOQUY Press Release Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable ******************************************************** Bravin Post Lee Gallery 80 Mercer St. New York, NY 10012 212-966-2672 bplg@interport.net PRESS RELEASE ******************************************************** Soliloquy An Installation by Kenneth Goldsmith "Scheue Dich ja nicht davor, Unsinn zu reden! Nur mu=DFt Duf auf Deinen Unsinn lauschen." (Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.) --Ludwig Wittgenstein During the week of April 15, 1996 to April 21, 1996, the text-based artist Kenneth Goldsmith tape recorded every word he spoke from the moment he woke up until the moment he fell asleep. He subsequently transcribed the tapes into a simple word processing program, removing all peripheral language except his own; the words were then strung together into seven separate paragraphs (one for each day), thus creating the raw material for Soliloquy, to be presented at the Bravin Post Lee Gallery opening February 8 and continuing through March 7. Soliloquy is an installation whereby the second most ephemeral human product, speech, is materialized and concretized in the gallery setting. If Goldsmith is to be taken as a somewhat typical example, then an average human being speaks 183,685 words each week. The artist has taken this week's worth of blather, printed it out (no editing, of course), and plastered the walls of the gallery, floor to ceiling, with three hundred forty four 22" x 30" sheets of paper containing nothing other than what he spoke during this one week last April. "If every word spoken in New York City daily were somehow to materialize as a snowflake, each day there would be a blizzard." --Kenneth Goldsmith Soliloquy, in its profound black and white silence, calls into focus one our most basic (and most often taken for granted) functions: the role of speech in our everyday lives. Speech is flexibly construed as either a public or a private human function; we are often guarded in what we say to others, hoping not to be overheard. However, just as often, we are self-consciously aware that we are using language in a public way, meant to be heard by many. How we define ourselves and how others see us in the world is constructed by what we say. A monumental step in a child's development is the first recognized public use of language. Words are spoken, and then just as fast, they disappear. Goldsmith has frozen that which we often would like most to forget; in doing so, his own language and speech have been seized and made totally public. By turns humiliating, enthralling, boring, tedious, absurd, absorbing, and yet always overwhelming, Soliloquy puts speech and its attendant issues under a magnifying glass. "The gallery will be covered wall-to-wall with bad breath and I'll be sure to get out of town as soon as it goes up. You can't believe all the things I said that I wish I hadn't," says the artist. REPORTER: Why don't you write the way you talk? GERTRUDE STEIN: Why don't you read the way I write? Soliloquy opens Saturday February 8 and continues through March 7. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 13:37:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: review (very short) / Zaserle Henry Gould notes -- <<< There must be something roughly paradise-like about Our World if there's a little press in the Canary Islands called Zasterle that publishes little books like the new _Light Street_ by Nick Piombino. I don't know who he is but he writes beautiful poems. >>> that would be the same Zasterle Press that published, few years back, a little poem-book entitled *Under Erasure* by Mr. Barrett Watten. (gotta figure out where I put that tiny gem) somehow didn't note/recall Z.P. as locaated in the C islands ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 11:49:52 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: poetry "schools" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Mark Prejsnar wrought: > To what extent is identifying nonmainstream > trends, giving 'em labels & profiles, simply helping much of the book > trade pinpoint what they don't want to stock, what won't help them in > theri increasingly single-minded drive to maximize profits at the cost of > social and cultural values? I wasnt so much thinking active avoidance [Pubwkly as "how not to shop"] as lack of interest-- from the pov of most bkstores, why seek new poetry titles, especially work that challenges the mainstream? but its the latter half of that question tells me youre raising a very possibility. on the other hand, hell, theyve avoided us this long without a guide simply by not purchasing books from any of the relatively smaller presses. so how much dmg could it really do to remind them were here. I just dont expect it to do a lot of good, either. again, though I wnt to emphasize that this has a lot to do with the way we buy poetry. if you have a good local bkstore (not a chain), why not place some of yr SPD orders through them? I'm as bad about this as anybody--I love to have those packages come right to my door. but if enough people do it, they might take a hint(or a suggestion). & it goes without saying that we have to continue to support stores like Bridge St. that do act as venues for good work. re schools & categories, of course one way to blur the pigeon-holing effect might be to highlight presses, not zoos or zones or movements. maybe presses are still subject to being fixed in their orientation from the outside ["isnt that the one that publishes X?"], but it seems to me that an article that shows the press at work, ie a diverse catalog of publications, could avoid that effect. maybe something like a brief editorial interview coupled with a catalog & samples. well, now I've drifted into fantasy. or maybe just transposed the problem. c. .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 11:47:07 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Essex Hemphill In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII what I left out was that my interlocutor, having said that he saw Essex in IJ's film, proceeded to describe MR's film -- _Looking_ has always bugged me, perhaps because it seems so unHughesian, but I only saw it once and need to give it a fair chance on another viewing -- Does anybody know if there is any work being done towards collecting Hemphill's poetry? The one readily available selected writings is a tiny sampling of his work over the years -- _Nethula Journal_, by the way, ran from '79 through '82 -- published Michelle Parkerson (whose film on Audre Lorde is being shown again on some PBS stations this month), Sterling Brown, Ahmos Zu Bolton, Robert Hayden, (the irrepressible Judson Crews!), several early works by Harryette Mullen, Joanne Jimason, Maxine Clair and many others including your correspondent, then a student -- Great art work in every number -- the name of the journal came to Essex in a dream -- He had dreams like that! one of the reasons we all loved talking with him -- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 14:49:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: Re: ironwood query Michael Cuddihy wrote a book, essentially a memoir, about _Ironwood_ which was published in, I think, the late eighties. It's quite a good book, haven't come across anything like it really. An editorial memoir. However I can only assure you of its existence, can't remember title or publisher, can't find my copy. SPD had, perhaps still has, some backissues of Ironwood. The Spicer/Dickinson, Oppen, & last issue. They may be gone. Best, Rod ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 15:39:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jennifer Sondheim" Subject: Perl program MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII You can easily modify the program below to add/hide/delete material on a file for exquisite corpse; it's Perl, runs in Unix shell. Alan ----------------------------------------------------------------------- #!/usr/local/bin/perl -w # Memo Program for Shell Account $| = 1; print "\n\aThese are your current messages:\n\n"; print `cat .message`; `cp .message .message.old`; print "\n\aWould you like to erase lines? If yes, type y.\n"; chop($no=); if ($no ne "y") {goto FINAL;} print "To erase lines enter first words or unique phrases,\n"; print "one per line, control-d to end.\n"; open(ZIP, ">> begin"); chop(@rem=); print ZIP @rem; close ZIP; foreach $rem (@rem) {$this = "grep -v '^$rem' .message > .mess"; `$this`; `mv .mess .message`;} `rm begin`; FINAL: { print "Would you like to add to current message list? If so, type y.\n"; chop($str=); if ($str eq "y") {print "Add new lines now.\n"; print "Use carriage return at the end of each line, use ^d to end.\n"; open(APPEND, ">> .message"); @text=; print APPEND @text; close APPEND;}} exit(0); ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 09:06:40 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: Re: zones, etc. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > Also, Bill Manhire has come up here a couple of times. I highly recommend > his witty collection of short stories, published in the U.S. as -The New > Land- (can't recall the publisher, sorry). Are there any of his poems > readily available in this country? The UCLA library has a selection of NZ > poetry, but it peters out in the early 90's. Try "Sheet Music: Poems 1967-1982", Victoria University Press 1996. This is a collection of his early poems, most of which had been out of print for a long time. His more recent books, "Milky Way Bar" and "My Sunshine", also from VUP, should also be available, but IMO they're less interesting. I have a longish review of Sheet Music and My Sunshine at "http://www2.met.co.nz/nwfc/beard/www/my_sunshine_sheet_music.html", in case you're interested. Cheers &c, Tom Beard. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 15:04:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Provoking: the stretch Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Tom Beard wrote: >I don't feel in any danger of conscription (though I've played around >on the avant-garde assault course for a while, and toy with the idea of >joining the territorials). I just get the feeling sometime (and this may be >a wrong impression on my part) that some people use the terms "language >writing" and "linguistically innovative" interchangably, and I didn't like >the implication that non-"language" writing couldn't be linguistically >innovative. --I have gotten that impression before myself, and also doubted it. "Language" writing, if not taken to be the grossly abbreviated version of the same (?) word in caps with equals signs between the letters (L=A=N, etc) is exceedingly problemantic, since all poems use language. "Always already" to borrow that annoying Derridian phrase. B. Perelman, in his recent _Marginalization of Poetry_ discusses various terms for the poetry that is his subject, but I wasn't very happy with his (non) conclusions. (People might argue there are poems that don't use language, eg "sound poems," "visual poems", but here the word poem is obviously modified with another word--suggesting that the word "poem" is meant to describe an abstract form, like a "feeling" or an "idea", though probably closer to the former than the latter in the US today--and this is something I hope to get back to below.) All "language" and "non-language" (or "traditional") poems use language, then. (I am being painfully simplistic and verbose in an effort to worry this out.) All my examples are the most obvious possible. I suspect many on this list have thought this all out before but I this is an attempt to at least give words to my understanding, with the hope that people will agree or disagree where they deem appropriate. I apology for the length. And most contemporary poets probably consider there use of language to be innovative (a term that comprises one boundary of the poetry field we have seen recently). From the modernists forward (maybe from the French Surrealists forward) I can think of few of even the most widely sold and read poets who would not consider themselves linguistically innovative: the late-great Frost being one (though even here not necessarily the _relatively_ young Frost Pound promoted), probably Phillip Larkin another, *late* Eliot, etc. As a rule of thumb, the less widely sold and read, the more likely a poet considers herself and is considered (by whom?-) innovative. Perhaps that's a stretch (provoked). But this would make sense in as much as *our* society (US, late 20th C) tends to consider poetry a politically radical activity and a progressive art form, and those poets who feel they are not getting enough public attention (not carried in enough bookstores, not taught enough in The Academy, etc) would probably rather assign this lack to their relative progressive- rather than regressive-ness. (ie, it would perhaps sound a little odd to hear a poet from this list say, "I'm just too fucking Old-Fashioned to be taken seriously!") And we have R Silliman's comment [damn, I haven't that post on this computer(I have to switch computers in the middle of the day)] that by "Innovation" is perhaps meant a drive shared by all poets, a groping towards something that seems to each writer unrealized (in language, in form, tradition, community, what have you or them). And I remember M. Bernstein in a post some weeks back saying that poetry was "revolutionary." But what constitutes "language poetry"? Not the fact it uses language. Not the fact that it uses language in an "innovative" fashion, at least not in a general way. But the term is used relatively easily, and clearly applies to some poets and not others (that "language poetry" as a label may always be stretched or snapped doesn't matter, as most any labeling of poetry "schools" may be as well, and the exceptions in this case do not effect the general rule, which is the function of "language poetry" as a label.) "Language poetry" sometimes refers to work that is characterized by broken syntax, sometimes fractured words, etc., either deliberately (eg, Bernstein) or as the result of a method of textual generation (eg, Mac Low). "Language poetry" sometimes refers to work that calls into question "representations of the self." Usually along the lines of demolishing the notion of the much-encompassing "lyrical I" in favor of poetry that eschews this "voice" in favor of a more "dialogic" (though I have never seen anyone on this list refer to Bakhtin's Dialogism or Social Heteroglossia) or "multi-vocal" voice. This is sometimes accomplished mimetically using the form described in the previous paragraph. Mac Low states as much in the Afterword to _The Pronouns_. Others have elsewhere. However, in general I find this categorical definition as incomprehensible as the "Innovative" one because there is much cross-over with poets usually considered outside the "language poetry" realm. For example, Bob Hass, like Mac Low, has claimed the importance of a "Buddhist belief in voice" (not quoting either one exactly) as imforming their poetry. And the question of how much any writer has personal or monological control over her voice is old and historically varient. "Language poetry" refers sometimes to works that are very "conventional" looking and sounding, but are written by "language poets." Recent B. Perelman as an example. "Language poetry" often seems to refer to works that are not widely bought and sold, stocked by Barnes and Noble, etc. In this sense "Language" seems a substitute for "Marginalized." At the same time of course our society is so relatively large, diverse and loosely-knit, and generally poetry-illiterate, that this Marginalization has to be primarily economic, since there is more than enough "room" in the field of "Language poetry" for an intersted party to read contentedly for quite some time, provided they don't expect to find what they want in the local store (distribution being regional, of course--you won't find any poetry in the Hallmark in Laconia, NH, for example), and (along the same line of reasoning) since "mainstream poetry" is not all that popular (except in the Academy) compared, say, to TV or doggeral, it might consider itself marginalized as well. I must break off now. Where does one go from here? Among the many, what are some-things I've left out? Matthias Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 16:02:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 03:55 AM 2/11/97 -0800, Ron Silliman wrote: >In your diagram, genre is (or at least seems >to be) some intersection between community and tradition. But what, >precisely, is tradition if it ain't community?? Is we a lion or is we a >moose? Moose. Actually, "tradition" in my schematic is not the same thing as community (what I have also called, perhaps more accurately, the socius). so genre as such is nowhere located on the field, although "lyric" seems to occupy the top-right corner and some forms of "witness poetry" the bottom left. The community/socius pole bears a big resemblance to what in Bourdieu's model of cultural fields goes by the name of "heteronomy". I'm speaking, remember, of the differences between a formal and a social appeal. So tradition is neither community nor practice -- rather, it's the sense of pastness that operates differently in different contexts -- one poet might invoke it through reference to rhyme and meter and another poet might invoke it by, say, allusion to Lowell. One might think this way, for example, about the issue of journal publication. The poet who publishes in _Poetry_ or _APR_ in 1997 engages, by this gesture, primarily in an appeal to tradition, whereas the poet who publishes in _Tinfish_ or _New American Writing_ might be engaging primarily in an appeal to community. This is because of the different way the journals operate, one as a repository, the other as an ongoing dialogue. So a New Formalist magazine like the now-defunct _Reaper_ engages first, in building a community of like (light?) minds, even as that community attempts to revitalize the appeal to "tradition" (in part by recasting it -- i.e., writing in rhyme and meter -- as the true "innovation." Part of my point in constructing this model is to claim that the poetry biz collectively misrecognizes the diversity of poetic practice and the different -- sometimes incompatible -- appeals to value by invoking something called "poetry" to cover the whole hog. Critical "success" in this account is nothing less than the seeming erasure of these different poles. snappin' and cracklin' (and recently poppin'), David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg kellogg@acpub.duke.edu Box 90023, Duke University (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. --Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 10:48:46 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: Michael Coffey / poetry "schools" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Multicultural (not poetics--poetics is something else)--fine (and there's >really no need to break that down0; Why fine? I think this is the most confused and problematic of all labels. Usually what people really mean is 'other cultures' which prescribes immediately who the book is for & not for. If there were a language element to it, there could be a non-English based category - but that leaves out those who chose to write in English. Even the old boiler post-colonial is better than multi-cultural though carrying its own complications. Or perhaps multi-cultural implies that the poets are themselves 'multi-cultural' and maintain multiple-culture-personalities, but then don't we all to a certain degree. Perhaps you need other labels such as 'indigenous' (a horrible word tho), or an 'international' that has poets broken down to their respective nationalities or alliegances. Perhaps there is room for an identity poetry, or even anti-colonial. Just some thoughts, dan ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 17:37:23 +0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: Re: Michael Coffey / poetry "schools" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >Traditional >Open Form >Multicultural >Performance >Classical >In Translation > >Anselm Hollo Above all other things. I really have to agree with Anselm. The various "avant" names that are running around will not be of interest to most of *Publishers'* audience. Language is as poetry is, lingusts and poets are specialists that have a specialty audience (unfortunately) if we go into pseudonomous designations then we are losing the general reader. I don't think we want to lose the general reader any more than we already have. Bil Brown ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 16:36:03 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: manuel brito & zasterle MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Charles Alexander wrote: > > I also love the "book-ness" of this book, its size and shape and other > characteristics, and particularly the cover design by Rosa Ventura. But then > I'm always taken by these Zasterle books put out by Manuel Brito. Manuel has been seemingly sending XE all of his titles as well, so have seen a wide selection of his very consistently delicious little books. When I get frustrated about distribution issues Im reminded of what he must feel like living there Tenerife, Canary Islands, & speaking only halting english, publishing a lot of american writers & trying to get those books around the states. Worthy of a few hoo-has anyway. Miekal ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 16:24:01 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: Lou Harrison Festival Sorry for the short notice... The San Francisco Conservatory of Music is holding a four day celebration in honor of composer Lou Harrison's 80th birthday. For additional information, call SF Conservatory of Music (1201 Ortega Street) - 415-564-8086 (http://www.sfcm.edu) Most events are $10 apiece. Feb 13th - opening concert, 8 pm. includes dancer Tandy Beal, David Tannenbaum guitar... Three Sonatas for Harpsichord Tandy's Tango Large ostinato for piano & more Feb 14th, 8pm Grand Duo Varied Trio Strict Songs Feb 15th, 8pm Gamelan concert Feb 16th, 12 noon Poetry Reading: Lou Harrison (whos book of poems _Joys & Perplexities_ was published by Jargon, 1992); Jack & Adelle Foley; Hank Lazer; Joyce Jenkins; and probably Michael Tilson Thomas. Feb 16th, 2 pm Final Concert Double Music (with John Cage) (ie composed with Cage?) Concerto No. 1 for Flute & Percussion Serenade for Guitar and Optional Percussion Song of Quetzalcoatl & more There are also a number of free discussions, and $5 demonstrations (Gamelan on Saturday at 2pm), and a film... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 17:19:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jennifer Sondheim" Subject: jennifer's hatred of others MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - jennifer's hatred of others i want to steal your girl from you she doesn't belong with you she belongs with me hatred of couples i despise your glances smeared across your faces hatred of useless wealth your broaches pins drooling from your fat nipples get a life jennifer nobody deserves more than me money for your work your blackglass limousines airline tickets plied with liquor strafed artifacts archeologies steamships just cause i want you doesn't mean i want you you think you're better than me i'll bite your head off stop fucking reproducing i'll sever your coupled hands the two of you i'll pull my frock up and piss on your faces you'll love it slobber slobber i'll make you watch i can have anyone i want any sex any time anywhere cut your ring fingers off glint glint split you in two all that useless metal i'll take your watch i've got all the time now tick tick i can wait your motherboard's dead meat your father's lost his name you know i'm talking to you you smell of me you always will simper simper you're not worth my piss simper simper jennifer's hungry jennifer wants your girl _______________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 14:49:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos In-Reply-To: <199702121832.LAA24631@pantano.theriver.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Yes, I still read Dorn's work -- No, he hasn't, so far as I know, done anything AS BAD as Pound -- But is that some immutable measure -- I don't know if Alan Golding will remember this or not, but several years back at a dinner following sessions at the 20th century lit. conference, Dorn made remarks that made my skin crawl -- more cowardly then, I spent the rest of the evening at the other end of the table with Chris & Deborah Parr -- should have confronted him on the spot -- Dorn has much of interest to say still -- as many of us witnessed at Orono last year -- but he's also shown himself a bigot in unforgivable ways -- does one have to have exceeded Pound in some kind of sweepstakes of prejudice? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 15:11:50 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: more value here (we are entertainment now) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jordan Davis wrote: > > so is there are there an audience keeping score of these remarks. the time of grasshoppers has come > sorry, this modem won't let me think -- intelligence as in artificial not our photographs, but the map, old charms, unpaved roadways > is that how we are to be beautiful. standing for once against the dinner table Now what is the zinfandel. vitaceae You are a > really beautiful map. unpaved charms, before there were roads >Why is it important to relax. Fidgetense. I/They. re: Because > nobody's driving the state brown decades. Not to be outdone or incorporated who can do the palace of those > outside. wait in line at the hempery, ladies with dogs Pressure is substituted for a rain. Detention for snow. Close up and save your > work the powers that acknowledge our shifts must give me a house I am > interested. Pottery has readings. Helmet head. List level. Political nice guy, reprise your sleepy value. My > name. Or just turn off the damned TV. Miekal And -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 12:24:40 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: [Fwd: Re: Hullo hullo hullo] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------4EAB5A4B4672" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------4EAB5A4B4672 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit not sure what the policy is about forwards, but I find both this list & some of its topics quite pertinent to poetics m and --------------4EAB5A4B4672 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Received: from listserv.brown.edu (listserv.brown.edu [128.148.128.155]) by westbyserver.westby.mwt.net (8.7.3/8.6.12) with SMTP id LAA26002 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 1997 11:22:21 -0600 (CST) Received: from stanley.cis.Brown.EDU (stanley.cis.brown.edu [128.148.128.155]) by listserv.brown.edu (8.6.10/8.6.10) with SMTP id MAA03561; Wed, 12 Feb 1997 12:21:56 -0500 Received: from BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU by BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (LISTSERV release 1.8b) with NJE id 1539 for CONLANG@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU; Wed, 12 Feb 1997 12:17:59 -0500 Received: from BROWNVM (NJE origin SMTP@BROWNVM) by BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 2110; Wed, 12 Feb 1997 12:17:58 -0500 Received: from cs.columbia.edu by BROWNVM.brown.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP; Wed, 12 Feb 97 12:17:57 EST Received: from shekel.mcl.cs.columbia.edu ([128.59.18.15]) by cs.columbia.edu (8.8.5/8.6.6) with ESMTP id MAA01278 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 1997 12:20:16 -0500 (EST) Received: (from shoulson@localhost) by shekel.mcl.cs.columbia.edu (8.8.5/8.6.6) id MAA14936 for CONLANG@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU; Wed, 12 Feb 1997 12:20:06 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <199702121720.MAA14936@shekel.mcl.cs.columbia.edu> Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 12:20:06 -0500 Reply-To: Constructed Languages List Sender: Constructed Languages List From: "Mark E. Shoulson" Subject: Re: Hullo hullo hullo To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG In-Reply-To: (mia@PPBBS.COM) Content-Type: text >Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 00:20:20 -0500 >From: mia@PPBBS.COM > > Oddly enough, I hardly ever use >"million" or "billion" in a literal way, except when talking about stars >or government spending. AFAIC, "billion" is just another word for >"very large number, really beyond what I can actually comprehend," >whether it is an American billion or someone else's. :) cf. Lapine, the language of rabbits in Adams' _Watership Down_. Rabbits can't count higher than four, so anything more than that is "hrair", meaning "many," "a lot," often translated as "a thousand" (or occasionally "five"). ~mark --------------4EAB5A4B4672-- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 17:21:08 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: names and schools MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dan Raphael Dlugonski wrote: and poets i feel closest to dont let > me in. now here's a familiar thread Im starting to hear over & over. which is the evidence to support interactivity & participation over yet another obvious form of class consciousness. > so we stride. > a name i'll never be called by. > my name the way a dog would say it. Dan, dont forget to pipe up about your longtime mag NRG, re linda russo, of maybe its not defunct yet? miekal ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 14:48:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: ps to Ron Silliman In-Reply-To: <199702121147.DAA21585@dfw-ix1.ix.netcom.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit It should have been obvious but: I didn't argue that history has a purpose, Foucault argues that counter-history has a purpose. I suggest you look again at Foucault's discussion of genealogy and history: there's a problem for Althusser there. All best, Joseph ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 20:41:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: Re: Names Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Ma's side: grandma: Olive C. Diffenderfer Skeen her brother/my great uncle: Meldrum C. Diffenderfer my uncle/her son: Carrel Wesley Skeen My dad's side: grandma: May Wheeler her brother/great uncle: Winslow Harding Loveland I got no middle name (unlike my brother, who got Daniel AND Harding with Wheeler) so when Carrel Wesley (my only uncle or aunt) traced the Skeen side back through Daniel Boone via his daughter Susannah and I was 7 I took on the shebang until my current teacher Miss Lewis raised a fuss about whether I had LEGALLY changed it to Susannah Boone Wheeler. That was the end of any flirtations with a middle name. But there was also talk of my being named for a great great grandmother >on my maternal side, Rachel Leet Wilson, who married Richard Harding and >gave birth to Rebecca Harding (later Rebecca Harding Davis, author of >_Life in the Iron Mills_, for you Am Lit trivia mavens). > >Loden is a made-up name (1972 vintage). Long, exhausting story, as I'm >sure is true of many (esp. women's) last names. > >Rachel > > Susan Wheeler wheeler@is.nyu.edu 37 Washington Square West #10A New York, New York 10011 (212) 254-3984 phone/fax ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 18:50:14 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: per-mail (Pear tree w/potatoes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Christopher Alexander wrote: > > M writtererng: > > What I'm suggesting is a sort of e-mail exquisite corpse. I've seen as > > I expect you have those ones some websites have tried to initiate, and they > > are IMO by and large godawful. > really I love the one at EPC, especially when high school kids & the > like get on there. its fascinating, the kind of stuff I would love to > be able to include in my work > "oh, dont end so heavy" says. > well--heres my first cotntribuation > (I cut it to 20 printed lines if thats ok). > love c. > ________________________________________________ > > "Automata pense" > > This is an automated ponse > to message Bravo, > > T"techne" , changing time > but techne is not the thing. I usings (or his > at the end (c'mon folks, you > can read > > We are all immersed in a much deeper > "techne" - > > Timeam reminded Proust mitt self > > desolations/voids/returns > tha Time brings. > four fried potato sandwiches > Proust's narrator screaming at the blight > a half-once of prime NOTHINGNESS TEE-HEE > he finds > > his writerly > and the > > creation > a SIMILAR sensation (not the same, but similar, > > from the > ancient past, wechoing) brings memof his gigantic Oeuvof > in a particular effect of time: malok feb 12 1997 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 21:38:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Who's Zoning Who MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit (Who's Zoning Who?) Consider, for example, the group of poets consisting of W, X, Y, and Z. All middle aged males, they recognized early in their poetic careers that fame, in contemporary American society, is a function of marketing, and that the marketing of ideas about poetry especially requires a gang (also known as a "school" or "group"), as their spiritual forebears, the New Critics, had effectively demonstrated. They formed one and then proceeded to successfully market each other through the gang's various magazines, publishing houses, anthologies, and University courses. Sharing an acute Oedipal anxiety about the poetries which preceded them, they proposed their writing as being involved in a radical social-historical "rupture". This served to cover the fact that they neither understood what constitutes beauty in the contemporary world nor were capable of engaging the complex question of its importance to poetry (seeing it presumably as somehow displaced by justice). Instead, relying on polemical attacks on "genre" to cover their tracks, they produced a lackluster, prosaic "writing" in which simplistic ideas about "ideology" were masked by syntagmatic verbal trickery. Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 19:10:55 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Felix Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos, Conjunction Junction Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" And I had figured Peter Cole, of Leviticus "fame." Maybe because growning up in Detroit in the '80s (and not knowing of the Tish's) I used to think that Conjunctions was the canonizer of contemp. lit/po.-- (I blush to reveal that to this list.) Anyways the writing world is a lot wider than Bradford Morrow's A list--but the formulation of Taggart Cole Sobin could be easily mistaken for a Conjunctions school by a 17 year old. joel felix. Dodie Bellamay wrote: >Oddly, Keith, I thought that Ron meant Norma Cole in his list: > >>Consider, for example, that non-group posed by Forrest Gander. Several >>of the folks on that list--Taggart, Cole and Sobin, say (and to some >>degree Palmer)--all share enough features to compose a group of their >>own except that the Loner status with all its aching pretentiousness is >>one of its major preconditions. > >I don't think Ron would fall into the trap of naming men by their last >names and then slip to a first name basis for a woman--I think Ron is much >too aware for that. > >But then he added: > >>All of them are male second generation >>Black Mountain poets whose work is notably more timid than that of >>their elders. > >So I figured it must be some male Cole that I'm not familiar with. > >Who is this mysterious Cole? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 23:53:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: divers Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Zasterle Press certainly w a s in the Canaries. Manuel Brito is, I believe,its editor/publisher. This press has done many handsome books by many poets known to listmembers,I ween--a number of them L=A=N poets. Our Listmaster will perhaps fill in the gaps. I have written abt L=A=N poetry as a movement within a tendency. I always found the analogy useful when i was teaching, of the poem as a window so clean as to be invisible, so that the scene it gives onto, dominates; or the poem as a window so interestingly flecked with cobwebs, flies, dirt, etc, that the scene beyond fades behind such immmediacy. This latter, of course, being langPo. I'm aware this leaves a lot unanswered, but it made a handy place to start. It leaves out the struttin' pomposity of many clean-window poems, where one cant not-see the window because the figure of the poet gets in the way. LangPo may be this tiny, marginalized semi-group effort certain people on this list perceive, but its influence is everywhere visible. Not a maindrains poet whose work doesnt reveal that, as the 80s progressed, its author took on some coloration from L P. Neo-formalism is in my opinion down to LAngPo too. I wd see it as well, as a reaction against the workshop poem. Btw, announcements of the death of the avant-garde continue to reveal the imperative of novelty. Happy typo of the day: lingusts. (as in "a plague of lingusts has been feeding upon the General Reader"?) Enjoyable, too, is the deliberate homonym "light-minded." "We were of light minds so we floated up to an early circle." Aldon, always glad to read yr postings, buddy, so caszh & so infoful. db--trying to keep his postings down to one a day. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 18:55:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Clothes Make the Man In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >George, > >No wonder you didn't get mugged. Dressed like that, people probably >thought you were in one of Sun Ra's Astro-adjectival Arkestra's of the >period. Yeah, except this was on a Thursday. Sun Ra, in those days, played every Monday night at Slugs's. I wish I had been there then. I would have worn more things made of silverfoil, though. Onliest time I heard Sun Ra was at some grotto college in Montreal in about 1971. That was his period when he had flashing lights up and down his arms and onh his antennae. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 00:02:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: second posting of the day Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" and then i forgot to say that Nick Piombino who lives in NYC has a book out with Sun & Moon of excellent poems, & in a later issue of _Avec_ some of his aphorisms. His essays, so dense as to double up as poems, can be found in a number of locations, and are a m u s t for anyone interested in the poetic practice of the present. db ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 00:45:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Michael Coffey / poetry "schools" "a readership that simply wants to browse and make its own decisions, thank you." Thank you Fred Muratori. The question remains how long there will be "poetry providers" -- i.e. non-corporate bookstores, or anything else that isn't an imposed common denominator. Not to be too doleful, after all we do have Brighten the Day. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 05:23:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Crackle >Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 13:37:37 -0800 >From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM >Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos > >At 11:51 AM -0500 2/11/97, Keith Tuma wrote: > >>So we're to believe that Taggart and Sobin are nostalgic, and pretentious to boot? Second generation watered down Black Mountain? (And Cole Swensen got accidentally tossed in THAT pile). > >Oddly, Keith, I thought that Ron meant Norma Cole in his list: > >>Consider, for example, that non-group posed by Forrest Gander. Several of the folks on that list--Taggart, Cole and Sobin, say (and to some degree Palmer)--all share enough features to compose a group of their own except that the Loner status with all its aching pretentiousness is one of its major preconditions. > >I don't think Ron would fall into the trap of naming men by their last >names and then slip to a first name basis for a woman--I think Ron is much too aware for that. > >But then he added: > >>All of them are male second generation Black Mountain poets whose work is notably more timid than that of their elders. > >So I figured it must be some male Cole that I'm not familiar with. > >Who is this mysterious Cole? > >Dodie Peter Cole, published by Station Hill. ------- Aside to Moose Kellogg (for whom this Rice Krispie thread must be dedicated), young Tom is beautiful and I like all the links to the family (how does that fit into the map?). Ron Silliman ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 00:09:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marina deBellagente laPalma Subject: names' fluidity Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At birth, in the late 1940s in Italy, I was named Marina Ada Paolina Oleario-de Bellagente. (a long story.) Came to Amerika in mid 50s and whenever a teacher began stammering, I would just say "present." In "the sixties" (ahem) I was Liza Bread to many of my friends, and Marina Bostedt when I published poetry; in the 70s I became Marina LaPalma as I hand typeset the title page of the first book we ever printed as Kelsey Street Press (Neurosuite, translations from Italian of Margherita Guidacci's poetry.) In some parallel universe I have been for 16 years a certain Mrs.Goldstein. My husband is named Richard Goldstein, but at the age of 15 he re-named himself Rich Gold. It is now his professional name as it was through the 70s and early 80s as an electronic artist; he is legally still Richard Goldstein but does get checks for Rich Gold sometimes and hotel and car rental bookings in various parts of the world can be annoyingly ambiguous or unstable because of it. Our child, Henry is named after my maternal grandfather Enrico. [One of my cousins in Boston is named Henry. He is now in his sixties and has always been an artist; for many years, on the various gallery notices I received, he was "Henry"; Then, ... around the time that anything Italian (Armani, arugula, caffe-latte, Bruno Magli) ascended to the zenith of trendiness ... he was transmuted into" Enrico".] Our son has been assigned the paternal "Goldstein", partly to weave him securely into the rather large Goldstein clan; but since he was adopted at birth and we have a good relationship with his birthparents and their families, he in fact began life listed on his hospital birth certificate as Aleister (after Crowley) Drake (as in dungeons-and) Jozens (his birthmother's name.) This was just a sort of courtesy or formality, as we all knew that a few months later when the legal adoption was finalized before a judge, the state of California would issue a new birth certificate listing me and Rich as his parents and giving him the name we chose. When he grows up, he can pick from among these, as well as his birthfather's last name, which is Crites. So there you go -- seven-plus names on the mailbox and counting. Marina deBellagente LaPalma 329 Pope Street Menlo Park CA 94025 (415) 326-4981 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 08:06:24 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 12 Feb 1997 11:32:38 -0700 from On Wed, 12 Feb 1997 11:32:38 -0700 Charles Alexander said: > >This Dorn fellow seems to be reviled by many right now, for reasons I >understand. But are things he has done even worse than Pound, or Adorno (a >not too-long-ago thread here), that the mere mention of his name requires a >prayer? And are people still reading his work, some of which I still find >insightful and quite brilliant? > _Gunslinger_ is more fun than chasin coyotes down the arroyo. It's the most-fun-to-read epic ever written. - Jack Spandrift the hard-drinkin, tough-talkin po-yeti from Brainerd, MN Jack's CD, "Whoopin with the Cranes", is now available from Wooden Nickel Press, PO Box 12, Varmint, Wyo 11191. Send $35. cash only prepaid with SASE. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 10:50:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos//Cole In a message dated 97-02-12 12:19:35 EST, Dodie writes: << So I figured it must be some male Cole that I'm not familiar with. Who is this mysterious Cole? >> I assumed Ron was referring to Peter Cole (_Rift_, Station Hill, & the translator of Shmuel HaNagid, Princeton). Charles ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 11:00:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: paradoxical criticism Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Henry Gould says: >The honest critic will (paradoxically) partake of the enthusiasm and inspiration of the artist h/she critiques. Most of the time I will only write reviews of books I can get excited about. Why spend time on what doesn't set me on fire? And I agree, too, with another post which raised the question of whether there is good and bad poetry. I find that I am always amazed at what I can discover in "bad" poetry. In theater, for example, I know that I have learned as much from a "bad" production as from a good one. Something about a good production allows me to settle back and enjoy, whereas a "bad" production forces me to figure out why. And in figuring out why, I often see other possibilities that are covered up in the good performance. I'm not sure if this is as true with poetry. It may even be more true with some "schools" than others. I'm going to have to think about this. I've always felt that a review, to lesser or greater degrees, should generate some of the same excitement that the work being critiqued generates. Steven Marks __________________________________________________ Samples of reviews, criticism and poetry at http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 15:17:16 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert zamsky Subject: Re: Rasula and poetry zones In-Reply-To: <199702101750.MAA18691@argus.acpub.duke.edu> from "David Kellogg" at Feb 10, 97 12:50:52 pm Content-Type: text David -- While I find your chart interesting and intriguing, I also find it very troublesome and indicative of what I see as a limitation (and modernist hangover) in contemporary theory/crit. Why the obsession with mapping poetic endeavor? From the tenor of your comments, I take faith that you are not propounding fixity or stasis. However, why do we (under the unfortunately uncomplicated shadow of Jamesonian Marxism) insist on enumerating the differences between individuals? How is it that the philosophical endeavor is to investigate the boundaries between individuals? I know, this is a history that goes waaaayyyyyy back (Nietszche, no, Aristotle), but that doesn't make this history any more sacred than any other. What if we give up on the notion of spatial metaphors as ever being sufficient, or even ultimately useful, and try to work instead with the problem of contact and interchange -- i.e. Levinas or even Heidegger. That is, posing the question of difference this way: how do I know I'm not you? What if an encounter with otherness is really a frightening and threatening brush with the loss of self through intimacy? How might posing the question in these terms of fluid interchange effect our understanding of poetic "schools"? And, via Levinas, what exactly do we mean by "difference," anyway? It seems to me that a notion of identity as existing through the fluid interchange/exchange with difference is what much "post-modern" lit. and poet bumps up against. The notion that my identity is not defined by my charting of my fourteen different subject positions, but through my complicated residence in the fluidity of the one. Just some thoughts. Best -- Robert Z.> > Pardon the lengthy description of my own work. I post this here because it > is relevant to the discussion, and also because I'd like to hear from folks > who object to my account, so as to strengthen it. So here goes: > > Although I find Rasula's account of the four "zones" of poetry compelling, > Joseph Lease and Forrest Gander rightly point to problems with zones as an > operative category. Assigning particular poets to one or another zone is > only one of these problems. There are always exceptions, such as Lauterbach > and Gander himself, and the New Formalism seems, as Lease pointed out, a > blip on the poetic horizon, fast becoming (if it hasn't already become) > insignificant. > > Rasula has his finger on something important, however. In my own > work-in-progress on the poetic field (for an abstract, see > "http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/sri.html"), I conceive these zones as > abstractions, POLES OF VALUE within the contemporary construction of poetic > practice. (This work is obviously indebted to Pierre Bourdieu in ways that > I don't have time to explain right now.) What Rasula identifies as the MFA > school corresponds more or less to a poetry predicated on uncomplicated > representations of Self. Against this obviously is the poetry of social > conflict, community building, identity politics, etc. Call the struggle > between these two poles the horizontal (social) axis of the poetic field. > Appeal to one or another of these sources of value has little to do with > form as such. What I call the formal, or "vertical" axis of the poetic > field comprises both NF and LP, but without naming them. While the New > Formalism is fading fast, the appeal to "tradition" still operates within a > lot of contemporary poetry, even language poetry as it becomes canonically > interesting. (I am speaking sociologically; I don't mean "interesting" as > an evaluative comment.) Against the appeal to "tradition" one could place an > appeal to "innovation." So that the contemporary poetic field looks more or > less like this: > > TRADITION > --------------------------------------- > | | > | | > SELF | [the poetic field] | COMMUNITY > | | > | | > --------------------------------------- > INNOVATION > > > It seems to me that this kind of a model is more flexible than a model which > operates in terms of "zones" or "schools." As New Formalism fades, the > appeal to tradition is still operative. As language poetry becomes (to > paraphrase Ron Silliman) more of a moment than a movement, other > possibilities begin to inhabit the arena close to innovation. Obviously > much language poetry would still be placed close to the "innovation" pole, > but individual poets' work could be read at various places within the field. > Moreover, poets might _move_, or be moved, as the vicissitudes of > canonization affect perception and reading. (Charles Bernstein's work seems > a lot more "traditional" now -- what with various historical accounts of > language poetry by Beach, Perelman, etc., and what with the recovery of > Stein and Zukofsky, and _The Tennis Court Oath_ for a broader audience in > various critical accounts -- than he did in, say, 1980. Also, Bernstein's > own criticism has helped create the traditional context for his work.) One > could also place individual poems, "schools" (Iowa, Brown, Buffalo), and > institutions at various points within the field. > > Well, whaddaya think? Does this account via poles of value escape some of > the problematics of the zone/school? > > Cheers, > David > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > David Kellogg kellogg@acpub.duke.edu > Box 90023, Duke University (919) 660-4357 > Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 > http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ > > There is no mantle > and it does not descend. > --Thomas Kinsella > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 10:59:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Names/Of No Known Provenance Comments: To: Susan Wheeler MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT At last count, there were 34 Patrick John Francis Pritchetts roaming throughout the continental US alone, all of them more or less identical excepting of course facial features, height, weight, length of nose, hair, eye & skin color, visual acuity, sexual orientation, reading preferences, occupations, etc. Oddly, they are all orphans. ---------- From: Susan Wheeler To: POETICS Subject: Re: Names Date: Thursday, February 13, 1997 10:47AM Ma's side: grandma: Olive C. Diffenderfer Skeen her brother/my great uncle: Meldrum C. Diffenderfer my uncle/her son: Carrel Wesley Skeen My dad's side: grandma: May Wheeler her brother/great uncle: Winslow Harding Loveland I got no middle name (unlike my brother, who got Daniel AND Harding with Wheeler) so when Carrel Wesley (my only uncle or aunt) traced the Skeen side back through Daniel Boone via his daughter Susannah and I was 7 I took on the shebang until my current teacher Miss Lewis raised a fuss about whether I had LEGALLY changed it to Susannah Boone Wheeler. That was the end of any flirtations with a middle name. Susan Wheeler wheeler@is.nyu.edu 37 Washington Square West #10A New York, New York 10011 (212) 254-3984 phone/fax ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 12:04:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shoemakers@COFC.EDU Subject: Re: Michael Coffey / poetry "schools" In-Reply-To: <970213004522_983663402@emout03.mail.aol.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Rod--Heard a spot on NPR the other day about independent book stores and music stores, respectively, forming support networks in order to come up with strategies to combat the big-chain takeover. One of the assumptions (a good one) was that the independents tend to have knowledgeable and motivated staff, more aware of local needs and interests. Nothing surprising there. But one of the ideas was that fave "local" artists wld be featured at other stores in the (non-local) network. Thus, more "product" for the stores and more distribution for the artists. Also, on the music end of things many major labels were in fact more than willing to work with these networks, happy to have another outlet. Any networking going on up DeeCee way? steve Steve Shoemaker ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 13:09:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Darn Those Dorns! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >On Wed, 12 Feb 1997 11:32:38 -0700 Charles Alexander said: >> >>This Dorn fellow seems to be reviled by many right now, for reasons I >>understand. But are things he has done even worse than Pound, or Adorno (a >>not too-long-ago thread here), that the mere mention of his name requires a >>prayer? And are people still reading his work, some of which I still find >>insightful and quite brilliant? >> > >_Gunslinger_ is more fun than chasin coyotes down the arroyo. It's the >most-fun-to-read epic ever written. > I think we're confusing Dorns here. I believe that the Dorn Charles refers to is "Dr." Alfred (or Albert?) Dorn, arch-Formalist and president of the New World Order of (something) Poets, an organization which sponsors annual contests for the best sonnet, villanelle, etc., and sends out mass-mailings to Poets & Writers listees. Much as I like experimental work, I don't break out in hives when I read a rhymed sonnet, either. Still, this guy is a little scary. Has been photographed affecting a cape and pointy beard. He's published work in _The Hudson Review_, and I think _The Formalist_, among others. Though he's ardent in his promotion of strict traditional forms, it's not clear where he stands on Social Credit or the efforts of the Axis Powers to take over the world, so I doubt that comparisons to Pound are warranted. -- Fred Muratori *********************** Fred Muratori "The spaces between things keep (fmm1@cornell.edu) getting bigger & more Reference Services Division important." Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries - John Ashbery Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html *********************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 10:40:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos In-Reply-To: <970213105032_474558637@emout18.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Speaking of Zoos-- a friend e-mailed the following to me this morning. Dodie -------------------------------- We all joke that "everybody" has done a zine, but NOW I actually believe it - - the plot of today's episode of Sesame Street is that Big Bird does a zine! They use the word magazine not zine, but that's the basic idea of it. He watches people buying various specialized magazines at Hooper's Store, and asks whether there's a magazine just for people like him - - big birds. When he's told that there isn't such a thing, he throws a small tantrum, then decides - - ta da! - - that he'll do one himself! Rest of the episode follows him as he draws a cover, comes up with story ideas, does an interview, has photographs taken, puts his issue together, etc, and creates Issue One of BIG YELLOW BIRD. (Didn't see how the episode finally ended - - snuck off to take a shower instead.) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 12:44:28 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karl Richter Subject: POEM MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT HOW GRANDFATHER FLEW Grandmother sculpts birds of smoke with her cheeks, tongue, lips and puffs them sailing through her wedding dress hung like a curtain and stained as yellow as the sunlit dust her creatures shatter into. And somewhere in the sack the day drags behind it, a lost hawk worries the storyteller's campfire, swooping and kissing the tale with his wings. --Karl Richter z8n25@ttacs.ttu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 13:49:26 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: Darn Those Dorns! In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 13 Feb 1997 13:09:08 -0500 from DORNETTE The name donated him when he was born worn in good stewardship for forty years and polished like a medal for his peers was neither square nor round - but it was Dorn. One syllable - and yet it was a horn that trumpeted his fame from here to there and blew down other Dorns who dared to share that doorway to the glory that was Dorn. If I could be an Alfred or an Ed or even Egbert, Ethelred or Ned I'd Hale and Harty be, let it be said - yet deep within my Hank-kerchief I've sworn when all our names are buried in the corn it's better to be loved than be adorn. - Jack Spandrift "the hard-drinkin, tough-talkin po-yeti from Brainerd, MN" Jack's new CD, "Cowpokin' Fun", is available from Leatherwurst Press, PO Box Irrelevant, Blasted, Wyo 1119413. Send check or money order IN ADVANCE ONLY for $45. Include SASE. No phone calls. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 14:57:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Perelman Subject: fake avant garde ID MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit TO THE LISTSERV Aliens have inhabited my aesthetics for decades. Really since the early 70s. Before that I pretty much wrote as myself, though young. But something has happened to my memory, my judgment: apparently, my will has been affected. That old stuff, the fork in my head, first home run, Dad falling out of the car-- I remember the words, but I just can't get back there. I think they must be screening my sensations. I'm sure my categories have been messed with. I look at the anthologies in the big chains and campus bookstores, even the small press opium dens, all those stanzas against that white space-- they just look like the models in the catalogs. The models have arms and legs and a head, the poems mostly don't, but other than that it's hard --for me anyway-- to tell them apart. There's the sexy underwear poem, the sturdy workboot poem you could wear to a party in a pinch, the little blaspheming dress poem. There's variety, you say: the button-down oxford with offrhymed cuffs. The epic toga, showing some ancient ankle, the behold! the world is changed and finally I'm normal flowing robe and shorts, the full nude, the scatter-- Yes, I suppose there's variety, but the looks, those come on and read me for the inner you I've locked onto with my cultural capital sensing device looks! No thanks, Jay Peterman! No thanks, "Ordinary Evening in New Haven"! I'm just waiting for my return ticket to have any meaning, for those saucer-shaped clouds to lower! The authorities deny any visitations --hardly a surprise. And I myself deny them-- think about it. What could motivate a group of egg-headed, tentacled, slimier-than-thou aestheticians with techniques far beyond ours to visit earth, abduct naive poets, and inculcate them with otherworldly forms that are also, if you believe the tabloids, rather salacious? And these abductions always seem to take place in some provincial setting: isn't that slightly suspicious? Why don't they reveal themselves hovering over some New York publishing venue? It would be nice to get some answers here-- we might learn something, about poetry if nothing else, but I'm no help, since I'm an abductee, at least in theory, though, like I say, I remember little. And yet this writing seems pretty normal: complete sentences; semicolons; yadda yadda. I seem to have lost my avant garde card in the laundry. They say that's typical. Well, you'll just have to use your judgment, earthlings! It's your job! Back to work! As if you could leave! And you thought gravity was a problem! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 15:24:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: Situation #14 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Situation #14 is now available, featuring the work of Robert Fitterman, Lisa Samuels, Hoa Nguyen, Stephen Ratcliffe, Loss Glazier, John Marvin, Noah de Lissovoy, David McAleavey, and David Golumbia. Subscriptions to Situation are $10 for four issues; $3 for single and back issues. Address: 10402 Ewell Ave., Kensington, MD 20895. Make checks payable to Mark Wallace. Anyone who wants further information is welcome to back channel me at this e-mail address. Mark Wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun | | to go to extremes" | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 14:19:24 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keith Tuma Subject: die a critic My chairperson put a copy of the brand new Diacritics in my mailbox, with this note attached: "This arrived yesterday and I thought you might have a more immediate interest in it. I'd like it back at some point but there's no hurry." So I've been thinking about that note and reading around in the magazine instead of doing what i should be doing. I want to say first that the chairperson here is a well-meaning, curious man. I took it that his decision to pass on the magazine to me involved a judgment; he had more important things to do than to read it (now). And that's what I've been thinking about in the wake of this poetry zones business. A few random remarks: Jonathan Monroe is to be congratulated for moving the discussion of exploratory anti-genre, anti-disciplinary "poetries" into the moneyed domain of composition and rhetoric pedagogy. I'm not going to take up his arguments, or problems I might have with them--though JM's enthusiasm shines brightest in his suggestion that 3rd graders might be made to read Bob Perelman's "China" beside Frost. The real value of JM's article is simply in recognizing the power of this pervasive institution. Want an audience for exploratory poetry? Want efficacy for its practices? Then find a way to get it into composition courses. Except that, having tried as much, one wants to know how to keep the discipline from showing up again after what is taken as "the party," as carnival, is over. I've also been looking at the listmaster's contribution. Some of those funny- banal (or is that banal-funny) poems called "Memories" are included. And no doubt many an astute reader will note that once again Mr. B is crossing genres in his essay-text. But what I noticed is that the text is a collage of fragments some of which were written for other purposes and occasions. It begins, for instance,with a message CB wrote to this very listserv (so much for keeping membership down, Charles,for "word of mouth"). And there are (I suspect)other passages written for elsewhere, imported into this text. The "traditional" justification for doing something like what CB seems to be up to would be the pursuit of a better or more perfect articulation of one's claims. (A second, slightly less traditional use of these tactics would seem to involve the narrating of one's own process of composition--I said it once like this, and now i say it like this, or I said it once like this, and this is what I want to make of all that now.) But I'm not sure that this is exactly what CB is up to (perhaps he might clarify). I think that CB is moving things around, putting it in new constellations for new occasions and situations, as a way of combatting that very glut of information which makes my chairperson inclined to put aside this very Diacritics. Approaching the unapproachable (Cavell), saying again and again, and saying just a little differently not necessarily to say it "right"--he's given up that fantasy--but to re-deploy. But increasingly i'm thinking of that re-deployment--that moving stuff round from listserv to essay, talk to essay, etc.--as a tactic that might be (and is)imagined as a response to--as it were--the glut confronting my chairperson as a rather desperate sign. Say it again and again because nobody is listening Glut confronts glut in a melancholy aesthetics of proliferation. Just a few random, spontaneously generated and probably incoherent words to clog your disk, by way of a first and partial review of the Diacritics issue all deserve congratulations for. Keith Tuma ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 15:31:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: Nick Piombino MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Just wanted to definitely agree with others that Nick Piombino's new book Light Street from Zasterle is well worth reading, as is BOUNDARY OF BLUR which also received some recent plugs. But I did want to mention Nick's other collections of poetry--his first book, POEMS, and an issue of Abacus, FROZEN WITNESS. His work can also be found in AVEC, CHAIN, SITUATION and many other publications. To my own sense, one of Nick's most interesting explorations involves what he once described to me as "the poltics of attention"--the way human consciousness, in its priveleging of some forms of phenomena over others, inevitably reflects built-in ideological biases. Much of Nick's own poetry seeks to challenge an unconscious "politics of attention" through language and other material techniques designed to bring consciousness back to attention to itself, rather than remaining an unconscious immersion in unquestioned social ideologies. One of the things that makes his poetry so interesting is that he's always looking where one least expects him to be looking. mark wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun | | to go to extremes" | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 15:36:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Golumbia Subject: Re: fake avant garde ID In-Reply-To: <199702131957.OAA24654@dept.english.upenn.edu> from "Bob Perelman" at Feb 13, 97 02:57:15 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Wow. -- dgolumbi@sas.upenn.edu David Golumbia ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 16:03:21 +0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: Re: fake avant garde ID Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I have decided that I hate poetry. Bil ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 15:53:51 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: darn thos dorns! Just want to add to the glut & say I take no responsibility for the "sonnets" and other splursions of "Jack Spandrift." I've known him for a long time - a small-town librarian & small-time crook from Bludget, Wyo, with a huge chipmunk on his shoulder that eats rhyme and meter for lunch. His execrable take on a man's good name (it is the 13th, after all) warrants severe derision. His only redeeming statement was when he wrote in a previous post that _Gunslinger_ is the "funnest"[sic] epic ever written, which I agree with 100 percent. Ignore Jack Spandrift, people. Or write a derogatory "driftette". He deserves all the buffalo shit out there (excuse, me, I mean glut). the Hon. Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 12:45:56 -0800 Reply-To: jbrook@ix.netcom.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Brook Subject: new PHAROS available MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Dear listed, I'm posting this for my friends at PHAROS in Paris, who were kind enough to publish a couple of my poems in the current issue (along with my translation of a poem by Sebastian Reichmann, familiar to Talisman and Exquisite Corpse readers). They were also kind to some others of recognizable name! --J. - - - - - The Winter 1997 PHAROS, the magazine's fifth issue, is now available. PHAROS is a literary magazine published twice a year in Paris. It features poetry and prose by both Paris-based and international writers. PHAROS was founded in 1995 as the offshoot of a writing workshop taught by Alice Notley and Douglas Oliver at the British Institute. Its contributors, besides Notley and Oliver, have included Robert Creeley, Marilyn Hacker, Anselm Hollo, Diane Johnson, Iain Sinclair, Arthur Sze, David Lehman and Anne Waldman, among others. Winter 1997 Table of Contents: PANSY MAURER-ALVAREZ: Light May Crack Through in Several Ways KAREN PEPPER: Final Monarch, The Taking of a Russian Tea, In Silhouette GEORGIA SMITH: From "Honoria" ROBERT MARX: Stained Glass DOUGLAS OLIVER: Chinese Bridport, Calling Them Home DAVID LEHMAN: April 30, June 11 LYNN HJELMGAARD: Love in the Time of Plastic SEBASTIAN REICHMANN: Russian Christmas, Rue Daru MOE SEAGER: Joni's Comeback NORRIE BLAQUART: Insubstantial, Just Looking HARRY GHISI: Wood MARIE HOUZELLE: Tell Me, Newlywed ADAM DE LINDE: Postcards DYLAN BRIE DUCEY: Frozen Mud TRACY DANISON: Bones of Guy de Maupassant Excavated on Champs-Elysees: Belle Epoque Writer Celebrated SUSAN HYMAN: From "A Cherry Orchard" YURIKO TAMAKI: Nausea, Life of Maruo REINE ARCACHE MELVIN: From "A Normal Life" GLORIA FRYM: From "Letters Home" LINDA HEALEY: From "Message From the Deep" WILLIAM BURKE: Our Dying Down, Through a Brutality LAURE MILLET: Me I Don't Even Look Like Myself JAMES BROOK: The Opening, Cinderella Story ALICE NOTLEY: Meet Me at La Chapelle for Some More Salami KEN MACKENZIE: Icarus, Truth, Ave Maria Subscriptions Subscriptions to PHAROS for one year (two issues), postpaid, are 60 French francs, $15 (US) or =A38 (UK). Please make check or money order out to Douglas Oliver. Submissions PHAROS welcomes submissions from writers in Paris and farther afield. Please address correspondence to: PHAROS The British Institute 11, rue de Constantine 75007 Paris FRANCE ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 16:05:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: fake avant garde ID Comments: cc: perelman@DEPT.ENGLISH.UPENN.EDU Thanks, Bob -- sitting here at my word processing cubicle in my DC patent law firm as the afternoon lates, I enjoyed that. Interesting you're expanding themes of *Virtual Reality* (I guess it was called?) in yet-weirder ways. In lieu of an in-person reading, this was a hearty pick-me-up. regards, d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 16:17:51 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco Subject: Bob's poem read/discussed & redeemed MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain I have decided that I hate poetry. -- Bil Brown Wow. -- David Golumbia _______________ Congratulations Bob Perelman! Never, while I've been on this list, that I can remember (and I'm not saying I can), has a posted poem produced such quick and diverse responses from its participants. It is an appropriate summation of the "audience" thread that has woven through the dialogue recently. Me? I enjoyed reading it-- twice. And then, after I "sacked" a second phone call to voice-mail, I deleted it forever, with a flick of the finger. Warmly, daniel bouchard (who forever refuses to divulge secrets of family names or personal attire) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 16:41:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: Darn Those Dorns! Bravo Henry! let them not be forlorn, oh dorns, forgotten, misbegotten, misplaced When sky is a tattered curtain to the last-born of earth, Dorn, oh Dorn will loft to Grace e ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 13:56:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: Re: Nick Piombino Comments: cc: djmess@sunmoon.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks Mark for mentioning POEMS. It is truly a great book. And Sun & Moon Press is still offering the book at a price of $5.00. Hope everyone will get a copy and read this remarkable poet. Douglas Mark Wallace wrote: > > Just wanted to definitely agree with others that Nick Piombino's new book > Light Street from Zasterle is well worth reading, as is BOUNDARY OF BLUR > which also received some recent plugs. But I did want to mention Nick's > other collections of poetry--his first book, POEMS, and an issue of > Abacus, FROZEN WITNESS. His work can also be found in AVEC, CHAIN, > SITUATION and many other publications. To my own sense, one of Nick's most > interesting explorations involves what he once described to me as "the > poltics of attention"--the way human consciousness, in its priveleging of > some forms of phenomena over others, inevitably reflects built-in > ideological biases. Much of Nick's own poetry seeks to challenge an > unconscious "politics of attention" through language and other material > techniques designed to bring consciousness back to attention to itself, > rather than remaining an unconscious immersion in unquestioned social > ideologies. One of the things that makes his poetry so interesting is that > he's always looking where one least expects him to be looking. > > mark wallace > > /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ > | | > | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun | > | to go to extremes" | > | GWU: | > | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | > | EPC: | > | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | > |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 11:52:12 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Beard Subject: Re: Nick Piombino MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > To my own sense, one of Nick's most > interesting explorations involves what he once described to me as "the > poltics of attention"--the way human consciousness, in its priveleging of > some forms of phenomena over others, inevitably reflects built-in > ideological biases. Interesting to consider how much of this "privileging of some forms of phenomena over others" is ideological and how much is biological - we tend to notice things that may be a physical threat to us, for example. Which may be why red is a good colour for attracting attention - red things in nature are often either signals of hazards (as in some animals' and plants' warning colouration) or on fire. Bitter things are often unripe. Sudden, loud noises were often signals that something was about to fall on us or eat us. These are very crude examples, of course. But the human capacity (read: mania) for setting boundaries and dividing the world into categories may have somehow developed out of the fact that edge-detection neural systems appear at a very basic level of our visual perception. Tom Beard ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 14:51:24 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Bob's poem read/discussed & redeemed In-Reply-To: <199702132118.QAA02510@krypton.hmco.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I have decided that I hate poetry. > -- Bil Brown > >Wow. > -- David Golumbia Well, I like poetry better than Carl Lewis. -- George Bowering > >_______________ > > >Congratulations Bob Perelman! > >Never, while I've been on this list, that I can remember (and I'm not saying I >can), has a posted poem produced such quick and diverse responses from its >participants. > >It is an appropriate summation of the "audience" thread that has woven through >the dialogue recently. > >Me? I enjoyed reading it-- twice. And then, after I "sacked" a second phone >call to voice-mail, I deleted it forever, with a flick of the finger. > >Warmly, > >daniel bouchard > >(who forever refuses to divulge secrets of family names or personal attire) George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 17:59:18 GMT-5 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: PETERSM@CORAL.INDSTATE.EDU Organization: Indiana State University Subject: Alice Notley Comments: To: Bob Perelman does anybody know the e-mail or snail mail address of alice notley? mark peters "mike's naked with no clothes and no head." --lyla goodberry ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 22:41:43 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Who's Zoning Who In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 12 Feb 1997 21:38:06 -0500 from This was one of the sharpest statements according to my lights in a while. Care to entrap yourself with further remarks on what beauty in the contemporary world involves? & its relation to poetry? & its displacement by justice? Simone Weil has some interesting speculations on beauty, justice and mediation, according to the Greeks. Let me quote from Pharisee #12 Psychompompos. . . What if Paradise exists, but we don't see it. The Kingdom of Heaven is "at hand." & utopia is a political compromise hammered together out of human p ride and earwax. "let the wind speak that is Paradise." It's the day after Ash Wednesday. Unless ye repent ye shall all likewise perish. They have earwax at CVS, along with Jack Spandrift's latest CDs and some dusty shelves of poetry zones. Go for it. It's the 90s - glut & choice are the bywo rds of our online world. Manual labor is learning how to use a backhoe & save. & William Blackstone daubed his forehead with thumbprint of ash. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 23:48:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: Who's Zoning Who In-Reply-To: <9702140403.AA13695@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Tricky, but yes. How much of rejection of "self" (& g*ds know I sympathize when it comes to poetry as dull bar seduction, see what a sensitive dude/brave dudette I am) also throws out what wd be worth preserving if the revolution ever succeeds? I'd love to see a lot more rejection of ego & superego, to adopt some retro terms, and more plumbing into the part of self that says why it's worth staying alive, worth seeking out other humans, worth the hassle of fighting through Babel and money and resentment. Silly beauty & foolish truth, because it's foolish to care that a primate band invents justice & somehow tries to make it, & silly if you see & think to go on living, but we do. Where are the gifts that keep *that* weird enterprise going? I find bits & pieces of them in all kinds or reporting & recording, but rarely find anyone willing to value them in public. Wendy On Thu, 13 Feb 1997, henry wrote: > This was one of the sharpest statements according to my lights in a while. > Care to entrap yourself with further remarks on what beauty in the contemporary > world involves? & its relation to poetry? & its displacement by justice? > Simone Weil has some interesting speculations on beauty, justice and mediation, > according to the Greeks. Let me quote from Pharisee #12 Psychompompos. . . > > What if Paradise exists, but we don't see it. The Kingdom of Heaven is > "at hand." & utopia is a political compromise hammered together out of human p > ride and earwax. "let the wind speak that is Paradise." > It's the day after Ash Wednesday. > Unless ye repent ye shall all likewise perish. > They have earwax at CVS, along with Jack Spandrift's latest CDs and some dusty > shelves of poetry zones. Go for it. It's the 90s - glut & choice are the bywo > rds of our online world. Manual labor is learning how to use a backhoe & save. > & William Blackstone > daubed his forehead with > thumbprint of ash. > --------------------------------------------------------------------- Wendy Battin (home) http://camel.conncoll.edu/ccother/wjbat/ (CAPA) http://shain.lib.conncoll.edu/CAPA/capa.html (Multiple Poetics) http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/5471/index.html ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 01:50:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: JDHollo@AOL.COM Subject: Nielsen on Dorn "but he's also shown himself a bigot in unforgivable ways" Says who? The Grand Vizier of Correct Thought? Of course, this, too, is just dinner or 'panel' table babble. P.S.: Kudos to Bough and Perelman for their prose poems (even though the UFO shtick is a little old hat). P.S. 2: Surprised to see Ron Silliman's 'classification' of Palmer Cole & Taggart as post-Black Mtn sentimentalists go unchallenged. In my humble opinion, at least the first two are Way Ahead of Murk, Mush, and Tedium (as are Dorn Baraka Blackburn Oppenheimer, to mention just a few who began the practice of their art long before the Holy Ghost of LangPo descended). P.S. 3: Hang in there, Bil Brown. There's lots more to read. Anselm Hollo ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 03:09:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jennifer Sondheim" Subject: for valentine's day whatever happiness you've found MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ it's valentines day, a day for couples and threesomes bubbles come out of jennifer's and alan's mouths loops of saliva on their surfaces form canals of liquid on liquid pushed from liquid air spilled cum on keyboards fingers chairs silicon dreams in silicon valleys breasts jennifer alan lie side by side undressed puddles drying on shared skin and skinny brains they're flat against the earth which pushes them into one long shadow merged hysteric back down against the ground where their ass cracks open into tunnels tendrils lost in one long shadow shared holes and noggins they've got nothing lost but sanity says nursing sue just come upon 'em _____________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 07:50:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: OH CANADA Does anybody have clint burnham's email? (is he still on this list?) Also, what ever happened to that OH CANDA issue of some U-BUFFALO "rag" that was suppossed to come out last year? I think Joel Kuszai was involved with it? Has it been scrapped?----Chris Stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 12:50:43 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L. Mac Mahon and T.R. Healy" Subject: Hello Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Greetings, my name is Randolph Healy. I'm from Ireland and this is by way of introduction. Don't worry if you've never heard of me. The condition is by no means uncommon. Following Jennifer's lead I'll post a Valentine. All the best, Randolph. Torch Song Your presence brings light, flickering, inconstant, against which my shadow halts unedged. Fragments from long-exploded stars meet in an act which like words has no boundary. My atoms your atoms kiss. Hold me. I am mainly empty space my surface a seething cauldron of interchanging particles. Only electricity prevents your lips from going straight through me. My body my mouth retain each impression here alight in your presence. Selah. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 07:57:39 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Who's Zoning Who In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 13 Feb 1997 23:48:06 -0500 from On Thu, 13 Feb 1997 23:48:06 -0500 Wendy Battin said: >Tricky, but yes. How much of rejection of "self" (& g*ds know I sympathize >when it comes to poetry as dull bar seduction, see what a sensitive >dude/brave dudette I am) also throws out what wd be worth preserving if >the revolution ever succeeds? I'd love to see a lot more rejection of ego >& superego, to adopt some retro terms, and more plumbing into the part of >self that says why it's worth staying alive, worth seeking out other >humans, worth the hassle of fighting through Babel and money and >resentment. Silly beauty & foolish truth, because it's foolish to care Right on, Wendy. g*d knows WE'RE ALL SICK OF MY EGO, but...here goes again... I had a little essay in the last Witz on the Russian conference where I tried to distinguish between "self" (that straw bogeyman of "left" poetics) and "Person" - "Person" being (in part) the expressor of Russian philosopher Chaadev's concept of "moral freedom" - an anthropocentric idea generally denied in all kinds of determinism (from the social Necessity of some versions of leftist justice to the market Necessity of this country that makes cowards of us all). Maybe beauty in poetry expresses the moral freedom of Person rather than Self. See Mandelstam's essay "Chaadev" for more info. Where are the gifts that >keep *that* weird enterprise going? I find bits & pieces of them in all >kinds or reporting & recording, but rarely find anyone willing to value >them in public. Yeah. the beauty of oral history. I was going to signoff poetics this morning out of self-blab-sickness. I think I will try to lurk for a while. Happy V-Day, everybody. - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 08:17:50 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: query Hi everybody, I'm back. wanted to ask again - anyone have an email address for Dave Baratier? Is he offline entirely? Please backchannel. Thanks. Henry_Gould@brown.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 13:40:00 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "F.A. Templeton" Subject: Categories Comments: To: Anselm Hollo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII No, no, no, help, don't put me on the shelf with all those poets who win slams and hate books! Fiona ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 07:17:45 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: per-mail (Pear tree w/potatoes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > Christopher Alexander wrote: etc etc damn, sorry--M & I seem to be having problems keeping our personal mail separate friom the list. of course anyone is free to intervene, but I really dont mean to burden you with our correspondence. chris .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 09:59:20 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Rushdie's Valentine MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Here's a Valentine from Salman Rushie: The [London] Guardian February 14 1997 On the eighth anniversary of the fatwa against him, Salman Rushdie castigates Europe's politicians for cynically abandoning the ideals of free expression and human rights THE DIPLOMATIC VICES EUROPE begins, as the Italian writer Roberto Calasso reminds us in The Marriage of Cadmus And Harmony, with a bull, and a rape. Europa was an Asian maiden abducted by a God (who changed himself, for the occasion, into a white bull), and was held captive in a new land that came, in time, to bear her name. The prisoner of Zeus's unending desire for mortal flesh, Europa has been avenged by history. Zeus is just a story now. He is powerless; but Europe is alive. At the very dawn of the idea of Europe, then, is an unequal struggle between human beings and gods, and an encouraging lesson: that while the bull-god may win the first skirmish, it is the maiden-continent that triumphs, in time. I, too, have been engaged in a skirmish with a latter-day Zeus, though his thunderbolts have thus far missed their mark. Many others - in Algeria and Egypt as well as Iran - have been less fortunate. Those of us engaged in this battle have long understood what it's about. It's about the right of human beings, their thoughts, their works of art, their lives, to survive those thunderbolts; and to prevail over the whimsical autocracy of whatever Olympus may presently be in vogue. It's about the right to make moral, intellectual and artistic judgments, without worrying about Judgment Day. The Greek myths are Europe's southern roots. At the continent's other end, the old Norse creation-legends also bring news of the supplanting of the gods by the human race. The final battle between the Norse gods and their terrible enemies has already taken place. The gods have slain their foes and been slain by them. Now, we are told, it is time for us to take over. There are no more gods to help us. We're on our own. Or, to put it another way (for gods are tyrants, too): we're free. The loss of the divine places us at the centre of the stage, to build our own morality, our own communities; to make our own choices; to make our own way. Once again, in the earliest ideas of Europe, we find an emphasis on what is human over and above what is, at one moment or another, held to be divine. Gods may come and gods may go, but we, with any luck, go on for ever. This humanist emphasis is, to my mind, one of the most attractive aspects of European thought. It's easy, of course, to argue that Europe has also stood, during its long history, for conquest, pillage, exterminations and inquisitions. But now that we are being asked to join in the creation of a new Europe, it's helpful to remind ourselves of the best meanings of that resonant word. Because there is a Europe that many, if not most, of its citizens care about. This is not a Europe of money, or bureaucracy. Since the word "culture" has been debased by over-use, I'd prefer not to use it. The Europe that is worth talking about, worth re-creating, is anyhow something broader than a "culture". It is a civilisation. TODAY, I am listening to the melancholy echoes of one small, intellectually impoverished, pathetically violent assault on the values of that civilisation. I refer, I'm sorry to say, to the Khomeini fatwa whose eighth anniversary this is, and to the latest barbaric noises about "bounty money" emerging from the Iranian government's front organisation, the 15 Khordad Foundation. I'm also sorry to say that the EU's response to such threats has been little more than tokenist. It has achieved, in one word, nothing. The Europe for which Europeans care would have done more than simply state that it found such an assault unacceptable. It would have sought to place maximum pressure on Iran while removing as much pressure as possible from the lives of those threatened. What has happened is the exact opposite. Iran is under very little (I would even say, no) pressure on this matter. But for eight years, some of us have been under a fair amount of stress. During these eight years, I have come to understand the equivocations at the heart of the new Europe. I have heard Germany's foreign minister say, with a shrug, that "there is a limit" to what the EU is prepared to do for human rights. (A few months after this statement, Germany, then Iran's biggest trading partner, gave a red-carpet welcome to Iran's terrorist-inchief, Intelligence Minister Fallahian. My Norwegian publisher, William Nygaard, was shot the week after Fallahian's triumphal tour.) I have heard Belgium's foreign minister tell me that the EU knows all about Iran's terrorist activities against its own dissidents on European soil. But as to action? Just a world-weary smile; just another shrug. During Italy's EU presidency, the Italian foreign ministry refused to answer - even to acknowledge - our letters on this issue. In Holland, I actually found myself obliged to explain to foreign-ministry officials why it would not be a good idea for the EU to accept the fatwa's validity on religious grounds. I have been refused entry to Denmark, on the spurious grounds of a trumped-up "specific threat" against my life, a threat which mysteriously vanished in the face of a public outcry; but I know that Denmark, already a major exporter of feta cheese to Iran, is presently trying hard to increase its trade relations with that country. During the just-concluded Irish presidency, I was offered a meeting by Dick Spring which then, oddly, took six months and a lot of pushing actually to arrange. In this meeting Mr Spring assured me that a strong statement about the fatwa would be included in the conclusions of the Dublin Summit. No such statement was made. (Ireland, too, is looking to expand its trade with Iran.) This new Europe has not looked to me like a civilisation. It is an altogether more cynical enterprise. EU leaders pay lip-service to the great European ideals--free expression, human rights, the Enlightenment, the right to dissent, the importance of the separation of church and state. But when these ideals come up against the powerful banalities of what is called "reality" - trade, money, guns, power - then it's freedom that takes a dive. When it's Danish feta cheese or Irish halal beef against the European Convention on Human Rights, don't expect free expression to win. Speaking as a committed European, it's enough to make a Euro-sceptic of you. In a few months, the United Kingdom will enter the EU "troika", and will then, for a year and a half, have a real opportunity to resolve this problem. I hope - I think, after so long a wait, I have the right to expect - that the British government will, during this period, be a good deal more active than it has. So much of diplomacy, I've learned, is a matter of nods and winks. The extreme passivity of the Foreign Office has permitted the rest of the EU to go to sleep on this issue, and has given the Iranians the sign that there is really no need for them to do very much at all. I am of course pleased that the Foreign Office has condemned the new bounty offer, but a few stiff words once a year are no substitute for a policy. LIKE so many of my fellow-Britons, I hope there will soon be a new Labour government. I have long been urging that government- in-waiting to understand the importance of the arts in conveying the sense of national renewal which Labour must seek swiftly to create. Today, on this tawdry anniversary, I ask Mr Blair to come to the aid of this one particular artist. As he knows, and has been good enough to tell me, the principles involved go far beyond the survival of a single individual. I ask him to bring a new spirit of urgency to the fight against the Zeus of Iran and his attempt to kidnap our freedoms; and by doing so, to show New Labour's commitment to the true spirit of Europe - not just to an economic community, or to monetary union, but to European civilisation itself. (c)Salman Rushdie 1997. All rights reserved -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/ http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html ---------------------------------------------------- ----------------------- Everything that allows men to become rooted, through values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in _one_ language, is the principle of alienation which constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, [...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 09:00:19 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Names okay, charles alexander and susan wheeler and linda russo have the most exotic relatives' names. my own: mother, selma father albert sisters elsa, kristina cousins, bente, ulla, inge magrethe other cousins: laurel, julie uncles and aunts hi-lites: einar, jens christian, etc bedstefar & bedstemor: thomas thorvald and magrethe grandpa and grandma: henry (hyman) and bessie (beyla) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 09:05:36 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Nielsen on Dorn In message <970214015038_-1307901933@emout13.mail.aol.com> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > "but he's also shown himself > a bigot in unforgivable ways" > > Says who? The Grand Vizier of Correct Thought? > there's no need to get defensive about the faults of poets we admire or feel peronally fond of. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 09:03:37 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: for valentine's day whatever happiness you've found oh jennifer, torch me! In message UB Poetics discussion group writes: > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > > > it's valentines day, a day for couples and threesomes > bubbles come out of jennifer's and alan's mouths > loops of saliva on their surfaces form canals > of liquid on liquid pushed from liquid air > > spilled cum on keyboards fingers chairs > silicon dreams in silicon valleys breasts > jennifer alan lie side by side undressed > puddles drying on shared skin and skinny brains > > they're flat against the earth which pushes them > into one long shadow merged hysteric > back down against the ground where their ass cracks > open into tunnels tendrils lost in one long shadow > > shared holes and noggins they've got nothing lost > but sanity says nursing sue just come upon 'em > > > _____________________________________________________ > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 09:56:06 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Keith Tuma Subject: Re: Who's Zoning Who In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 14 Feb 1997 07:57:39 EST from It must really be valentine's day 'cause the poison arrows are flying. At least when Silliman wants to smear somebody by linking him with Pat Buchanan he uses a name. Not that there's much doubt who Mike B means by W, X, Y, and Z. I've always preferred Q's work myself, though the oedipal complex in N is a fascinating curio, and the lit-crit narratives of legitimation in $$ are the subject of one of my best student's ponderous dissertation. But if I had three kids, I'd be sure to name them after Murk, Mush, and Tedium. Listen, I knew Murk, Mush, and Tedium. Murk, Mush, and Tedium were friends of mine. (Many an evening we'd explore simple-minded discourses of ideology.) And you, Mr. @@@, are no Mush. Nor Murk. Nor Tedium. As the Batman of the British Isles says, love and love, keith (who's happy to meet any ghost who comes along, holy or not, and wishes he knew what ed dorn is supposed to have done/said and that ed would have a chance to respond) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 10:19:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sherry Brennan Subject: Dorn Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Looking for something else this weekend, unearthed a copy of Dorn's poem named something like _Turbines on the North Atlantic_, having filed and forgotten it existed. It's very moving and beautiful and political (a manifesto-like chant in places like Patchen, I'd say, in this case). And I like it very much. Sherry >Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 11:32:38 -0700 >From: Charles Alexander >Subject: Re: Zones v. Zoos > >> even (god help us) Dorn, > >This Dorn fellow seems to be reviled by many right now, for reasons I >understand. But are things he has done even worse than Pound, or Adorno (a >not too-long-ago thread here), that the mere mention of his name requires a >prayer? And are people still reading his work, some of which I still find >insightful and quite brilliant? > >charles > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 08:26:23 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Who's Zoning Who MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > Consider, for example, the group of poets consisting of W, X, Y, and Z. yss or consider the list member z who had too much coffee at an Oedipal breakfast with harold bloom & wildly made otherwise mundane accusations which assumed that everyone else assumed that they were not engaged in publicizing each others work & further assumed that to bring this dark secret to light with a brilliant flash would return the Literary Realm to its rightful place as the contemplation of what constitutes beauty in the contemporary world. so wild were the gestures of this wiley critic that he nearly gave himself a socio- historical "rupture" & spilled his lackluster, prosaic "eggs benedict" all down the front of his new simplistic "ideology". .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 10:42:06 -0500 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Perelman and theory and stuff MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I've been reading Rasula's Wax Museum, which has sparked a lot of very good dialog on the list recently....It is interesting that I've just gotten to the part where he suggests a fundamental failure in the language circle, arising from their not collapsing theory and practice into a single form, a poetry that is also theory--(...from one point of view, that is certainly going on in Andrews' crazed "poetics essays" but Rasula was writing before last year's publication of Paradise and Method, which collects those pieces and allows you to see just how challenging and odd Andrews' "theortical" writings are..) I think Perelman's been thinking along these lines, and I think the poem posted here was almost as good as the one that opens Marginalization of Poetry and gives it its title.. In fact, his work has always been a favorite of mine; the books Face Value and First World are such models of how to be skeptical and passionate and committed about politics within a non-mainstream writing mode, kind of it seems to me a separate developmental track running parallel to Silliman's less hectic new sentence strategy: parallel tracks running in the same direction (left). Some postings don't seem as positive about Perelman's poem as I was...But I'm not always good at interpreting arch gnomic asides. I loved it anyway. Rasula's point is kind of fascinating (--I haven't finished the section where he develops this theme, so I may not fully represent his views..) On the one hand part of me thinks you (we, them?) don't have to meld theory and poetic writing into one new mode..On the other hand, there's a real exploratory integrity to the idea that it is a historical/esthetic imperative.. His belief that more people would find LangPo non-abstruse, if the creative writing contained theory, seems to me too easy (again, take a look at Andrews' essays, one example of creative writing explaining itself which I don't think will win over many academics tomorrow) One final connected note: I think Rasula's American poetry wax museum, and Perelman's Marginalization of poetry, are two of the best and most generative books about poetry I've ever seen; if you haven't seen 'em, I recommend it. Perelman's is shorter and more hands-on in examining poetry directly. But both are about SITING u.s. poetry--locating it in current social and cultural dynamics. Vital. Mark Prejsnar ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 11:07:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: Names Comments: To: maria damon In-Reply-To: <33047e0326a7480@mhub2.tc.umn.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I have a husband-wife pair of ancestors named Zalmon Francis Monroe and Ophelia Kitchen Monroe. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 11:30:09 +0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: Re: Nielsen on Dorn Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >P.S. 3: > >Hang in there, Bil Brown. There's lots more to read. > >Anselm Hollo I know. Maybe a bit TOO much... don't you think. Bil Brown ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 10:29:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: die a critic Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" to pick up for a sec on what keith t. is saying on this subject line, vis-a-vis jonathan monroe: to align poetic practice with recent developments in comp/rhet. would require that poetry is discussed not simply in terms of its products but in terms of its processes... i think much is to be gained, at least wrt the academic sites of poetry production, from looking at the way process is taught (or not taught)... to harp/hop on my hobbyhorse of late, that notion of "craft" is part of what i see blocking productive associations between comp. and poetry... it's b/c "craft" works in effect to stabilize product through a certain rigor, a certain form of attention... this is not an argument against attentiveness as such... i'm talking about the way "craft" tends to be institutionalized... i add here only that "craft" -- insofar as it's theorized -- represents one way (but only one way) to safeguard the laboring *body* of the writer... but there are many other ways... so it would seem to me to be helpful in discussing poetry, or poetries, to consider the process aspect more fully (somebody mentioned mac low's work, which is to the point here if only b/c mac low attends so consciously to process, yet in ways that craft-oriented writers might not appreciate)... again i think it's worth noting how many books are out there that presume to discuss the "writer's craft"... invariably these books seem to advocate a specific aesthetic, or aesthetic approach anyway... and of course what gets left out, finally, is so much of art itself---b/c the way "craft" is generally deployed in the classroom, it consists of rules and techniques (if not outright gimmicks) that can take most only so far---right up to the verge of art, but not art itself... which in effect safeguards art against those who would presume to understand it more fully, who would presume to place art on a continuum with other social practices---and once again confirms that the artist is born, not made, the artist-as-genius, as romantic savant, as any-number-of-unconfirmed-sightings... it's not a matter of making art easy or known or verifiable... seems to me, though, that we can do better than advocate procedures that have the effect of reducing what passes for 'proper' aesthetic process while situating most who aspire at a clear remove from the possible plays of process... lots more to say here, but i'll close with that... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 11:52:54 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Would anybody on this list have a snailmail for Roderick Iverson in L.A.? Please backchannel. --Pierre -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel/fax (510) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/joris/ http://www.albany.edu/~tm0900/nomad.html ---------------------------------------------------- ----------------------- Everything that allows men to become rooted, through values or sentiments, in _one_ time, in _one_ history, in _one_ language, is the principle of alienation which constitutes man as privileged in so far as he is what he is, [...] imprisoning him in contentment with his own reality and encouraging him to offer it as an example or impose it as a conquering assertation. -- Maurice Blanchot ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 09:21:37 -0800 Reply-To: doncheney@geocities.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Cheney Organization: Pinch Me Alfredo, Inc. Subject: Catullus for Valentines Day MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Two translations of CATULLUS 70 for Valentines Day: 70. No one says that my woman is not nubile, but to me, even if Jupiter himself reads this, she is a petal. She loves it when I talk about love and when I rapidly write about liquid openings. ========================================================================= Oasis No one sees my woman's deceit, not a duck not me not even Jupiter himself can see it. That's what I say: but a man in love who talks about loving in windows and writing on buses is like opportunity and water. ========================================================================== Don Cheney ========================================================================== visit Don Cheney's Home Page & Clean Neck Shop http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5791/index.html doncheney@geocities.com ========================================================================== ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 12:32:14 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Bronk Panel at Oxford, August 30, 1997 I am writing in behalf of Dennis Ryan, who is organizing a panel on William Bronk to be held as part of a one day conference on Estrangement, to be held at Oxford University on 8/30/97. There are I believe three "sections" of the conference, one on literature and culture (which is where the Bronk panel would be), another on psychology or something like that, and a third whose focus i've forgotten now. Anyway, the conference is interdisciplinary and otherwise is quite unconventional. EAch panel participant will have written a thousand word essay, which will have been published with other like essays for the general consumption of the entire conference. EAch panelist will come to the conference with a much longer version of this essay, and will meet with other panelists in the morning in a workshop format. I.e., all the Bronk people, a minimum of six and a maximum of ten, will spend the morning exchanging views and also coming up with a document of some sort, written collectively by the entire panel, which will be presented to the entire conference in the afternoon. Or something like this. Well, if you are interested in participating, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE NOT AN AMERICAN (there are 4 Americans on the panel already--myself, Henry Weinfield, Ed Foster, and Dennis Ryan--and there may be more), then please contact Dennis Ryan (his e-mail address is Ryan@bvu.edu; he teaches in the communications Program of Buena Vista Univ. in Storm Lake, Iowa 50588-1798). Dennis says that room andboard for 4 days would cost $46.00 a day (and I believe that is American dollars). We would welcome all applicants, but would like to have an internationally grounded discourse there. Thanks, Burt Kimmelman ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 12:32:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: ride the tiger to the river Euphrates Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" well is it then a matter of making an art our art for we (I) are different? we have something else to say and do, yes, but does that place us in the rather restricted relation of OPPOSITION to an exclusive and rewarded TRANSPARENCY PRACTICE? Don't think so. I mean, if you're one of the hegemonic boomers, you may HAVE to see it that way, but if you're on either side of that bracket (or you just WANT to be) there seems to be more permission to exist in other relations. I can hear it now, we're WUSSING out on the Hegel score. Hey hey ho ho. But this insistence on the opposition-relation, that seems like only a recent recurrence of a syndrome of turf warring (MAPS) that comes and goes as new resources are alleged to be OUT THERE .. go dog go .. of course I love tulips as much as anybody .. I also love MY TRIP, SOME OTHER KIND, RESPONSE, IN MEMORY, etc, etc more. Is this an opposition? Is elsewhere an opposition? Seems more like an affirming negation from here. TRANSPARENCY PRACTICE offers more than the OPPOSING TEAM seems to want to admit, at least openly .. I guess you can go on being THEY indefinitely .. but why? why not elect oneself central? or peripheral? and get going with the vantages already? there do seem to be non-monotonous people listening non-monotonously, at least as long as they can stand it .. until they give up .. Signed, A PERMANENT CRISIS IS NO SUCH THING PS Siting is not vital tho the siding may be vinyl .. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 12:46:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: Re: the future of an illusion (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > hey Hynek, > thought you minght find this quotation interesting. > > kevin > -------------------- > From: Sylvester Pollet > > I'll throw this into the mix--it's a quote from Matthew Sweney, who's been > working with Petr Mikes at Votobia Publishers in the Czech Republic: > > "Poetry [in the C.R.] doesn't sell now because it's no longer > controversial. Everyone was writing and buying poetry before because it was > illegal, a sort of rebellious act, but now that Socialism is gone, poetry > has lost its attraction. People watch Schwarzenegger videos on their new > VCRs instead." > Hi Kevin!! Interesting? Yes & no. "No" because it is oversimplified, "yes" because it's true... First, poetry as such was not illegal: there were many "communist" poets and there was poetry even on TV! On the other hand, there was also poetry which went against the grain. Not necessarily in the sense of being anti-communist, by no means, but simply because it was "real", which is to say, it was about things and feelings "outside" the official ideology, it was about anxiety, nothingness and death, or about common everyday things, or about faith and God, etc. While now the time is more "prosaic" and poetry seems to be too pathetic to be true... And Swarzenegger? Well, you know what the majority of Canadians likes watching, don't you?! And you don't think that people in Central Europe are different species, do you... By the way, VOTOBIA is a really interesting publishing "company"; their editorial plans are "rather" nonconventional. Moreover, they are from Moravia, and not from Prague -- which [that is Prague] always tended to present itself as the only cultural centre in the republic. And this "voice of marginality" is another "sympathetic" (as we would say in Czech; guess what it could mean!) feature of Votobia. Take care! Hynek ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 13:22:30 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry again Subject: Re: ride the tiger to the river Euphrates In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 14 Feb 1997 12:32:39 -0500 from Dante was a transparency. always an open hand, wrote endless critical work s & letters, here is what we're doing & what we're going to do, D.Comedy is full of asides & para-narrative on the poem itself, but then the structures took off on their own, a player piano embedded isomorphic valentine & what good is tapeworm transparency anyway? who cares? the poem eats your processes until they are highly unrecognizable. - "Henry Again" (pat. pending) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 12:42:04 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Zukowski Subject: John High Does anyone know the e-mail address (or possibly even a phone number) for John High? I believe he is the editor of _Five Fingers Review_. Please backchannel. Thanks. Peter Zukowski zukowski@uic.edu ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 11:59:43 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: ride the tig etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > we have something else to say and do, yes, but does that place us in the > rather restricted relation of OPPOSITION to an exclusive and rewarded > TRANSPARENCY PRACTICE? Don't think so. yes yes of course its important not to lock ourselves into this position--art is about more than burning newspapers--, but lets not deny that its one possible assessment of a poetic practice--as limited as any other single assessment, but not more. > Is this an opposition? Is elsewhere an opposition? Seems more like an > affirming negation from here. yes, elsewhere is an opposition of sorts, & I should think we ought to be able to frame it that way if/when its useful to do so. the work acts as an affirming negation only when its taken obsessively in terms of opposition: "I see my work as oppositional practice-- thats all really". I dont recall anyone doing that here recently--do you? > TRANSPARENCY PRACTICE offers more than the > OPPOSING TEAM seems to want to admit, at least openly true enough--but who called us into teams? I always considered myself central, really. signed (sigh) or "wouldja call off the crisis response team already?" .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 12:24:29 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Names MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT gwyn wrrt: > I have a husband-wife pair of ancestors named Zalmon Francis Monroe and > Ophelia Kitchen Monroe. thats wonderful. you know Ive always been sort of fascinated with the idea of being from the stock of common nouns--as, for instance, after an object or a day of the week (have to admit a real liking for the name Wednesday of Addams fame). in this context they become such lovely, inscrutable words. chris. .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 15:36:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: Who's Zoning Who MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Do you really know, Keith? Or was it just a phantom exercise in decentering incivility before it got fixed as Poetics? I'm not sure I know. Peace, love, and good vibes (as always), Mike PS, the problem with those stupid graphs, as Charles Dodgson could have told you, is you can't get this world into a flatworld. Won't fit. Sorry. Said Alice, as the Red Queen disappeared. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 14:41:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: poison pens/valentine's day MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII (for Mike Boughn & Keith Tuma) V E E D A N R A L I C Y E T A N S M S A forget me not threat or plea a flower dbchirot ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 15:54:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lisa Samuels Subject: my poetics valentine MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Poets poets burning bright in the targets of my sight what more perfect thing can be than your sweet mortality? Common, common thing it is to say and do and whistle words that turn your eyes to light whirl and shape and missile. When you come down through the air my valentines, my valentines, please embrace my writing there valentines to thee. personally yours, for the daily pleasures, lisa s. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 15:47:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: Who's Zoning Who Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 03:36 PM 2/14/97 -0500, Michael Boughn wrote: >PS, the problem with those stupid graphs, as Charles Dodgson could >have told you, is you can't get this world into a flatworld. Won't >fit. Sorry. Said Alice, as the Red Queen disappeared. As the creator of one such "stupid graph," I would like to say that I don't intend to "get this world" thru it -- merely to get something interesting. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg kellogg@acpub.duke.edu Box 90023, Duke University (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. --Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 15:55:00 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: my poetics valentine In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 14 Feb 1997 15:54:56 -0500 from Lisa Lisa luminescent In my eyeballs convalescent Happy valentines to you Brief pithy terse succinct & true VITA BREVIS ARROWS LONGER ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 16:30:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: : D is all we get of the cat (your summary axe) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I blieve, Chris Alexander, if that is your name -- that the guiding logic at work here is oppositional -- viz Hank Lazer's opposable poetries, viz Bob Perelman's we is another poem, viz Ron Silliman's comments here and Cap-l -- I belive that Bruce &rews is relentless in his opposition, and that of the lpoets maybe only Charles B has gone on to oppose opposition and maybe he hasn't -- maps are for claiming resources and for sittling arbitrartions, charts are for malapractice -- the crisis goes deeper, lads, and the initials are everywhere .. wussy hegel glottal simpatico, contra dante sounds .. and maybe he's just the Poetry Chicken .. a lot'll .. geese .. a shady .. to get into the narrative -- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 16:41:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jennifer Sondheim" Subject: The more things change.... (fwd) Comments: To: Fop , Research MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I was totally fascinated by this post, and asked Bill if I could send it on, so with permission - please read - love, Alan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- -Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 13:19:04 -0800 -From: Bill Stilwell -To: CYBERMIND@LISTSERV.AOL.COM -Subject: The more things change.... Just finished reading a wonderful article by Tom Standage in The Electronic Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/) called "Romances of the Telegraph" about how the introduction of telegraph and telephone technology caused fears not unlike those caused by the internet today about illicit relationships. I'll quote a few bits just to get the point across. To read the entire article you need to register at the above URL (it's free) and then search for the article. I only hope that e-mail and related technology moves quickly into the realm of the 'safe' now occupied by telephones. "An article entitled The Dangers of Wired Love, published in 1886, warned of the consequences of allowing women to use new communications technologies without supervision." "One 19th-century cautionary tale concerned George W. McCutcheon of Brooklyn, who ran a news-stand assisted by his 20-year-old daughter, Maggie. Business was booming, so, in 1886, he decided to expand and install a telegraph line, with Maggie as its operator. But he soon discovered that she was "keeping up a flirtation" with several young men over the wires, including Frank Frisbie, a married man who worked in the telegraph office of the Long Island Railroad. Over the wires, Maggie invited Frisbie to visit her, and he accepted. But when her father found out he forbade the visit, so Maggie began seeing Frisbie on the sly. McCutcheon tried moving his news-stand, but Maggie soon found work in a nearby telegraph office and resumed the relationship. Eventually, her father pursued her to a rendezvous and threatened to "blow her brains out". She had him arrested, and he was charged with threatening behaviour." "There was even a novel called Wired Love, written by Ella Cheever Thayer and published in 1879, which built its plot around an online courtship - and beat today's slew of dreadful email romance novels to the punch by over a century. And in 1891 an article called Romances of the Telegraph rounded up other stories with happy endings." "Other articles talk of the telephone's tendency to lower moral standards. "It's appalling," said an elderly aunt, reported in Telephony in 1903, "to see how they use telephones nowadays. Last night Mary, who was dressing, answered the telephone in her room. And it was a man calling her up. The two of them stood talking to one another just as if they were entirely dressed and had stopped for a little chat on the street! I tell you this generation is too much for me." --Bill (bill_stilwell@mindlink.bc.ca) "What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup."--Boris Pasternak ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 16:48:56 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: Re: ride the tiger to the river Euphrates Jordan, remember that Hegel tune "I don't need your summary acts to give into the narrative age"? The problem with elsewhere is there's usually lots of tourists there. Hell is other tourists? (I remember something about an up-to-date theory of time.) Adorno (clap hands clap hands) says on the first page of Aesthetic Theory ". . . however tragic they appear, artworks tend a priori toward affirmation." hmm. --Rod Barnes & Chernobyl: It's got everything you need It's an artist, it don't look back ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 16:51:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: dante valentini MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII with all this luvin goin on and Henry's mention of dante, i'd like to share my e mail valentine to Beatrice. To:Beatrice@celestial.rosa not sure why but i'm feeeliing really frisky now and you are the target of my emoticons. good thing i'm knowhere near you 'cause i'd be massaging your feet into an erotofrenzy. and since the medium is the massage. you'd have to succumb numb into my passions. i'd swallow you. hollow you. hallow you. gentle . swelling desire delirious. you are delicious. i'll take two scoops. packed into a daydream like summer laughter and freedom. i burn with optimism's flame. the wondiferous splendor of your sparkle. a smile that moves me to song. a choir to the graceful dance of your moonbrows. ever freshing the fountain. superluminous murmurs coil my sensation. the juice of your memory slakes my drought. i dream of buttering your muffin. sleep well knowing that in one mind melancholy with the tears from the wake of your passing, an ember burns amber like ale stout in its steadfastery. hidden from the make-up of the a public face. deep in the soul. a coal remains. hear it cry with steam as teardrops bake into its lumina. soul coal. dream steam. emotions like motions owe prayers to the source. i stroke you. i stroke you. i stroke you. evocative notions. be my guide to awareness. breathe into my daytime. slip into my night. let me squeeze your freshness every morning. let me brush my teeth with your mind at knight so my nocturnal excursions are quessts for pearl necklaces and the slaying of insecurities. and inhibitions. ambitious but ample ,oh apple of my pie. let me bake you into a cake. run down my chin. melt my cream. satisfy my sweettooth. swim in my tastebuds. splash in my saliva. slurp up my sunshine. surrender to my songcraft. with my shipsong packed with poet's art, can my word keel crack your frozen heart? will you be my valentine. will you hold my hand. will let me hide in your shadow safe from eyes of judgment. can i play in your shade? can i draw on your sidewalk. can i skip to your heartbeat? can i compose arias with only your name? symphonies in your key? puddlesplash. leafpile snuggle . stay beautiful. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 17:29:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grotjohn Organization: Mary Baldwin College Subject: Re: my poetics valentine Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit My first formal post here. A VALENTINE'S SESTEENY love/lucious/heart/sweetie/savor/Venus Astarte/ecstacy/relish/cloying/precious/meat viscera/Eros/lambkin/passion/ambrosial/odor delight in/amphetamine/mawkish/Cupid/fancy/petkins darling/fond/infatuation/interior/Kama/juicy sacharine/honey/gods of/partial/middle/rapture taste/Psyche/adoration OR romance/fervor/characteristic -- Bob Grotjohn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 16:08:45 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: my poetics valentine vrey lovely, lisa s; and to all a good v-day. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 16:13:05 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: my poetics valentine terrific; keep em coming. In message <33051175.212F@cit.mbc.edu> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > My first formal post here. > > A VALENTINE'S SESTEENY > > love/lucious/heart/sweetie/savor/Venus > > Astarte/ecstacy/relish/cloying/precious/meat > > viscera/Eros/lambkin/passion/ambrosial/odor > > delight in/amphetamine/mawkish/Cupid/fancy/petkins > > darling/fond/infatuation/interior/Kama/juicy > > sacharine/honey/gods of/partial/middle/rapture > > taste/Psyche/adoration > OR > romance/fervor/characteristic > -- > Bob Grotjohn > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 14:22:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Nielsen on Dorn In-Reply-To: <970214015038_-1307901933@emout13.mail.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII from the "grand vizier of correct thought" -- I'm not going to get sucked into that kind of crap -- Dorn himself, in a letter to the then LeRoi Jones, said letter on deposit in the library at UCLA for your perusal should you care to peruse, apologizes for phone call the previous night -- in which apology he reports that his wife took him to task for "Jew baiting" in the course of the conversation -- as my students would say -- "ironic, huh?" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 14:41:41 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: minor corrections In-Reply-To: <33051175.212F@cit.mbc.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII with Chet Baker's pretty valentine playing in the background -- Just got that _Diacritics_ and wanted to forestall a couple misunderstandings -- While I am deeply grateful to J. Monroe for including my essay on Russell Atkins's criticism, there are two points in Jonathan's introductory essay that might mislead readers -- He opens with the remark that this issue "draws on presentations from two events" at Cornell on 94 & 95 -- that is indeed true, but some of the work, such as my own, is drawn from elsewhwere -- as in I was elsewhwere hen those events happened -- My essay was not part of the conference & symposia -- More imprtantly, at least to me -- on pg. 7 of his intro., Jonathan refers to my having noted that "the most successful black poets have been those, like Rita Dove and Derek Walcott, 'who write in more mainstream modes [and] . . . whose forms are less troubling than their content'" What I actually say on pg. 86 is that black poets "whose forms are less troubling than their content" might be more likely to attract a modest increase in interest by publishers and readers in their critical works (as opposed to somebody like Atkins) -- The claim as represented by Monroe might prove to be true in the end, but it's not the claim I was making yours in love on our saint's day, the grand exalted incorrect whoosiz ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 17:03:38 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: name-sies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit henry again wrote: > - "Henry Again" (pat. pending) Welcome to the family, you should meet Carolyn Always who is on another list Im on Miekal And ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 15:44:44 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: Nielsen on Dorn MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: > > from the "grand vizier of correct thought" -- > > I'm not going to get sucked into that kind of crap -- Dorn himself, in a > letter to the then LeRoi Jones, said letter on deposit in the library at > UCLA for your perusal should you care to peruse, apologizes for phone > call the previous night -- in which apology he reports that his wife took > him to task for "Jew baiting" in the course of the conversation -- > as my students would say -- "ironic, huh?" But isn't this the Pound debate again? Pound who said "A hundred yids should die for every Fascist that falls" (in his taped ravings)? All of this is and must be on the record. But who do we throw out as a result of it? Apparently only the poets we dislike (for whatever other reason). Those we find essential stay put. Marjorie Perloff made what should have been the final statement on this question--what was that last zinger, "It can't be Love my Politics, love my poetry." In the anecdote above, Dorn's the bad guy, Jones/Baraka the good. Yet Jones/Baraka writes of "jewladies" himself, and "faggot handmaidens of the french whore," and "some up and coming queer" (long before the word achieved its in-your-face currency). And I'm not even willing to part with the poem in which he makes some of these references, the coruscating "Politics of Rich Painters." What I heard Anselm Hollo objecting to was the tendency to make untouchables of our enemies, while making excuses for our friends. Please correct me, AH, if I'm wrong. Rachel Loden ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 18:17:11 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Nielsen on Dorn whoa, my adored rachel. i don;t think writing "even dorn (god help us)" or whatever aldon wrote, is "making an untouchable" of dorn. i read it simply as an offhand remark about something we all know: that dorn, while incontrovertibly a major poet with good personal qualities as well as talent, is capable of prejudicial attitudes and statements. to mention in passing, and with what i took to be some humorous affection, something that is well known and that is not pleasant is not, to my mind, an act of censorship. In message <3304F8EC.16B8@concentric.net> UB Poetics discussion group writes: > Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: > > > > from the "grand vizier of correct thought" -- > > > > I'm not going to get sucked into that kind of crap -- Dorn himself, in a > > letter to the then LeRoi Jones, said letter on deposit in the library at > > UCLA for your perusal should you care to peruse, apologizes for phone > > call the previous night -- in which apology he reports that his wife took > > him to task for "Jew baiting" in the course of the conversation -- > > as my students would say -- "ironic, huh?" > > But isn't this the Pound debate again? Pound who said "A hundred yids > should die for every Fascist that falls" (in his taped ravings)? All > of this is and must be on the record. But who do we throw out as a > result of it? Apparently only the poets we dislike (for whatever other > reason). Those we find essential stay put. Marjorie Perloff made what > should have been the final statement on this question--what was that > last zinger, "It can't be Love my Politics, love my poetry." In > the anecdote above, Dorn's the bad guy, Jones/Baraka the good. Yet > Jones/Baraka writes of "jewladies" himself, and "faggot handmaidens of > the french whore," and "some up and coming queer" (long before the word > achieved its in-your-face currency). And I'm not even willing to part > with the poem in which he makes some of these references, the > coruscating "Politics of Rich Painters." What I heard Anselm Hollo > objecting to was the tendency to make untouchables of our enemies, while > making excuses for our friends. Please correct me, AH, if I'm wrong. > > Rachel Loden > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 18:55:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: Nielsen on Dorn MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Rachel Loden wrote: > > Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: > > > > from the "grand vizier of correct thought" -- > > > > I'm not going to get sucked into that kind of crap -- Dorn himself, in a > > letter to the then LeRoi Jones, said letter on deposit in the library at > > UCLA for your perusal should you care to peruse, apologizes for phone > > call the previous night -- in which apology he reports that his wife took > > him to task for "Jew baiting" in the course of the conversation -- > > as my students would say -- "ironic, huh?" > > But isn't this the Pound debate again? Pound who said "A hundred yids > should die for every Fascist that falls" (in his taped ravings)? All > of this is and must be on the record. But who do we throw out as a > result of it? Apparently only the poets we dislike (for whatever other > reason). Those we find essential stay put. Marjorie Perloff made what > should have been the final statement on this question--what was that > last zinger, "It can't be Love my Politics, love my poetry." In > the anecdote above, Dorn's the bad guy, Jones/Baraka the good. Yet > Jones/Baraka writes of "jewladies" himself, and "faggot handmaidens of > the french whore," and "some up and coming queer" (long before the word > achieved its in-your-face currency). And I'm not even willing to part > with the poem in which he makes some of these references, the > coruscating "Politics of Rich Painters." What I heard Anselm Hollo > objecting to was the tendency to make untouchables of our enemies, while > making excuses for our friends. Please correct me, AH, if I'm wrong. > some thoughts (over) heard: there was no 'tendency to make untouchables' of any bodies rather the perspicacity to point out a bigots bigoty. no 'throwing out' did I hear, but if one hears throwing out, it of course presupposes the white noise of the 'in' we are in. Nielsen rather, with discrimination wrote: > > Yes, I still read Dorn's work -- > > No, he hasn't, so far as I know, done anything AS BAD as Pound -- > > But is that some immutable measure -- I don't know if Alan Golding will > remember this or not, but several years back at a dinner following > sessions at the 20th century lit. conference, Dorn made remarks that made > my skin crawl -- more cowardly then, I spent the rest of the evening at > the other end of the table with Chris & Deborah Parr -- should have > confronted him on the spot -- Dorn has much of interest to say still -- > as many of us witnessed at Orono last year -- but he's also shown himself > a bigot in unforgivable ways -- does one have to have exceeded Pound in > some kind of sweepstakes of prejudice? No pound as the measure of in-ness (as in indictable co-conspiritor) here or heard, rather the good sense to make the ineluctable political measurement of the propaganda of the deed. a salutary measure of consciousness in the too vigorous search for tendencies that rues the diminution of our better, poesy selves. Lets hope its not so easy to make 'final statements'. mc ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 17:09:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: divers Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" 1) My Valentine Poem Tho often you at me are glowering Tho your conceit is sometimes towering & your one-liners can be scouring Tho you sing sharp and flat while showering Tho your persona's overpowering & were mine less, you'd have me cowering Tho Spec Collections has us rowing in type no less, I sit here vowing (while you, net-maidens keep on wowing) when skies are blue or clouds are lowering to keep this long-haul friendship flowering leastwise thruout today, george whatsyername + + + + 2) Ed Dorn's _North Atlantic Turbine_ is an amazing book, as it was when it first appeared. And there are earlier books: _Hands Up_, _The Newly Fallen_, filled with moving poetry, hard-bitten/tender poems of love and mourning, often with a political--but what we used to call "human"--edge to them. _Gunslinger_ was a notable departure from the work of his first decade of publishing. Some big change, announced with "Stand by the Door Awhile, Death, there are Others" which i read as intermediary between the early and the middle periods of this terrific poet. As for bigotry--we have Aldon's indications, and wasnt an issue of his zine _Rolling Stock_ full of taunting of AIDS sufferers? I'd welcome clarity on that one. * * * * * * 3) Bob Perelman's poem: one might well say Wow. He came along like a bottom-feeder and scooped up a lot of heavy matter very fast. Its an exemplary act, it shows how the List can feed (neg or poz) poetry. f.n. Bob, didnt know you were lurking--you put it to good use. Now I'll tell you how to make a proper dash--depress "Shift" and "option" while you type u.c.dash--you have to hit it twice on e-mail to make it long enough, but only once on yr harddrive. Bowering taught me this. db ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 17:57:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Aldon, Pat & Rachel In-Reply-To: <3304F8EC.16B8@concentric.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Come on now guys, I know you're reading at least parts of this exchange -- No, it clearly does not boil down to one incident years ago -- I mentioned the letter in response to remarks that appeared to dismiss another incident as an isolated episode of conference table talk -- I have no interest whatsoever in tracking any and all such remarks Dorn may have made over the deacdes -- Somebody asked why there seemed to be negative reactions to seom mentions of Dorn -- I indicated one reason such negativity might exist -- My guess is that somebdoy who made similar remarks years apart has probably made them on more than two occasions to more than two people -- I could, of course, be wrong about that -- You might ask Dorn his current opinion of Mencken's diary entries on the subject of Jews -- perhaps Dorn has changed his opinion in the interim -- I would be pleased to learn that he has -- As to Pound debate redux -- I most certainly did not tell anyone to stop reading Dorn -- quite the contrary -- Nor in any way does Jones/Baraka come off as "the good guy" in my representation of the letter -- my remark about "irony" was directed to the fact that one poet was apologizing for something to another poet who was about to do the same thing -- I am on record, here and elswhere, with my opinions about antisemitism in Baraka's poetry of the cultural nationalist period, about his criticism of his earlier antisemitism since he has become a Marxist, and about the fact that he still reads poems in public from that period without much comment about the change -- The system I've borrowed is about to shut off -- I am not going to defend myself for being offended by things that people have said in public -- Nor will I let myself be classed with those censorious folk who WILL tell you what not to read -- Olson said racism has to be kept at the end of a stcik -- he also continued to read Pound -- see y'all later on another topic ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 20:07:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: names and doubles MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Although impercise in its appliction, a measure of certain consciousnesses available in our present is the cliched 'kafka-esque', over-abundantly used as an adjectival injunction to give order to 'our' disordered lives. But the following is true: There is another michael corbin (same middle name too) who is a felon; wanted for parole violation and failure to appear in court in the state of michigan. this person also (for perhaps genetic or perhaps cosmic reasons) met my general physical discription including the placement of a small facial scar. This person's drivers license number very closely approximated mine (close enough for a fine police officer to, perhaps willingly, confuse them). And, clearly for some horoscopical reason, this gentleman had my exact same date of birth. The reason that I know of the existence of this literal out-law was, of course, that I was thought to be him, by those who had an interest to know him and to get him (I have never been to michigan I assure you and my crimes well . . .). Twice I was accosted by the constabulary during self-conscious gestures of political civil disobedience unrelated to this identity convergance (once against the storage of nuclear waste, the other, unironically, at a demonstration agaisnt police brutality). When mis taken for the michigan gentleman upon my arrest I was jailed until the state of michigan could point out that I was not their man. Twice more the constabulary engaged me. unfortantely, I was observed being excessive on my motorcycle. On the final instance after 'they', as they say, 'ran my plate' I was mis took for a felon on the run (and speeding on a motorcycle no less). I was approached in high-tabloid-television fashion by the constabulary, their firearms drawn, after I had pulled sheepishly to the shoulder. I know not if my hieroglyph has been apprehended. But as of this moment I remain at large. mc mc ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 22:40:37 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: names and doubles corbin rites: > There is another michael corbin (same middle name too) who is a felon; > wanted for parole violation and failure to appear in court in the state > of michigan. this person also (for perhaps genetic or perhaps cosmic > reasons) met my general physical discription including the placement of a > small facial scar. This person's drivers license number very closely > approximated mine (close enough for a fine police officer to, perhaps > willingly, confuse them). And, clearly for some horoscopical reason, this > gentleman had > my exact same date of birth. etc... which reminds me of the marvelous anecdote in Our Lady of the Flowers of the young thug who systematically denies being the one who committed a crime by someone who looked just like him, had his date of birth, his name, his address, but...wasnt him. high camp and very charming, a break of hilarity in genet's baroque eroticism. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 04:06:03 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: no massacre MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Aldon: first, am distressed that I may have offended you. Whole snafu points up the limits of email, something I've often been lectured on by resident logician who says it should be used for brief bulletins and not to carry anything with emotional freight. A simple act like pressing the reply button makes it seem that I am talking to you alone (rather than responding to the whole thread). You weren't censoring and I know that. I've recently put the screws to Eliot (on another list) for reasons very similar to the ones that made you highlight Dorn's bad behavior. Which is to say that stuff he said offended me greatly. When I said that there was a tendency to make untouchables of our enemies while making excuses for our friends, I meant that that tendency was mine as well. But neither of us is suggesting censorship, and I don't think that accusation is really anywhere in my post. It seems possible--now that I think of it in the half-lunacy of 4 a.m. --that the work of someone who is (even slightly) reviled may, in a perverse way, attract more readers than it might have been able to pull in otherwise. I wonder how many people will pick up Dorn after this discussion with new interest, for instance. Who is this guy and how did he get that way? It's more the sort of mildly withering adjectives that Ron Silliman used in his Zones v. Zoos post that might actually have the power to shrink a potential readership, seems to me. What could be worse for a writer than to be perceived as timid or nostalgic, not to mention achingly pretentious? Now those are a real death knell. Rachel Loden ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 04:04:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSchu30844@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Randolph Healy I lost Randolph Healy's message; would someone kindly forward me another copy (Randolph, are you there?). Thanks, Susan ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 09:07:22 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: racism, racist poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" How a person behaves -- what the person thinks, says and does -- ought certainly to determine how one relates to that person -- what one thinks, says, does in re: him/her. Any problems so far? Writing -- that's thinking, saying, doing. Still with me? Reading -- ditto. Are we on the same page? Simple so far. Ed Dorn comes around me, I'll bust him one good in the chops whatever his skills as a poet, whatever my friend Anselm thinks. No grand zodiacs of correctness involved. You might want to read Rushdie's valentine into this space. What makes you think you can separate reading from ethics? Aesthete? You imagine that writing and reading in the absence of ethics are anything but "trade" to use Rushdie's term. As to pointing out the contradiction in someone's work, that's certainly a start, but it absolutely excuses the sayer if nothing else changes. People keep imagining that someone can provide an exposition to resolve an issue like this in some sort of theory, that there's some sort of path through it. There is no intellectual resolution available to allow one to consort with hateful behavior. My father used to say "lie down with dogs, get up with lice." If you have the time or strength or want to pick the lice off yourself, you're safe to lie down with racists, anti-semites, queer-haters, fatwa-issuers, collaborators with the Nazis, and the like. Perhaps it really won't do you any harm? Perhaps it's really not objectionable? Perhaps the regime really won't be as bad as they say? Perhaps it'd be okay to accommodate just for the brief time the phenomenon is present? Perhaps, since so many feel so comfortable in taking the ride, they are not wrong after all. Juden heraus. As I say, Dorn around me? Punch in the mouth. Tom Tom Mandel ************************************************************ Screen Porch * tmandel@screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ************************************************************ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 09:23:05 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: the more things change (fwd); dorn... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" a note of thanx to alan j. sondheim for the forwarded post on telegraph technologies... i've heard these stories before, and it's nice to have some formal sources to check out... my wife kass fleisher and i met online, so i have a personal (and professional) interest in such stuff... and i've heard too many stories about dorn, from too many folks who know him too well, not to be aware of problems with him personally & politically... which is revealed in his public self, finally, b/c he *has* a public self that's often *very* public... i don't think aldon was suggesting that we don't read his work -- aside from _slinger_, _way west_ has some fine fine work in it, and if you've spent any time at all in idaho, dorn's writing on same reveals a terrific touch... so a call for us ALL -- pleez? pretty pleez? -- not to get into these testy waters looking for combat... if you know the man and like the man and feel the urge to rush to his defense as a friend or acquaintance, give a bit of pause -- you'll still have to contend with some pretty awful public realities... yeah, maybe we're ALL pretty awful deep down inside, or not so deep, but then i'd simply have to observe that, art aside, we ought to reserve those moments for the intimate few who can tell us where to get off... apologies for the homily/// best, whollyjoe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 14:42:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Elizabeth Mathews Losh Subject: Re: names In-Reply-To: <199702130809.AAA08962@mail.well.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII According to the Oxford English Dictionary "Losh" is is a word which is onomatapoetic in origin and means "to fall with a splash" or "to go stumbling" as in "Yet am I not so sheepish to losh into the Ditch" (1629). It also is a "distortion of Lord, used in certain exclamations" as in "The losh preserve me, sirs" (1779) or "Losh me! that's beautiful language!" (1855). Losh is a surprisingly rare name outside of Pennsylvania and most people don't know quite how to pronounce it. Whenever I am introduced at a reading I write on a small slip of paper ("rhymes with GOSH"), as people generally assume "rhymes with GAUCHE." I suspect that it is a name of German origin as everyone in my father's family is German American. But my father insists that it isn't really from "Losch" but rather "Loches," the picturesque French chateau in the Loire Valley made famous by Joan of Arc and some rather grotesque stories about its dungeon. This year he was triumphant when, after tracing the family genealogy back 350 years, he finally arrived at some French speakers who were religious dissidents to boot. I still believe that we are all middle class Krauts and that all other etymologies are just wishful thinking. "Losh" is also the title of a book from Charasse Press Incorporated, Copyright 1975 by Brian Grieveson. I believe that Losh is the Native American heroine of the book who dies tragically at the end and who also has a daughter named Losh. The book is cryptically dedicated to "Losh Roxanne." The last line of the book is: "I love you, Losh" ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 17:36:55 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: [Fwd: CONLANG: Jabberwocky Translations] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------7CC21EE95BBD" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------7CC21EE95BBD Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit passed on by miekal --------------7CC21EE95BBD Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Received: from listserv.brown.edu (listserv.brown.edu [128.148.128.155]) by westbyserver.westby.mwt.net (8.7.3/8.6.12) with SMTP id MAA17015 for ; Sat, 15 Feb 1997 12:14:35 -0600 (CST) Received: from stanley.cis.Brown.EDU (stanley.cis.brown.edu [128.148.128.155]) by listserv.brown.edu (8.6.10/8.6.10) with SMTP id NAA09528; Sat, 15 Feb 1997 13:11:05 -0500 Received: from BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU by BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (LISTSERV release 1.8b) with NJE id 3580 for CONLANG@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU; Sat, 15 Feb 1997 13:06:32 -0500 Received: from BROWNVM (NJE origin SMTP@BROWNVM) by BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 4289; Sat, 15 Feb 1997 13:06:32 -0500 Received: from mail.inreach.com by BROWNVM.brown.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP; Sat, 15 Feb 97 13:06:31 EST Received: from leomoser (ppp062.inreach.com [205.138.224.62]) by mail.inreach.com (8.8.3/8.7.1) with SMTP id KAA19703; Sat, 15 Feb 1997 10:03:23 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by mail.inreach.com id KAA19703 Message-ID: <3305FC82.4FB0@inreach.com> Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 10:12:18 -0800 Reply-To: acadon@INREACH.COM Sender: Constructed Languages List From: "Leo J. Moser" Organization: LJM Subject: CONLANG: Jabberwocky Translations X-cc: hrick@magicnet.magicnet.net, JAHenning@aol.com, RMoser6000@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 KAA19703 Leo Moser supplies a copy of a webpage of links to Jabberwocky Translations: Choktaw to Klingon to Welsh! (see end for ref.) @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ JABBERWOCKY TRANSLATIONS: (in alphabetical order by language name [in English]) Afrikaans=20 Die Flabberjak, Linette Retief Brabbelwoggel [translator unknown] Choctaw=20 Chabbawaaki, Aaron Broadwell Czech=20 Zxvahlav, Jaroslav C=EDsarx Tlachapoud, Aloys and Hana Skoumal Danish=20 Jabberwocky, Mogens Jermiin Nissen Dutch=20 De Krakelwok, Ab Westervaarder & Ren=E9 Kurpershoek Wauwelwok, Alfred Kossmann & C. Reedijk Koeterwaal, Nicolaas Matsier Esperanto=20 Gxaberuxoko, Mark Armantrout La Jxargonbesto, Marjorie Boulton Babecxado Marjorie Boulton and Jim Cool Jabervokado, William F. Orr Finnish=20 Pekoraali, Kirsi Kunnas & Eeva-Liisa Manner French=20 Le Jaseroque, Frank L. Warrin Jabberwocky, Henri Parisot Jabberwocheux / Bredoulocheux Henri Parisot Le Berdouilleux, Andr=E9 Bay Le Jabberwocky, J. B. Brunius [Jabberwocky] Antonin Artaud German=20 Der Jammerwoch, Robert Scott Brabbelback Lieselotte & Martin Remane Der Zipferlake, Christian Morgenstern Hungarian=20 Szajk=F3hukky We=F3=B4res S=E1ndor Italian=20 Il Ciarlestrone, Adriana Crespi Klingon=20 ja'pu'vawqoy, keith lim Latin=20 Gaberbocchus Hassard H. Dodgson Mors Iabrochii Augustus A. Vansittart Norwegian=20 Dromeparden Zinken Hopp Polish=20 Dz~abbersmok Maciej S/lomczy=F1ski Rumanian=20 Traxncaxniciada Frida Papadache B=EEzd=EEbocul Nina Cassian Russian=20 Barmaglot (ASCII) / Barmaglot (Cyrillic text) / Barmaglot (Cyrillic, GIF) E. Orlova (with O. Demurova)=20 Umzari U.L. Oryol Tarbormo+ski A. ^Serbakova [Jabberwocky] [translator unknown] Slovak=20 Tarad=FAr Juraj & Viera Vojtek Spanish=20 Chacaloco Erwin Brea El Jabberwocky Adolfo de Alba El Dragob=E1n M. Manent Swedish=20 Jabberwocky [translator unknown] Jabberwocky, Louise Arosenius Jabberwocky, G=F6sta Knutson Tjattersl=E5net, Eva H=E5kanson Tjatterskott, Harry Lundin Welsh=20 Siaberwoci, Selyf Roberts the jabberwocky variations: [ introduction | translations | parodies | acknowledgements ]=20 chil=20 email keith: keithlim@pobox.com --------------7CC21EE95BBD-- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 01:50:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: JDHollo@AOL.COM Subject: Loden, Damon, re Nielsen/Dorn Yes, Rachel, you read me right. The term 'unforgivable' is not, I don't think, commonly used in a spirit of "some humorous affection" (Maria D.). But I suppose these "kick-the-dog" (or the Dorn) fits of righteousness ARE excusable--especially considering our shared powerlessness in the face of the corporate-feudal world government's brutality (so eloquently described in Salman Rushdie's message). to bed, to bed as Lady Macbeth said AH Corvus ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 22:44:47 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: Aldon, Pat & Rachel aldon rites > Come on now guys, ... etc. you know i think it's the age of aquarius and everyone's a little undone. everyone at work is totally wigged out and hysterical about nothing of significance...the way this dornpound thread has spun out looks like a similar tempest in a teapot...me, i'm gonna try to get a life, having gotten one of those cards w/ kidnapped kids photos on it as my ONLY valentines day snail mail, and having spent the evening at the gym with the one or two other single folks in the universe. md ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 21:16:52 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: our vale in time MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit greetings all, miekal & liaizon & i were blessed on valentine's day (a holiday which like most others we usually ignore (except xmas which happens to fall on miekal's birthday)). at around 5:30 pm we looked outside our east window & saw the following sight: EIGHT CARDINALS PERCHED IN OUR SUGAR MAPLE - SEVEN MALES & ONE FEMALE! in all my 40 years i've never seen more than three maybe four cardinals together. but eight! the effect on me was one of awe, of sacredness, of good omen, blessedness, almost a trippy feeling of having one's reality strangely but pleasantly tweaked or shifted. what a valentine's gift, those live bright red splotches in the grey-brown winter branches on a backdrop of white snow. who needs poetry (or watercolors) when you've got mother nature? more miraculous if it'd happened in a city.. . glad to be out "in the sticks" [actually, we're at the milktruck frequented cross-section of two county highways; there are street lamps shining out the west windows...BUT, compared to any city i've been in lately, this is still "the sticks"] -lyx ish -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 00:22:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: dante valentini In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 14 Feb 1997, k.a. hehir wrote: > > To:Beatrice@celestial.rosa > grazie, signor hehir, but have we met? I can't seem to place you. __________________________________________________ Samples of reviews, criticism and poetry at http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 23:42:07 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: B Staker Subject: Re: NEW ADDRESS FOR POETICS LIST In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19961112205849.0068fe94@bway.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII OPTIONS ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 03:04:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "A. Jennifer Sondheim" Subject: after Valentine's Day's darkness, the darkness sets in MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ________________________________________________________________________ In Kush 95 dissolves, 96 I 97 know 98 not 99 who 100 or 101 what 102 I 103 am; 104 z 86 105 In Kush, these times are lost; my soul dissolves, I know not who or what I am; these times are dark as Kush is dark and light. 106 these 107 times 108 are 109 dark 110 as 111 Kush 112 is 113 dark 114 and 115 light. 116 . 117 rz 118 pico zz 119 h 120 pico zz 121 sed 's/ksh/Kush/' zz > zzz 122 pico zzz 123 new zzz 124 cat jn zzz > ding 125 rm zzz jn 126 rm zz 127 ls 128 mv ding jn 129 sz jn 130 b 131 m 132 m 133 b 134 h 1 > ding ------------------------------------------------------------------------- {k:87} In Kush: In: not found {k:88} Kush, ksh: Kush,: not found {k:89} these Kush: these: not found {k:90} times Shell: 0.61s user 0.83s system Kids: 11.16s user 7.25s system {k:91} are Kush: are: not found {k:92} lost; Kush: lost: not found {k:93} my ksh: my: not found {k:94} soul ksh: soul: not found {k:95} dissolves, Kush: dissolves,: not found {k:96} I ksh: I: not found {k:97} know Kush: know: not found {k:98} not ksh: not: not found {k:99} who alexis ttyp0 Feb 12 03:29(166.84.254.254) sondheim ttyq2 Feb 13 03:00(ts2.nyc.access.n) {k:100} or Kush: or: not found {k:101} what [ ...HEY!!!!! This message comes from bjc (Brian Cully)... disaster averted, shutdown not needed. ] {k:102} I Kush: I: not found {k:103} am; Kush: am;: not found {k:106} thse ese ksh: these: not found {k:107} times Shell: 0.63s user 0.93s system Kids: 11.21s user 7.31s system {k:108} are Kush: are: not found {k:109} dark ksh: dark: not found {k:110} as as: error: no input filename given usage: as [-F[O][if]#] [-O[#]] [-S[C]] [-o objfile] [-L] [-R] [-Q] [-P [[-Ipath] [-Dname] [-Dname=def] [-Uname]]...] file.s... {k:111} Kush Kush: Kush: not found {k:112} is Kush: is: not found {k:113} dark ksh: dark: not found {k:114} and Kush: and: not found {k:115} light. ksh: light.: not found {k:116} . {k:117} __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 07:52:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: valentine poem MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi, I just joined the list and thought I would offer a valentine poem one day late. HALF-PETRARCHAN LOVE SONNET Y I B C N N E Z W M E U M E -Mike Magee. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 21:32:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: Erica Hunt? Harryette Mullen? (email addresses) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" If anyone on the list has email addresses for Erica Hunt or Harryette Mullen, could you please backchannel me? thanks, Tenney ---------------------------------------------------------- tenney nathanson tenney@azstarnet.com nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 14:18:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: racism, racist poets the way i usually think of it is that if a writer is blind, fool, and dishonest enough to either believe, or, not believing, still become a propaganda machine for racism, facism, oppression, torture, murder, repression, etc (yes i AM including pound here) i find their entire ouevre considerably less credible. yes, as with elliott and his pathetic anti-semitism, a writer might still have tremendous gifts which are only tarnished by such behavior, but the gift IS tarnished, and i lose that wonderous, celebratory sense when reading because i must pass everything i read and every feeling of admiration through the considerable filter of knowing the writer has been horrifically, at the least, misled. to put it more succinctly, imagine reading tillie olson or that old favorite, meridel leseuer; one lets go, accepts premises willingly, is buoyed up on a respect and admiration verging on worship, learns, opens, takes in an extraordinary synthesis of emotion, compassion, skill, communication, immediateness, clarity... then imagine reading pound, especially after hearing one of those whacked anti-semitic broadcasts. you admire, but reluctantly. you distrust what you admire. you distrust his ability, innovativeness, wonder who he copied and stole from, what horrific use THAT particular idea will be put to... you might still read, though i wouldn't read in any context that puts money in the artists' hands (buy film ticket, or book, for example). but it isn't a good read, a whole-hearted read. yes, there are degrees: elliott, though a misled snob in many respects, is not, i think, on the level of pound who was LIVING with the horrors of anti-semitism and facism in action and still enthusiastic in their support... e ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 13:51:59 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Kocik address query MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Might anyone have an address--snail or otherwise--for Robert Kocik? Would appreciate such if okay to be passed on. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 12:22:27 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: NOT about Pound In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Has anyone on the list had a look yet at this new novel by Julian Rios, _Poundomania_, that I see noted in this morning's _NY Times_ -- Sounds fantastic, but, despite being a Dalkey Archive production, seems not to have shown up in bookstores here yet -- AND while we're on the subject of innovative writing in Spanish, does anyone have leads on more recent Spanish Language poets whose verse is as interestingly put together as Rios's prose? I've been a bit cut off since moving away from a Spanish Language bookstore where they looked out for me -- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 15:04:28 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: racism, racist poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" e -- if what you say is the case -- and for me it is -- then the converse holds?... i think it does... that is, if i really take to someone, i'm that much more likely to WANT to like someone's poetry... which isn't to draw any hard & fast lines, or connections, just to indicate again how the person-al can inflect perceptions of product... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 15:49:13 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: racism, racist poets mandel, i find your complete lack of ambivalence on this score very likeable, though i don't share it. or rather, i share it selectively. for example, i'm not a fan of pound because of his politics but i am a fan of gertrude stein. how do you see stein? > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 17:20:58 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT: FWD FROM ERIK BELGUM VOYS is a new sound journal on CD dedicated to exploring all aspects of speech (editors Erik Belgum and Brian West). VOYS #1 features Raymond Federman reading his novel, "The Voice in the Closet." VOYS #2 will feature various works around the theme of "Speech and Electronics." Future issues tentatively include the following: realizations of the plays of Gertrude Stein, storytelling, glossolalia, new works by various writers/audio artists/sound poets, etc., etc. Subscriptions are $28/year for 2 CD's ($32/year overseas). Send check or money order payable to VOYS, PO Box 580547, Minneapolis, MN 55458-0547. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 18:27:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: racism, racist poets In-Reply-To: <199702161918.OAA29854@toast.ai.mit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII But there is a very real sense in which Pound was not "living with" anything like the horrors of fascism--he was geographically isolated at Rapallo, had no mail from the US during the war, and had a comfortable buffered zone of privilege--a safe place from which to spout his bullshit. As for Dorn, his public statements have been execrable in a number of ways--in the early years of the AIDS pandemic he published some really nasty anti-gay stuff. I don't think it would be skillful means for me, in particular, to punch him in the mouth. But it doesn't exactly lead me to spend my limited "disposable" income on his books, either. For me, the Dorn issue is just a re-teaching of that truth: just because someone is black, Latino, Asian, First Nations, queer, a poet, an innovative poet, a leftist, whatever doesn't mean they're "cool." Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 18:40:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Lazer's /Opposing Poetries/ In-Reply-To: <199702162104.PAA02966@charlie.cns.iit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Yo, Hank Lazer, she said rather publicly, mercy boocoo for all of the excellent work and thought and scholarship and insight that went into producing /Opposing Poetries./ A great service to readers. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 19:09:39 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: no coast of Nebraska (bad/good) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Rod -- tragedy (by which I guess you mean the tendency to neglect the need to focus) (or maybe you mean a work of art that records the events befalling ((no more absolutes)) those with a problem dilating) (or maybe in all this pastiche ((the word's like caulk (((breathing forever))) and in an old place unfixed a long time you need caulk)) the fractal's a star on the brow of a deathshead) wouldn't be so bad to see -- Clement Greenberg said Jules Olitski was the final product of abex but he meant it in a good way -- apex of the ibex -- fin ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 20:20:53 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: no coast of Nebraska (bad/good) In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 16 Feb 1997 19:09:39 -0500 from sorry to interrupt, fellas, just wanted to point out that the fractal's a version of penrose tiling (the goulden section). Unrepeatable, pace Clement. Nonperiodical, no tragedy intended. You listening, Jules? - Poetry Chicken Time silvers the plow & the poet's voice. - Olitsky/Mandelstam re: Dorn He walked into a doorjamb head first, like the sleuth of anger he was temperate and prey to the gods, like the "silent swerving from accuracy by an inch that is the uncanny element in everything. . . a sort of secret treason in the universe" he played at coyote. He he. Don't throw your fist at the shadow of the Devil's inkpot. Ye are gods - bless they that curse ye. Excuse not thy offenses at the trough of World Valentine Corporation. For the Valentine that ye purchase so dearly today is the Valentine ye ought to have given yesterday. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 18:26:24 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I think it is bad when we exculsively mix moralistic tendencies with art. I mean you can appreciate someone's politics and say 'wow, this person is right on, and therefore is a good poet...but also can't someone just be plain evil and be a great artist. I think this is possible. I think the reader just has to work harder in knowing the in-and-out of that artist's thinking and deal with it. I don't know why an artist has to be on a higher moral ground. Tosh Berman TamTam Books ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 15:41:12 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: racism, racist poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I felt much the same about dorn after last saturday night. (yech) >As I say, Dorn around me? Punch in the mouth. > >Tom > > > > >Tom Mandel >************************************************************ >Screen Porch * tmandel@screenporch.com >4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 >Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 >************************************************************ > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 21:46:34 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: same old thing In message UB Poetics discussion group writes: > I think it is bad when we exculsively mix moralistic tendencies with art. > I mean you can appreciate someone's politics and say 'wow, this person is > right on, and therefore is a good poet...but also can't someone just be > plain evil and be a great artist. I think this is possible. I think the > reader just has to work harder in knowing the in-and-out of that artist's > thinking and deal with it. I don't know why an artist has to be on a > higher moral ground. > > Tosh Berman > TamTam Books actually, i mix "moralistic tendencies" much less with art than with other pursuits, such as friendship. for instance, i enjoy reading william burroughs, although he shot his wife. althusser also killed his wife, and i teach his ideas in class (not uncritically, though my critique does not solely rest on his uxoricide). i doubt very much, though, that i could be friends with someone who shot his wife. of course, it depends on the circumstances; in both of these cases, the guys were not in their right minds at the time, but still they were doing something that seems somehow culturally condoned for guys who are not in their right minds. also, i'm not sure disliking someone's anti-semitism is a moral issue; it seems more one of self-preservation and self-respect. btw, ezra pound wasn't just a great poet who happened to be anti-semitic; his anti-semitism was the substance not only of his poetry but of his life choices and most passionate political public activities. i don't care much for pound. now some folks would call genet an anti-semite for various reasons. i have only been able to find one anti-semitic statement in all of his oeuvre, which i passionately adore. (though that one sentence makes me uncomfortable.) how did "morality" get mixed up in this discussion anyway?--md > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 22:54:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: racism, racist poets ahhhhh joe! we are back to taste are we... yes, it is true. and yet, isn't there that sickening disappointment we have all known when we've met someone, and they've been great, talked the great talk, walked the great walk, and then we look at their writing and KABAAM! with the best will in the world, we cannot bring ourselves to think we like it, or it's any good... and the converse; someone who is a wretch as a person, dishonest, mean spirited, manipulative, and they write like an angel... but yes. i think the source stains the message, or lifts it sometimes. it is so tangled up, really. you read donne, the sermons about giving and giving up things for others, or herbert. and it's all very nice and good-good talk, you think, still, there's something really lovely but then, then you find out that herbert relinquished the immense perks of his class, time, position, to go off and care for a small country flock against all advice for proferrment. and the tender, humble, gentle verse he writes, the simplicity and sympathy, resound so very much... or donne, after his wild youth, and wilder marriage, and imprisonment and hopeless poverty, and then he writes of what one renounces for love, and a love bought dear, and you hear the brilliant urbanite scholar crying out in each phrase against the poverty and obscurity and shame, and that he can still hold to a tenderness, a valuing rather than a bitterness, it is quite moving... e ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 12:40:24 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: new Adorno, Bernstein, Killian, Nielsen etc. @ B St In-Reply-To: <970210131620_-2044224710@emout01.mail.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Good morning Rod, hope all is well & not too snowy. I'd like to order some books: TANGLED LOYALTIES: LIFE & TIMES OF ILYA EHRENBERG, Joshua Rubenstein, Basic Books JOHN'S WIFE, Robert Coover PINOCCHIO IN VENICE, Robert Coover IMAGINATION VERSES, Jennifer Moxley, Tender Buttons BLACK CHANT, Aldon Nielsen, Cambridge SOME OTHER KIND OF MISSION, Lisa Jarnot, Burning Deck THE LACK, Rod Smith, Abacus PENGUIN MODERN POETS #10, Doug Oliver/Denise Riley/Iain Sinclair LUSH LIFE, Bill Berkson, Z Press POWERLESS, Tim Dlugos, Serpent's Tail LE DIVORCE, Diane Johnson THE DIARY OF JAMES SCHUYLER, Black Sparrow (paperback edition) SEEDINGS, Jerome Rothenberg, New Directions GEOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA, Gertrude Stein (I believe this is again in print, but not sure from whom) As always, please mail to Simon Schuchat AIT Taipei - ECON Department of State Washington, DC 20521-4170 Also, don't bother with items that I might have put on earlier lists but which you couldn't then find (particularly TRAIL OF THE SILKWORM, which I picked up on my last visit to Hong Kong), with the sole exception of the Bruce Andrews AERIAL, wheneverit comes out. Hope you had a happy Chinese new Year & all best for the year of the golden cow! Cheers, Simon ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 12:44:39 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: apologies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII sorry to have sent a personal message to the whole list. not what I am reading, but what I intend to read. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 22:41:05 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: main Subject: tarn address MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII nathaniel tarn house/email address. please backchannel. thanks, dan featherston ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 22:15:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: new Adorno, Bernstein, Killian, Nielsen etc. @ B St In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Now here's one real advantage to the mistakes people make when hitting that reply key -- We are finally back to reading lists -- I'm impressed with both the range and the quantity of Simon's order from Rod -- hope he reads mine first! -- but I think I'll take a few items from his list and add them to my own current reading -- Have finally gotten to the reading lists in the new book on Olson's reading -- The real meat is in the footnotes -- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 00:36:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: jen hofer Subject: mexican poetry in translation Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable i'm trying to find out everything possible there is to know about books published recently (say, in the last five years, but particularly in the last year) of mexican poetry in translation, preferably bilingual editions, and particularly work by women, & even more particularly "innovative" or "experimental" or "non-traditional" or "unconventional" (or etc etc etc) work by women. i know about forrest gander's book & juvenal acosta's & marjorie agos=EDn's & i'm familiar with the work of suzanne jill levine & eliot weinberger (& probably some others i'm forgetting but just so you don't spend tons of energy helping me out with things i already know)--anyone want to tell me everything else about everything else? many thanks, jen ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 02:08:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: JDHollo@AOL.COM Subject: One each from Bert and Ted Bertolt Brecht: THE MASK OF EVIL On my wall hangs a Japanese carving The mask of an evil demon, decorated with gold lacquer. Sympathetically I observe The swollen veins of the forehead, indicating What a strain it is to be evil. Translated by H.R. Hays Note: the German "boese" cd also be rendered "angry, furious." --------------------------------- Anselm Hollo: LINES FROM TED (Berrigan) XIV The poet whose works you love Who's changed your life & given it shape & become a Great Moral Source Of Support in your life May just be a prick with a bad character Don't let that worry you They just have bad days all the time If you're vulnerable to never wanting to read their works again when you find that out Then never go any closer to them than this Because it's the works that are the truth Every person has a right Poet or not to be judged by their best The only credit poets get is for being poets Then putting their words together & coming up with poems -------------------------- As an oldtime/oldfashioned, even, rootless ("we got legs, not roots") cosmopolite of long standing, I personally regard all self- or "identity"-definition based on "othering the Other" as a big mistake. It makes this species, all of us, atavistically vulnerable to the pathological fear and paranoia that often finds its expression in all kinds of forms of scapegoating, racism, bigotry, etc. Such brain function aberrations are traditionally exploited by demagogues warlords and "business" and "religious" "leaders." It's a tough one; the propensity seems quite "hard-wired," hence requires constant vigilance, first and foremost in regard to oneself. Paranoia is far more addictive than the old poppy juice. Sweet dreams, and good morning Anselm ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 02:48:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: racism, racist poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I would respond with a jaundiced eye and ear to Dorn's poetry if he had kept his mouth shut for years but then I found out his true feelings later. Honesty in one realm is likely to be true in other realms. tom bell ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 03:19:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: Re: no coast of Nebraska (bad/good) Jordan, well (it) was (I) suppose (DeKooning) said (there) is (no longer tragedy our failures are merely (pathetic which I don't think I quite go along with not that I'm not pathetic but I believe being pathetic might also (be a tragedy insofar as (it can be digested.] Still, thoughts do arise. This is the strange and wonderful thing. Or this is. Or this. This has been a Thematic Apperception Test of the Emergency Multiplicity Attachment. It remains uncertain whether negation of any kind is an electric chopper pump. & speckled incident at critical angle. But you're definitely right about dilating. I think I get your drifts. --Rod ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 00:32:21 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Flawed Makers Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" That was y o u r goodness, intelligence, affirmation, sorrow, y o u r ability to feel beauty, truth, evil, tyranny, honesty, that you found in the poem, whichever poem, into that wordnet you were drawn and from you these qualities were made to resound there made apparent, sensuously their intelligence apprehended came back to you from this more-than-a-Rorschach arrangement of letters. . . So how could you be deceived about an experience this personal? Even though the person who put that poem there for you to read were evil incarnate and o n l y that? The music from a broken heart can resonate for a long, long time. The above being my take on the poem Ted wrote. Thanks for posting it, Anselm. db ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 02:21:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: Flawed Makers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Bromige wrote: > > That was y o u r goodness, intelligence, affirmation, sorrow, y o u r > ability to feel beauty, truth, evil, tyranny, honesty, that you found in > the poem, whichever poem, into that wordnet you were drawn and from you > these qualities were made to resound there made apparent, sensuously their > intelligence apprehended came back to you from this more-than-a-Rorschach > arrangement of letters. . . So how could you be deceived about an > experience this personal? Even though the person who put that poem there > for you to read were evil incarnate and o n l y that? The music from a > broken heart can resonate for a long, long time. > > The above being my take on the poem Ted wrote. Thanks for posting it, > Anselm. db Ted's lines, Anselm's poem, yes? It's in his _Corvus_ (Coffee House). Thanks everybody. What a lovely thread this has turned out to be. Rachel ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 02:23:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: nico vassilakis Subject: nordaDORN MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII poets are nothing really who they are in life is a curiosit/ic extention of their work experience is / of their work we better to not meet a poet ~>?0+1 is 1 if it's allowd 2B what? nothing's crazy? quote "evidence" wood be nice. (3-1)=2 help us in the dim . . . . . . ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 08:13:28 -40962758 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jim Rosenberg Subject: Calling Loss ... Content-Type: text Sorry to bother the whole list with what should be a backchannel matter ... Loss, are you out there? Does anyone know if anything has happened to Loss Glazier? Lawrence Upton is arranging a reading in London (thanks John!!) to correspond with Hypertext 97 visitations, and we need to hear from Loss. If anyone knows of what may have happened to Loss's E-mail connection, please backchannel me. -Thanks, Jim -- Jim Rosenberg http://www.well.com/user/jer/ CIS: 71515,124 WELL: jer Internet: jr@amanue.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 08:53:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: racism, racist poets In-Reply-To: <199702161918.OAA29854@toast.ai.mit.edu> from "Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest" at Feb 16, 97 02:18:39 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > to put it more succinctly, imagine reading tillie olson or that old > favorite, meridel leseuer; one lets go, accepts premises willingly, is > buoyed up on a respect and admiration verging on worship, learns, opens, > takes in an extraordinary synthesis of emotion, compassion, skill, > communication, immediateness, clarity... I guess maybe that's the difference. I never read that way. I'm always suspicious. In my experience, the categories of "learning" and "worshipping" are exclusive of each other. (Nor do I feel sure enough of my own purity to go around socking people in the mouth for being bad. Isn't that kinda what the Ayotollah thought he was up to?) Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 09:40:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Diane Marie Ward Subject: Re: Calling Loss ... In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Loss Sightings.... Loss is out there... on vacation for a little bit - he should be back in a week or so.. Jim, will back channel email address. -- Diane-Marie Ward On Mon, 17 Feb 1997, Jim Rosenberg wrote: > Sorry to bother the whole list with what should be a backchannel matter ... > > Loss, are you out there? Does anyone know if anything has happened to Loss > Glazier? Lawrence Upton is arranging a reading in London (thanks John!!) to > correspond with Hypertext 97 visitations, and we need to hear from Loss. If > anyone knows of what may have happened to Loss's E-mail connection, please > backchannel me. > > -Thanks, Jim > > -- > Jim Rosenberg http://www.well.com/user/jer/ > CIS: 71515,124 > WELL: jer > Internet: jr@amanue.com > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 12:25:22 +0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: Re: One each from Bert and Ted Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >As an oldtime/oldfashioned, even, rootless ("we got legs, not roots") >cosmopolite of long standing, I personally regard all self- or >"identity"-definition based on "othering the Other" as a big mistake. What exactly is "othering the other"... explain. Please. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 10:52:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: william marsh Subject: Jeff Hansen? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" If anyone has Jeff Hansen's email address, would you please backchannel to wmarsh@nunic.nu.edu Thanks. bill marsh ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 14:21:14 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: a Persian diatribe / ..."Chaos--the Rock Video" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Poetics persons -- looking via Yahoo for something else (as these things go), I stumbled on a poetics-related diatribe by a certain Hakim Bey, a Persian chap who has a number of opinions. Found it here: http://www.v2.nl/FreeZone/ZoneText/Diversions/Broadsheets/PornographyB S.html & there's an abstract: >File Contents: Excerpt from Chaos: The Broadsheets of Ontological >Anarchy by Hakim Bey. This document was gleaned from an excellent >Hakim Bey source, Marius Watz's site, and was HTMLized by Tom >Jennings. The excerpt is entitled "Pornography" (poss. added by Jennings?, not sure -- haven't looked at the orig. source) -- while Bey has various prejudices about contemp. western poetry, etc., I thought his observations about the way poetry is received in the pan-Islamic world (or, anyway, the old Iran of his memory) to be worthy of note -- the term *hal* (tossed out by Bey) being, incidentally, from the old Sufi lexicon, and signifying "a spiritual state" (or sometimes a "state of absorption"). Am appending below what appears in the above-cited excerpt, for poss. general interest, amusement, shrugs, or whatnot. cheers, d.i. p.s.: glancing at the "acknowledgements" note at end of the text, I see that *The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism* are likely to be already familiar to some readers of this Listserv. Oh well -- just tossing this morsel into the soup, for what worth. / / / / / / / / / / / / Pornography IN PERSIA I SAW that poetry is meant to be set to music & chanted or sung--for one reason alone--because it works. A right combination of image & tune plunges the audience into a hal (something between emotional/aesthetic mood & trance of hyperawareness), outbursts of weeping, fits of dancing--measurable physical response to art. For us the link between poetry & body died with the bardic era--we read under the influence of a cartesian anaesthetic gas. In N. India even non-musical recitation provokes noise & motion, each good couplet applauded, "Wa! Wa!" with elegant hand-jive, tossing of rupees--whereas we listen to poetry like some SciFi brain in a jar--at best a wry chuckle or grimace, vestige of simian rictus--the rest of the body off on some other planet. In the East poets are sometimes thrown in prison--a sort of compliment, since it suggests the author has done something at least as real as theft or rape or revolution. Here poets are allowed to publish anything at all--a sort of punishment in effect, prison without walls, without echoes, without palpable existence--shadow-realm of print, or of abstract thought--world without risk or eros. So poetry is dead again--& even if the mumia from its corpse retains some healing properties, auto-resurrection isn't one of them. If rulers refuse to consider poems as crimes, then someone must commit crimes that serve the function of poetry, or texts that possess the resonance of terrorism. At any cost re-connect poetry to the body. Not crimes against bodies, but against Ideas (& Ideas-in-things) which are deadly & suffocating. Not stupid libertinage but exemplary crimes, aesthetic crimes, crimes for love. In England some pornographic books are still banned. Pornography has a measurable physical effect on its readers. Like propaganda it sometimes changes lives because it uncovers true desires. Our culture produces most of its porn out of body-hatred-- but erotic art in itself makes a better vehicle for enhancement of being/consciousness/bliss--as in certain oriental works. A sort of Western tantrik porn might help galvanize the corpse, make it shine with some of the glamor of crime. America has freedom of speech because all words are considered equally vapid. Only images count--the censors love snaps of death & mutilation but recoil in horror at the sight of a child masturbating--apparently they experience this as an invasion of their existential validity, their identification with the Empire & its subtlest gestures. No doubt even the most poetic porn would never revive the faceless corpse to dance & sing (like the Chinese Chaos- bird)--but...imagine a script for a three-minute film set on a mythical isle of runaway children who inhabit ruins of old castles or build totem-huts & junk-assemblage nests--mixture of animation, special-effects, compugraphix & color tape-- edited tight as a fastfood commercial... ...but weird & naked, feathers & bones, tents sewn with crystal, black dogs, pigeon-blood--flashes of amber limbs tangled in sheets--faces in starry masks kissing soft creases of skin--androgynous pirates, castaway faces of columbines sleeping on thigh-white flowers--nasty hilarious piss jokes, pet lizards lapping spilt milk--nude break- dancing--victorian bathtub with rubber ducks & pink boners-- Alice on ganja... ...atonal punk reggae scored for gamelan, synthesizer, saxophones & drums--electric boogie lyrics sung by aetherial children's choir--ontological anarchist lyrics, cross between Hafez & Pancho Villa, Li Po & Bakunin, Kabir & Tzara- -call it "CHAOS--the Rock Video!" No...probably just a dream. Too expensive to produce, & besides, who would see it? Not the kids it was meant to seduce. Pirate TV is a futile fantasy, rock merely another commodity--forget the slick gesamtkunstwerk, then. Leaflet a playground with inflammatory smutty feuilletons-- pornopropaganda, crackpot samizdat to unchain Desire from its bondage. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS CHAOS: THE BROADSHEETS OF ONTOLOGICAL ANARCHISM was first published in 1985 by Grim Reaper Press of Weehawken, New Jersey; a later re-issue was published in Providence, Rhode Island, and this edition was pirated in Boulder, Colorado. Another edition was released by Verlag Golem of Providence in 1990, and pirated in Santa Cruz, California, by We Press. "The Temporary Autonomous Zone" was performed at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, and on WBAI-FM in New York City, in 1990. . ..... ............ \\\\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ========================= | through recklessness woundingly worthless | i guess we became: | the more we became in abandon | the less we became ///////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\////\\\\/////// Mirza Ghalib (according to yours truly) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 14:36:31 -0500 Reply-To: Mark Prejsnar Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Evil poets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In line with what Tosh Berman wrote (someone might be "just plain evil and a great artist"..forcing a reader to "work harder to know the ins-and-outs of that artist's work and deal with it"). Likely few member of the list are unfamiliar with it, but I still think Bernstein's "Pounding Fascism," a chapter in A Poetics, is the best illustration I know of the nuanced and tension-ridden work of "knowing the ins-and-outs" of a body of poetry. Short tho' it is, I've often refered to this as the only indispensible piece I have ever read on Pound--the thing I send people to who are trying to make sense of his abiding weirdness. Useful for understinding vital things about the Cantos as poetry, as well as for addressing the issues we've been raising here. Mark Prejsnar ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 13:37:51 -0600 Reply-To: maria damon Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: maria damon Subject: Re: a Persian diatribe / ..."Chaos--the Rock Video" david is real; hakim bey is the nom de plume of peter lamborn wilson, who lived in iran for a number of years, but who is not persian. for what it's worth. maria d ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 14:49:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "John E. Matthias" Subject: Pound/Dorn >Delivery-Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1996 15:09:43 -0500 >X-Organization: University of Notre Dame >Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1996 15:07:45 -0500 >Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group >Sender: UB Poetics discussion group >From: "John E. Matthias" >Subject: Pound & Fascism, etc. >To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS Re: Pound Trial/Dorn Trial > Almost a year ago, during the last Pound trial, I posted the following on trials from Milan Kundera's _Testaments Betrayed_. Because it took so long to type out, I saved it. As I said at the time, I don't agree with everything Kundera says any more than I agree with everything Pound says or Dorn says, but I think this text provides a useful perspective, so I post it again. John Matthias > >I've been reading Milan Kundera's _Testaments Betrayed_ these last couple >of days & found some good things about the trials, in every sense, of >writers in our century. In the Chapter called "Paths in the Fog" Kundera's >focus is Kafka. On pp. 225-240, however, he begins to generalize with a >rather surprising paragraph on Orwell's _1984_: > >"The pernicious influence of Orwell's novel resides in its implacable >reduction of a reality to its political dimension alone, and in its >reduction of that dimension to what is exemplarily negative about it. I >refuse to forgive this reduction on the grounds that it was useful as >propaganda in the struggle against totalitarian evil. For that evil is, >precisely, the reduction of life to politics and of politics to propaganda. >So despite its intentions, Orwell's novel itself joins in the totalitarian >spirit, the spirit of propaganda. It reduces (and teaches others to reduce) >the life of a hated society to the simple listing of its crimes." > >A little later he goes on like this, reaching back again to Kafka: > >"Tribunal: this does not signify the juridical institution intended for >punishing people who have violated the laws of a state; the tribunal (or >court) in Kafka's sense is a power that judges, that judges because it is a >power; its power and nothing but its power is what confers legitimacy on >the tribunal... > >"The trial's memory is colossal, but it is a very specific memory, which >could be defined as _the forgetting of everything not a crime_. The trial >thus reduces the defendant's biography to _criminography_; Victor Farias >(whose _Heidegger and Nazism_is a classic example of criminography) locates >the roots of the philosopher's Nazism in his early youth, without the least >concern for locating the roots of his genius; to punish someone accused of >ideological deviations, Communist tribunals would put _all_ his work on the >index (thus, for instance, the ban on Lukacs and Sartre in Communist >countries covered even their pro-Communist writings). "Why are our streets >still named for Picasso, Aragon, Eluard, Sartre?" a Paris paper asked in a >1991 post-Communist intoxication; it's tempting to answer: because of the >value of their works! But in his trial against Europe, Sartre said exactly >what values mean now: "our cherished values are losing their wings; looked >at closely, every one of them is blood-stained"; values stained are values >no longer; the spirit of the trial is the reduction of everything to >morality; it is absolute nihilism in regard to craft, art, works..." > >"For nearly seventy years Europe lived under a trial-regime. From among the >great artists of the century, how many defendants...I shall mention only >those who had some significance for me. Starting in the twenties, there >were those hounded by the tribunal of revolutionary morality: Bunin, >Andreyev, Meyerhold, Pilnyak, Veprik (a Jewish-Russian musician, a >forgotten martyr of modern art; he dared to defend Shostakovich's opera >against Stalin's condemnation; they stuck him in a camp; I remember his >piano compositions, which my father liked to play), Mandelstam, Halas (the >poet was adored by Ludvik in _The Joke_; hounded after his death for >gloominess seen as counterrevolutionary). Then there were the quarry of >the Nazi tribunal: Broch (he gazes at me, pipe in mouth, from a photo on my >worktable), Schoenberg, Werfel, Brecht, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Musil, >Vancura (the Czech writer I most love), Bruno Schulz. The totalitarian >empires and their bloody trials have disappeared, but the _spirit of the >trial_lingers as a legacy, and that is what is now settling scores. Thus >the trial strikes at: those accused of pro-Nazi sympathies: Hamsun, >Heidegger (all Czech dissident thought, Patocka most notably, is indebted >to him), Richard Strauss, Gottfried Benn, von Doderer, Drieu la Rochelle, >Celine (in 1992, a half century after the war, an indignant official >refused to designate his house a historical monument); supporters of >Mussolini: Malaparte, Marinetti, Ezra Pound (the American military kept >him, like an animal, in a cage for months under the blazing Italian sun; in >his Reykjavik studio, the painter Kristjan Davidsson showed me a large >photo of him: 'For fifty years it has gone with me everywhere I go'); the >Munich appeasers: Giono, "Alain, Morand, Montherlant, St.-John Perse (a >member of the French delegation to the Munich conference, he was closely >involved in the humiliation of my native country); then, the Communists and >their sympathizers: Mayakovsky (who today remembers his love poetry and his >amazing metaphors?), Gorky, Shaw, Brecht (who is thereby undergoing his >second trial), Eluard (that exterminating angel who used to decorate his >signature with a drawing of crossed swords), Picasso, Leger, Aragon (how >can I forget that he offered me his hand at a difficult time in my life?), >Nezval (his self-portrait in oils is on the wall of my bookshelves), >Sartre. Some of these people are undergoing a double trial, first accused >of betraying the revolution, then accused for services they had rendered >earlier: Gide (in the old Communist countries, the symbol of all evil), >Shostakovich (to atone for his difficult music, he manufactured rubbish for >the regime's needs; he maintained that for the history of art a worthless >thing is null and void; he didn't know that for the tribunal it is the >worthlessness itself that counts), Breton, Malraux (accused yesterday of >having betrayed revolutionary ideals, accusable tomorrow of having held >them), Tibor Dery (some works of this Communist writer, who was imprisoned >after the Budapest massacre, were for me the first great literary, >nonpropagandistic reply to Stalinism). The most exquisite flower of the >century, the modern art of the twenties and thirties, was even triply >accused: first by the Nazi tribunal as _Entartete Kunst_, "degenerate art"; >then by the Communist tribunal as "elitist formalism alien to the people"; >and finally by the triumphant capitalist tribunal as art steeped in >revolutionary illusions. > >"How is it possible that the Soviet Russian chauvinist, the maker of >versified propaganda, he whom Stalin himself called "the greatest poet of >our epoch"--how is it possible that Mayakovsky is nevertheless a tremendous >poet, one of the greatest? Given her capacity for enthusiasm, her emotional >tears that blur her view of the outside world, wasn't lyric poetry--that >untouchable goddess--doomed one fateful day to become the beautifier of >atrocities, their "warmhearted maidservant" (Baudelaire)?....To be a true >poet and at the same time to support (like Mayakovsky) an incontestable >horror is a scandal--in the sense of an unjustifiable, unacceptable event, >one that contradicts logic and yet is real. We are all unconsciously >tempted to dodge scandals, to behave as though they don't exist. That is >why we prefer to say that the great cultural figures tainted with the >horrors of our century were bastards; but it isn't so; if only out of >vanity, aware that they are seen, looked at, judged, artists and >philosophers are anxious to be decent and courageous, to be on the right >side, to be right. That makes the scandal still more intolerable, more >inexplicable. If we don't want to leave this century just as stupid as we >entered it, we must abandon the facile moralism of the trial and think >about this scandal, think it through to the bottom, even if this should >lead us to question anew all our certainties about man as such. > >"But the conformism of public opinion is a force that sets itself up as a >tribunal, and the tribunal is not there to waste time over ideas, it is >there to conduct the investigations for trials. And as the abyss of time >widens between judges and defendants, it is always a lesser experience that >is judging a greater. The immature sit in judgment on Celine's erring ways >without realizing that because of these erring ways, Celine's novels >contain existential knowledge that, if they were to understand it, could >make them more adult. Because therein lies the power of culture: it redeems >horror by transforming it into existential wisdom. If the spirit of the >trial succeeds in annihilating this century's culture, nothing will remain >of us but a memory of its atrocities sung by a chorus of children." > >I didn't mean to type out so much; nor do I agree with everything Kundera >says. But this is certainly all worth thinking about in the context of the >continuing trial of poets like Ezra Pound. > >John Matthias > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 19:49:55 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L. Mac Mahon and T.R. Healy" Subject: Re: Randolph Healy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear Susan, Lovely to hear from you. The way the list works I'm sure someone has answered your request. It's raining heavily here, hailstones all that sort of thing. I spent today at a seminar on classroom management. Fortunately the keynote speaker was brilliant and she managed to redefine the topic in the most interesting way. Who'd have thought it could be done? Our cat's resting quietly in the downstairs bathroom, having had the choperation today. It's something I have mixed feelings about, but for that poor cat testosterone seemed to be some kind of rocket fuel. He kept disappearing and arriving back days later looking very decrepit. I'll enclose a poem though I still haven't found and PNG ancestors. It's just a question of going back far enough. Love, Randolph. Spirals Dance I think I prefer bottomless chaos, where there is no plan, hidden or otherwise, where for ten billion years a universe lay swollen, unliving, without a soul, and endlessly creative, molecules in every possible place forming, folding, touching, collapsing, until, in a moment, the threshold was crossed. And I sensed the weight of those who lost their footing in the storm that makes trial pieces of us all. And everyone I saw at the apex of a pyramid, teetering, fragile, the slightest slip and they might never have made it anyway. Even a comma. Fragile, transitory, precarious, yet how could you miss at every turn the touch of life's own kiss? upcurving ash tips trawling every breeze, Tigris-Euphrates filigree of nerve tissue in the flight of a bird. Or from the squeeze-box of blue on a crust to the samba band of dog rooting in a bin the same riotous tune drenching every available place. And at any point it could have been different, multiple branches and fibres fingering every particle of the body of the possible. And every false start, every unexplored strand winked and returned to emptiness. Gone, only the illusion left that every line in the sketches still on show was deliberate. But, whatever way I put it, I suppose I saw each living thing as a collection of collections of tiny dead spheres restlessly combining and dissociating. And even if iron atoms aren't dead, nor made or iron, or even if each one is a ferment of paradoxes without which my heart would not beat, how can I avoid slipping through a lattice that offers no foothold for a human self? Am I here at all? At the garden exhibition, dragons' necks swooping and curving, boas of white bells, crystalline repetition, disappeared and were replaced by a landscape of little magnets attracting, repelling, lining up with the nearest field, domains then collapsing under thermal assault, summing over time to nothing. Is life alive? its roots reaching into submicroscopic worlds where entities exist simultaneously in arrays of mutually excluding states, matter itself its breath attenuated to near, but never, zero. Or not? Choose, if a wave of waves can decide on its own shape. Tuesday. Are my thoughts my own? Neither the world nor its representative replies. Simple, complex, directed, chaotic? No answer. Whatever passes for pattern can be accommodated as part of a larger random sequence or result of any of an arbitrary set of laws. Choose, and/or take the consequences. I used to think nature shrank from our touch, enveloping us in a cocoon of ideas, every love narcissism, and hatred a war with oneself. I don't know what I will think tomorrow. Even a comma. And if we are poised on the edge of a scalpel so is the universe. The smallest change in Newton's gravitational constant and stars could not form; and should the charge mass ratio of the electron or Planck's constant waver neither atoms nor us. As if, too, preceding, surrounding this universe are, were, will be shoals of others, outside any line or progress, the mutilated, empty, capable only of spasms, side by side with the classically profiled, tone-deaf unreason hammering on every key. When I heard the expression "We're all in the same boat" I took it to mean that we're all in the same kind of boat, a flotilla of indistinguishable, isolated tubs. It never occurred to me that it could mean one great craft, with all the nautical camaraderie which that suggests. We could be alone, this universe a die with everything staked on one toss, its scale alone ensuring that one planet, one, whose loss would be no more matter than an atom falling from your body, would be a grace note in the immense silence. Poised. My daughter is making faces at me through the window because I wouldn't buy her chocolate, she standing between her reflection and her shadow. Present. And I see a vast double pyramid expanding into past and future meeting where the spirals dance and the mad and sturdy music registers again. At 04:04 15/02/97 -0500, you wrote: >I lost Randolph Healy's message; would someone kindly forward me another copy >(Randolph, are you there?). > >Thanks, Susan > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 21:17:37 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: a Persian diatribe / ..."Chaos--the Rock Video" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Poetics persons -- > >looking via Yahoo for something else (as these things go), I stumbled >on a poetics-related diatribe by a certain Hakim Bey, a Persian chap >who has a number of opinions. Found it here: Slight worry that this was tongue in cheek (that's 'porn to ruin' me) but for those who might be beguiled: Hakim Bey (apart from being Peter Lamborn Wilson and often-on the case, editor and cyber-ribber) is hardly Persian. He is however a chap with often hilarious and sometimes engaging opinions. love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 16:50:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "John E. Matthias" Subject: Rothenberg on EP >Delivery-Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 13:03:17 -0500 >Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 10:03:29 PST >Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group >Sender: UB Poetics discussion group >From: Jerry Rothenberg >Subject: Re: more on Pound: query for Jerry R. >To: Multiple recipients of list POETICS As it happens, I also saved Jerry Rothenberg's post regarding the last Pound trial, so I thought I'd follow up the Kundera quote with what he had to say last March. I've cleared this with Jerry & send it back with his permission. John Matthias > >This is in reply to Tenney's query about my own statement that the the most >telling impact of Pound's work was on poets who politically, morally, might >have been at the greatest distance from it. To start with my own experience >-- growing up0 when I did -- the presence of Pound in the late 1940s was, to >say the least, a bewilderment. I was stunned by much of the poetry, both >by how it read (the language of it) and by what I heard it saying: anti-war >& anti-capital & powerful too in its presentation of a way, a means, of >approaching & hoping to shape the world through the poet's means, the poetry >itself. I was about 16 years old at a first reading of him & shortly >thereafter -- along with the reading -- came the awarding of the Bollingen >& the tremendous fuss that that stirred up (close to fifty years ago). With >that we were aware also of the extent of Pound's fascism &, as became clearer >over the years, the viciousness of the anti-semitism in his World War II >broadcasts -- a lunacy of language common to the fringe of homegrown fascists >who were also in his entourage. My own first published piece of writing was >a letter to the New York Post (a different NY Post at that time) in which >I lamented what I thought had happened to Pound and what had become (as it >still seems to be) a conundrum around the man & the work the man had given >us. There was a lot I didn't know then but knowing it would certainly not >have made it easier. > >I was never, in any sense, a Poundian, since there were too many other threads >& lines coming into my awareness to allow a focus (in that sense) on any >single individual. But the observation of Pound's impact -- on myself & >others -- began shortly after that: the observation that those who were >most significantly building on Pound's poetics & actual poetry were not the >crazies & the fascist hoods of the John Kasper variety, etc., but poets >like Kelly, Olson, Duncan, Mac Low, Blackburn, & before them the whole >gallery of "Objectivists" or -- from other directions -- any number of >European and Latin American writers -- all of them (as I understood it) with >a political and moral sense (coming out of World War II) that was >strongly anti-fascist, strongly in opposition to the totalitarian barbarisms >for which Pound (in the years of his fascist infatuation) had become a >minor flunky. In their context Pound became, remained a vital force -- the >proof, through them, of what was right & germinal about him and the proof, >conversely, of what was evil -- & banal in Hannah Arendt's sense -- in >his succumbing to the "fascist temptation." > >What Pound offered and in some sense made possible wasn't divorced from the >political but wasn't at the same time tied to what became HIS politics. >It was a demonstration of how the political -- as history -- could enter >the body of the poem -- how the poem could thrive on what Ed Sanders >(many years later & clearly drawing on Pound) spoke of as "data clusters" >defining a new "investigative poetry". I don't need to go on with this, I >think, except to note that it was (as far as I can recollect) not the >little fascists who learned from this but poets who by disposition and, I >believe, commitment were looking for a way out of the fascist & >totalitarian nightmare that had threatened to overwhelm our world. And >there was also -- stronger in Pound than in most other forerunners in >the North American context -- a sense that history & poetry could be >redefined, opened up and certainly renewed, and that for this Pound himself >(as Charles B., I think, points out in his Pound essays) was a stepping- >stone, a guide to things that his fascist leanings would have finally >precluded. He was clearly the most extraordinary translator we had by then >produced -- not only pointing to Albigensian Provence and to a sense of >China speaking to the present, but (coming like Cesaire and the other >Negritude poets) from the likes of Frobenius, forming one of the links (but >only one) to an African past as a pinnacle, too, of the creative human >spirit. It is not to say that this was -- all of it -- of Pound's doing >but that he helped to set much of it in motion -- much of what, coming >after him & (in some sense in spite of him) -- became essential to our >present work. > >And, finally, I would point out what was -- for myself & others -- the >lesson of Pound's failure -- the lesson of the poet who had in the long run >betrayed his poetry. It is a terrible thing to say and it is, I think, a >terrible possibility that faces all of us. But it is Pound who also says >it best, from the "pull down thy vanity" voice in Canto 81 to the still >more telling voice (where he was already into his silence, depression) in >Canto 116: > > I have brought the great ball of crystal > who can lift it? > Can you enter the great acorn of light? > But the beauty is not the madness > Tho' my errors and wrecks lie about me. > And I am not a demigod, > I cannot make it cohere. > >I can read this, anyway, as both a confession of failure (and of betrayal -- >of himself & us) and at the same time a triumph of whatevr is there >speaking through him. But not Pound alone -- for which let me end, Tenney, >by copying out (in what's already a long message) a poem by Julien Beck >(of the Living Theater, etc. (a good pacifist & anarchist & anti-fascist), >who I think loved all the poets that he mentioned in it. It's one too >that Pierre and I are hoping to include -- along with a number of others -- >in a section of manifestos for the next volume of Millennium. > >Julian Beck's "the state will be served / even by poets" > >the breasts of all the women crumpled like gas bags when >neruda wrote his hymn celebrating the explosion of a > hydrogen bomb by soviet authorities >children died of the blistrs of ignorance for a century when >siqueiros tried to assassinate trotsky himself a killer > with gun and ice >pound shimmering his incantations to adams benito and > kung prolonging the state with great translation > cut in crystal >claudel slaying tupi guarani as he flourished cultured > documents and pearls in rio de janeiro when he > served france as ambassador to brazil >melville served by looking for contraband as he worked > in the customs house how many taxes did he requite > how many pillars of the state did he cement in > place tell me tell me tell me stone >spenser serving the faerie queene as a colonial secretary > in ireland sinking the irish back for ten times > forty years no less under the beau monde's brack >seneca served by advising nero on how to strengthen the > state with philosophy's accomplishments >aeschylus served slaying persians at marathon and salamis >aristotle served as tutor putting visions of trigonometrics > in alexander's head >dali and eliot served crowning monarchs with their gold >wallace stevens served as insurance company executive > making poems out of profits >euclides da cunha srved as army captain baritoning troops >and d h lawrence served praising the unique potential of > a king > >these are the epics of western culture >these are the flutes of china and the east > >everything must be rewritten then > >goethe served as a member of the weimar council of state > and condemned even to death > >this is the saga of the state which is served > >even to death > > >jr >jrothenb@carla.ucsd.edu > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 16:40:36 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: a Persian diatribe / ..."Chaos--the Rock Video" In-Reply-To: <856209853.721433.0@slang.demon.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hakim Bey lives here in Wisconsin--Miekal And could give you more details-- -- His work is flamboyant & enjoyable Read Rumi ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 15:04:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: On how morality gets into it, according to Olson In-Reply-To: <856209853.721433.0@slang.demon.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII These reminders found in reading Ralph Maud's _Charles Olson's Reading_: "Olson did not visit Pound after February 1948; he was sick of the man, finally. An irresistable moral force was asserting itself . . . That the interest in Pound's work did not wane is reflected in Olson's library." " . . . Cagli had brought back the biggest and most ghastly news of all time in the form of drawings he had made at Buchenwald when his artillery unit had opened up the camp: 'the first to look into that compost of civilization.' Olson's poem, 'La Preface,' commissioned by Cagli for the brochure of the New York and Chicago showings of the drawings, was the poet's attempt to resist the utter resistance of this knowledge in such a way that from that stop he might know a new beginning--" "Cagli and Riboud . . . taught him 'the way a man comes to core . . . the discovery of his own resistance . . . the way a poet--at least--makes himself of USE to society.'" Must fly back to the state of sin -- for now I remain yours, His most incorrect lowness, the Vicar of Boulder ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 19:15:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shoemakers@COFC.EDU Subject: Re: Evil poets Comments: To: Mark Prejsnar In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Yes, I agree about the Bernstein piece. I'd also recommend Jerry McGann's essay, "The Cantos of Ezra Pound, the Truth in Contradiction" (from *Towards a Literature of Knowledge*), one of the first pieces to take on these issues seriously. And more recently, there's Perelman's Pound chapter in *The Trouble with Genius*. Also extremely useful. steve On Mon, 17 Feb 1997, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > In line with what Tosh Berman wrote (someone might be "just plain evil and > a great artist"..forcing a reader to "work harder to know the ins-and-outs > of that artist's work and deal with it"). > > Likely few member of the list are unfamiliar with it, but I still think > Bernstein's "Pounding Fascism," a chapter in A Poetics, is the best > illustration I know of the nuanced and tension-ridden work of "knowing the > ins-and-outs" of a body of poetry. Short tho' it is, I've often refered > to this as the only indispensible piece I have ever read on Pound--the > thing I send people to who are trying to make sense of his abiding > weirdness. Useful for understinding vital things about the Cantos as > poetry, as well as for addressing the issues we've been raising here. > > Mark Prejsnar > Steve Shoemaker ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 17:25:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: e-ddress for rob mittenthal Comments: To: poetics@listserv.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'd appreciate it if someone cd tell me rob mittenthal's e-ddress. thanks, db. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 21:05:31 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Racism, racist poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" First of all, to make clear what I might have left unclear, I thought Aldon was on the money not to be drawn into the issue of "who owns the correct point of view." I have no desire to be drawn into it either. I'm sorry Maria Damon doesn't "share (my) complete lack of ambivalence on this score," to the degree that the phrase is an accurate characterization. I should say that I'm not seeking Ed Dorn out or calling him out to give him the ass-kicking he so richly deserves and so expressly has asked for -- that would be unambivalent. I'm just saying that I don't tolerate that kind of bullshit around me. If everyone did no more than that the case would be covered would it not? As to Anselm's (if jdhollo@aol.com be his address -- the post is unsigned) excusing "fits of righteousness" (i.e. attacks on Dorn's racism) in the name of "our shared powerlessness in the face of the corporate-feudal world government's brutality" let me say first that I adore Anselm as person and poet and second, sorry, that's a lot of hoohah. You either do or do not hold a position like Ed Dorn's or the Persian-Fatwa-issuer. The fact that you don't have the power to enslave (or even employ) lots of people doesn't turn your bile into Bal a Versailles. Perhaps Khomeini never intended to act on his Fatwa; it's had its effect hasn't it? Anyway. Ed Dorn can't whip blacks on a chain gang, and he can't turn his anti-semitism into anything very effective either. That's good -- for me, I mean. It ain't a fact in his defense. Some time in the late fifties, stepping to a podium to give a reading in Germany, Paul Celan found a crudely-drawn anti-Semitic caricature on a slip of paper left on the podium -- left for him to find. That caricature is the visual equivalent of Dorn's "Jew-baiting" (his words). Of Pound's whining bathetic spew. Of Eliot's prim dismissals. It is no different from David Duke for that matter. Wake up. Every word spoken is spoken by someone to someone. If you can't take it in at that level, your interest in one thing and lack of interest in another is of no value. Rather, it is of the value of choosing a color of paint that goes well with the upholstery you prefer. Tom Mandel Tom Mandel ************************************************************ Screen Porch * tmandel@screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ************************************************************ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 23:28:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSchu30844@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Randolph Healy Dear Randolph--in fact, no one took it upon themselves to forward your message back to me, so I'm very glad that you yourself responded. I loved the description of your cat and the choperation. And I like your poem very much. Is your comment about PNG status a hint that my Tinfish might consider it? I'm still on sabbatical, and very vague. But it's very nice to be back in Hawai'i, where one can be vague in the sun and by the surf. Buffalo was too much grunge and freeze-burn. There's a strong chance I'll be going to England in late April or early May. I'd love to travel to Ireland to catch a glimpse of those O'Keefes of mine. Might I look you and yours up for dinner? On me (if it happens)! I'm also glad that someone has brilliant ideas about teaching. The more the merrier! aloha, Susan PS My friend Becky, whose book you signed, will be glad of your re-discovery. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 02:09:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSchu30844@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Randolph Healy I'm terribly sorry I sent a personal message to the entire list...(blush). Susan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 00:59:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: Re: Evil poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" also: a terrific piece by Andrew Parker on Pound, anti-semitism, $, and language, in Arac's /Postmodernism and Politics/. tenney At 07:15 PM 2/17/97 -0400, you wrote: >Yes, I agree about the Bernstein piece. I'd also recommend Jerry >McGann's essay, "The Cantos of Ezra Pound, the Truth in Contradiction" >(from *Towards a Literature of Knowledge*), one of the first pieces to >take on these issues seriously. And more recently, there's Perelman's >Pound chapter in *The Trouble with Genius*. Also extremely useful. >steve ---------------------------------------------------------- tenney nathanson tenney@azstarnet.com nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 06:04:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 16 Feb 1997 to 17 Feb 1997 First, a question (out of sheer laziness)-- Where is the O'Hara poem (or is it not a poem) in which he speaks of poetry (his?) in terms of the Abstract Expressionist Credo to want to keep the surface up? Second, all that push pull stuff (is it dialogue yet?) and, going, (out of sheer exhaustion) though if the truth had rounded up many transparency mixtures and scattered the lens in the city's sun, one could oppose opposing "and mine I loved till I to myself was not mine" (etc.) which is MAYAKOVSKY that is STALIN that is MAYAKOVSKY Assuming you are reading this very fast like what was that LSD guy's name oh yeah slanislav grof and the junk bin of memory the hypnosis of the exroomate telling a friend subliminally "turn right" and outloud TURN LEFT, as if to get on the wavelength but always spillover and so GROF didn't take him in (oh this was 1985 or so--- before poetry or at least the great poetry wars (out of sheer exhaustion) and then he lived in the flotation tank society on central park west but i heard he was last in hawaii and he wasn't harry but poor harry what he did wandering was there a detox program, a way to figure out how to stay alive past 23 (even though he's 33). The answer is NO (out of sheer idleness)---but there is no tragedy unless you wake up one morning and realize your LEGS ARE TWISTED coz you FELL ASLEEP WITH YOUR ROOTS ON......... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 06:23:45 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: a Persian diatribe / ..."Chaos--the Rock Video" Comments: cc: Christina Fairbank Chirot MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Folks -- here at the home corral, I'm gettin' the Poetics missives in Digest; so the Hakim = P.L.Wilson news was some part of a day late in getting to me; -- thanks to the several who've offered that useful footnote. Christina Chirot's terse advice -- > Hakim Bey lives here in Wisconsin--Miekal And could give you more details-- > -- > His work is flamboyant & enjoyable > > Read Rumi (i.e., final sentence) is noted w/ an aposite smile. Guess I will (some more). "Wherever a pain is, the remedy goes there. Wherever a lowland is, the water runs there...." (Mathnawi), & such. cheers, d.i. . , ......., 1.................., \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/\0/\/////////////////////...' .o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o....' ///\\\\\\/////////\/\\\o///\/\\\\\\\\\//////\\\...' .David..........Raphael..........Israel...' [&/or.office......disrael@skgf.com] {telephonic.location.202/882-1179} | "...honk if you believe in geese" | \\\//////\\\\\\\\\/\///&\\\/\/////////\\\\\\///..' ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 03:45:54 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: the death of checkers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A little something more for our conversation on the perfectibility of the species... THE DEATH OF CHECKERS Grant that the old Adam in this Child may be so buried, that the new man may be raised up in him. --The Book of Common Prayer This is the new socialist brain. This is the statue of Dzerzhinsky falling over. This is my wife Pat. This is an ode to the Bratsk Hydroelectric Project. And I just want to say [abort, retry, fail...] the kids, like all kids, love the little dog. This/is/your/brain/speaking...So I want you all to stonewall it. Because gentlemen, this is my last dance contest, last waltz with Leonid around the Winter Palace. This is the Komissar of Moonbeams, this is the Soviet of Working People's Reveries. This is the new man born out of Adam. These are the new world order mysteries--oh, Republican cloth coat. Oh gallery of Trotskyist apostasies. Tricia and Julie do not weep for me: I live and flourish in the smooth newt's tiny eyes, my new brain fizzing with implanted memories. --Rachel Loden _New American Writing_ 13 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 08:22:47 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 16 Feb 1997 18:26:24 -0800 from On Sun, 16 Feb 1997 18:26:24 -0800 Tosh said: >I think it is bad when we exculsively mix moralistic tendencies with art. >I mean you can appreciate someone's politics and say 'wow, this person is >right on, and therefore is a good poet...but also can't someone just be >plain evil and be a great artist. I think this is possible. I think the >reader just has to work harder in knowing the in-and-out of that artist's >thinking and deal with it. I don't know why an artist has to be on a >higher moral ground. Most artists are just like other people, only worse. Their obsession with their work draws them away from people & into the labyrinth of dreams and vanity and illusion. Because they are worse than usual, people make excuses for their behavior, even romanticize it. Until the day comes when they have to appear before the tribunals and go to jail for their immoralities personal and artistic. The fact that their best and freest gifts and impulses go into their work fortunately saves the work itself and wins people over far and wide, just as it should. And occasionally the work acts as a good influence on the lousy artist too. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 08:20:56 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: gli poeti racisti Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" With these words from Anselm Hollo... "As an oldtime/oldfashioned, even, rootless ("we got legs, not roots") cosmopolite of long standing, I personally regard all self- or "identity"-definition based on "othering the Other" as a big mistake. It makes this species, all of us, atavistically vulnerable to the pathological fear and paranoia that often finds its expression in all kinds of forms of scapegoating, racism, bigotry, etc. Such brain function aberrations are traditionally exploited by demagogues warlords and "business" and "religious" "leaders." It's a tough one; the propensity seems quite "hard-wired," hence requires constant vigilance, first and foremost in regard to oneself. Paranoia is far more addictive than the old poppy juice." I am completely in accord. He is especially right about the hard-wired part, as we see worldwide in this here enlightened age of ours. True also are the words in his poem, to the effect that we have the right to be judged by what is best about us and the best we've done. We can make that easier for folks, of course, by not spewing racist garbage as the other part of the mix! Tom Tom Mandel ************************************************************ Screen Porch * tmandel@screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ************************************************************ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 07:02:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jill A Mccartney Subject: stein query In-Reply-To: <199702180502.WAA67114@f1n2.u.arizona.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII i'm writing about the politics of stein's later work, and just a few weeks ago someone mentionned a piece on stein's republicanism at http://www.slate.com/. i couldn't access it and so would like to try to get in touch with the author. anybody remember/know about this? please backchannel (jmccartn@u.arizona.edu). thanks, jill mccartney ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 10:33:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Evil poets Comments: To: shoemakers@cofc.edu In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I am interested in reading McGann's thing--thanx for mentioning it...and I agree about the Perelman Pound essay, which I decided was one of the few other useful treatments I'd seen, when I read that book a year ago. It was a pity that I felt obscurely irritable about the rest of it--the discussion of Joyce felt too standard-academic, and the chapters on Zukofsky and Stein really made me uncomfortable, as they seemed to belittle the work of each on the grounds that it was hopelessly diminished by the poets' lack of "social location" (i.e. a meaningful audience and social role to work within)... That judgment seemed to me off-target. As regards Pound, I have to admit to having just read Perloff's "The Contemporary of Our Grandchildren" in Poetic License, and now have another first-rate essay to cite (not being an acadmic, I spend long amounts of time reading little but poetry, and then in sudden spasms catch up with criticism/theory I've missed). On Mon, 17 Feb 1997 shoemakers@cofc.edu wrote: > Yes, I agree about the Bernstein piece. I'd also recommend Jerry > McGann's essay, "The Cantos of Ezra Pound, the Truth in Contradiction" > (from *Towards a Literature of Knowledge*), one of the first pieces to > take on these issues seriously. And more recently, there's Perelman's > Pound chapter in *The Trouble with Genius*. Also extremely useful. > steve > > > > On Mon, 17 Feb 1997, Mark Prejsnar wrote: > > > In line with what Tosh Berman wrote (someone might be "just plain evil and > > a great artist"..forcing a reader to "work harder to know the ins-and-outs > > of that artist's work and deal with it"). > > > > Likely few member of the list are unfamiliar with it, but I still think > > Bernstein's "Pounding Fascism," a chapter in A Poetics, is the best > > illustration I know of the nuanced and tension-ridden work of "knowing the > > ins-and-outs" of a body of poetry. Short tho' it is, I've often refered > > to this as the only indispensible piece I have ever read on Pound--the > > thing I send people to who are trying to make sense of his abiding > > weirdness. Useful for understinding vital things about the Cantos as > > poetry, as well as for addressing the issues we've been raising here. > > > > Mark Prejsnar > > > > Steve Shoemaker > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 09:40:13 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: the death of checkers Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" rachel, thanx for that!... i really enjoyed it... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 09:09:00 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Randolph Healy MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT susan sed: > I'm terribly sorry I sent a personal message to the entire list...(blush). dont blush too hard--there seems to have been a spate of this recently. signed (one of the principal offenders) chris .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 12:02:18 +0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: VOX Festival: Poetry In Louisville Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Something for you all... The First Annual VOX Festival: April 25-27 1997 Louisville's Poetics and Performance Conference will bring Oral Performance from some of the key Spoken Word and performance artists from around the country to the Louisville Metropolitain area, for three days of panel discussions, workshops,demonstrations and music, featuring some of the most controversial and prolific of avant garde Performing Spoken Artists in America. INCLUDING: Nicole Blackman Brenda Coultas Anne Elliott Anne Waldman Pasq Wilson and others... REGISTRATION RATES & DEADLINES: Postmarked by March 25th, 1997 $25 postage paid all event pass $50 event pass after March 25th Check & Money Order Only, Please Write for more info on registration to: VOX Festival c/o The Kentucky Writers Coalition Clifton Center 2117 Payne Street Suite 304-B Louisville, KY 40206 or Email bil@orca.sitesonthe.net ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 12:24:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: when that a wide wood (can't hear) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" so where was the emphasis in some trees? the attention to fallacy, were cliches a tragedy? hypothesis? eminent domain the enemy thought and the eminence is a multinational not a nation? thou still. He is speaking to a mechanism for producing liquor? resource is attitude, the fog comes in Gets his gat, plugs his map, Judy Garland, was the original poetics the study of tragedy? great map but where's (just like a pile of leaves) the mountain? seems mainly to have done with royal families. A thousand not yet naive as crossed eyes (growth / value) (contrarian) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 13:20:59 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco Subject: people-not-here-talk MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain It's unusual (I may be wrong about this) that a poet publicly declares his intention to slug another poet in the chops. I've read some of Dorn's poetry. It didn't rouse my fighting instinct. Would someone (Aldon Neilsen? Tom Mandel?) mind taking the time to explain in more detail what it is Dorn may have said (in public only, please) to piss people off? Also, while I'm making demands, I was wondering, Ron Silliman, if you would elaborate on why you liken Eliot Weinberger ("the AntiGroup politics they pursue. Which has an interesting political edge to it, especially when as in Eliot's case it comes across sounding ultraleftist with an echo of Pat Buchanan") to a Buchanan echo? cannon echo? canon echo? daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 10:34:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: people-not-here-talk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" s. > >I've read some of Dorn's poetry. It didn't rouse my fighting instinct. > >Would someone (Aldon Neilsen? Tom Mandel?) mind taking the time to explain in >more detail what it is Dorn may have said (in public only, please) to piss >people off? > I too want to know. If it was discussed before in detail, i must have missed it. cheers, Tosh Berman TamTam Books ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 14:18:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Andrew D Epstein Subject: Re: Chris S's O'Hara question In-Reply-To: <970218060424_1712291008@emout02.mail.aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 18 Feb 1997, Chris Stroffolino wrote: > First, a question (out of sheer laziness)-- > Where is the O'Hara poem (or is it not a poem) in which he speaks of poetry > (his?) in terms of the Abstract Expressionist Credo to want to keep the > surface up? > Hi Chris -- The passage you're thinking of is, I think, at the end of O'Hara's essay piece "Notes on _Second Avenue_." It's in Collected Poems, p. 497: "As I look this over, it seems quite a batty way to give information about the poem, but the verbal elements are not too interesting to discuss although they are intended to keep the surface of the poem high and dry, not wet, reflective and self-conscious. Perhaps the obscurity comes in here, in the relationship between the surface and the meaning, but I like it that way since the one is the the other (you have to use words) and I hope the poem to _be_ the subject, not just about it." Hope that helps! Take care, Andrew Epstein ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 15:27:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: people-not-here-talk -Reply >>Would someone (Aldon Neilsen? Tom Mandel?) mind taking the time to explain in >>more detail what it is Dorn may have said (in public only, please) to piss >>people off? > >I too want to know. If it was discussed before in detail, i must >have missed it. cheers, > >Tosh Berman >TamTam Books for that matter, I, too, am out of the loop on this -- (I'd read some fiction Dorn wrote once, have heard of the guy vaguely, and have a notion he's ensconsed w/ the Naropa School more or less) -- but this seems bit like having somehow missed news of WW III so, some note of background, kindly? d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 17:38:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: e-ddress for rob mittenthal Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi David, He's on the list, but he doesn't check in very often, so here's this: So there. Bests (from Brookline, Mass) Herb > I'd appreciate it if someone cd tell me rob mittenthal's e-ddress. >thanks, db. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 16:13:00 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jeremy F Green Subject: Re: divers In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 14 Feb 1997, David Bromige wrote: > 2) Ed Dorn's _North Atlantic Turbine_ is an amazing book, as it was when it > first appeared. And there are earlier books: _Hands Up_, _The Newly > Fallen_, filled with moving poetry, hard-bitten/tender poems of love and > mourning, often with a political--but what we used to call "human"--edge to > them. _Gunslinger_ was a notable departure from the work of his first > decade of publishing. Some big change, announced with "Stand by the Door > Awhile, Death, there are Others" which i read as intermediary between the > early and the middle periods of this terrific poet. > > As for bigotry--we have Aldon's indications, and wasnt an issue of his zine > _Rolling Stock_ full of taunting of AIDS sufferers? I'd welcome clarity on > that one. > > Eliot Weinberger has an appropriately indignant discussion of this in _Words on Paper_ (as far as I remember, Rolling Stock "awarded" infection for sundry "poetry crimes"--what they were I can't recall, but along the lines of "praising the work of Joanne Kyger and Stephen Rodefer", etc.) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 15:57:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: poetry & address Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" thanks, everybody, three of you have already responded back-channel w robert mittenthal's e-ddress. We here at KSEB ("Radio Shishkebab") have compared results and chosen our fave version which we shall be contacting any minute now. So the 3 free tickets to last Saturday's Johnny Otis & the Band show have already gone, sorry & Th-th-thats all folks.But several hitherto (to us) unknown e-ddresses emerged incidentally, it was good trolling. Keep those cards & poems coming in! Especially those poems! Thank you,Randolph Healy,Jordan Davis & Rachel Loden! The List is getting Poetic at last. db ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 16:09:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Reiner Subject: Re: stein query In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Slate archives articles in a section called "compost." This should be the URL of the Gertrude Stein article (by Herbert Stein, called, I think "Cubist as Republican"). http://www.slate.com/itseemstome/97-02-06/itseemstome.asp On Tue, 18 Feb 1997, Jill A Mccartney wrote: > i'm writing about the politics of stein's later work, and just a few weeks > ago someone mentionned a piece on stein's republicanism at > http://www.slate.com/. i couldn't access it and so would like to try to > get in touch with the author. anybody remember/know about this? > please backchannel (jmccartn@u.arizona.edu). > thanks, > jill mccartney > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 11:17:26 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: AWOL Happenings (forwarded) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 06:56:50 +1000 >To: awol@ozemail.com.au >From: awol@ozemail.com.au (AWOL) >Subject: AWOL Happenings > >Just a reminder that AWOL's HAPPENINGS list is now available from our website: >http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol/ >HAPPENINGS is updated regularly and contains information about Australian writing >events, competitions and conferences on a state by state basis. HAPEENINGS >also contains information on the latest small press releases and writing >programs on Australian radio and tv. > >To enable to keep our information up to date please let us know of any >event that we haven't listed. > > > >Mark Roberts > > > >AWOL >Australian Writing On Line >awol@ozemail.com.au >http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol >PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137 Australia >Phone 61 2 7475667, Mobile 015063970 >Fax 61 2 7472802 > > > > Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer & User Representative SIS Team. Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Phone 93517710 Mobile 015063970 Fax (02) 9351 7711 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 19:31:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Anselm--just back from my jaunt to Baja and days of unimaginable salty bliss to find all manner of fun stuff in my emailbox. Old hat by now, but I'd like to put my two cents in. I think you and others have misunderstood Ron Silliman's comments, which I quote below. I can see why you might be incensed: on the surface Ron appears either to assume that what he says is self-evident or to be indulging in gratuitous provocation--equally childish and arrogant mind-sets, typical of that phase of adolescent individuation in which self is defined in opposition. But is it not possible that what we have here is deliberate self-parody? If it is, we have been invited to be present at the emergence of a new level of wisdom--the development of an observing ego--and we can only applaud Ron's generosity in allowing us to be there. But as for those appropriative galoots who claim that we're all part of their herd if we do langpo-type stuff (as if the 20th century and a good part of the 19th were his own personal rangeland), out west where you and I live they call buckaroos who brand whatever cattle happen to be around rustlers, and the hanging judges don't care much for theory as an excuse. On the subject of poor Dorn and even poor Pound, your eloquent poem speaks volumes. I'd just like to add a few names from various hit lists to stir the dust a bit. What do we make of Spicer's line, gratutous in context, about a "New York jew salesman of amethyst pyjamas?" Are we allowed to read Celine, Maurois, Giono, Montherlant (add any number of French writers)? Brecht, Picasso, Rodin and Williams were in various ways unpleasant to their wives and girlfriends, and Gesualdo killed his wife. Degas was an antisemite. Frieda Kahlo, that somewhat improbable heroine, was by any standards a "difficult" woman, and would have been even if she'd had a more abstemious husband. Dickenson and Smart were more than a little over the edge. And let's not forget Leni Riefenstahl (I'm sure I missed the spelling on that one). At what point are all these folks so beyond the pale that they take their work with them? Or do we recognize the flaws, grit our teeth and learn, even become enriched, despite the fact that we might not feel comfortable at that cocktail party? Now that I've made this list, it occurs to me that this group of the difficult, demented and disreputable may be a school, even though most of these folk had a sentimental attachment to the notion of the loner. Best to the missus. Consider, for example, that non-group posed by Forrest Gander. Several of the folks on that list--Taggart, Cole and Sobin, say (and to some degree Palmer)--all share enough features to compose a group of their own except that the Loner status with all its aching pretentiousness is one of its major preconditions. All of them are male second generation Black Mountain poets whose work is notably more timid than that of their elders. And all of them are too much in love with a certain codified sense of Beauty, tho it plays out in very different ways from person to person (except that for all it comes across as some variant of nostalgia). We could build a slightly larger circle here and toss in some other folk who fit the category, such as Augie Keinzhaler, George Evans, Eliot Weinberger. What keeps these folks from being a group is precisely the AntiGroup politics they pursue. Which has an interesting political edge to it, especially when as in Eliot's case it comes across sounding ultraleftist with an echo of Pat Buchanan. Another cluster of writers who could be legitimately grouped would be poets who were trained ("educated" in the most literal sense) within the academic poetics of the free verse '60s mode who have sometimes been associated with langpo, largely because they have very lively minds and can't keep their work from having lots of snap and pop at all points: Gander himself is an example, as are C.D. Wright, Jorie Graham, Ann Lauterbach and Bob Hass. These writers (and here is where Palmer would come in again) have a more complicated relation to questions of community and tradition and a very ambivalent stance toward innovation. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 19:33:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Oops (blush blush blush), meant to backchannel that last. Oh well, now I've gone public. Hope no one feels I've been provocative. I try never to be provocative. Did the Milesian lie who said that all Milesians were liars? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 22:51:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dave Zauhar Subject: Re: the academy of evil poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Those of you working in the computer industry might have a harder time getting hold of the source here, but listmembers in the academy should be able to track it down w/ relative ease: the current (February 21, 1997) issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about the MFA program at Syracuse, complete w/ tales of a poet throwing Scotch in the face of a graduate student and calling her a "stalinist bitch." My favorite part is the pictures of 4 writers. They all look like they're posing for their dust jacket photograph. Is that a part of the curriculum at MFA programs these days? Anyway, the article is entertaining when it shows the various writers at each other's throats, but it's also disturbing to see the manipulation of students that seems to be commonplace, if the article is to be believed. Read it and weep (or laugh, depending on your disposition). Dave Zauhar ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 22:10:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: its okay to commit unspeakable acts Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" George, its ok to commit unspeakable acts and to speak of them to other people but lets just keep this between the two of us ok? Its ok to compare dickinson to dorn because if ed went public with his prejudices, emily went private with her heaven-knows-what. So thats all ok eh, that balances out. Anyway george just one more little secret we can keep between us, eh? (we canadians say "eh"). david ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 22:14:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: oh my god Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Everybody, i dont know what just came over me--I posted to the list a very personal transmission from me to george bowering!! oh my god, dont read it! oh, this is terrible! how cd i make such a dumb mistake? yr address is almost entirely different from the List's address! Can you believe it? Its like putting the car into Drive when you think youre putting it into Reverse! shucks. uh, algernon charles. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 01:24:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: oh my god In-Reply-To: <9702190615.AA08642@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hey, I'm deeply disappointed. I just posted my entire sexual, criminal, & literary history to the list by accident and it never showed up. Just shows where too much trust in technology gets you. wendy (aside, stage left) On Tue, 18 Feb 1997, David Bromige wrote: > Everybody, i dont know what just came over me--I posted to the list a very > personal transmission from me to george bowering!! oh my god, dont read it! > oh, this is terrible! how cd i make such a dumb mistake? yr address is > almost entirely different from the List's address! Can you believe it? Its > like putting the car into Drive when you think youre putting it into > Reverse! shucks. uh, algernon charles. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 22:27:49 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: its okay to commit unspeakable acts In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII "Vinnie and I say masses for poor Irish boys souls. So far as I am concerned I should like to have you kill some--there are so many now, there is no room for the Americans, and I cant think of a death that would be more after my mind than scientific destruction, scholastic dissolution, there's something lofty in it, it smacks of going up!" --Emily Dickinson to her brother -- June 15, 1851 Now,,,, is it really all that difficult to understand that I might talk about Dickinson's poetry with my students and also talk about this part of her thought? One conversation helps us to understand something about her poetry -- the other conversation helps us, perhaps, to understand something about our culture that we probably need to understand as much as we need her poetry -- The irony in her poetry and in this letter might even help us to comprehend the ironies of our own history -- who is trying to police what in this recent discussion??? yours in the shank o' the evening, the grunt vassar of San Ho ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 22:28:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" alright, alright, I was a little obvious. Spreads a little innocent merriment, anyway. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 22:46:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: oh my god In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Just received a message from the deity -- it was intended for the whole list but apparently used the wrong reply function and came to me alone -- It said: "Don't trust any messages over fifty!" ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 08:26:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: oh my god dear wendy we got the literary and criminal part, but the sexual part seems to have gotten turned, partwy through, into ascii gibberish. could you please at least finish the part about the rubber suit and the feathers? several of the list members have a bet on how it will turn out... e ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 09:02:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: most artists are worse than other people MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Artists are like other people, only worse? Oh geez, Henry. I thought artists were other people. Some bad traits, good traits, etc. Artists are more likely to dream? Geez, these days they're more likely to be excellent business people, holding a regular job, doing their work as an artist, having families too sometimes and not even necessarily beating them or being addicted to drugs. I mean, really, the only thing worse than being ordinary is being romanticized, even if in the negative. Mark Wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun | | to go to extremes" | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 08:51:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Landers Subject: Re: people-not-here-talk -Reply In-Reply-To: from "David Israel" at Feb 18, 97 03:27:28 pm Content-Type: text > > >>Would someone (Aldon Neilsen? Tom Mandel?) mind taking > the time to explain in > >>more detail what it is Dorn may have said (in public only, > please) to piss > >>people off? > > > >I too want to know. If it was discussed before in detail, i must > >have missed it. cheers, > > > >Tosh Berman > >TamTam Books > > for that matter, I, too, am out of the loop on this -- > > (I'd read some fiction Dorn wrote once, have heard of the guy > vaguely, and have a notion he's ensconsed w/ the Naropa School > more or less) -- > > but this seems bit like having somehow missed news of WW III > > so, some note of background, kindly? > > d.i. > Dorn and Tom Clark seemed to think that AIDS was a topic of humor. They nominated various infamous people for the award which consisted of an injection of the AIDS virus. This done to the lurid graphic of a dripping hypo. I wrote them at the time and told them that I didn't think it was funny. I asked Dorn after a reading what he was thinking of. He was not cordial and refused to talk about it. Pete L. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 09:32:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: Re: oh my god In-Reply-To: <9702191326.AA03388@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 19 Feb 1997, Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest wrote: > we got the literary and criminal part, but the sexual part seems to have > gotten turned, partwy through, into ascii gibberish. could you please at > least finish the part about the rubber suit and the feathers? several > of the list members have a bet on how it will turn out... Huh? the rubber suit and feathers was the literary part. w ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 09:41:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: this sentence is a lie? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I was able to get the lying cretan/milesian paradox to shut down when I took the statement 'everything I say is a lie' to be sarcastic ... J ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 09:59:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: people-not-here-talk -Reply In a message dated 97-02-19 02:40:28 EST, you write: << (I'd read some fiction Dorn wrote once, have heard of the guy vaguely, and have a notion he's ensconsed w/ the Naropa School more or less) -- >> Hardly. He lives in Boulder, but teaches at CU. Check out Tom Clark's _Naropa Poetry Wars_ (or somesuch) to find out why he doesn't hang with the Disembodied crowd. I think soemone already mentioned this, but there was an issue of his magazine, Rolling Stock, in the 80's full of vicious AIDS jokes & anti-gay sentiment. Lost my respect then. Sad. I still like the early work & _Gunslinger_. The one time I heard him read, he was too drunk. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 10:06:47 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: most artists are worse than other people In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 19 Feb 1997 09:02:05 -0500 from Well, the most important artist of "our generation" (listening, Mickey Mouse Club members?) I know personally is Jack Spandrift, the hard-drinkin tough-talkin po-yeti from Brainerd MN. That proves it. Did you read his egregious attack on Fellow-Poet Dorn? I'm embarrassed to be associated with a list that would include such a person. And furthermore, I tink I said in my fust post that people romanticize artistic "badness" in a very very bad way. I don't really think artists are wuss than other people, I was just tryin to rhetoroarically counteract the moralist front. This ain't to say I don't agree completely with Aldon that Emily Dickinson's scorn of me Irish furfathers is relevant to the Historical Taste-Building nekessary here & everywhere, & with Mandel, Tom, that slugs must not cower under the rug in the face of rampant bigotry. Oh no! Let slugs emerge! Poets aren't worse than other people. It's just that people in general are so BAD that any predilection for expression-obsession tends to drag the lame foot over the ground and leave the said poet unstaid. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 10:53:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Toni Simon Subject: Re: Light Street (reviews) In-Reply-To: <199702190628.WAA14266@norway.it.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Since this is my first posting I would like to say hello to all of you and to thank Charles Bernstein and the State University of New York at Buffalo for making this important access possible. Although I was not on-line when several reviews of my new book Light Street from Zasterle Press appeared (2/12-2/14) I was delighted when I did see them and I am very appreciative. Special thanks to Henry Gould, Charles Alexander, Tom Beard, Fred Muratori and to my good friends Mark Wallace, David Bromige and Douglas Messerli. As was mentioned in several of the postings concerning Light Street and my other books, Zasterle Press, edited by Manuel Brito in the Canary Islands, is a terrific press and has included- since 1994- such books as The Whole Note by Gill Ott, a collaboration by Alan Davies with the photographer M.M. Winterford, Acoustic Masks by Ted Pearson, The Weatherman Turns Himself In by Leslie Scalapino, Keys To The Caverns by Clark Coolidge, and Train of Thought by Jack Spicer. Earlier books include those by Charles Bernstein, Carla Harryman, Barrett Watten, Ray DiPalma, Bruce Andrews, the late Jerry Estrin and the late Daniel Davidson. Nick Piombino ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 08:10:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: "Poets are other people" In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I thought I read in Sartre that Hell was other people -- Oh damn! Is that why nobody wants to be stuck in a living room with me? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 08:25:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Other Mothers' Sons In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Well, having had a good yuck while reading Henry's last -- I looked back at the post on Emily Dickinson -- and while "history" is indeed mentioned, I can't seem to find any reference to taste in those sentences whatsoever -- Tell me, Ramon Fernandez, if you can, Why this blessed rage for taste ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 11:51:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: "Poets are other people" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" On the other hand, Aldon, are you so sure you'd want to be stuck in a living room with Sartre? >I thought I read in Sartre that Hell was other people -- Oh damn! Is that >why nobody wants to be stuck in a living room with me? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 10:12:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Irony & Emily Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" is it just lil old me trying to "save the appearances" or is there a Swiftian ring to Dickinson's sentiments re my people? (I am not actually descended from irish stock, but since the whole world wants to be, it wd be egregious of me to exclude myself). I have much pleasure of the "o my god" string, thanks Wendy & Eliza & Aldon. And good on you, Mark W, for taking the kidding so well. I had some bad moments during the night, feeling i had shown my less-than-charitable side to the List. I can only pray that one of these midnights, euphoric & heedless on Diet 7-Up and Manchego cheese, I dont reveal the names--and they are of many nations--of all those poets I had throttled & dumped in the river. Weird percussion aids, end-rime, end-runs around beautiful obstacles, the sixpack drunk with a fellow-poet, ghazals, gazelles (beauty & grace of), sestinas, Dad's pocket-fluff, Mom's hemline, the hole in Sissie's wall--they were sucking for a bruise. But still, I have my regrets. db ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 13:27:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: Tina Darragh reading Sunday, Feb. 23rd, 8 PM a reading/talk by Tina Darragh Bridge Street Books 2814 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20007 ph 202 965 5200 hurray! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 10:28:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Irony Emily Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I am backchanelled by one of our number inquiring as to why I have regrets. I have regrets because all the importrant anthologies are now being edited by close relatives of those poets I had bumped off. Nuff said? db ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 12:38:58 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: Irony Emily MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Bromige wrote: > > I am backchanelled by one of our number inquiring as to why I have regrets. > I have regrets because all the importrant anthologies are now being edited > by close relatives of those poets I had bumped off. Nuff said? db well david, you & I & alan (jennifer) will just have to make our own anthology,now wont we? we can call is New American Poetry. miekal ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 13:30:36 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Irony Emily In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 19 Feb 1997 10:28:48 -0500 from >I am backchanelled by one of our number inquiring as to why I have regrets. >I have regrets because all the importrant anthologies are now being edited >by close relatives of those poets I had bumped off. Nuff said? db Let it go, Dave. Aunt Spurl had it coming, anyway. I've included your sestina, "Turkey Time for Stuffed Shirts" (with a few editorial downgrades) in my upcoming anthology, _Dribble Down the Line : Odiferous Poets of the 90s_ (Cowboy Laundry Press, POB 13, Small Town, Wyo 11174). It's due out next week. You don't mind I used it, do you? Thanks. p.s. the books's only $39.95, prepaid only, please. - Jack Spandrift p.s. no, you "Poets" out there - don't get your hopes up. YOU ARE NOT IN THIS ANTHOLOGY!!! ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 10:53:28 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Irony & Emily Play Together in Perfect Harmony In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I always consider a sentence of death by scientific education to be Swiftian in nature -- I also have always imagined that modest proposals for the eating of one's "own" people have a slightly different "taste" than proposals that others should be devoured -- If for no other reason than that the self is nearly always excluded from the sentence passed upon even one's own -- though a modest proposal for autoingestion WOULD seem to set a new standard for modesty as well as irony -- well, now I see that I finally have come down on the side of taste after all -- to quote that great poet Slinger Francisco: "I never ate a white meat yet!" are we past the fifty mark yet? And please remember the following from Charles Bernstein's list of rules for the POETICS list: all irony (including sarcasm, schtick, mocking, jokes, and comic innuendo) will be prohibited from the list. This is a particularly difficult rule to enforce automatically, but recent, unpublishable, research, indicates that there may be genetic markers of sarcasm and our team of crack(ed?) computer experts are working around the clock to find programs to detect this "irony gene" in linguistic expression. [nb: Bernstein uses "genetic" in both its linguistic and its biological senses here, obviously way ahead of his time once more in predicting a major portion of the "Ebonics" debate -- the comma that appears after the word "research" is, in fact, a genetic marker of irony, and statistical analysis indicates that there is only a 1 in 50 million possibility that anyone other than Charles Bernstein could have left this marker at the scene -- lastly, for those of you who have recently inquired about the seemingly absent Loss, he is completing the irony detection program at a secret off-campus s(c)i(gh)te.] as ever, yours, the gnomon of Zurich ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 11:20:30 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Irony & Emily Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yo, Bromige, lay off the cheese, it'll kill you. Gazelle meat, on the other hand, is low on fat and swift to digest. At 10:12 AM 2/19/97 -0500, you wrote: >is it just lil old me trying to "save the appearances" or is there a >Swiftian ring to Dickinson's sentiments re my people? (I am not actually >descended from irish stock, but since the whole world wants to be, it wd be >egregious of me to exclude myself). > >I have much pleasure of the "o my god" string, thanks Wendy & Eliza & >Aldon. And good on you, Mark W, for taking the kidding so well. I had some >bad moments during the night, feeling i had shown my less-than-charitable >side to the List. I can only pray that one of these midnights, euphoric & >heedless on Diet 7-Up and Manchego cheese, I dont reveal the names--and >they are of many nations--of all those poets I had throttled & dumped in >the river. Weird percussion aids, end-rime, end-runs around beautiful >obstacles, the sixpack drunk with a fellow-poet, ghazals, gazelles (beauty >& grace of), sestinas, Dad's pocket-fluff, Mom's hemline, the hole in >Sissie's wall--they were sucking for a bruise. But still, I have my >regrets. db > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 14:31:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: Re: Irony Emily In-Reply-To: <330AE61D.4D59@mwt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII And, We're Not related! Jennifer! On Wed, 19 Feb 1997, Miekal And wrote: > David Bromige wrote: > > > > I am backchanelled by one of our number inquiring as to why I have regrets. > > I have regrets because all the importrant anthologies are now being edited > > by close relatives of those poets I had bumped off. Nuff said? db > > > well david, you & I & alan (jennifer) will just have to make our own > anthology,now wont we? we can call is New American Poetry. > > miekal > http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html images: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Tel. 718-857-3671 CuSeeMe: 166.84.250.149 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 16:51:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: oh my god MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Wendy Battin wrote: > Huh? the rubber suit and feathers was the literary part. Little cousins, how quickly you forget! "Hope" is the thing with feathers -- That trembles in the soul -- And likes to get its punishment -- Restrained with chain -- and ball -- Sings sweetest -- in its rubber suit -- And sore must be its form -- 'Tis best to bash that little bird Then slowly -- make it warm -- It chirrups in its manacles -- Perfects its treacly Plea -- Yet, never, though the belts are taut It ever asks -- the Key -- Emily D. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 21:36:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: tim_wood Subject: Re: the academy of evil poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" >Those of you working in the computer industry might have a harder time >getting hold of the source here, but listmembers in the academy should be >able to track it down w/ relative ease poets only exist in the academy and the computer industry? no wonder commentators accuse poets & poetry of irrelevance Tim Wood ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 23:06:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: the academy of evil poets -Reply >poets only exist in the academy and the computer industry? no wonder > commentators accuse poets & poetry of irrelevance > > >Tim Wood or, they say many's the slip betwixt the cup & the lip & several do sail thru & free -- 'tween the devil & the deep blue sea d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 23:24:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Inefficient Latinate Ribosome In-Reply-To: <199702200332.VAA05518@mailhost.cyberramp.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Inefficient Latinate Ribosome Processes Richard Kostelanetz's "String Two" (Heaven Bone #10) Twome menter terocity, Tiso latend deroto. Genic plesbia mater, Erminus enderlo. Irim nisceliba; Ipso facto, acco. O gentic gratia! Terri ficti omatopo. Ambi epsilo erebrum Agenit ophis ducati, Togeny phoman celer Ratem pestuo resyri. Ronto! Tolo! Neco! Braci! Ravi! Tympani! __________________________________________________ Samples of reviews, criticism and poetry at http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 00:12:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wendy Battin Subject: oh my g*d, w/feathers Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Fish, flesh, or fowl come. End all bummers long, Whatever is forgotten, Dorn, or lies. Bought by that textual music, all detect Mongers of a single idiolect. Willem Butter Ates ------ Rachel Loden wrote: Little cousins, how quickly you forget! "Hope" is the thing with feathers -- That trembles in the soul -- And likes to get its punishment -- Restrained with chain -- and ball -- Sings sweetest -- in its rubber suit -- And sore must be its form -- 'Tis best to bash that little bird Then slowly -- make it warm -- It chirrups in its manacles -- Perfects its treacly Plea -- Yet, never, though the belts are taut It ever asks -- the Key -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Wendy Battin (home) http://camel.conncoll.edu/ccother/wjbat/ (CAPA) http://shain.lib.conncoll.edu/CAPA/capa.html (Multiple Poetics) http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/5471/index.html ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 21:14:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Just had dinner with a group that included three other subscribers to the list. The subject of some recent threads came up, and I homed in on what I have found disturbing. I would guess that we all have a few opinions that others might find odd--even me. If I present mine in the form of dismissive adjectives that I expect everyone to agree with I don't invite the possibility of discussion, and I don't offer any enlightenment. I could, instead, treat the poet an aspect of whose work I find offensive with some respect, enlarging on what I find problematic, and presenting chapter and verse. No one may agree with me, but at least they'll understand my rationale and have the option of engaging with it. Not a bad goal for a poetics list. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 21:47:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I still know nothing of Dorn and Clark's politics and feelings. I feel I need some example of their work.. So far it seems to be two men who have either a dark sense of humor or a sense of irony, or perhaps just evil. Whatever, I still think that a writer's work should be judged on his work and not his life, racism, or politics. For all I know they may have regrets for their comments. I just don't know. Perhaps they're wasted on their own problems, again I don't know. What we do know is their work (if we read it) and that is what we should be commenting on. Of course I just had three glasses of red wine, so what do I know... yours, Tosh Berman TamTam Books ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 23:20:27 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski Subject: most artists are other people Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" or maybe this should subjected most artists are worse people than artists. i feel i come out best in my art, more principle, more vision and intelligence. dan raphael the poet is a lot more interesting, perceptive and balanced a person than my regular world self. can you separate the person form what they produce? yes and no. i feel that to do intense and moving art you are working some edge of subconscious. perhaps then you are doing other work to support yourself. or because you cant conventionally support yourself you work some edges of health, sanity, substance misuse. the quality of the art does not directly correspond with how well the person reacts to various ethical and spritual demands of day to day life. i am not making excuses, just saying that a persons maturity, karma and general focus may not directly relate to the quality of er work. dan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 03:35:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 18 Feb 1997 to 19 Feb 1997 How nice, when the DIGEST FORM is small enough so I don't have to download and then later sign back on, etc. (a rare day) This may address (not answer) some of Jordan's questions ("where was the emphasis in some trees? were cliches a tragedy?"): one thing that might be said about a line like "No more odes, the dood doctor said, come in with something distressing" is that it is another one of Ashbery's many "I got your PRESCIPTIVE GAME number" to Harold Bloom, your "ruin the sacred truths shit attempt to elevate WORDSWORTH and retract on BLAKE ("skyscrapers going up to the sky, people going down to the ground"--dylan) and all the ideological implications---remember Bloom WAS a radical in the 50's and early 60's and I am grateful to him for the fact that Shelley was part of my undergrad curriculum in a way, say, Beddoes was not--despite smug Benjy Brown (god rest his soul?) who divided Shelley's phases up into "Mad Shelley" "Anarchist Shelley" "Atheist Shelley" etc. Fuck him, he was a Shakespearean. Whatever that meant. I dropped the course to take my 6th with the guy who turned me onto the beats, Brackhage, Fassbinder and Bloom (last time I saw him he told me he felt guilty for teaching the visionary company all these years and got some NEW book on the romantics, perhaps edited my McGann i forget don't quote me and how it just seemed so bland (article in this week's NEW YORK PRESS on creative writing departments (fiction but could be applied to poetry too) "Am I bland enough"?--- So I was a lopsided englsh major but I wanted to ask Jerome Rothenberg if he'd sanction my hunch I mean theory (IN MEMORY OF MY HUNCHES,hmmmm, coming soon to a NO BOOK near you) that they felt betrayed by Bloom as he began leaning like the tower of PISA away from the prison which OLSOn took from pound and towards the James Merrill and May Swenson (not fur person Sarton) side of Ashbery instead and one of the RIFTS, like the developing rift between AM and FM music around the same time, the center not being able to hold after "some folks are born silver spoon in hand, lawd don't they help themselves, y'all" and even stevie wonder more POP than HIP (he bible, they say--Cixous, Dickinson) and "can't the bad guy win every once in a while" reached #1 (smirched, worm-eaten) but it didn't matter (STAIRWAY TO FREE PEARL BIRD JAM FOORBALL) and so he could claim the authority of BLAKE et al and put it in MERWIN (even as he could still be perceived as a radical who broke down STULTIFYING ACADEMIC PERIODIZATION (helen liked when I was in that groove) even though he (I'm still talking BLOOM) had to use FREUD (UGHHHHHHH!) to do so and already turned his back on emerson and in this sense followed the fashion as much as he made it so the FREUD-WORDSWORTH SIDE won out (evident in his emphasis on Tragedy in his recent Shakespeare) and McWorkshops fed it and the PAST GREW more distant and THE MAINSTREAM broke with tradition de facto if not de jure THE AVANT GARDE broke with tradition de jure but not de facto. Is the distinction between Bukowski and Berrigan really that great? (I mean there' a perspective in Bukoski and Berrigan and Marvin Bell are the same, or is that just a reductive reading of the "language poetry"?) How petty! Yes, Harold, poets are characters in a play (she is anyway--flipside is better)--but WHICH play? "UH, DUH, THE PLAY OF SIGNIFIERS" Right answer, but out of character. Remember your stake in pathos. It's your responsibility for us confessionals lop- sided in the human pole of myth. Our stock is dropping without you. Your stock may drop without us, but only to those who still think MALLS are disgusting (guiliani spar, editor of K-MART, a CHAIN mag) and we'll let them play to the youth market (elvis needs boats--latest routledge catalogue?) THE AUDACITY of the MLA holding a special session whose main purpose was to determine whether CULTURAL STUDIES is dead." Is anything else ALIVE? PROVE IT. hire me. I know a woman (email solely) named Lisa Kenyon who couldn't even get her PUNK MUSIC panel accepted last year. How did Gillian McGain pull it off? (uh oh the town vs. gown thread could be triggered by this one) and Jameson appeals to thre AUTHORITY of GANG OF FOUR and TALKING HEADS (like the way Ulysses abuses poor Achilles, according to Thersities at least, who IS a reliable observer in this case) and I'm so SICK of the canonization of CHINA-- almost everything in THE FIRST WORLD, FACE VALUE and C.A. is better (r.i.p. pig xiaping---to be "credited" for "market economy" which is the same as the tomkin square crackdown) and I'm also noticing (but not necessarily sick of) the canonization machinery surrounding Bernstein's (or should I say Charles') LINE poem and I'm WITH YOU IN ROCKLAND (rockville) all of you who were disappointed by the fact that he (Jameson) didn't talk about the HEADS or the GANG (no one I know calls them that, though when me and George acted out "we all have good intentions but all with strings attached" to make a mockery of "air- guitar" night Andy wrote us up as "disjointed chrysanth- emums swaying in the wind") or that Clint Burnham didn't let himself talk about P.J Harvey or Pavement enough (allegedly Christgau in this week's voice talks about Ashbery's influence on PAVEMENT--I gotta get) (and why did JONI MITCHELL recently express her disgust with poetry? Would she have said this 20 years ago?) "as serious artists deserving of close readings" and cultural studies is not a term in the ode-distressing polarity with which I started. Bloom ignores it largely. Ashbery doesn't at places. So is this just a parlour game?----- (to post this to the whole list would be a kind of "he's always making love to the whole world" (sic)) Thank you Andrew Epstein for notes on Second Ave. And yes Mark Wallace, Everyone is a poet sometimes... even poets! -----Chris Stroffolino ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 03:15:28 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: so long Well, folks, it's time to saddle up Old Whither, me & my unshakable sidekick Spandrift are riding out. The fare's too rich, I need to fast for a while. Some of us like the sound of our own e-voice; now the aftertaste of my own wretched chatter & puerile comments leaves me sick at heart. I understand this is a mixed medium & a friendly home away from home, yet as one of the worst offenders I applaud those with some restraint - here's to honest questions and comments on matters of substance! It's hard to resist, especially for a day-jobber; Jack says "count me out buddy", but I myself may be back someday soon as a lurker. See if I ain't! Sincere thanks to all kindly spirits & intelligent pals, this is a remarkable corner of the litewawy woods. Please don't email any condolences etc.! I'm still at Henry_Gould@brown.edu for reasons d'etat or so on. For those of you whom it pleaseth to sow the wind, I leave you with a note from an old cell-mate of Jack's name of El Bardo: But when I came alas! to wive, / With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain, / By swaggering could I never thrive, / For the rain it raineth every day. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 07:07:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kathleen Crown Subject: poetry reading/performance In-Reply-To: Automatic digest processor "POETICS Digest - 18 Feb 1997 to 19 Feb 1997" (Feb 20, 12:05am) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii poetry readings by NATHANIEL MACKEY with Hafez Modirzadeh and Royal Hartigan (reed/percussion) Monday, February 24th, 8 pm with ED ROBERSON, Hafez Modirzadeh, and Royal Hartigan College Hall Livingston College Rutgers University New Brunswick NJ ____________________________ Tuesday, February 25th with FULL MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT by Hafez Modirzadeh and Royal Hartigan Poetry in the Round (Jeffrey Gray, Director) Seton Hall University South Orange, NJ Backchannel for more info: kcrown@rci.rutgers.edu -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 09:14:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sherry Brennan Subject: Irony Emily Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This thread has been very important for me. I didn't know anything--literally--about Dorn as a person prior to the conversation on this list, although I had read and like what I have read. And I have never seen a discussion in print of the quotation below that Aldon Nielson quoted from Dickinson. These are serious issues--not just because I have both Irish and Jewish greatgrandparents (as well as British and German and Hungarian and Czech ones). But because they speak loudly about our own education(s) and culture--as Nielson says. My professional training is as an Anglo-Saxon scholar, although I left the field before finishing the final degree. One of the most valuable things I have ever done, though, is a close reading of the emendations and footnotes of various 18th, 19th and early 20th century editions of Anglo-Saxon texts. The 19th and 20th century editions of _Beowulf_ are used by these editors (and by some of the scholars who based their work on these editions) up to the time of WWII to make the argument that the germanic race was genetically superior. The places where these arguments get made in Beowulf are situated around holes in the text -- literal holes in the text, where the ms. was burned or cut or cannot otherwise be read now. Early editors of the AS texts would fill in these "holes" with their own emendations, and then shore up their "emendations" with cultural explanations of how the text, the poem, works to make that particular emendation the only proper emendation. The question of how one reconciles (or doesn't) the relation between persons (writing or reading) and texts is wrapped up in all kinds of theoretical, textual and philosophical debates. The question of how one reconciles (or doesn't) the relations between persons and persons, nations and persons, is even more difficult. There's no simple way to talk about the ways that an Anglo-Saxon scholar may have "shored up" colonialism as systematic political and cultural oppression by his or her emendations of a phrase in Beowulf. After Auschwitz (to quote another thread months past) it seems better to address the issue than to sweep it under the rub. rug, I meant. Daily I wonder in what ways my own limitations, assumptions, inabilities, failures--my own unacknowledged or unknown immersions in our culture(s)--get inscribed into my writing or into my reading. How I use the body of the text as my own body. autoingest? or others bodies. Will I eat my words. cuts. these holes. poems. her poetry. need as well. as need. our. us. conversation. sherry >"Vinnie and I say masses for poor Irish boys souls. So far as I am >concerned I should like to have you kill some--there are so many now, >there is no room for the Americans..." Emily Dickinson >One conversation helps us to understand something about her >poetry -- the other conversation helps us, perhaps, to understand >something about our culture that we probably need to understand as much as >we need her poetry Sherry Brennan Development Research The Pennsylvania State University (814) 863-4302 SAB5@psu.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 09:22:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: --- the user dictionaries --- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 20:11:39 -0800 >To: lorenz@arts.ucsb.edu >From: cmlorenz@earthlink.net (Christine Lorenz) >Subject: --- the user dictionaries --- > > >graphomaniacs, > ideologues, > exhibitionists, > lend me your lexicons... > > > > > > - - - - - - - - - - The User Dictionaries - - - - - - - - - - - - > > < http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/~lorenz/dictionaries > > > >Every time you click "save" when you spell-check, you make a deposit into a >semi-conscious crypto-self-portrait that resides in your hard drive. > >Make yours public. Find your User Dictionary file -- attach it to an e-mail >message that includes the software version that it came from -- and forward >it to the address below. > >No user dictionary is too small, too mundane, or too cryptic. >Anonymity respected if requested. > > > - - - -- - - ----> lorenz@arts.ucsb.edu > > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > > > ( g i v e w i d e s t d i s t r i b u t i o n ) > > > >=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- > Christine Lorenz > cmlorenz@earthlink.net > lorenz@arts.ucsb.edu > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 09:20:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sherry Brennan Subject: no subject Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Just checked and realized I spelled Aldon Nielsen's name wrong. Should be Nielsen not Nielson. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 08:21:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Irony Emily Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" That Emily Dickinson participated in some of the less appealing aspects of the culture of Amherst, Massachussets, then, as now (despite the heavy academic layer imposed upon its essential redneckedness) is only surprising because we have made her into a saint--far less surprising, at any rate, than finding out what Mabel Loomis Todd and big brother were doing under the dining room table while Emily and Sis covered for them (did she stand in the doorway in her prim white dress and watch?). As a cultural artifact the guilty letter tells us that Yankees didn't like Irish, as if this needed further confirmation. It doesn't enter into the oeuvre. Now, a critique could be worked up about what gets included and what not in the poetry, and from there to what the unstated purpose of poetry was seen to be by Miss D and her coevals, and that would be an interesting discussion regardless of who its focus--I think we all, despite the huge broadening of the field accomplished for us by the surrealodadaists, Olson, Pound, Williams, etc., tend to segregate our opinions and concerns to one extent or another into poems, prose, email, dinner conversation, letters to the editor, etc., and the choices and mechanisms thereof are at the heart of practice. If I say I write by "dictation" in whatever way I mean that, how do I explain that my radio angels or ghosts push some products more than others? This exploration around the edge of practice being in fact a central concern of my own practice. But for her own reasons, unlike Pound, say, as Yussl Rothenberg has pointed out, it doesn't enter into ED's poems. Not ED Ed Dorn, not ED Lady in White. Look, I've never known too many people (I think I just invented a new form of modifier) who never tell or laugh at ethnic jokes, who never use racist terms, etc. Most of us, unlike say Jessie Jackson (Rothenberg's example, this time at dinner) or Ed Dorn or Tom Clark, try to be aware of who's in the room (although I can tell you that as an astereotypical looking Jew I've heard more than a few odd things from people who make the wrong assumption). And almost all of us are smart enough not to publish the stuff. But the occasional random spoken offensiveness and that one piece of published foolishness, both possibly conceived and produced on one sort of bender or another (understandable if inexcusable) shouldn't keep this (or any) crowd away from _The North Atlantic Turbine_, _20 Poems_, _Gunslinger_, _La Gran Apacheria_ (try to find the first, comic-book version), etc., where they'll find none of that foolishness. And while I'm at it, let me reminisce for a moment. I remember when my then roomie Chuck Stein, as part of his effort to get me up to speed, read me the opening pages of GS across my daffodil coffee table (daffodil was what the paint co. called it. The table was all of six inches tall, but we sat on floor cushions like a pair of pashas). I was then and remain incredibly excited by the rhythms of that opening, the break from the regularity of "I met in Mesilla/the Cautious Gunslinger" into "with slender, leather-encased hands/casually folded to make his knock," the impetus of which sprung us into a very long night and dawn reading aloud the first two books (that's all there were), doping out (and we ere a bit) all the possible ways of sounding it, because hitting the beat meant getting the sense and the syntax. And I remember the months-long anticipation, waiting for the next parts to appear, the rumors of whatever might be going on at the publisher's, all that stuff, because we had to know what happened next, where would he take it, could he pull it off? Look, Dorn fucked up in public, but he also invented the Literate Projector--feed it visuals, it turns them into words. I've said my piece. By the by, I don't have my books beside me, and I probably screwed up the lines from Slinger. All the more reason to check it out yourselves. At 09:14 AM 2/20/97 -0500, you wrote: >This thread has been very important for me. I didn't know >anything--literally--about Dorn as a person prior to the conversation on >this list, although I had read and like what I have read. And I have never >seen a discussion in print of the quotation below that Aldon Nielson quoted >from Dickinson. > >These are serious issues--not just because I have both Irish and Jewish >greatgrandparents (as well as British and German and Hungarian and Czech >ones). But because they speak loudly about our own education(s) and >culture--as Nielson says. > >My professional training is as an Anglo-Saxon scholar, although I left the >field before finishing the final degree. One of the most valuable things I >have ever done, though, is a close reading of the emendations and footnotes >of various 18th, 19th and early 20th century editions of Anglo-Saxon texts. >The 19th and 20th century editions of _Beowulf_ are used by these editors >(and by some of the scholars who based their work on these editions) up to >the time of WWII to make the argument that the germanic race was genetically >superior. The places where these arguments get made in Beowulf are situated >around holes in the text -- literal holes in the text, where the ms. was >burned or cut or cannot otherwise be read now. Early editors of the AS >texts would fill in these "holes" with their own emendations, and then shore >up their "emendations" with cultural explanations of how the text, the poem, >works to make that particular emendation the only proper emendation. > >The question of how one reconciles (or doesn't) the relation between persons >(writing or reading) and texts is wrapped up in all kinds of theoretical, >textual and philosophical debates. The question of how one reconciles (or >doesn't) the relations between persons and persons, nations and persons, is >even more difficult. There's no simple way to talk about the ways that an >Anglo-Saxon scholar may have "shored up" colonialism as systematic political >and cultural oppression by his or her emendations of a phrase in Beowulf. >After Auschwitz (to quote another thread months past) it seems better to >address the issue than to sweep it under the rub. rug, I meant. > >Daily I wonder in what ways my own limitations, assumptions, inabilities, >failures--my own unacknowledged or unknown immersions in our culture(s)--get >inscribed into my writing or into my reading. How I use the body of the >text as my own body. autoingest? or others bodies. > >Will I eat my words. cuts. these holes. poems. her poetry. need as >well. as need. our. us. conversation. > >sherry > > >>"Vinnie and I say masses for poor Irish boys souls. So far as I am >>concerned I should like to have you kill some--there are so many now, >>there is no room for the Americans..." Emily Dickinson > >>One conversation helps us to understand something about her >>poetry -- the other conversation helps us, perhaps, to understand >>something about our culture that we probably need to understand as much as >>we need her poetry > > >Sherry Brennan >Development Research >The Pennsylvania State University >(814) 863-4302 >SAB5@psu.edu > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 11:50:11 +0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bil Brown Subject: Re: poetry reading/performance Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Great Nate Mackey. Love that boy!! bil ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 10:42:31 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: poetry reading/performance Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" looks fab >poetry readings by NATHANIEL MACKEY >with Hafez Modirzadeh and Royal Hartigan (reed/percussion) > >Monday, February 24th, 8 pm >with ED ROBERSON, Hafez Modirzadeh, and Royal Hartigan > >College Hall >Livingston College >Rutgers University >New Brunswick NJ >____________________________ > >Tuesday, February 25th >with FULL MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT >by Hafez Modirzadeh and Royal Hartigan > >Poetry in the Round >(Jeffrey Gray, Director) >Seton Hall University >South Orange, NJ > > >Backchannel for more info: kcrown@rci.rutgers.edu >-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 08:42:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I should _never_ try to write before coffee. The opening salvo of my last should read: "That Emily Dickinson participated in some of the less appealing aspects of the culture of Amherst, Massachussets, then, as now (despite the heavy academic layer imposed upon its essential redneckedness) a hick-town,..." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 08:47:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Irony? In-Reply-To: <199702201621.IAA27093@denmark.it.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Actually, I know quite a few people who never use racist terms -- What does or does not enter into the "ouevre" of Emily Dickinson is not so neat a question, now is it -- as she did not publish herself to the world -- It does enter into the published verses of Pound, Williams, Cummings, Stevens, Loy, jumping ahead Wieners, Baraka, Kerouac, JOnas,,, Is there some wall betwixt poems and "other" stuff we are not supposed to look over? The fact that "Yankee" prejudices existed does not strike me as a reason to continue to accept their non-surprising existence -- Isn't it in fact because people are not surprised to hear racist terms that they go on being used with such casual frequency? enough -- I've got to go meet with some students ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 11:43:07 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: stein query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" do you know of the big brouhaha in modernism modernity, picked up by the chron of higher ed and the forward (jewish newsweekly), stein's support of the vichy gov? i have a more diffuse article in modern fiction studies, on stein, jewish social scientists and the "jewish question." >i'm writing about the politics of stein's later work, and just a few weeks >ago someone mentionned a piece on stein's republicanism at >http://www.slate.com/. i couldn't access it and so would like to try to >get in touch with the author. anybody remember/know about this? >please backchannel (jmccartn@u.arizona.edu). >thanks, >jill mccartney ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 10:50:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: taking a break Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear Listmates, I'm taking a few days off, and if I can figure how to retract my electronic umbilical, will be reachable backchannel only (and even there, expect delays). I'll miss you all. db ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 11:01:30 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: taking a break In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII David -- when telling you how to retract the umbilical I forgot to mention that you should tape a silver dollar over it afterwards if you want an "innie" -- yours from omphalos, the vassal of concreteness ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 19:39:47 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L. Mac Mahon and T.R. Healy" Subject: evil poets Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hard to make any judgement stick when a tonal change is enough to put a safe distance between us and our statements, never mind appeals to indeterminism, group myopia or even (gasp) growth. All the same, though we might have broken dogmatism up for parts, the appetite for a stonefest is as insatiable as ever. Which was perhaps why political correctness was invented. The appearance of humanism yet all the fun of the chase. Unfortunately, not all baddies are so obliging as to declare themselves in their utterances. At least some of the real bastards take care to get the palaver right. Which is not to suggest that words cannot do lasting harm. But spare a thought for the slickos. best wishes, Randolph Healy. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 15:47:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: Louisville Report In-Reply-To: <9702200505.AA23808@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII day one of the 25th annual twentieth-century literature conference here in beautifully warm louisville ky (compared to london ontario that is), and i stand here at an email terminal in the ekstrom typing away. some 400 presenters here, and tho poetix in my opinion has received the short end of the stick in past louisville conferences, it seems as tho we're holding our own this year. i just sat in on the following panel: the modernist long poem: pound, sitwell, and stein. andre stipanovic, rutgers u, "ezra pound's coming of war in the long poem: persona and the historical narrative in `near perigord' heather hewett, u of wisc-madison, "waves of words: the tide of primitivist discourse in edith sitwell's gold coast customs" amy feinstein, u of wisc-madison, "`an invitation suffices for the present': the abstract affair of stein's stanzas" there are some other interesting panels going on now that i am missing: one on elizabeth bishop, another on latin american poetry (borges, olga orozco, and minerva margarita villarreal), as well as poetry/fiction reading (richard m. henry, nancy kuhl, gary geddes, and catherine francis). i see a lot of fellow grad students strolling the halls and walkways here, wondering if this is all nothing more than a c.v. line-item. but i've liked what i've heard so far. tomorrow is the tom orange and dave chirot pound-williams-baudelaire- kerouac-grenier show (debra parr had to bow out). michael boughn is supposedly about, and i'm hoping to meet maria damon and mark scroggins as well. i did make a point of swooping down on the publishers' book display table and snatchin up in my grubby claws a copy of mark's new zukofsky anthology, as well as a lovely copy of the rothenberg/joris anthology. damn this telnet connection is slow. more later, t. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 13:25:31 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Louisville Report In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII PLEASE continue the report from L'ville -- I haven;t been able to attend in recent years and will much appreciate any and all news -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 16:43:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: this message is unintended for the list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Actually, I wouldn't say this in public, but if there were more accidential private postings to the poetics list, the whole thing might be more interesting. So, please, reserve your public commentaries for personal friends who are willing to bear it, and send us only your heartfelt hidden secrets. mark wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun | | to go to extremes" | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 17:52:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: this is not a message In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII /////____ / @| / \\ \_ |\\- ceci n'est pas un poisson and in any case it was private and not for you. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 09:59:41 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Re: this is not a message Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > /////____ > / @| / \\ > \_ |\\- > >ceci n'est pas un poisson and in any case it was private and not for you. > >Gwyn > > Don't worry I didn't read it. Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer & User Representative SIS Team. Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Phone 93517710 Mobile 015063970 Fax (02) 9351 7711 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 17:00:08 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: this is not a message Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" n'est pas n'est pas n'est pas n pa 'est pa n'est pa n'est pa n'est pa Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 15:05:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Irony? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 08:47 AM 2/20/97 -0800, you wrote: >Actually, I know quite a few people who never use racist terms -- Well, Aldon, I guess that makes thou and thine holier than I and mine. In the multiethnic neighborhoods I have always inhabited we have never been quite so pure. We all told and tell ethnic jokes, play with "foreign" words and accents, call friends of other persuasions and origins by names that would get an LA cop in trouble. Back in prehistory I was working with Bayard Rustin, who would close shop sometimes after a very long day by saying, "Alright, white boys, let's go home," to which us white boys would answer, "Who you callin white boy, nigger?" We must have all been unreconstructed racists. Or maybe context matters and sometimes informs political correctness. Your friends, in fact, may be hypercareful around you, lest they be judged. But if you guys really are that pure, I think I'd rather hang around my own streetcorner. We may be nasty, but we do have fun. >What does or does not enter into the "ouevre" of Emily Dickinson is not so >neat a question, now is it -- as she did not publish herself to the world >-- Archness is so unbecoming. And let me point out, as it doesn't always happen, that I did spell oeuvre correctly. >It does enter into the published verses of Pound, Williams, Cummings, >Stevens, Loy, jumping ahead Wieners, Baraka, Kerouac, JOnas,,, > >Is there some wall betwixt poems and "other" stuff we are not supposed to >look over? The fact that "Yankee" prejudices existed does not strike me >as a reason to continue to accept their non-surprising existence -- Isn't >it in fact because people are not surprised to hear racist terms that they >go on being used with such casual frequency? One can accept that something existed without condoning. No matter how little I accept the prejudices of the long-dead, or the living, they won't go away. Let me say it again--it's not the racist terms that hurt--it's the context in which they are used. Some people can call me jewboy and it's a joke, others, it's fighting words. But hopefully we'll never have a color- or ethnic- or gender-blind world--differences--not stereotypes--are there, and they're interesting. Stereotypes are interesting, too, but that's another discussion. I guess I'm making a plea for some other kind of sense--look over all the walls you want to, but don't let what you find make you blind. Check out, and study, the public and private crimes, but note that poet a or b decided which of his faults to censor. Otherwise litcrit becomes tabloid lit-tittilation. I was also, I hoped, opening a different thread that I think is important. We all do put walls between various kinds of discourse. Dickinson didn't find anti-Irish sentiment appropriate for her poetry. That's interesting. Pound included antisemitism but not shopping lists. I sometimes include shopping lists but not Polish jokes. These are not always conscious decisions, and the boundaries are flexible and malleable; we do, most of us, impose such restrictions, however, in response to some internal rules or other of decorum. The nature of that decision, and the fact that there is such a process, is of the essence of most of our practice. If it were not so, we'd be chanting our native woodnotes wild in the strangest of places. Go lecture your students. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 15:56:42 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Irony? In-Reply-To: <199702202305.PAA08116@denmark.it.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'll begin by copping to the missssspeeeling, which therefore should not have appeard in quotation marks -- apologies at all times for all my typing -- on the other hand, A post that begins by making reference to the possibole holier than thouness of myself and certain of my friends, and ends by telling me to go lecture my students, is an odd place to find the advice that archness is unbecoming -- Of course context makes a difference -- never said it didn't -- the Dickinson quote appeared in a post that made a quite clear distinction between letters and poetry and which proceeded to ask questions about possible learning that might occur in the discussion of both -- I will not get into arguments about whose neighborhood is more multiethnic than etc -- I never said that I didn't know anybody at all who uses racist terms -- I said that I know quite a few people who do not -- The people I have in mind would certainly be surprised to hear it suggested that they censor themselves out of fear of my reaction -- Glad to hear you worked with Bayard Rustin -- Rustin was himself the object of both villification and humor on the subject of his sexuality -- I suspect he had a pretty clear sense of when he was being insulted and when he was being joshed -- I suspect -- I don't know -- I do know that this discussion keeps turning away from things I have said into discussions of positions that I have never taken -- I will be happy to continue on this subject off the list with anyone who wishes to take the issues up with me -- I will not have anything more to say in the near future in response to anything growing out of the Dorn discussion in this space, as I think people who have read my posts attentively know where I stand -- and I suspect that others simply do not care -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 18:04:12 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: 'pataphysical sobriety test Comments: To: wr-eye-tings MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Been busy htmling the last few days instead of doing the usual sideline commentary on the poetics list & came up with a linked rendition of "Quantum 'Pataxerogeny: A hypertext in 37 quanta" & have made two of more of my 'pataphysical hypercard stacks available for download. You will find these ubuesque appetizers at: http://www.net22.com/qazingulaza/pataphysics/pataphysics.html or if you want to just check out our complete site (which is 95% tweaked) drop in at: http://net22.com/qazingulaza & if you still are not cross-eyed or satiated I have just completed the first version the The Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms, words collected by The Avant Garde Museum of Temporary Art since 1985. There are still some weird gibberish characters Ive yet to tweak out but it is mostly accessible (this address may not be its final home): http://net22.com/neologisms ---- cross-eyed & satiated miekal ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 16:06:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: XUL In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On a happier note -- a reminder that Roof books has published _The XUL Reader: An Anthology of Argentine Poetry (1981-1996)_ eidted by Jorge Santiago Perednik and Ernesto Livon Grosman: bi-lingual 14.95 ISBN 0-937804-67-3 looks like good stuff ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 08:26:50 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: stein query In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I don't know about some recent academic furor over Stein's politics and/or support of Vichy government, but having read WARS I HAVE SEEN not too long ago, I don't find any "support" for Vichy, although there is a great deal of having to get along and live with it, and some sympathy for those who had to play active roles in order to keep life moving along (e.g., stationmasters for the railroad) etc. there is much more pride in the doings of the "boys in the mountains" that is, the maquis. and of course tremendous pride in being liberated by the u.s. army. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 17:37:22 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: : D is all we get of the cat (your summary axe) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT back after being too busy at work. Jordan freights: > I blieve, Chris Alexander, if that is your name -- > that the guiding logic at work here is oppositional -- viz Hank > Lazer's opposable poetries, viz Bob Perelman's we is another poem, > viz Ron Silliman's comments here and Cap-l -- I belive that Bruce > &rews is relentless in his opposition, and that of the lpoets maybe > only Charles B has gone on to oppose opposition and maybe he hasn't > -- well, yes but then again this seems to be only a handful of names--& while the acts associated with those names have been & continue to be very important, & while that work is certainly among the most conspicuous from one vantage, that doesnt necessarily establish theirs as *the* guiding logic--which in fact seems to be what you rightly pointed out earlier. unless you just mean that theirs is the logic thats guiding this conversation--the thread on zoos & whatnot is what were discussing, right?-- in which case I think youre partly right, though again I wouldnt say its the exclusive logic. obviously the rhetoric of opposition (& marginalization) persists after L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E--as someone mentioned elsewhere not too long ago ["could we get more vagaries down here?"], with the titles of some recent anthologies its difficult to say where exactly we suppose ourselves to be writing from-- or maybe not difficult enough?--but Im really not convinced that it has to be read as the dire endemic or retarding condition its sometimes made out to be. if youll grant that a lot of writers seem to have abandoned this model, or seem never to have taken it up at all--which you may not, but it seems to me that they have--. & that thinking language practice as a political opposition is one possible gesture among others, & doesnt somehow become a determining factor in the strong sense--. because I think youd be mistaken if you were to assert that opposition somehow means that were programmatically writng in response to, or that anyones work has become the determined negative image of,say, american journalistic prose--. or that "rustling" your work into the opposition "corral" somehow deforms its reception--? nor does it mean necessarily a sort of simplistic one-to-one opposition between 2 groups competing for the same resources ["there are 2 kinds of poems int he world,prose that" or "this town isnt big enough"]etc. --shirts versus skins? obviously OPPOSITION is one possible line of thought among others--one that I find useful-- but not *the* meaning etc.-- ¬ necessarily such a restricted relation after all. so "not the hegelian I used to be"--already smoked my last pack of Absolute Spirit. of course whether or not resistance is a useful view of swich or a poltical reality ["tell me again of how your poetics resists the naturalizing ideology of the new york times?"]-- is another matter. &whether *you*find it useful to think wrtg in thse terms--. but the problem with "elsewhere" is that its still somewhere--ie, just as firmly ensconced in the social field as any other practice. ok, so opposition is problematic, or needs to be troubled--I can see that. but there is no just elsewhere--another binary, one with an occluded second term, doesnt seem to help. "climb on, the avant-garde is a-leavin" sounds like playing kant to david kelloggs bourdieu. > maps are for > claiming resources and for sittling arbitrartions, charts are for > malapractice -- the crisis goes deeper, lads, and the initials are > everywhere .. wussy hegel glottal simpatico, contra dante sounds .. > and maybe he's just the Poetry Chicken .. a lot'll .. geese .. a > shady .. to get into the narrative -- maps dont just s[imply a battle plan--raiding the other tribes magic resources or flour. ["godoggo"]. an attempt to visualize the field of amerwrtg is just what Id expect from the amercan left (this is not a criticism)--which, among other things, tries to piece together why it is exactly that something like commodity capitalism (or in this case "the bourgeois novel of the last century") persists. but, yes clearly a sort of battle, though in any case not just synonyous with complaints of "clubbiness" or the its-who-you-know/ how-you-work atmosphere of a united nation's arts councils or so-called mainstream publishing-- which is I think we can agree, just another stream, if one that has accumulated considerably more capital ["jeez its even gotten in the water here"] --& so greater public visibility & influence in determining what it means to make art, what forms of expression are acceptable etc.--which, like it or not, is political. to me, the presses that publish the only writrs whose wrk Im really interested in--with a few exceptions--, coupled with the copy shops & internet servers where those wrters publish their own work--seem ample, if in the accustomed financially jeopardized sort of way. so reducing the model to maps for claiming resources or sitting arbitrations--kissinger & stalin passing napkins about book sales or something--is, well, reductive. not simply engaging in a turf ware ["wherefore"] or just sour over somebodys grant applications--. I dont think about this stuff because I love it or because I think I ought to make The Big Money on bonuses from dalton or departmental grants. I dont have any particular longing to visit school children or read to the 6 people present at 7:00 pm at the Midville town hall arts center. Im a computer systems consultant at the underfunded library of an underfunded state university & I dont have any books out that I havent put out & I dont really care. but I would like to see more of the books that I like to read on the shelves of that library or in local bookstores--& not just for my convenience. now whether I can still qualify for "hegemonic boomer" status--? boom-boom-boom. well meet sometime & you can give me a button or something. [smile]. love me, Love My Carpet, chris, or ["whatever .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) language code not found. illegal operation error. this program will shut down, & all unsaved data will be lost. if problem persists, consult your systems operator. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 18:25:54 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: this is not a message MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT n'est pas ness past mas parse mis-paste .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) language code not found. illegal operation error. this program will shut down, & all unsaved data will be lost. if problem persists, consult your systems operator. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 21:49:33 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Irony? In-Reply-To: <199702202305.PAA08116@denmark.it.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 3:05 PM -0800 2/20/97, Mark Weiss wrote: >At 08:47 AM 2/20/97 -0800, you wrote: >>Actually, I know quite a few people who never use racist terms -- > >Well, Aldon, I guess that makes thou and thine holier than I and mine. In >the multiethnic neighborhoods I have always inhabited we have never been >quite so pure. We all told and tell ethnic jokes, play with "foreign" words >and accents, call friends of other persuasions and origins by names that >would get an LA cop in trouble.... >Go lecture your students. yikes. is all i can say. mark, how come u have a bee in yr bonnet abt this? seems to me that, has someone touched a nerve? i've felt preached at on the list, but i didn't detect it in this go-round. very interesting medium, this. xo, md ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 16:56:56 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: this is not a message Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ah merd, je suis un poisson dan salmon At 05:52 PM 2/20/97 -0500, you wrote: > > /////____ > / @| / \\ > \_ |\\- > >ceci n'est pas un poisson and in any case it was private and not for you. > >Gwyn > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 16:59:59 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: Irony? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >racists. Or maybe context matters and sometimes informs political >correctness. Your friends, in fact, may be hypercareful around you, lest >they be judged. But if you guys really are that pure, I think I'd rather >hang around my own streetcorner. We may be nasty, but we do have fun. out here in antipodes we make our friday night fun stringin' up seppos. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 22:01:15 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: this is not a message In-Reply-To: <199702210356.QAA14890@ihug.co.nz> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 4:56 PM +1300 2/21/97, DS wrote: >ah merd, je suis un poisson > >dan salmon > >At 05:52 PM 2/20/97 -0500, you wrote: >> >> /////____ >> / @| / \\ >> \_ |\\- >> >>ceci n'est pas un poisson and in any case it was private and not for you. >> >>Gwyn >> dans la grande poeme de la mer je suis un mousse ivre ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 20:19:16 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Irony? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" what's a seppo? At 04:59 PM 2/21/97 +1300, you wrote: >>racists. Or maybe context matters and sometimes informs political >>correctness. Your friends, in fact, may be hypercareful around you, lest >>they be judged. But if you guys really are that pure, I think I'd rather >>hang around my own streetcorner. We may be nasty, but we do have fun. > >out here in antipodes we make our friday night fun stringin' up seppos. > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 15:38:28 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pam Brown Subject: Re: Irony? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi - A septic tank - a Yank It comes from being colonised by the English...you know a titfer is really a hat ....Tit for Tat - A hat Weird isn't it See you round like a rissole Pam BrownAt 08:19 PM 20/2/97 -0800, you wrote: >what's a seppo? >At 04:59 PM 2/21/97 +1300, you wrote: >>>racists. Or maybe context matters and sometimes informs political >>>correctness. Your friends, in fact, may be hypercareful around you, lest >>>they be judged. But if you guys really are that pure, I think I'd rather >>>hang around my own streetcorner. We may be nasty, but we do have fun. >> >>out here in antipodes we make our friday night fun stringin' up seppos. >> >> > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 16:37:13 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: Re: Irony? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I thought it was see you round like Australia Square >Hi - >A septic tank - a Yank > >It comes from being colonised by the English...you know >a titfer is really a hat ....Tit for Tat - A hat > >Weird isn't it > >See you round like a rissole >Pam BrownAt 08:19 PM 20/2/97 -0800, you wrote: >>what's a seppo? >>At 04:59 PM 2/21/97 +1300, you wrote: >>>>racists. Or maybe context matters and sometimes informs political >>>>correctness. Your friends, in fact, may be hypercareful around you, lest >>>>they be judged. But if you guys really are that pure, I think I'd rather >>>>hang around my own streetcorner. We may be nasty, but we do have fun. >>> >>>out here in antipodes we make our friday night fun stringin' up seppos. >>> >>> >> >> > > Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer & User Representative SIS Team. Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Phone 93517710 Mobile 015063970 Fax (02) 9351 7711 ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 22:20:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Irony? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I think I need subtitles. At 04:37 PM 2/21/97 +1100, you wrote: >I thought it was see you round like Australia Square > > > > > >>Hi - >>A septic tank - a Yank >> >>It comes from being colonised by the English...you know >>a titfer is really a hat ....Tit for Tat - A hat >> >>Weird isn't it >> >>See you round like a rissole >>Pam BrownAt 08:19 PM 20/2/97 -0800, you wrote: >>>what's a seppo? >>>At 04:59 PM 2/21/97 +1300, you wrote: >>>>>racists. Or maybe context matters and sometimes informs political >>>>>correctness. Your friends, in fact, may be hypercareful around you, lest >>>>>they be judged. But if you guys really are that pure, I think I'd rather >>>>>hang around my own streetcorner. We may be nasty, but we do have fun. >>>> >>>>out here in antipodes we make our friday night fun stringin' up seppos. >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >> >> >Mark Roberts >Student Systems Project Officer >& User Representative SIS Team. >Information Systems >University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia >Phone 93517710 >Mobile 015063970 >Fax (02) 9351 7711 > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 02:16:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: well said, TR, well said Comments: cc: Suantrai@IOL.IE Randolph -- having pored over Thursday's Poetics digest (& in consideration of some days now, seems, of these PC-tinged Dorn et al. debates & declaratives), must say your take on this'all seems among the keenest I've seen: w/ dynamic balance, apt breadth, & an unstingy insight that extends in all directions. A Poetics listserv newbie here, your observations seem worth remembering. d.i. >Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 19:39:47 GMT >From: "L. Mac Mahon and T.R. Healy" >Subject: evil poets > >Hard to make any judgement stick when a tonal change is enough to put >a safe distance between us and our statements, never mind appeals to >indeterminism, group myopia or even (gasp) growth. . . .[etc.] ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 07:35:23 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Cayley Comments: To: british-poets@mailbase.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" New from: i n f e r n a l m e t h o d s GREETING WANT by John Welch ISBN 0 905795 08 3 96 pages Price GBP 6.95 Royal Octavo Cover design by Amanda Welch Greeting Want comprises a group of sequences written over the last eight years or so. Some of the poems, while not making direct reference to it, reflect the poet's experience of psychoanalysis; he contributed a chapter 'Dream and Restoration,' to Poets on Writing, Britain 1970-1991, edited by Denise Riley (Macmillan, 1992). Greeting Want offers lucid, gentle, remorseless sequences to remind us of the 'plenty-in-absence' that may live at the edge of the inner city. These are talking poems, not solitary or rapt, and they have spent their time among people: the fantastic, dislocated heroism of migrant children, or the torsion of passing from a domestic house into the traffic of streets, an area where 'stone is ground down to a dusty meal of light'. Only a very fine poet could wonder about his distance from the small heart of an owl, calling in the city. Our present is where we start from in this writing, while there is also the brush of bird-flight, occasional goddesses bearing the work of a past and the horror of 'careful solitudes'. But the mystery of incorporating others may overcome this undertow as we 'take the bright couple into us' through the exact reflection of John Welch's true poetry. John Welch has been a significant figure since the early seventies, and deserves acclaim. His own aptly named Many Press has published numerous well-designed pamphlets... For my money, Out Walking is the finest volume Anvil have produced. - James Keery, PN Review. John Welch's first full-length collection, Out Walking, is a considerable and consistent achievement. The poems abound with intelligent reflection... - Rob Sheppard: PN Review With Out Walking, John Welch has well and truly set off, and I look forward to following his path as far as wherever it reaches. - Peter Robinson: Grosseteste Review Blood and Dreams offers unlimited shelf-life, is flexible enough to continue to 'give' with repeated readings. As a writer I seek those books which provoke reverie and inspire further writing; this is just such a book. - Martin Hibbert: Memes Born in London 1942, where he now lives and works, John Welch has published three full-length collections of poems: And Ada Ann (Great Works Press, 1978), Out Walking (Anvil 1984) and Blood and Dreams (Reality Street Editions, 1991). John Welch founded The Many Press in 1975, an imprint publishing new poetry. He has written widely on South Asian Literature and edited an anthology Stories from South Asia (Oxford University Press 1988). ------------ Also available from infernal methods R. F. Langley, Twelve Poems ISBN 0 905795 03 2 Peter Riley has described reading Langley's poem 'The Upshot': "These are no longer 'his' moments; they can enter a different life because they are not trapped in circumstance. The craft of their forming, the traditional poetic skills of constantly accurate comparison, lift them out of the particular in their very fidelity to it, and we take them on as unrecognised instances. It is our job to find them a home." There are two extensive interviews with R.F.Langley by Bobby Walker in Angel Exhaust 13 and 14. Langley's poetry was included in Michael Schmidt's 'Calendar of Modern Poetry' for PN Review 100. Previous publications from infernal methods include A Different Mercy by Mark Hyatt (now out of print). Order Form Name . Address . . . Please send me copy / copies of Greeting Want by John Welch at GBP 6.95, and copy /copies of Twelve Poems by R.F.Langley at GBP 4.00 per copy (UK post and packing included, please add GBP 1.00 for post abroad). I enclose remittance of . Please make cheques etc payable to Nigel Wheale. infernal methods 64 Sturton Street, Cambridge CB1 2QA S P E C I A L O F F E R ------------------------- Greeting Want by John Welch, published by infernal methods, is a large format (Royal Octavo) 96 page collection of poems priced at GBP 6.95..... ordered direct from John Welch before the end of March it costs GBP 5.00, plus 50p p&p. Note: Greeting Want is available with the cover either laminated (i.e. shiny) or unlaminated. Some people prefer the unlaminated cover - please indicate below which you would like. Please send me copy / copies of Greeting Want at the special price of GBP 5.50 (UK p&p included, please add GBP 1.00 for post abroad). Laminated . Unlaminated . I enclose a cheque for . Cheques etc for this offer should be made out to John Welch and orders sent to 15 Norcott Road, London N16 7BJ Name . Address . . . ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 09:58:25 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: this is still not a message Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Now, this is brilliant (but in a postmodern way?)- M. At 06:25 PM 2/20/97 MDT, christopher alexander, etc. wrote: > n'est pas > > ness past > mas parse > mis-paste ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 08:18:02 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: Dorn & Dickinson et al Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It's all been fascinating, not least the new poems by D & Y. I'm a serious sort & cant reply in kind, but not having heard about Dorn's comments I was saddened to. Yet, I had picked up his _Abhorrences_ because of my admiration for the poetry (knowing nothing of the man) of his earlier books, & found it a great disappointment. So obvious, so lacking in the poetic subtleties of his best writing. So: does this 'falling off" (in my eyes) in the writing reflect a sad change in the man's ideological/emotional stance? I dont know. I do know that Jerome Rothenberg captured what seems to me to be the major point about Pound: that the formal qualities of the writing were a teaching I had to have, even though I knew how evil some of the man's ideas were. Perhaps we always have to approach artists with a certain schizophrenia? Thinking of that comment of Dickinson's I also think of Susan Howe's visionary reading of her & her work 'in' the context of the whole puritanical violence of american 'settlement' & how it has never disappeared nor been comprehended. Then her (D's) ironies abound... But must also as Aldon Nielson says, they must be interrogated, that means 'read' with as great insight & care as we can bring to them... ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour Shakespeare Department of English drag yr mouldy old bones University of Alberta up these stairs & tell me Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 what you died of (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 I think H: 436 3320 I've got it too. Sharon Thesen ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 10:45:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Third term (const amend) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Chris -- I like your post, and I disagree. There are no commercial, few civic, and fewer and fewer aesthetic points of divergence between the two campsites, which, as the wardens in both are clever and vigilant, should be around for at least another half decade. The resources that are allocated by these maps are not bucks, they're attention-hours. There is an audience; arguing about its existence is insulting (not saying you did -- just countering a wearying and often remark). The audience prefers that I use no terrain metaphors. Don Allen's amazing anthology transformed American poetry. It offered an entirely new (yet pleasantly available) set of ways to look at words, at social town, at sexual life, at the universe. I'm thinking, of course, of the Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara. -- Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 11:02:54 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: r e c u p e r a t i n g p o u n d MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit since my own interests in literature are so often extra-literary or schizo-literary I havent had much impulse to step into the turbulence of the text the past few days...tho now I will remark that there is a remarkable kaleidescope of outspeakings, I am heartened that T Mandel felt this space secure enough to make his announcements (tho my own affectations are perhaps opposite) & once again I observe the epikal strength with which opinions wrangle theories & hope that that energy & strength is equally transfered to the books you make & the readings you do & the classes you teach.... from the permaculture perspective, everything gardens, the most abundant the most diverse systems are those composed of unlimited edges meeting, for instance the genetic diverisity of a pond meeting a woods is often more complex. somehow in a group discussion as this, it comes so easily to stand above & scrutinize from a safe vantage point ... while the real provocation to write & read is multitudinously closer to the behavior of the text in a paradigm that morphs as we speak. Now is Pound's anti-semitism any greater than the farmer that lives down the road. I doubt it. & he is my neighbor & his family has lived here for 6 generations, they belong here on this land regardless of their empty & unexamined mental life. & Cantos is on my bookshelf, next to the collected works of Gertude Stein, as is Gunslinger on the same shelf as the Dictionary of Aberrant Behavior. as Malok says, "I'll shut up now." Miekal -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza The Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms: http://net22.com/neologisms e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 12:04:59 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: this is still not a message MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > Now, this is brilliant (but in a postmodern way?)- now christmas brillig (bettin a proust modem weight) snowcrest miss bullet (patina russ malden wight) oh crust mersed billet (a tinniest walden might) accurst mess buildin (attend rewest aldon meet) a cast mis-gilded (intend true west all done mate) ark hast mouse guilded (a tenure vestal dorn met) arkham house guiled (tenuate vest doormat) cram us guilty (tential a cormorant) cramer salty (tent shell a current) cremora sody (to show occurrent) gomorrhas day (tissue oscura) deborahs prey (issue a score) deformat prose (is to astor) deformed prosody (astir) d for pense d (asr) defenced (sr) deafens amercan bandstan capstan chris .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) language code not found. illegal operation error. this program will shut down, & all unsaved data will be lost. if problem persists, consult your systems operator. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 11:30:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: this is still not a message In-Reply-To: <2D36190894@alexandria.lib.utah.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Yeah Chris, but you just know that web-site for anagrams, right? I mean, you don't want us to think you did all this YOUR(post-modern)SELF, right? On Fri, 21 Feb 1997, Christopher Alexander wrote: > > Now, this is brilliant (but in a postmodern way?)- > now christmas brillig (bettin a proust modem weight) > snowcrest miss bullet (patina russ malden wight) > oh crust mersed billet (a tinniest walden might) > accurst mess buildin (attend rewest aldon meet) > a cast mis-gilded (intend true west all done mate) > ark hast mouse guilded (a tenure vestal dorn met) > arkham house guiled (tenuate vest doormat) > cram us guilty (tential a cormorant) > cramer salty (tent shell a current) > cremora sody (to show occurrent) > gomorrhas day (tissue oscura) > deborahs prey (issue a score) > deformat prose (is to astor) > deformed prosody (astir) > d for pense d (asr) > defenced (sr) > deafens > > amercan bandstan > capstan > chris > > .. > christopher alexander, etc. > calexand@alexandria..lib.edu > (Marriott Library Computer Systems) > > language code not found. illegal operation error. > this program will shut down, & all unsaved data will be > lost. if problem persists, consult your systems operator. > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 12:48:30 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: this is still not a message MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > Yeah Chris, but you just know that web-site for anagrams, right? I mean, > you don't want us to think you did all this YOUR(post-modern)SELF, right? I wont nothing of the kind, of course. now where is that web site? .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) language code not found. illegal operation error. this program will shut down, & all unsaved data will be lost. if problem persists, consult your systems operator. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 15:42:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Perelman Subject: spell check and ethics check MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Re Christine Lorenz' suggestion to share spellcheck residues: "Holes in the Argument" in *Face Value* was actually built around such a list, at least I think so. I came across some unknown file in my poems-file with all those words, semi-alphabetized: REAGAN'S REAL DISPEL REALM; sense was nearly there: OUR CALLS PROCEED PROFESSIONALISM; NUMBLY O'HARA DESIRE, etc. It couldn't have been a spell check file, with words like 'real' and 'our'?? But it had, as I remember, some designation like WP.SUP?? The Pound, Dorn thread calls up the tensions around naming, name-calling, evaluation, community, groups-cliques-cabals-conspiracies, dismissal, phobia. There's is so much to say that all particulars fray under contradictory generalized forces. I admired Dorn's early work quite a bit: his elegant political lyricism seemed so smart. Now it feels like he got squashed by the demands of masculinization: in the work he read at the Orono conference this summer he read a slinger-redux epic about heroic outsiders--drugs and transportation hijinx; all the characters were dogs, which was a bit funny, and allowed him to talk about bitches & garner some uneasy laughs. But the whole thing was finally pretty broken down: the piece wasn't finished, wasn't really funny enough to justify the conceit. Poets with large political ambitions seem to have a hard time avoiding stepping in real dreck the last few decades. Is it that (male) poets need to feel they're taking it to the streets in some way or other? (How far away is the gesture Tom makes of bashing Dorn?) Breton writes in the 3rd manifesto that the archetypal surrealist act is running into the street firing a revolver indiscriminantly. (After all, there's nothing but bourgie protofascists out there.) Aren't Baraka's gaybaiting, antisemitic poems more or less as bad as Dorn at his anecdotal worst? Maybe not quite. And doesn't it feel somewhat preposterous the way it comes down to measuring rhetorical atrocity?-- "more or less" despicable. It makes me think poets are very irritated by being imprisoned, finally, in the aesthetic sphere. In the chapter on Bruce Andrews in *Marginalization* I ask if he means it when he writes "*sink* the boat people!" Of course he doesn't. But he does want that intensity of statement. Pound is, for me, still the center of this problem. In the chapter on him in *Trouble with Genius* I try to make it clear how impossible it is to separate his politics from the lively avantgarde speed of his disjunctions and juxtapositions. So I don't agree with Charles, in fact, when he differentiates Pound's fascism ("small-minded, penurious political accounting system") from his open textual style ("utopian"). This isn't something to be clarified in the rapidfire ouija board regime of the listserv, probably. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 13:42:15 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Just to be clear, I'm assuming that what you mean by "large political ambitions" is a social agenda motivated by distress at the situation we find ourselves in, as opposed to a desire for public office. Do you think that what you describe is limited to poets? Male poets? Males? Is it possible that these really are tough and demoralizing times for those who believe in some sort--any sort--of equitable society? Are you proposing aesthetic quietism as a proper, even a possible, cure for those of us who continue to be afflicted with savage indignation? At 03:42 PM 2/21/97 -0500, you wrote: >Poets with large political ambitions seem to have a hard time avoiding >stepping in real dreck the last few decades. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 16:45:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: manny savopoulos Subject: Fw: The Chronicle and Sexual Harrassment (fwd) Comments: To: ted psahos , penny rodopoulos , michael vlamakis , michael blitz ---------- > From: Julie Torrant > To: ENGRAD-L@CNSIBM.ALBANY.EDU > Subject: The Chronicle and Sexual Harrassment (fwd) > Date: Friday, February 21, 1997 3:04 PM > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 13:48:27 -0500 (EST) > From: Jennifer Mitchell > To: rtc , jm6788 , > jt3355 , Deb Kelsh , > rob.wilkie@worldnet.com, tjn842 , > llane@osprey.unf.edu > Subject: The Chronicle and Sexual Harrassment (fwd) > > > > COLLEAGUES: If you support our critique (below) of the practices of > The Chronicle of Higher Education as it seeks to suppress open > debate on the issue of sexual harassment in United States > universities, please add your name and institutional affiliation > to a copy of the text and send it to The Chronicle reporter > who interviewed Jennifer Cotter, the victim of sexual harassment > by Professor Stephen Dobyns, Syracuse University. (If you would > like to read the letter Ms. Cotter is circulating regarding this > issue and which our letter supports and expands upon, please send > a brief post to either Deb Kelsh at lked54a@prodigy.com or > JulieTorrant at jt3355@cnsvax.albany.edu.) > > The reporter's name is Robin Wilson, and her fax # is 301 453 3769. > > Or, you may send it to the following editors and senior writers at > The Chronicle: > > Scott Heller: SCHELLER@delphi.com; > Courtney Leatherman: Courtney.Leatherman@chronicle.com; > CorbinGwaltney: Corbin.Gwaltney@chronicle.com; > Scott Jaschik: Scott.Jaschik@chronicle.com; > DeniseMagner: Denise.Magner@chronicle.com > > > Please forward this text to all interested parties. > > > An Open Letter to the Community regarding The Chronicle of Higher > Education's Suppression of Jennifer Cotter's Analysis of the Sexual > Harassment committed against her by Stephen Dobyns of Syracuse University > > We write in support of Jennifer Cotter's attempts to resist the > systematic suppression of ("her") analyses aimed at bringing to public > knowledge and debate the very serious and widespread problem of sexual > harassment in United States universities. > We also write to protest the undemocratic practices of The Chronicle > of Higher Education and its staff by which it reduces the issue of sexual > harassment to a "trivial" one of "personality conflict." In suppressing > Ms.Cotter's analysis of the systemic character of sexual harassment, > The Chronicle, in effect if not by design, manufactures consent for the > status quo of pervasive sexual harassment within the academy. > Within a formal democracy, consent for exploitative, oppressive > social structures must continually be produced through various pedagogical > practices, with pedagogy broadly understood as the habits and practices of > institutions and their individual members which constitute conditions for > the production and dissemination of meaning. > > It is axiomatic, then, that when Robin Wilson interviews > Jennifer Cotter and focusses on the details of what happened when Stephen > Dobyns committed sexual harassment against her, and when Ms. Wilson > ignores and effectively suppresses efforts by Ms. Cotter to explain her > understanding of sexual harassment's systemic causes and their > institutional effects, Ms.Wilson is participating in The Chronicle's > effort to manufacture a reading of sexual harassment as an "accident" or > "quirky effect" of Dobyns's "individual" constitution which, given his > "creativity" and the PLEASURE it gives "us all," we had best simply > forgive and accept--for the common good! > This reading, as Cotter notes, leaves sexual harassment and its > systemic causes untouched, and prepares a homecoming for Dobyns by > excusing him and relaxing pressure on Syracuse to confront both the > incident as systemic violence as well as its own failure to follow > through on its own sanctions against him. > But it also serves the interests of the University-as-Industry, > that is, the university as one site for manufacturing consent that serves > business interests and reaps benefits from doing so. The reading > produced by Wilson and The Chronicle manufactures consent for Syracuse > University's tolerance of sexual harassment. This effectively legitimates > the manufacturing of consent necessary to other universities if, for > example, they are to hire celebrities who will attract students and > funding and lend the particular university an "exciting" "aura." > "Celebrity" is an effect of the privatized, "personal spin" "creative" > stars put on socially and systemically structured phenomena. > Privatization of socially structured phenomena, however, is an act of > commodification that must be made to disappear, since the visibility of > this process would not only reveal the particular form of "celebrity > creativity" privileged on many campuses to be an effect of the > privatization of meaning made possible by public university funds. It > would also reveal the university star system in general as complicit with > those very (socially produced) structures of violence that condition the > occurrence of sexual harassment as systemic. The manufacturing of consent > for Syracuse University's acceptance of Dobyns achieves just such a > magical effect. By making celebrity and university involvement in > corporate welfare disappear, a gap between the university and business is > produced. This gap-- produced by various tactics at different > universities that work in concert with a variety of legitimizing > mechanisms--is nevertheless what allows universities to maintain a posture > of freedom from business and establishment interests, in turn allowing > universities to pull in lots of money, apparently on the basis of their > own and their celebrities' "merit" rather than structural violence. In > its turn, business benefits from the resulting emphasis that reinstates > and naturalizes meritocracy and masks the interests of the capitalist class. > To produce and disseminate readings which manufacture the > appearance of such a gap is to aid in the masking of structural violence > and prevent transformation of its conditions of possibility. In > other words, to produce and disseminate the reading of sexual harassment > as an effect of a "quirk" in an otherwise "valuable" individual > is to participate in the pedagogy of profiteering. This pedagogy works to > contain issues rather than open them to public debate, analysis and > critique. In doing so, it serves only the establishment segment of > the community. > It is, to our minds, astounding that The Chronicle staff thinks > the profit motive behind their work is invisible, not only given the > general understanding of pedagogy in the broad sense we have put forth, > but also the U.S. Army's and Navy's comparatively rigorous confrontation > of their institutional structures of violence against women. It is an > indication of The Chronicle's massive, establishment interest in > containing this issue (rather than opening it to debate and analysis) > that produces a rather pointed irony: The Chronicle of HIGHER EDUCATION-- > supposedly highly democratic in method and aim--is suppressing systemic > analysis and collective response to sexual harassment while the presumably > authoritarian Army and Navy open up to the demand to redress > such patterns. The Chronicle's habits and practices, in short, > effectively work to position the Army and Navy--NOT HIGHER EDUCATION--as > the VANGUARD in redressing sexual harassment! > In the face of such strenuous effort on the part of The > Chronicle to whitewash critical connections between academia and business, > we need to ask: Is The Chronicle interested in shutting the door on a > potentially explosive issue, effectively rehabilitating male-dominated > education? That is, is there a sense that Ms. Cotter could be the > Anita Hill of academia? Cotter's systemic analysis of the social function > of harassment is an explicit call to other victims of harassment to press > charges, and to academic institutions to expose and redress such charges. > By attempting to sever Cotter's "personal story" from the systemic > analysis of harassment which she forwards, The Chronicle works to suppress > the potential of this case to encourage other victims of harassment in > the academy and their supporters. There has been a widely-reported > increase in formal charges of sexual harassment following Anita Hill's > Congressional testimony. Does the weakening of Cotter's argument by The > Chronicle's practices serve to contain such a response within the academy? > We see the opportunities this case presents rather differently. > This case is an opportunity for critical reflection and collective > resolve to intervene in the patterns which enable sexual harassment and > all other kinds of abuse. We urge The Chronicle to publish debates and > analyses of sexual harassment and all issues of oppression within > academia, rather than reports which manufacture consent for containing the > contradictions between our myth of equality and individual freedom and > the realities of complex social patterns of oppression. That is, we call > for The Chronicle to publish debates and analyses that enable the > understanding of the relationships among many "interpersonal" cases in > terms of TRANSPERSONAL patterns of oppression, so that The Chronicle > serves not just the few, but ALL members of the community. > > > The Red Theory Collective > (U at Albany, NY) > > > Deb Kelsh > Laura Lane > Jennifer Mitchell > Tom Nespeco > Julie Torrant > Rob Wilkie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 16:47:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check In-Reply-To: <199702212042.PAA08736@dept.english.upenn.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mark, it doesn't "sound" to this "observer" as if Bob Perelman were prescribing anything for poets, male or otherwise, with "large political ambitions"--rather observing a trend in some of them, over the course of their careers. There are probably tons of counterexamples that the mind doesn't notice first because they aren't as flashy to think of as a poet who *does* get embroiled in controversy. Bests Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 13:52:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Cold be. I seem to be in an intemperate place. At 04:47 PM 2/21/97 -0500, you wrote: >Mark, it doesn't "sound" to this "observer" as if Bob Perelman were >prescribing anything for poets, male or otherwise, with "large political >ambitions"--rather observing a trend in some of them, over the course of >their careers. There are probably tons of counterexamples that the mind >doesn't notice first because they aren't as flashy to think of as a poet >who *does* get embroiled in controversy. > >Bests >Gwyn > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 13:56:23 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: this is still not a message In-Reply-To: <2DF03E772D@alexandria.lib.utah.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm still looking for the anagram web-site in my "archives" and will post it when it turns up. In the meantime, here's something to whet, as they say, your "appetite": Postmodern = modest porn SAMUEL BECKETT = make, but select OR setback me lute (Irish inflection) OR mute Blake sect (not to be confused with the meek beast cult (and certainly not the meet Keats club (thanks to Heather McHugh for telling me about this originally and I hope to find it in about five minutes!) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 17:07:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: manny savopoulos Subject: READING!! Comments: To: don byrd , graduatites , michael vlamakis , michael blitz DIASPORA ART & LITERATURE FOUNDATION -presents- *eight poets---three languages---one voice* February 23, 1997 Sunday 5:00PM Aldos Democratic Club 28-11 23rd Avenue Astoria, NY 11105 -five dollar donation- Featuring- Janet De Leon Dimitrios Dolios Kerrie Keriotis Robert Manniello Raphael Salinas Manny Savopoulos Vasiliki Sereti Artemis Vallianatos ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 14:10:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: this is still not a message In-Reply-To: <2DF03E772D@alexandria.lib.utah.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII OK, gram-fans, the server seems to be down momentarily but the site is http://csugrad.cs.vt.edu/~eburke/anagrams.html Thanks, Bob for weighing in on the Dorn/Pound thread; I've taken Aldon's invitation and responded to him personally, but I hope to still hear other's thoughts on this, to me, most important discussion . . . ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 17:21:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check In-Reply-To: <199702212142.NAA19014@andorra.it.earthlink.net> from "Mark Weiss" at Feb 21, 97 01:42:15 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit re: Mark Weiss's comment to B. Perelman: "Is it possible that these really are tough and demoralizing times for those who believe in some sort--any sort--of equitable society? Are you proposing aesthetic quietism as a proper, even a possible, cure for those of us who continue to be afflicted with savage indignation?" Aesthetic quietism seems hardly what Perelman was proposing. Perhaps just a practice of political engagement which doesn't devolve so sorrily into rant. I have no problem with pointing out and - more importantly, of course - *doing something* about "demoralizing times" and "savage indignation," but it seems to me there's an implicit nostalgia in Weiss's castigation of *these* times as opposed to others. If *these* are the bad times, when were the good ones? Utopian visions can be backward as well as forward looking and neither seem particularly fruitful to me. Albert Murray: "in spite of temporary setbacks, the normal expectation in every social science melodrama is that everything will turn out allright." What's more melodramatic than the silly bigotries a Pound or a Dorn or a Baraka fall into? No one wants them to assume a position of quietism just one which is brave enough to deal with the complexities of their particular themes, issues. Their Utopias are just the flip sides of their Dystopias. Neither are accurate and the vision tends to progress in a direction which inspires boredom as much as anything else. (Baraka's distancing himself from Black Nationalism seems an implicit realization of such problems). In any case I'm not sure highlighting the poles of "quietism" and "savage indignation" do us any good. -Mike Magee. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 16:35:04 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: this still knots a mess, sage Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I wont nothing of the kind, of course. >now where is that web site? I won't not hinge fork mind, off curse (nowhere tis hat we bs tie?) I won taunt hanged for hind, focus (now heart is at beastie?) Iowa aunt hangs door find, fractus (how earth sat beat sty?) I tow haunts food rind, tacitus (howe barthes ate my?) It towers finds, tact (hobart at me?) I own facts, (who art me?) frown (farts) Matthias Regan Northwestern University Department of Chemistry Phone: 847/467-2132 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 14:37:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ian Wilson Subject: Re: Fw: The Chronicle and Sexual Harrassment (fwd) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Does someone have a copy of the Chronicle article as well as Cotter's letter that could be made available in this forum? I have not heard that Syracuse plans to take back Dobyns. My understanding of the situation is that certain of the faculty were delighted with his actions: it gave them the perfect excuse to be rid of him. The letter writers below seem naive in their call to modify capitalism, to end the commodification of celebrity. IR Wilson ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: Fw: The Chronicle and Sexual Harrassment (fwd) Author: UB Poetics discussion group at Internet Date: 2/21/97 4:45 PM ---------- > From: Julie Torrant > To: ENGRAD-L@CNSIBM.ALBANY.EDU > Subject: The Chronicle and Sexual Harrassment (fwd) > Date: Friday, February 21, 1997 3:04 PM > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 13:48:27 -0500 (EST) > From: Jennifer Mitchell > To: rtc , jm6788 , > jt3355 , Deb Kelsh , > rob.wilkie@worldnet.com, tjn842 , > llane@osprey.unf.edu > Subject: The Chronicle and Sexual Harrassment (fwd) > > > > COLLEAGUES: If you support our critique (below) of the practices of > The Chronicle of Higher Education as it seeks to suppress open > debate on the issue of sexual harassment in United States > universities, please add your name and institutional affiliation > to a copy of the text and send it to The Chronicle reporter > who interviewed Jennifer Cotter, the victim of sexual harassment > by Professor Stephen Dobyns, Syracuse University. (If you would > like to read the letter Ms. Cotter is circulating regarding this > issue and which our letter supports and expands upon, please send > a brief post to either Deb Kelsh at lked54a@prodigy.com or > JulieTorrant at jt3355@cnsvax.albany.edu.) > > The reporter's name is Robin Wilson, and her fax # is 301 453 3769. > > Or, you may send it to the following editors and senior writers at > The Chronicle: > > Scott Heller: SCHELLER@delphi.com; > Courtney Leatherman: Courtney.Leatherman@chronicle.com; > CorbinGwaltney: Corbin.Gwaltney@chronicle.com; > Scott Jaschik: Scott.Jaschik@chronicle.com; > DeniseMagner: Denise.Magner@chronicle.com > > > Please forward this text to all interested parties. > > > An Open Letter to the Community regarding The Chronicle of Higher > Education's Suppression of Jennifer Cotter's Analysis of the Sexual > Harassment committed against her by Stephen Dobyns of Syracuse University > > We write in support of Jennifer Cotter's attempts to resist the > systematic suppression of ("her") analyses aimed at bringing to public > knowledge and debate the very serious and widespread problem of sexual > harassment in United States universities. > We also write to protest the undemocratic practices of The Chronicle > of Higher Education and its staff by which it reduces the issue of sexual > harassment to a "trivial" one of "personality conflict." In suppressing > Ms.Cotter's analysis of the systemic character of sexual harassment, > The Chronicle, in effect if not by design, manufactures consent for the > status quo of pervasive sexual harassment within the academy. > Within a formal democracy, consent for exploitative, oppressive > social structures must continually be produced through various pedagogical > practices, with pedagogy broadly understood as the habits and practices of > institutions and their individual members which constitute conditions for > the production and dissemination of meaning. > > It is axiomatic, then, that when Robin Wilson interviews > Jennifer Cotter and focusses on the details of what happened when Stephen > Dobyns committed sexual harassment against her, and when Ms. Wilson > ignores and effectively suppresses efforts by Ms. Cotter to explain her > understanding of sexual harassment's systemic causes and their > institutional effects, Ms.Wilson is participating in The Chronicle's > effort to manufacture a reading of sexual harassment as an "accident" or > "quirky effect" of Dobyns's "individual" constitution which, given his > "creativity" and the PLEASURE it gives "us all," we had best simply > forgive and accept--for the common good! > This reading, as Cotter notes, leaves sexual harassment and its > systemic causes untouched, and prepares a homecoming for Dobyns by > excusing him and relaxing pressure on Syracuse to confront both the > incident as systemic violence as well as its own failure to follow > through on its own sanctions against him. > But it also serves the interests of the University-as-Industry, > that is, the university as one site for manufacturing consent that serves > business interests and reaps benefits from doing so. The reading > produced by Wilson and The Chronicle manufactures consent for Syracuse > University's tolerance of sexual harassment. This effectively legitimates > the manufacturing of consent necessary to other universities if, for > example, they are to hire celebrities who will attract students and > funding and lend the particular university an "exciting" "aura." > "Celebrity" is an effect of the privatized, "personal spin" "creative" > stars put on socially and systemically structured phenomena. > Privatization of socially structured phenomena, however, is an act of > commodification that must be made to disappear, since the visibility of > this process would not only reveal the particular form of "celebrity > creativity" privileged on many campuses to be an effect of the > privatization of meaning made possible by public university funds. It > would also reveal the university star system in general as complicit with > those very (socially produced) structures of violence that condition the > occurrence of sexual harassment as systemic. The manufacturing of consent > for Syracuse University's acceptance of Dobyns achieves just such a > magical effect. By making celebrity and university involvement in > corporate welfare disappear, a gap between the university and business is > produced. This gap-- produced by various tactics at different > universities that work in concert with a variety of legitimizing > mechanisms--is nevertheless what allows universities to maintain a posture > of freedom from business and establishment interests, in turn allowing > universities to pull in lots of money, apparently on the basis of their > own and their celebrities' "merit" rather than structural violence. In > its turn, business benefits from the resulting emphasis that reinstates > and naturalizes meritocracy and masks the interests of the capitalist class. > To produce and disseminate readings which manufacture the > appearance of such a gap is to aid in the masking of structural violence > and prevent transformation of its conditions of possibility. In > other words, to produce and disseminate the reading of sexual harassment > as an effect of a "quirk" in an otherwise "valuable" individual > is to participate in the pedagogy of profiteering. This pedagogy works to > contain issues rather than open them to public debate, analysis and > critique. In doing so, it serves only the establishment segment of > the community. > It is, to our minds, astounding that The Chronicle staff thinks > the profit motive behind their work is invisible, not only given the > general understanding of pedagogy in the broad sense we have put forth, > but also the U.S. Army's and Navy's comparatively rigorous confrontation > of their institutional structures of violence against women. It is an > indication of The Chronicle's massive, establishment interest in > containing this issue (rather than opening it to debate and analysis) > that produces a rather pointed irony: The Chronicle of HIGHER EDUCATION-- > supposedly highly democratic in method and aim--is suppressing systemic > analysis and collective response to sexual harassment while the presumably > authoritarian Army and Navy open up to the demand to redress > such patterns. The Chronicle's habits and practices, in short, > effectively work to position the Army and Navy--NOT HIGHER EDUCATION--as > the VANGUARD in redressing sexual harassment! > In the face of such strenuous effort on the part of The > Chronicle to whitewash critical connections between academia and business, > we need to ask: Is The Chronicle interested in shutting the door on a > potentially explosive issue, effectively rehabilitating male-dominated > education? That is, is there a sense that Ms. Cotter could be the > Anita Hill of academia? Cotter's systemic analysis of the social function > of harassment is an explicit call to other victims of harassment to press > charges, and to academic institutions to expose and redress such charges. > By attempting to sever Cotter's "personal story" from the systemic > analysis of harassment which she forwards, The Chronicle works to suppress > the potential of this case to encourage other victims of harassment in > the academy and their supporters. There has been a widely-reported > increase in formal charges of sexual harassment following Anita Hill's > Congressional testimony. Does the weakening of Cotter's argument by The > Chronicle's practices serve to contain such a response within the academy? > We see the opportunities this case presents rather differently. > This case is an opportunity for critical reflection and collective > resolve to intervene in the patterns which enable sexual harassment and > all other kinds of abuse. We urge The Chronicle to publish debates and > analyses of sexual harassment and all issues of oppression within > academia, rather than reports which manufacture consent for containing the > contradictions between our myth of equality and individual freedom and > the realities of complex social patterns of oppression. That is, we call > for The Chronicle to publish debates and analyses that enable the > understanding of the relationships among many "interpersonal" cases in > terms of TRANSPERSONAL patterns of oppression, so that The Chronicle > serves not just the few, but ALL members of the community. > > > The Red Theory Collective > (U at Albany, NY) > > > Deb Kelsh > Laura Lane > Jennifer Mitchell > Tom Nespeco > Julie Torrant > Rob Wilkie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 15:01:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: people-not-here-talk -Reply In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I was wondering why the anti-Dorn animus, too; only people I can remember his dissing are rednecks. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 15:14:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: oh my god In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Hey, I'm deeply disappointed. I just posted my entire sexual, criminal, & >literary history to the list by accident and it never showed up. >Just shows where too much trust in technology gets you. > >wendy (aside, stage left) You must have a lousy server. It all showed up on my screen, and I forwarded it to some of my best friends in Cleveland and Toronto. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 17:32:53 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check In-Reply-To: <199702212042.PAA08736@dept.english.upenn.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" bob p rites: >It makes me think poets are very irritated by being imprisoned, finally, >in the aesthetic sphere... nor do critics. thanks bob for pointing out that politics, not just "textual," are relevant at every turn, and that poets have just as much of a right to be considered politically as anyone else.--md ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 18:36:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: Fw: The Chronicle and Sexual Harrassment (fwd) yeah, what exactly DID s. dobyns do? i know universities have a grotesque "boys will be boys" policy when it comes to sexual harrassment of students, especially when the harasser is is celebrity. perhaps not ALL universities. but i can think of two particularly grotesque cases in boston area, involving three different universities, without trying very hard at all! e ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 17:02:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Of course we'll never know what Perelman meant if others keep speaking for him. But I can tell you that by "these times" I meant the present conservative tenor of the country that makes it harder to organize around most indignations than it used to be in the bad old days when we had to face large numbers of people with guns, not some past utopia when there was less to be indignant about. At 05:21 PM 2/21/97 -0500, you wrote: >re: Mark Weiss's comment to B. Perelman: "Is it possible that these >really are tough and demoralizing times for those who believe in >some sort--any sort--of equitable society? Are you proposing >aesthetic quietism as a proper, even a possible, cure for >those of us who continue to be afflicted with savage indignation?" > >Aesthetic quietism seems hardly what Perelman was proposing. >Perhaps just a practice of political engagement which doesn't >devolve so sorrily into rant. I have no problem with pointing out and >- more importantly, of course - *doing something* about >"demoralizing times" and "savage indignation," but it seems to me >there's an implicit nostalgia in Weiss's castigation of *these* times >as opposed to others. If *these* are the bad times, when were the >good ones? Utopian visions can be backward as well as forward >looking and neither seem particularly fruitful to me. Albert Murray: >"in spite of temporary setbacks, the normal expectation in every >social science melodrama is that everything will turn out allright." >What's more melodramatic than the silly bigotries a Pound or a Dorn >or a Baraka fall into? No one wants them to assume a position of >quietism just one which is brave enough to deal with the >complexities of their particular themes, issues. Their Utopias are >just the flip sides of their Dystopias. Neither are accurate and the >vision tends to progress in a direction which inspires boredom as >much as anything else. (Baraka's distancing himself from Black >Nationalism seems an implicit realization of such problems). In any >case I'm not sure highlighting the poles of "quietism" and "savage >indignation" do us any good. > >-Mike Magee. > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 09:14:26 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check Comments: To: Gwyn McVay In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Large political ambitions do seem to do something to poets. (Real politicians, in my own experience, are much much much more cautious in their speech, are mainly concerned with keeping out of trouble.) The list keeps focused on Pound, Dorn, fascism, etc. That isn't the only ideological problem for poets. Mayakovsky, who himself said he "stepped on the throat of his own song," and spent years writing political posters -- which do have considerable artistic merit -- and a couple years writing advertising jingles for the largest grocery store in Moscow. (imagine Frank O'Hara on Gristedes). But there is great poetry even in rather troubling works like My Soviet Passport. (There's enough dreck as well.) Or Neruda: Canto General is a great poem, but I really do gag on the sentimental Stalinism: In three rooms of the old Kremlin lives a man named Joseph Stalin. His bedroom light is turned off late. The world and his country allow him no rest. Other heroes have given birth to a nation, he helped to concieve his as well, to build it and to defend it. His immense country is, then, part of himself and he cannot rest because it is never at rest. etc etc. And Dante - being no medieval Catholic, and a Jew, I find that ideology repugant, too. It seems to me, in all of these cases, the problems are a) the poets are still imperfect human beings and b) the ideologies for saving the world tend to be on such sweeping scale that they inevitably involve alot of what Anselm referred to as "othering the Other" which gives permission for the sort of behavior and espousal of such views we are going back and forth on in this thread. When poets sing on behalf of power, that's a problem, and when poet's decide they have unique access to the truth, that too can lead to problems -- but in both cases the poetry can remain great. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 20:31:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dave Zauhar Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Or Neruda: Canto General is a great poem, but I really do gag >on the sentimental Stalinism: > > In three rooms of the old Kremlin > lives a man named Joseph Stalin. > His bedroom light is turned off late. > The world and his country allow him no rest. > Other heroes have given birth to a nation, > he helped to concieve his as well, > to build it > and to defend it. > His immense country is, then, part of himself > and he cannot rest because it is never at rest. > >etc etc Pablo. . . where was your shit-detector when it came to Stalin and his evil-smelling crew? His bloodied hands stank to heaven yet you took the stink intor your lungs and didn't cough once. Or retch. Why? Did the Georgian smile on that human shitpile fool you? Or his moustache a wiser poet than you likened to a cockroach? By all means one should fight for the poor: let them have justice and bread but one should fight without illusions, without laughing gas in one's cavities. --Irving Layton ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 21:41:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: this is a poetry column In-Reply-To: <199702212042.PAA08736@dept.english.upenn.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII t h i s i s n o t a l i n e o f p o e t r y but this is __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 00:52:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: poets and their repugnant whatevers Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" 1. There is a difference, certainly, between an objection I might make to, let us say, an anti-semitism I find in Dante and an anti-semitism I find in a contemporary poet. In some essential sense, an easy-to-follow one, Dante is not a living person. He's dead. His voiced opinion cannot -- by his voicing of it -- affect the politics and social facts of my life. (not to say that others can't so use it: I'd take that up with them) My objection to Dorn was to the living person's words and their living reverberating presentness, not to the work either for that matter but to the opinions of the person; why is this distinction hard to grasp? It is a person causing trouble whom we must resist. 2. Bob Perelman suggests my offer to bash Dorn is close to a male poet's need to "take it to the street," and how wrong can he be actually. I chose the words "punch in the mouth" after all. At the same time, I did (twice) say "if he comes around me" which should be easy to interpret. I'm suggesting that the aggression is located in the objectionable opinion. And expressing my annoyance at the fuzzy non-thinking I found on this subject here in the list -- as if evil required interpretation to be understood (no, only to be explained away). My technique was what Brecht called "plumpe Denken" -- gross or vulgar formulation of a thought, a kind of rhetoric yes. 3. Bob also suggests that "poets are very irritated by being imprisoned, finally, in the aesthetic sphere." But poets are not imprisoned in the (not even "an") aesthetic sphere. A poem is in language the inherent vehicle of ethics and politics. The history of poets addressing directly (to make or change) a current social scene does not begin with Dante nor end with Adam Mickiewicz. It is coeval with poetry surely. In some sense *well*beyond the way that a brushstroke e.g. is a signature of the artist, language holds or extends the relation of poet and society to the forefront of consciousness in reading a poem. What is said in a poem doesn't have the value of what color is used in a painting. It is not, iow, a matter of aesthetics at all. Precision in thought, I am saying, is essential to a poet in a way it is not to a painter; sloppy moral thinking by poets about poets ain't allowable. Well, maybe I'm overstating, do youthink so? It's late and I'm tired too tired prob. to take "precision of thought" for a subject, as I'm not being terribly precise myself. But, then, in a situation plain as the nose on one's face, precision comes fairly easily. Or should. Not much weighing and measuring required to revile racism. Tom Mandel Tom Mandel ************************************************************ Screen Porch * tmandel@screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ************************************************************ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 22:11:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marjorie Perloff Subject: Re: Mac Wellman play In-Reply-To: <199702220504.VAA07842@leland.Stanford.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Have just had the good fortune to see Mac Wellman's new play at the Ivy Substation in LA and want to urge those of you in the LA area to go! It's called "The lesser Magoo" and has music by Michael Roth from San Diego--really brilliant. Anyway, Mac's play takes off on just about everything in our society from political rhetoric to New Age to the standard interview (which made me think of the MLA interviews for job candidates)--and the language is extraordinary--with its "unusualists". It's only one one more week (through Sat night March 1) and I hope some readers of this list will get to see it--great acting too. Marjorie Perloff ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 03:38:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Bennett M. Sm [Dimpson" Subject: Re: this is not a message In-Reply-To: <9702202300.AA30939@mercury.chem.nwu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII please pass the drops I'm going blind &c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c. &c. Bennett Simpson &c. bms5q@virginia.edu &c. &c. &c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c.&c. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 10:36:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: Louisville Report In-Reply-To: <9702210502.AA12375@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII sorry i didn't get a chance to get to an email terminal yesterday. but today the connection is much quicker. i of course can't be too objective about my panel but i thought it went well and got a nice attendance yesterday (micahel boughn, alan golding, mark scroggins, and peter jaeger were there among others): strategizing american poetics after williams thomas orange, the university of western ontario, "imagism, objectivism, and the making of william carlos williams" david baptiste chirot, university of wisconsin-milwaukee, "williams, kerouac, grenier: visual words, soundful visions" we had a little trouble getting our overhead and slide projectors synchronized, but dave's paper very nicely blended commentary with slides of grenier's recent work which i am now happy to have finally seen. the next panel i went to: nation languages: kamau braithwaite, robert crawford and r.s. thomas mark d. mcmorris, brown university, "mis-handling the legacy of empire: strategies of dynamic dispacement in kamau braithwaite's x/self" mark scroggins, florida atlantic university, "the forked tongue: contemporary scottish poetry and the dilemma of language" david t. lloyd, lemoyne college, "through the looking glass: r.s. thomas's the echoes return slow as poetic autobiography" very interesting points of commonality between what would seem to be very different papers, not a whole lot of time left for discussion at the end unfortunately. but i have lots of new things to look up and read when i go home. talked zukofsky stuff over lunch with mark and and peter and jonathan and then alas, the lure of book- and cd-shopping pulled me away from my duties as a dutiful conference-goer. went down to the bardstown road area of louisville and picked up a few books, but more exciting perhaps was finding tampa red and mississipi fred mcdowell cds (just cant find that stuff in canada). this afternoon i will go hear peter jaeger's talk on steve mccaffery, and this panel also has papers on joan retallack, kathleen fraser, and tina darragh. then it's back on the road for the long trip back to london ont. it was beautifully warm here all weekend (22C/74F) but now it's gotten cold again, winter's back. sorry for the inadequacies of this travelogesque sketch (or sketchy travelog). anybody who wants to know more can certainly backchannel me, and maybe some of the other poetixers in attendance here will throw in their two cents' worth. cheers, t. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 10:06:27 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: jogg�d MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit jog my memory, Mac Wellman published what magazine? also sometime back there was an inquiry about defunkt literary mags, which is something Im keenly innerested in. would love to know of, or see a website established that logged this information in somewhat of a chronological manner, as well as notating which publically accessible archives these mags are housed in. miekal -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 08:19:44 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Neruda and Stalinism Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm going to suggest an explanation of why Neruda's "shit detector" malfunctioned in the case of Stalin. This will require a little history, both personal and more general. Although my family were what would be called democratic socialists in Europe (Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas were tutelary dieties in our household), there were still a lot of Stalinists around when I was growing up. Some of them managed to hold on to the faith right into the sixties (My father's flirtation with the American Communist Party, like that of most American radicals, did not survive the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939). These were the fathers and mothers of some of my friends, and I knew them well. Most subscribers to the list are probably familiar with Ginsberg's description of a cell meeting in Kaddish. That really seems to have been what it was like. The party served a frunction for the believers not unlike the church for fundamentalist christians--it was the center of social life as well as ideology. As a result, members had little intimate contact with non-believers. My best friend's parents actually met and carried on their courtship at cell meetings. This exclusivity was enforced from the outside as well as from the inside. Police and FBI harrassment, during the cold war and before, were a fact of everyday life, and blacklisting, even in less than glamorous fields, was commonplace. The labor movement, in a bid to overcome the brutality of the suppression to which it was accustomed, was purged of anyone who could be suspected of radicalism. Religious schools reaped an ironic bonanza of cheap atheist labor in the form of teachers who could no longer teach in the public schools. Early television was dominated by McCarthy's show-trials--I used to watch them after school. And the trial and execution of the Rosenberg's, whatever their culpability may have been, was an extended nightmare for people who assumed that we were in the midst of a pogrom and who still were traumatized by the images (for some, who had been there, by the reality) of the death-camps. To outward appearances, weren't they a lot like us? Mrs. Rosenberg and my mother even had the same first name, and the full-page photograph of her body slumped over, straining against the leather restraints of the electric chair, that graced the cover of the Daily News the morning after the execution was the subject of many nightmares and is still etched in my brain. If even members of the ruling class, and Protestants, to boot, were not safe--we had seen Alger Hiss destroyed--what would happen to Jewish liberals and radicals? You didn't have to be particularly radical to be affected. The historian Richard Hofstadter, for instance, spent years not being able to get a permanent job because his views, far from Stalinist, were known to be left of center. My father lived in fear that his youthful socialist activism would come to light and cost him his livelihood, and when I began protesting and signing petitions they were terrified for me. I was cautioned to at least refrain from signing my name, because you never know when a signature would come back to haunt you. To their credit, when the Vietnam War heated up they did overcome their fears and participate in protest marches, but it took a fair amount of courage for them to do so. People routinely got arrested for refusing to take shelter during air raid drills. I think the first time I was called a communist was when I was twelve years old. I was arguing politics with a friend as we crossed the street, declaring my allegiance to Adlai Stevenson, when the cop directing traffic spit the word at me like a curse. Add to this the general assumption that the government and the official media were dispensing propaganda instead of news. Most of us knew from the radical press, for instance, that Arbenz, the democratically-elected president of Guatemala, portrayed in the main-stream media as a communist and a threat to the American Way of Life, was at best mildly left of center, and that his overthrow was a CIA job, not a popular uprising. Anyone who remembers the Vietnam era will not be surprised by this. It's now universally known that the government lied to us repeatedly about what was going on, and for many years the mainstream press was eagerly complicit. I would go to demonstrations in Washington that you didn't have to be a professional crowd-counter to know were pretty enormous--I mean, they filled a lot of densely-packed space. In the wee hours, back in NY, I'd read the early edition of the Times and learn that there had been maybe ten thousand of us. It was late in the war the the editorial offices told their reporters that they no longer had to lie, and suddenly demonstrations that were no larger than the earlier ones were reported as hundreds of thousands strong. To get the news you had to read the reports of the French Press Agency. To older American radicals this was no surprise. One indication of the degree of duplicity going back many years was the changing manipulation of American public opinion about Stalin himself. A monster in the twenties and early thirties, an uneasy trading partner in the late thirties, a heroic ally when it suited the US government during WWII, a paranoid monster thereafter. Why assume that any of it was true? So there was fear, isolation, distrust of government and mainstream sources, the fact of persecution, even for the beliefs of years past, coercion to betray the pasts of friends, and there was also very effective Russian propaganda. Some of my friends' Communist parents, like Neruda, had been to the Worker's Paradise, often at the expense of the Russian government by way of the American party. They were very carefully shepherded from Potemkin villages to model communes and factories. That was the reality they chose to believe in. Reports to the contrary were assumed to be tainted. Of course, none of this, even in those circumstances, would have been possible without the will to believe. Utopianism, like any true believerhood, flourishes in a climate of desperation as a comfort for the afflicted. The worse the desperation the more fervid the belief tends to be. This brings us at last to Neruda. If things were bad for leftists in America, they were awful in the feudal societies of Latin America. The kind of quasi-official violence that marked US labor conflicts in the first three decades of this century persisted in Chile, with the brief respite of the Allende regime, until Pinochet. Neruda and other intellectuals were in constant danger. He describes in his memoirs, and also, and I think more eloquently, in his Nobel lecture, his narrow and desperate escape across the Andes. The "disappearances" that became notorious under Pinochet and under the generals in Argentina had been a fact of life, if less common, for a long time. And Neruda did, finally, convenientlt die on the day of Pinochet's putsch. Stalin was one of history's great monsters, and Neruda's shit detector certainly failed. He could, perhaps, have known better. But his was a complex naivete that can only be read, I think, in context. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 08:26:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I don't think Mac ever published a mag; if he did, it was before he came to New York in the 70's. He did edit a collection of theater criticism and I think two collections of contemporary plays. And of course he has published several books of poems and novels, mostly with Sun&Moon. I wrote the intro to his first major poetry collection, which was published by New Rivers. Mac has one a bunch of Obies. He may be the most prolific playwright since Lope da Vega, and he's probably the best we've got. At his best he's great. And I use the term advisedly. At 10:06 AM 2/22/97 +0100, you wrote: >jog my memory, Mac Wellman published what magazine? > >also sometime back there was an inquiry about defunkt literary mags, >which is something Im keenly innerested in. would love to know of, or >see a website established that logged this information in somewhat of a >chronological manner, as well as notating which publically accessible >archives these mags are housed in. > >miekal >-- >@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# >Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime >QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: >http://net22.com/qazingulaza >e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 10:40:06 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Louisville Report In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" thanks thomas orange, i'm particularly interested in how "my" panel went, i couldn't go (screwed up on travel plans, utterly exhausted, too $), it was w/ joe harrington and chris beach. also, does anyone have an e-address for mark mcmorris?--md At 10:36 AM -0500 2/22/97, Thomas M. Orange wrote: >sorry i didn't get a chance to get to an email terminal yesterday. but >today the connection is much quicker. > >i of course can't be too objective about my panel but i thought it went >well and got a nice attendance yesterday (micahel boughn, alan golding, >mark scroggins, and peter jaeger were there among others): > >strategizing american poetics after williams > thomas orange, the university of western ontario, "imagism, >objectivism, and the making of william carlos williams" > david baptiste chirot, university of wisconsin-milwaukee, >"williams, kerouac, grenier: visual words, soundful visions" > >we had a little trouble getting our overhead and slide projectors >synchronized, but dave's paper very nicely blended commentary with slides >of grenier's recent work which i am now happy to have finally seen. > >the next panel i went to: >nation languages: kamau braithwaite, robert crawford and r.s. thomas > mark d. mcmorris, brown university, "mis-handling the legacy of >empire: strategies of dynamic dispacement in kamau braithwaite's x/self" > mark scroggins, florida atlantic university, "the forked tongue: >contemporary scottish poetry and the dilemma of language" > david t. lloyd, lemoyne college, "through the looking glass: r.s. >thomas's the echoes return slow as poetic autobiography" >very interesting points of commonality between what would seem to be very >different papers, not a whole lot of time left for discussion at the end >unfortunately. but i have lots of new things to look up and read when i >go home. > >talked zukofsky stuff over lunch with mark and and peter and jonathan and >then alas, the lure of book- and cd-shopping pulled me away from my duties >as a dutiful conference-goer. went down to the bardstown road area of >louisville and picked up a few books, but more exciting perhaps was >finding tampa red and mississipi fred mcdowell cds (just cant find that >stuff in canada). > >this afternoon i will go hear peter jaeger's talk on steve mccaffery, and >this panel also has papers on joan retallack, kathleen fraser, and tina >darragh. then it's back on the road for the long trip back to london ont. >it was beautifully warm here all weekend (22C/74F) but now it's gotten >cold again, winter's back. > >sorry for the inadequacies of this travelogesque sketch (or sketchy >travelog). anybody who wants to know more can certainly backchannel me, >and maybe some of the other poetixers in attendance here will throw in >their two cents' worth. > >cheers, >t. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 10:49:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: poets and their repugnant whatevers In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970222005249.0068ee84@cais.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i don't think yr being extreme or overstating yr case. the more u talk the more i'm in agreement w/ you, tho i still wouldn't punch dorn in the mouth, mostly cuz i haven't been trained to do it properly; i'd probably leave the room or tell him verbally to not talk like that around me. actually, at our panel at mla, my entire paper was an unintentional refutation of his. 12:52 AM -0500 2/22/97, Tom Mandel wrote: >1. There is a difference, certainly, between an objection I might make to, >let us say, an anti-semitism I find in Dante and an anti-semitism I find in >a contemporary poet. > >In some essential sense, an easy-to-follow one, Dante is not a living >person. He's dead. His voiced opinion cannot -- by his voicing of it -- >affect the politics and social facts of my life. (not to say that others >can't so use it: I'd take that up with them) > >My objection to Dorn was to the living person's words and their living >reverberating presentness, not to the work either for that matter but to >the opinions of the person; why is this distinction hard to grasp? > >It is a person causing trouble whom we must resist. > >2. Bob Perelman suggests my offer to bash Dorn is close to a male poet's >need to "take it to the street," and how wrong can he be actually. I chose >the words "punch in the mouth" after all. At the same time, I did (twice) >say "if he comes around me" which should be easy to interpret. I'm >suggesting that the aggression is located in the objectionable opinion. And >expressing my annoyance at the fuzzy non-thinking I found on this subject >here in the list -- as if evil required interpretation to be understood >(no, only to be explained away). My technique was what Brecht called >"plumpe Denken" -- gross or vulgar formulation of a thought, a kind of >rhetoric yes. > >3. Bob also suggests that "poets are very irritated by being imprisoned, >finally, in the aesthetic sphere." But poets are not imprisoned in the (not >even "an") aesthetic sphere. A poem is in language the inherent vehicle of >ethics and politics. The history of poets addressing directly (to make or >change) a current social scene does not begin with Dante nor end with Adam >Mickiewicz. It is coeval with poetry surely. In some sense *well*beyond the >way that a brushstroke e.g. is a signature of the artist, language holds or >extends the relation of poet and society to the forefront of consciousness >in reading a poem. What is said in a poem doesn't have the value of what >color is used in a painting. It is not, iow, a matter of aesthetics at all. >Precision in thought, I am saying, is essential to a poet in a way it is >not to a painter; sloppy moral thinking by poets about poets ain't allowable. > >Well, maybe I'm overstating, do youthink so? It's late and I'm tired too >tired prob. to take "precision of thought" for a subject, as I'm not being >terribly precise myself. But, then, in a situation plain as the nose on >one's face, precision comes fairly easily. Or should. Not much weighing and >measuring required to revile racism. > >Tom Mandel > > > > > >Tom Mandel >************************************************************ >Screen Porch * tmandel@screenporch.com >4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 >Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 >************************************************************ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 10:53:43 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Neruda and Stalinism In-Reply-To: <199702221619.IAA21682@denmark.it.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 8:19 AM -0800 2/22/97, Mark Weiss wrote: >I'm going to suggest an explanation of why Neruda's "shit detector" >malfunctioned in the case of Stalin. This will require a little history, ... thanks mark. i'm going to share this msg w/ my class on the sf renaissance. it's hard for younger folks, myself included (born in 1955, to pretty apolitical parents who were horrified by mcCarthy but not afraid for themselves) to grasp the real horror of those years, which have been delivered to us as "happy daze." a few yrs ago i heard leo marx describing the politics of my dept back in the 50s. Allen tate was a genial gentleman, he sd, but he (marx) suspected that if they'd had an honest discussion about politics they wouldn't have had much in common. i naively asked, in the following q and a session, why they didn't in fact ever have that honest political discussion. he gently reminded me of the mccarthy era and said bluntly, i would have lost my job. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 09:09:15 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: Neruda and Stalinism Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Great letter Mark! Very interesting. Tosh Berman TamTam Books ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 17:52:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: Re: Neruda and Stalinism In-Reply-To: <199702221619.IAA21682@denmark.it.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I want to thank you greatly for this post, which brings back my own fears and memories as well, not that they are that far beneath the surface. Mayakovsky, one of my favorite poets, could also be found absurd or want- ing, vis-a-vis the empowered State (Pasternak takes him to task), and there is the oddly disturbing "case" of Rimbaud. A final, moody, note - when people "become cases," what is implied? This is an odd distinction, the identification of a person, personhood, with a specific narrative turn - "the case of Solzhenitsyn," "take the case of Faulkner," and so forth... Alan http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html images: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Tel. 718-857-3671 CuSeeMe: 166.84.250.149 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 18:10:16 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dean Taciuch Subject: Re: spell check and etc Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The call for spell-check and user dictionary files reminded me of a piece I was working on a few months ago (still not finished)-- a long poem called "rote" which is built from a 1930s speller. The speller itself simply lists words, from grade 2 through 8, but there is a sound patterning to them, based on similar spellings and words that might be confused by grade schoolers. I placed the words into lines and stanzas adding nothing but punctuation. I go back to it every once in a while, mostly to take out the punctuation I put in--not having worked with found material very often, I tended not to trust what I found. (Probably by next year I'll have worked it back to the original--just lists, that'll be it, and the time spent will be the poem.) Here's a sample, from "Grade 5" Mist list sleet, sweep swept. Taught daughter alike. Aside alarm. Against good-by, goodnight. Tax text. Cloak means. Stairs chose clerk. Glee sleeve. Ninth ninety nineteen. Lazy crazy tap trap. Strap deer, beer sneak. Speak, speaker, truly. Geese bolt. Marble stump. Louder cooler blaze. Graze scrub scrubbed. Serve served server. Serving lodge dodge circle. Circus cistern tease. Butcher stiff bog banana. Joy, employ narrow sparrow, lose losing. Acted actor acting. Quit quite jelly. Jolly weekly, deeply steel daisy. Job blot junk. Least yeast remember. Remembered remembering burned, burst simple sample. Example: lowest, highest afloat. Agree, agreed? Waist pinch, barking fever cord. Lack stack backed latest. Finest main remain trained. Level camel. Cruel feed feeder. June, July watching. Struck answer. Voice coop. ______________________________ Dean ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 16:30:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Reiner Subject: SF Reading Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" On Thursday, February 27th Susan Smith Nash reads from _Channel-Surfing the Apocalypse_ and other works at New College of California, 777 Valencia St. San Francisco, CA. 7:30 p.m. $4. Information about the book and the author can be found at: http://www.crl.com/~creiner/syntax/channel.html ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 21:07:51 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: people-not-here-talk -Reply In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 21 Feb 1997, George Bowering wrote: > > I was wondering why the anti-Dorn animus, too; only people I can remember > his dissing are rednecks. Some of my best friends are rednecks . . . Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Duke University kellogg@acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. -- Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 21:13:08 CST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: eric pape Subject: Re: people-not-here-talk -Reply In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT I feel awkward raging into the middle of this debate, since I haven't said anything on this list in so long, and since I don't personally know the principal characters, as everyone else seems to. But certainly such things as tact and appropriateness have never stopped me in the past. Tom's right. And I shouldn't have to remind folks that violence is not an inappropriate response to violence. As I remember, Brecht's original conception of plumpe Denken was a counter to those who would use their oh so subtle metaphysics to deny or explain brutality.It is crucial we remember this. Would I, personally, punch Mr. Dorn? I don't know the man well, nor am I familar with his remarks. My "redneck" uncles always told me never to thrash a man unless you knew for sure he needed a thrashing. Or were certain that what you were making a fuss over warranted a fight. In this case, I can say unequivocally that the fuss is enough, but the man, well, I'd need to meet him. But, then, I've never tried to hide the fact that I am, indeed, a redneck too. Pass the Copenhagen! Thanks, Eric ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 11:51:13 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: Neruda and Stalinism In-Reply-To: <199702221619.IAA21682@denmark.it.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I don't disagree with any of Marc's comments re Neruda and Stalinism (though it seems to me that in the 20s Stalin was the preferred choice of the capitalist west over Trotsky, who wanted to export revolution -- Stalin was going to stay at home and build socialism in one country -- but that is a very minor nit). and obviously Neruda was partially motivated by the two impeccable decision rules: the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and you take your friends where you find them. but I want to note that one could also construct an equally rational justification for Pound's fascism, espousal of Mussolini and probably even the anti-semitism could be explained, justified, and so on. we don't have the same direct stake in Neruda so we don't suffer as much with his Stalinism as we do with Pound. and I suspect most of us on the list will generally agree with Neruda's attack on Yanqui imperialismo, even if we are Yanquis, while Pound's views on Jews involve some of us, at least me, in a different way that we can't sympathize with. but Pound was never as rewarded by power as was Neruda, either local Chilean (Senator and diplomat, culminating as Ambassador to Paris) or international left (promoting his work in translation all over the globe). the most support Pound ever received from the "state" was his room and board at St. E's. again, I am not here "attacking" Neruda or "defending" Pound. I am arguing that active espousal of big picture politics, particularly chiliastic politics on either the left or right, will magnify other flaws in the human poet. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 21:20:07 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Neruda and Stalinism Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I don't think I was trying to justify Neruda's or anyone else's Stalinism. I was trying to explain how it was possible to be deluded, and to underline the importance of context in understanding behavior. But let's get this straight--I might be able to arrive at an explanation of how Pound came to feel and act the way he did, but I'd still be left with a poet incorporating into his work a vicious racist system based on a perversion of genetics. That was a central element of his politics. Stalin was not central to Neruda, communism (whether or not we think it practicable) as an ideal of human justice was. His delusion was accepting Stalin as the instrument thereof. But it was the pursuit of justice that was the motivation. While both men may have been deluded I think there's a world of difference between those two positions, and I hope that it's only the rhetorical habit of symmetry that keeps you from seeing that. And I don't think that anyone outside the Aryan Nation could justify Pound's position. Just to pick at a nit, it's entirely possible that there were people in the west who thought that Stalin was better for their futures than Trotsky. That doesn't mean that they had the power to determine the outcome of the power struggle. Or do you have copies of the cheques from JP Morgan to Stalin's PAC? It's also not entirely clear (and here I enter into heresy) that Trotsky would have been such a bargain for the Russian people. >but I want to note that one could also construct an equally rational >justification for Pound's fascism, espousal of Mussolini and probably >even the anti-semitism could be explained, justified, and so on. > .> ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 00:47:07 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Weiss, naivete, Neruda In suggesting an explanation for why Neruda's "shit detector" malfuntioned vis a vis Stalin, Mark Weiss recounts some of the extreme psychological and ideological pressures endured by his radical parents and their Communist Party friends during McCarthyism. He argues, and quite accurately I'm sure, that the unrelenting quality of this pressure quite naturally led to a circling of the wagons in rank and file CP circles which only served to narrow further the political field of vision of honest and deeply moral people. The story is moving, but I'd argue that it is fairly irrelevant in terms of helping one to understand Neruda and in coming to terms with that great poet's life-long and fairly visceral Stalinism. In fact, Weiss's argument that Neruda's "complex naivete" is analogous to that of U.S rank and file CPers centers on his concluding statement that, "If things were bad for leftists in America, they were awful in the feudal societies of Latin America. The kind of quasi- offficial violence that marked US labor conflicts in the first three decades of this century persisted in Chile, with the brief respite of the Allende regime, until Pinochet." Yes, Chilean history is one of class conflict, and things were never exactly rosy for leftists there, particualrly in moments of acute crisis, when, as in 1973, the full force of the native ruling class and imperialism comes down with an iron fist. But an important part of the history of the Stalinized Communist parties everywhere during the 30's and through WWII (in line with Kremlin dictates that were driven by Stalin's desire to maintain a modus vivendi with the U.S. and Europe) is the renouncing of the direct struggle for power in the "feudal" societies of the "third world," in favor of CP alliances with the "progressive" and "nationalist bourgeoisie." This led in a number of countries--and Chile, in fact, is a prime example--to the formation of electoral alliances between the Communist parties and capitalist parties, so-called "popular fronts," which in a number of instances around the world momentarily came to power. Far from pushing forward a revolutionary program, the CP in nearly all these cases acted as faithful junior partner, working to hold the trade union movement in check, and often being in the vanguard of the ideological and legal attacks on activists who would not consent to these accomodationist policies (the classic and tragic case is Spain, where the most rabid and successful enemies of the powerful anarchist trade union movement were not the fascists but the PC of Spain, on which see Orwell's _Homage to Catalonia_. But the old SWP member, Militant newspaper hawker in me is coming back and I'm getting long-winded. So how does this relate to Neruda? In this way: Pablo Neruda was in no way a rank and file communist whose personal life was under constant and relentless harrassment. Of course, he faced persecution in significant ways when the political winds weren't blowing the right way, and he faced sthose with great courage (e.g. his albeit poeticized flight across the Andes from the previously "progressive bourgeois" Radical Party government of Videla was undoubtedly heroic) but he was also a leading official of the Chilean Communist Party, its Secretary of Propaganda for an extended period in the 1940's, an elected CP senator during the "Popular Front" Videla regime, and consul and ambassador for "progressive" capitalist Chilean governments on two or three occasions, all as an open member of the Communist Party. On one of those "consul" occasions, Neruda was in Mexico for an extended spell during Trotsky's exile there. Far from being "naive" about the purges, show trials and summary executions of left-wing communists in the Soviet Union, Neruda knew about them well and approved of them, as any internationally prominent member in good standing of the Third International did. There was nothing all that secret about the purges within the movement. The crowning, orgasmic moment, of course, of the Stalinist terror, was Trotsky's murder in Mexico City at the hands of an NKVD agent (or was it KGB by then?). There is a revealing moment in Neruda's _Memoirs_ when he writes, with the idyllic atmosphere so typical of that book (but it seems we can only assume it's true) about going to meet David Alfaro Siqueiros, one of the two greatest Mexican muralists (the other was Diego Rivera, Frieda Kahlos's husband, and both great friends of Trotsky's), at prison, where he was conveniently let out on Neruda's visits by the warden so David and Pablo could go drink and have, as Neruda describes it, a jovial time. Siqueiros, a prominent member of the Mexican CP, was in jail for an early but failed team machine gun assault on Trotsky, which Trotsky describes in some detail in the autobiography completed shortly before Stalin finally got him. I'd like to perhaps boldly suggest this, though I'm unaware of any concrete proof, or other discussion of the matter: Neruda was well aware of the efforts to kill Trotsky, was a fan of the attempt, and was in close consultation with Stalin's henchmen during his presence in Mexico. Why wouldn't he have been? Neruda was close to a number of people in Trotsky's circle of avant-garde admirers, which included Rivera and Kahlo, Breton and a number of the French Surrealists, and numerous Mexican writers and artists. Why wouldn't the most prominent Communist Party member in Mexico and clandestine drinking buddy of Trotskyite head-hunter Siqueiros have been closely consorting with Stalin's henchmen? To think otherwise strikes me as naive, and naive in an uncomplex way. I don't mean by these comments (which I'd wager could be expanded and made more credibly damning with benefit of some research) to take anything away from Neruda's writing. In fact, I don't think it does in the least, and the recent tough-poet guy commentary about punch in the mouth strikes me as sad and silly. Dorn, Neruda, Pound, are all great poets who have enriched our lives because they've shown us in their own different ways what greatness the human imagination is capable of. If they've compromised themselves in serious ways through their public lives, as they certainly have, that speaks to how strange and paradoxical the task of being a human being can be, and about how the imagination can be at once capable of the basest excrescences and of the wildest and most sublime beauty. Thank god for poetry and the weird, indecipherable people that make it. So to conclude, Mark, and with the greatest respect, I'd like to suggest that Neruda was in no way like your parents or their beautiful friends: He was a very priviledged Communist Party apparatchik, who had a life of relative leisure, title, and travel, and he used his position for good and for bad. He knew quite a lot about what Stalin was doing, approved of it, and participated in it very conscientiously in the "long-range interests of the class struggle." I'd suggest that given the explosion of popularity his name has enjoyed given the uncannily _Memoir_ -like atmosphere of Il Postino, that some careful accounting of his role is in order from poets who should be more skeptical of such romanticizing. These comments are certainly overly general, but your "complex naivete" excuse seems somewaht easy, especially since the "fascists" seem to get trashed on this list for behavior that seems, in comparison to Neruda's (and who are the others? Hikmet, Brecht, even Vallejo?, etc.), childish and almost poignant in its desperate stupidity. Kent ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 01:55:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Yunte Huang Subject: Re: Louisville Report In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII As one of the many presenters on the Lou. Conf., my trip to Lou., I shall say, is a hell lot of driving, two nine-hour long and lone drive within two days. So I missed Thursday's and Saturday's show, but I can report on a few panels I wnet to on Friday. Panel C4: Strategizing American Poetics after Williams Thomas Orange, "Imagism and Objectivism, and the Making of W.C. Williams" David Chirot, "Williams, Kerouac, Grenier: Visual Words, Soundful Visions" Good attendance, nice slide shows. For myself, having seen Grenier's pages (with those impressive two fingers) many times and having heard him talked (or not talked) about those photos, it still felt fresh when somebody else talked about them. Orange raised an interesting but arguable point about Pound's inability to understand early Williams' poetry. Panel D6: Readings in Anglo-American Modernist Poetics Yunte Huang, "Ezra Pound and the Chinese and Jewish Traditions of Textual Practice" Jason Fichtel, "Go Down, Melanctha: African American Spirituals and Musicality in Gertrude Stein's Melanctha" Benjamin Lockerd, "The Age of Eliot: Th Age of Einstein" Michael Campbell, "Comedy Both Human and Inhuman: Stevens' Poetry and Bergson's Social Corrective Theory of Laughter" I have to say, in terms of attendance and response, the panel went very well. My paper was to relate Pound's hatred in unstable Jewish textuality to some of the moves he made when he translated (the translation) from the Chinese. Fichtel's analysis of those names in Melanctha (like Jef-fe-rey, Me-lanc-tha) in relation to African Spiritual rhythems, which I don't know much about, was interesting. Lockerd's paper is about Eliot's engagement with the new development in physics (Einstein's theory), and one person in the audience turned out to be a former student of Einstein. Campbell read Stevens as a comedian, which I found to be more interesting than reading Stevens' metaphysics. Before the panel, I barely knew a soul among the five-hundred strong mass (except Alan G.) and could recognize a few names and faces, but after the panel I had some nice chats with people who came to me. Panel F5: US Poetry and/as Popular Culture Maria Damon, "When the NuYorican Came to Town: A Study of Poetic Exchanges" Christopher Beach, "Poetry on Television?: Bob Holman's 'A United States of Poetry' as Video-Poetry Revolution" Joseph Harrington, "America's Richest Poet, or The Meaning of Walt Mason" When I walked into the room, a woman was smiling at me, and I thought that was Maria Damon. But it turned out she was doing an "affirmative action" count in the room, the result of which she would use to make a point in discussion. And of course, Maria D. wasn't there, she remote-controlled Alan Golding to read her kick-'em-in-the-ass paper about the social exchanges among different poetry communities in Twin City. Harrington and Beach used Mason and Holman respectively to argue for a popular function of poetry. It was a lively panel, provoking various response. Alan, now disconnected from the home-office in Twin City, made three comments, one of which being whether some video poetry is actually using the mode of production of the object of its critique (a structural-Marxist point). And the woman who was counting "heads" earlier on (the reason she was smiling at me, by the way, I guess, was that I was an Asian male) asked about eh gender issue involved. All and all, it was fun. Sorry didn't make it to more of the sessions, and to Alan's party on Saturday night, but "we" are still during the six-day memorial period for Deng's death, so no partying for me. Yunte Huang ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 00:19:29 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Weiss, naivete, Neruda Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Could be you know the history better than I do--I, too, would have to do more research than I am inclined to at the moment. But for the record, wasn't Neruda a rather strong supporter of the miner's strike that was the defining moment of Chilean leftist politics, despite whatever directives came out of Moscow? Also for the record, my parents were never communists nor always beautiful, and only some of the communists in the neighborhood were beautiful. None of them, even those very involved with the party, were fully aware of what was going on in the Soviet Union, although they tended to be apologists. I think that they were apologists out of a desperation to maintain their belief in a set of human possibilities that met with positive reinforcement nowhere else that they had access to. For the same reason many African American intellectuals, who also should have known better, became involved with the party. And I am suggesting that Neruda shared that desperation even in his privileged, but insecure, position, that even, perhaps, witnessing misery around him made him more desperate because of his privileged position. (By the way, a meeting in prison is hardly likely to be clandestine, and privileged treatment of privileged prisoners of the kind you describe is not exactly unknown in Latin American jails) Desperation can motivate a lot of unseemly behavior, but I'd really need more proof to accept that Neruda was a party to any secret Stalinist plot to thwart the gains of unionized labor. Perhaps he thought that alliances were the best possible way to go in the circumstances. Those alliances certainly for a time improved the living conditions of large numbers of people, even if they failed to achieve a worker's paradise. Let me go further. There is no question but that most of the CPs around the world felt a need to remain in solidarity, and there is no question but that they got detailed directives and funds from the Kremlin, but the evidence seems to be that a very very few of the most important functionaries (Neruda was never in that sort of manegerial position; in fact, he was out of the country and out of contact with the Chilean party for long stretches of time} knew the details of directives or even the exact channels for funds. Even the FBI acknowledges this now. The information was just too sensitive. Trotsky assassination theories have been for a long time the kind of industry that Kennedy assassination theories have become in this country. Neruda as conspirator is a new one on me, and I congratulate your originality. I do think that that's a charge I would be wary of levelling at anyone with no basis but ingenious speculation. Was Neruda really the most important communist in Mexico? Finally, to an old SWP member I apologize for having implied anything less than complimentary about Trotsky. I'm suddenly reminded of all those parties in my youth that dissolved into partisan shouting and declarations of loyalty to one International as opposed to another. Even then they struck me as more about theology than history, and I swore I'd stop participating in them. And here I am, sucked in again. But can I really leave your final statement unchallenged? As far as I know, unless Neruda really was only friendly with Breton et al in order to facilitate the assassination of Trotsky, he wasn't involved with killing anyone or advocating the killing of large numbers of people for reasons of race and ethnicity, although he may have swallowed and been an apologist for the official party line on the show trials (it's hardly likely, incidentally, that he was aware of the extent of the gulag system--the kremlin rarely boasted about it to people whose good will they felt it was useful to maintain). Maybe that's why some of us on this list get madder at fascists of the 30's and 40's than they do at Neruda. At 12:47 AM 2/23/97 +0600, you wrote: >In suggesting an explanation for why Neruda's "shit detector" >malfuntioned vis a vis Stalin, Mark Weiss recounts some of the extreme >psychological and ideological pressures endured by his radical >parents and their Communist Party friends during McCarthyism. He >argues, and quite accurately I'm sure, that the unrelenting >quality of this pressure quite naturally led to a circling of the >wagons >in rank and file CP circles which only served to narrow further the >political field of vision of honest and deeply moral people. > >The story is moving, but I'd argue that it is fairly irrelevant in >terms of helping one to understand Neruda and in coming to terms with >that great poet's life-long and fairly visceral Stalinism. In fact, >Weiss's argument that >Neruda's "complex naivete" is analogous to that of U.S rank and file >CPers centers on his concluding >statement that, "If things were bad for leftists in America, they were >awful in the feudal societies of Latin America. The kind of quasi- >offficial violence that marked US labor conflicts in the first three >decades of this century persisted in Chile, with the brief respite of >the Allende regime, until Pinochet." Yes, Chilean history is one >of class conflict, and things were never exactly rosy for leftists >there, particualrly in moments of acute crisis, when, as in 1973, >the full force of the native ruling class and imperialism comes down >with an iron fist. > >But an important part of the history of the Stalinized >Communist parties everywhere during the 30's and through WWII >(in line with Kremlin dictates that were driven by Stalin's desire to >maintain a modus vivendi with the U.S. and Europe) >is the renouncing of the direct struggle for power in the "feudal" >societies of the "third world," in favor of CP alliances with the >"progressive" and "nationalist bourgeoisie." This led in a number of >countries--and Chile, in fact, is a prime example--to the formation of >electoral alliances between the Communist parties and >capitalist parties, so-called "popular fronts," which in a number of >instances >around the world momentarily came to power. Far from pushing forward >a revolutionary program, the CP in nearly all these cases acted as >faithful junior partner, working to hold the trade union movement in >check, and often being in the vanguard of the >ideological and legal attacks on activists who would not consent to >these accomodationist policies (the classic and tragic case is >Spain, where the most rabid and successful enemies of the powerful >anarchist trade union movement were not the fascists but the PC of >Spain, on which see Orwell's _Homage to Catalonia_. But the old SWP >member, Militant newspaper hawker in me is coming back and I'm >getting long-winded. So how does this relate to Neruda? > >In this way: Pablo Neruda was in no way a rank and file communist >whose personal life was under constant and relentless harrassment. Of >course, >he faced persecution in significant ways when the political winds >weren't blowing the right way, and he faced sthose with great courage >(e.g. his albeit poeticized flight across the Andes from the >previously "progressive bourgeois" Radical Party government of Videla >was undoubtedly heroic) but he was also a leading official >of the Chilean Communist Party, its Secretary of Propaganda for an >extended period in the 1940's, an elected CP senator during the >"Popular Front" Videla regime, and consul and ambassador for >"progressive" capitalist Chilean governments on two or three >occasions, all as an open member of the Communist Party. > >On one of those "consul" occasions, Neruda was in Mexico for an >extended spell during Trotsky's exile there. Far from being "naive" >about the purges, show trials and summary executions of left-wing >communists in the Soviet Union, Neruda knew about them well and >approved of them, as any internationally prominent member in good >standing of the Third International did. There was nothing all that >secret about the purges within the movement. The crowning, orgasmic >moment, of course, of the Stalinist terror, was Trotsky's murder in >Mexico City at the hands of an NKVD agent (or was it KGB by then?). >There is a revealing moment in Neruda's _Memoirs_ when he writes, >with the idyllic atmosphere so typical of that book (but it seems we >can only assume it's true) about going to >meet David Alfaro Siqueiros, one of the two greatest Mexican muralists >(the other was Diego Rivera, Frieda Kahlos's husband, and both great >friends of Trotsky's), at prison, where he was conveniently let out >on Neruda's visits by the warden so David and Pablo could go drink >and have, as Neruda describes it, a jovial time. Siqueiros, a >prominent member of the Mexican CP, was in jail for an early >but failed team machine gun assault on Trotsky, which Trotsky >describes in some detail in the autobiography completed shortly >before Stalin finally got him. > >I'd like to perhaps boldly suggest this, though I'm >unaware of any concrete proof, or other discussion of the matter: >Neruda was well aware of the efforts to kill Trotsky, was a fan of >the attempt, and was in close consultation with Stalin's henchmen >during his presence in Mexico. Why wouldn't he have been? Neruda was >close to a number of people in Trotsky's circle of avant-garde >admirers, which included Rivera and Kahlo, Breton and a number of the >French Surrealists, and >numerous Mexican writers and artists. Why wouldn't the >most prominent Communist Party member in Mexico and clandestine >drinking buddy of Trotskyite head-hunter Siqueiros have been closely >consorting with Stalin's henchmen? To think otherwise strikes me as >naive, and naive in an uncomplex way. > >I don't mean by these comments (which I'd wager could be expanded >and made more credibly damning with benefit of some research) to >take anything away from Neruda's writing. In fact, I don't think it >does in the least, and the recent tough-poet guy commentary about >punch in the mouth strikes me as sad and silly. Dorn, Neruda, Pound, >are all great poets who have enriched our lives because they've shown >us in their own different ways what greatness the human imagination >is capable of. If they've compromised themselves in serious ways >through their public lives, as they certainly have, that speaks >to how strange and paradoxical the task of being a human being can >be, and about how the imagination can be at once capable of the basest >excrescences and of the wildest and most sublime beauty. Thank god >for poetry and the weird, indecipherable people that make it. > >So to conclude, Mark, and with the greatest respect, I'd like to >suggest that Neruda was in no way like your parents or their >beautiful friends: He was >a very priviledged Communist Party apparatchik, who had a life of >relative leisure, title, and travel, and he used his position for >good and for bad. He knew quite a lot about what Stalin was doing, >approved of it, and participated in it very conscientiously in the >"long-range interests of the class struggle." I'd >suggest that given the explosion of popularity his name has enjoyed >given the uncannily _Memoir_ -like atmosphere of Il Postino, that >some careful accounting of his role is in order from poets who should >be more skeptical of such romanticizing. > >These comments are certainly overly general, but your "complex >naivete" excuse seems somewaht easy, especially since the "fascists" >seem to get trashed on this list for behavior that seems, in >comparison to Neruda's (and who are the others? Hikmet, Brecht, even >Vallejo?, etc.), childish and almost poignant in its desperate >stupidity. > >Kent > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 13:46:18 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "F.A. Templeton" Subject: playwrights In-Reply-To: <199702221626.IAA22284@denmark.it.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Not to downplay Mac's talent (Mac Wellman), which I applaud, but I have another candidate here: John Jesurun. John is not as published as Mac, but a) his Chang in a Void Moon is a landmark in theatre. It was a serial, (much imitated since as a form) every Monday night, 2 showings, at the Pyramid Club in the early 80s. (Speaking of prolific) John would go home after the show, write the next episode, cast and rehearse it by the next week. The main character was played by a man and a woman, one character (the Infanta) was played by a chair, and the action took place in several centuries simultaneously. His staging (he directed too) was absolutely seminal. Actors included John Kelly, Steve Buscemi, Anna Kohler etc etc. The plot proliferated to the point where John's intro before the show of the story so far was a verbal tour de force which should have been saved for literary history. Chang has been revived in continuation a couple of times, including upcoming this March or April at The Kitchen, for episodes 50-something to 60-something. and b) check out his Philoktetes, in Yale Theatre mag a couple of years ago, for some of the best American language onstage ever, in a work of dizzying savagery. It was written for Ron Vawter before he died. And lots more in between. John's EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE should at last be coming out from Sun & Moon soon (eh, Douglas?) but there's also a huge body of produced work. GO SEE IT! That's what playwrights write for. And let's not forget Richard Foreman. On Sat, 22 Feb 1997, Mark Weiss wrote: > I don't think Mac ever published a mag; if he did, it was before he came to > New York in the 70's. He did edit a collection of theater criticism and I > think two collections of contemporary plays. And of course he has published > several books of poems and novels, mostly with Sun&Moon. I wrote the intro > to his first major poetry collection, which was published by New Rivers. > Mac has one a bunch of Obies. He may be the most prolific playwright since > Lope da Vega, and he's probably the best we've got. At his best he's great. > And I use the term advisedly. > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 15:27:22 +0000 Reply-To: "F.A. Templeton" Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "F.A. Templeton" Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check In-Reply-To: <199702212042.PAA08736@dept.english.upenn.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 21 Feb 1997, Bob Perelman wrote: > It makes me think poets are very irritated by being imprisoned, finally, > in the aesthetic sphere. In the chapter on Bruce Andrews in > *Marginalization* I ask if he means it when he writes "*sink* the boat > people!" Of course he doesn't. But he does want that intensity of > statement. Been mulling this one, Bob. What does "means it" mean? If he doesn't mean what he says, what have we got? A quote? Irony? Hardly sheer (unreferential) intensity. Maybe the audience at the Ear know he doesn't mean it, but what about the guys at the back of the bar? I've always wondered about the "not-saying" position's dependency on cultural context, especially when a lot of what we're supposed to understand as "not-said" are other-cultural references (Wooster Group's use of blackface, etc.) I'm genuinely in a spirit of inquiry here, as a fan of both Bruce and Liz LeCompte. And though I've been critical in the past of ungrounded irony, ie irony that doesn't state its critical position, I'm not happy either with insistence on constant gloss and de-implication of the speaker -- a kind of staking your tuft so you can point to the guy on the next one and imitate him. A you're-wrong-so-I-must-be-right dogmatism. I agree with BOTH Randolph and Aldon: Hard to make any judgement stick when a tonal change is enough to put a safe distance between us and our statements, never mind appeals to indeterminism, group myopia or even (gasp) growth. All the same, though we might have broken dogmatism up for parts, the appetite for a stonefest is as insatiable as ever. Which was perhaps why political correctness was invented. The appearance of humanism yet all the fun of the chase. Unfortunately, not all baddies are so obliging as to declare themselves in their utterances. and Aldon: Isn't it in fact because people are not surprised to hear racist terms that they go on being used with such casual frequency? The problem is, that tonal change doesn't carry as far as we might like to think. Try travelling. Even out of the "aesthetic sphere",or out of where it's ok to insult your friends. On some levels there's a dramatic question here. Most cultures get dialogue between points of view, so maybe the performance-implied (if verbally denied) insistence on the poet's subject-position needs a shake. Even if Charles B denied my suggestion that all his linguistic tone-subject multiple shifting was dramatic. And people still quote back lines by my characters and say, "You said..." (Poetry student, actually). Hating speech won't get you out of it being read or heard or your speaking. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 16:42:46 +0000 Reply-To: "F.A. Templeton" Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "F.A. Templeton" Subject: Re: playwrights In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Proper reference: John Jesurun's Philoktetes is in Yale Theatre mag, now called Theatre, volume 25 no 2. Fiona ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 11:41:55 -0500 Reply-To: davidi@wizard.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Poetry: Rumi { "I don't get tired of You" } MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT And now, an interlude . . . . I don't get tired of You. Don't grow weary of being compassionate toward me! All this thirst-equipment must surely be *tired* of me, the waterjar, the water-carrier. I have a thirst fish in me that can never find enough of what it's thirsty for! Show me the way to the Ocean! Break these half-measures, these small containers. All this fantasy and grief. Let my house be drowned in the wave that rose last night out of the courtyard hidden in the corner of my chest. Joseph fell like the moon into my well. The harvest I expected was washed away. But no matter. A fire has risen above my tombstone hat. I don't want learning, or dignity, or responsibility. I want this music and this dawn and the warmth of your cheek against mine. The grief-armies assemble, but I'm not going with them. This is how it always is when I finish a poem. A Great Silence overcomes me, and I wonder why I ever thought to use language. Jelaluddin Rumi rendered by Barks (based on an earlier version by A.J.Arberry) from *RUMI: Like This* (43 Odes, versions by Coleman Barks) published by Maypop Books (1989) -- 1st poem in the book [w/ thanks to les artistes, Markar & Parkar for their gift of this volume some years ago -- I just don't read this stuff enough] . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ========================= | thy centuries follow each other | perfecting a small wild flower | (Tagore) //////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\///// ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 11:11:10 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: the chronicle/evil poets/louisville etc... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" just back from louisville, having gone there and back with my wife kass fleisher, who gave a reading at one of the "creative" panels... so some bookkeeping: e: according to the chronicle, that dobyns threw a glass of scotch in a grad. students' face at a party and called her a "stalinist bitch" is uncontested, both by dobyns and other witnesses... aside from which, it appears that dobyns' "drinking problem" is also uncontested... there is no doubt in my mind that the accusations against the program are accurate, in terms of sexual harrassment, even misogyny... no surprise here, kass has been hearing these rumors since 1986... i have to say---the question of the status of "talent" in academic creative writing circles, and of corresponding pedagogies, remains largely unexamined... unfortunately, the shitstorm that has followed in the wake of this appears to have confused sexual harassment, which has undoubtedly taken place, with (for example) "vulgarity" (nonfiction writer mary karr has been accused of same)... the article does *not* do a good job of airing out the issues, either... an aside here: seems to me that a poet, of some acclaim (whatever one thinks of his writing), acting out his perhaps idiosyncratic impulses thusly, is hardly an idiosyncratic matter... as suggested by the "red collective" who signed that item forwarded to the list... at the same time, sexual harassment and the use of vulgar language do not necessarily have anything to do with each other... w/o wishing to sound nostalgic, these are indeed troubled times for academe... and i would argue that this thread has a real and active bearing, at least insofar as academe is concerned, on the dorn/neruda/evil poets/spellcheck thread... and i have greatly enjoyed the exchange twixt mark weiss and kent johnson, albeit i'm feeling bad right now b/c i think aldon nielsen's take on dorn has been misconstrued... maria: alan golding did a swell job of delivering your paper... the discussion afterward was provocative, but i had to duck out to hear (none other than) tobias woolf read, who in fact i now see is completely embroiled in the syracuse university creative writing program controversy!... talk about synchronicity... anyway, maria, i'm sorry i missed *you* (AGAIN)... against yunte huang, i guess i would have to say that there *is*, and was, a valid question raised about the gender-specific attendance at this panel... no one raised a question about race as such but this would be valid too, esp. in a panel in which two papers are engaging the popular-poetic around, among other things, issues of ethnicity... geezus yknow i hate to have to count, but what the hell... of the roughly 25 people in attendance, by my count, only 4 were women, and only 1 person of color, if you would like to construct yourself in this way... the woman was simply asking, why is this?---why did this topic draw primarily white males into attendance?... anyway, i would like here to publicly thank alan golding for his hospitality throughout (kass and i left before his house party)... alan is a sweetie, and it was great talking with mark scroggins, christopher beach, michael boughn and others who had the generosity to put up with my occasionally relentless mouthiness... i wish we could all meet f2f more often... esp. in shirtsleeve weather!... i would like to offer but one observation re the conference in general: having attended keynotes as well as assorted 'critical' and 'creative' panels, i was struck by the *relative* lack of crossover in the audiences (excepting the keynotes)... that is, the creative panels, whatever one thinks of such writing, were not particularly well-attended by the critical writers with whom i'm familiar, and the critical panels, whatever one thinks of such writing, were not particularly well-attended by the creative writers i know... of course this is just an impression, as one cannot be in two places at the same time... but if my sense of things is correct, there continues to be a divide around this issue (even an architectural one, given that creative and critical presentations were in separate buildings)... anyway, greetings to all... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 17:42:23 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ira Lightman Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check Comments: To: "F.A. Templeton" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII I really appreciated Fiona Templeton's posting, especially being able to put irony quotation marks in a dramatic/performance presentation, yet does (as Fiona suggests) this rescue a text's harsh remark? The idea of being a rebel, a freedom warrior, against political correctness, sometimes is not against pc but sharing power. Then again, un-pc remarks made by individuals in private can sometimes be a release from the hard work of diplomacy/public behaviour, *by those who are very committed* to anti-racism etc, who have *practical effect* (e.g. on lobbying for funds and conditions) *outside language*. One of the roles of writing has always been to place language kept private so as to bring it "out in the open": the literature of anti-repression. But also one of the roles of writing has always been to place private language and private experience in a way that readers *identify with*; as they share the placing of it *as private*, keeping it *non-public*, in the interests of good public life. Ira Lightman ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 11:58:04 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Repugnant selves "i still wouldn't punch dorn in the mouth, mostly cuz i haven't been trained to do it properly" It's the nose that's his weak spot. Tho I don't approve of poking 67 year old men in the nose either. When I was in Boulder at Naropa a few years back, folks there said that Dorn never let himself set foot on the Naropa campus anymore. I thought at the time (as I do now) that that must feel like a horrible kind of exile. I think it's a mistake to focus this discussion on Dorn, though. Jack Spicer made anti-semitic statements, for example. Clark's homophobia, sick as it seems, is ultimately an extension of the same social ensemble that allowed Eli Siegel ("Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana") to go around "curing" homosexuals or that enabled (forced?) Robert Penn Warren to drop Duncan's work from his magazine when RD came out of the closet in print elsewhere. Considering how much Tom Clark did, positively, to broaden the audience of the New York School, it seems bizarre that this other side should finally win out. One thing that does ring out, though, in the instance of both Clark and Spicer at the least, is that sense they have of themselves as (more or less literally) monstrous. It's what draws Clark to both Celine and Olson (it's the only thing about Olson he seems at all sympathetic toward). I suppose it's an improvement of sorts if this sort of pathology becomes knotted right in such self-identified monstrosity, although as events in the former Yugoslavia have shown, there's plenty of the old banal genocidal potential still around for everyone. I'd love to hear from Kevin (or anyone else, for that matter), what the function of anti-Semitism is in Spicer's work/psyche. Ron Silliman head totally fogged in a bad cold ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 13:12:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Come Around Me If he come around me / I'd like to bow deeply to Anselm Hollo. Have coffee with Anne Waldman / if she come around me. If Maya Angelou come around me / I'll smile and say nothing. Should the late / Frank O'Hara come around me / I'd buy him a stiff drink. Ron Silliman already / come up in my face / and so I sat on the floor. How soon do you need this whole list? / I got other homework. Besides I / gotta spend time / doing mantras of energy / for Nobody Punch Anybody in the Mouth. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 18:14:52 BST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ira Lightman Subject: Irony, drama, sanity, prophecy, LangPo Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII I'd also like to add a thought to Fiona Templeton's thread. I was reading Steve Benson in Language Alive, and Fiona's post helps me to think through some responses I had. Steve Benson seems very much concerned with decency, warmth between people, intimacy, difficult emotions that a relationship, or a social discourse can't easily take. This later work, to me, kept jumping back from itself, ironising itself, in a way I find less powerful than the early material, like the Blue Book book; as if to offer passion but to remain calm and beautiful and funny, in this later work. And that makes me think of the different uses of one kind of political theatricality: camp. One feature of camp, for me, is that it touches lightly on issues for obvious necessary change, and then refuses to debate them ("I've heard that objection about a thousand times, yawn".) The refusal of that kind reminds me of some "it's non-referential" comeback lines to obviously political Language Writing, and LangWriting has the feeling, to me, of gay camp (not least in early Steve Benson); many of its writers had political conviction, civil rights convictions especially, before writing; they don't discover the convictions, they camp them. But, what happens to new convictions that have evolved in communities based on and still practicising the old convictions; what happens to those feeling the new convictions who have no community? What happens to child abuse campaigners who are ironised (eg "don't take it so far, oh come on") by Carol Tavris, writer of very powerful books of seventies' feminism? What happens to those who have latterday visions, for whom God moving in mysterious ways compromises their commitment to a (necessarily) programmatic civil rights politics? If one believes in repressed memories of child abuse, or visions, (I do both), or heresies to one's group's or friends' (or audience of them's) positions, can these come through? Or can they be blocked from coming through in speech/art as speech/performance, by "ironic" tone switching? Can some camp rely on too rigid a pre-established schematic of repression and anti-repression? Though I don't underplay the good role of solid, if reactionary, first-wave progressives - he closed, ironico-sweetly, but not therefore falsely.... Ira Lightman ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 12:33:51 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Louisville Report In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" thanks for the report yunte huang and others. wish i coulda been there. i'm scared about the local fallout/backlash i might get from my paper, which is forthcoming in nowak' corsscultural poetix ragmag. it's still a rough paper but i was under a deadline that mark was very generous about but i still couldn't make it an elegrant and generous piece of writing, nor a sharply analytic one. oh well, you heard the disclaimer here first. and btw, alan golding, thanks a lot for reading the piece! At 1:55 AM -0500 2/23/97, Yunte Huang wrote: >As one of the many presenters on the Lou. Conf., my trip to Lou., I shall >say, is a hell lot of driving, two nine-hour long and lone drive within >two days. So I missed Thursday's and Saturday's show, but I can report on >a few panels I wnet to on Friday. > >Panel C4: Strategizing American Poetics after Williams > Thomas Orange, "Imagism and Objectivism, and the Making of W.C. >Williams" > David Chirot, "Williams, Kerouac, Grenier: Visual Words, Soundful >Visions" > >Good attendance, nice slide shows. For myself, having seen Grenier's pages >(with those impressive two fingers) many times and having heard him talked >(or not talked) about those photos, it still felt fresh when somebody else >talked about them. Orange raised an interesting but arguable point about >Pound's inability to understand early Williams' poetry. > >Panel D6: Readings in Anglo-American Modernist Poetics > > Yunte Huang, "Ezra Pound and the Chinese and Jewish Traditions of >Textual Practice" > Jason Fichtel, "Go Down, Melanctha: African American Spirituals and >Musicality in Gertrude Stein's Melanctha" > Benjamin Lockerd, "The Age of Eliot: Th Age of Einstein" > Michael Campbell, "Comedy Both Human and Inhuman: Stevens' Poetry and >Bergson's Social Corrective Theory of Laughter" > >I have to say, in terms of attendance and response, the panel went very >well. My paper was to relate Pound's hatred in unstable Jewish textuality >to some of the moves he made when he translated (the translation) from the >Chinese. Fichtel's analysis of those names in Melanctha (like Jef-fe-rey, >Me-lanc-tha) in relation to African Spiritual rhythems, which I don't know >much about, was interesting. Lockerd's paper is about Eliot's engagement >with the new development in physics (Einstein's theory), and one person in >the audience turned out to be a former student of Einstein. Campbell read >Stevens as a comedian, which I found to be more interesting than reading >Stevens' metaphysics. Before the panel, I barely knew a soul among the >five-hundred strong mass (except Alan G.) and could recognize a few names >and faces, but after the panel I had some nice chats with people who came >to me. > >Panel F5: US Poetry and/as Popular Culture > >Maria Damon, "When the NuYorican Came to Town: A Study of Poetic >Exchanges" >Christopher Beach, "Poetry on Television?: Bob Holman's 'A United States >of Poetry' as Video-Poetry Revolution" >Joseph Harrington, "America's Richest Poet, or The Meaning of Walt Mason" > >When I walked into the room, a woman was smiling at me, and I thought that >was Maria Damon. But it turned out she was doing an "affirmative action" >count in the room, the result of which she would use to make a point in >discussion. And of course, Maria D. wasn't there, she remote-controlled >Alan Golding to read her kick-'em-in-the-ass paper about the social >exchanges among different poetry communities in Twin City. Harrington and >Beach used Mason and Holman respectively to argue for a popular function >of poetry. It was a lively panel, provoking various response. Alan, now >disconnected from the home-office in Twin City, made three comments, one >of which being whether some video poetry is actually using the mode of >production of the object of its critique (a structural-Marxist point). And >the woman who was counting "heads" earlier on (the reason she was smiling >at me, by the way, I guess, was that I was an Asian male) asked about eh >gender issue involved. > >All and all, it was fun. Sorry didn't make it to more of the sessions, and >to Alan's party on Saturday night, but "we" are still during the six-day >memorial period for Deng's death, so no partying for me. > >Yunte Huang ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 12:40:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check Comments: To: "F.A. Templeton" In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" fiona quotes others: >Hard to make any judgement stick when a tonal change is enough to put a >safe distance between us and our statements, never mind appeals to >indeterminism, group myopia or even (gasp) growth. All the same, though >we might have broken dogmatism up for parts, the appetite for a stonefest >is as insatiable as ever. Which was perhaps why political correctness was >invented. The appearance of humanism yet all the fun of the chase. >Unfortunately, not all baddies are so obliging as to declare themselves in >their utterances. > just read a very good ms that talked about protests against an african art exhibit in toronto(?), to which the curators responded, but those racist images are meant ironically, to which the protesters responded, yes, we know, and the general public knows also that it's ironic, but the irony simply isn't enough to offset the overpowering images which resonate so thoroughly with their NON-ironic racist counterparts... i found that very interesting and worth further investigation as a line of argument. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 12:50:48 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Repugnant selves In-Reply-To: <199702231758.LAA02267@dfw-ix4.ix.netcom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'd love to hear from Kevin (or anyone else, for that matter), what the >function of anti-Semitism is in Spicer's work/psyche. > >Ron Silliman >head totally fogged in a bad cold i think the function of spicer's antisemitism is 1) part oif a general east-coast phobia (part of what he complained of abt nyc wa the "jewfaced children") 2)a sense that judaism was homophobic (cf the story of lot in sodom), and that jews had a more public claim to oppression than gay people, which he resented. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 11:17:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: poets and their repugnant whatevers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Tom Mandel wrote (in part): > 2. Bob Perelman suggests my offer to bash Dorn is close to a male poet's > need to "take it to the street," and how wrong can he be actually. I chose > the words "punch in the mouth" after all. At the same time, I did (twice) > say "if he comes around me" which should be easy to interpret. I'm > suggesting that the aggression is located in the objectionable opinion. And > expressing my annoyance at the fuzzy non-thinking I found on this subject > here in the list -- as if evil required interpretation to be understood > (no, only to be explained away). My technique was what Brecht called > "plumpe Denken" -- gross or vulgar formulation of a thought, a kind of > rhetoric yes. My inner turntable keeps queueing up lovely snatches of (Berrigan's) _Sonnets_ in this connection, particularly "A few rape men or kill coons so I bat them!" from "Mess Occupations," or this variation on a theme: Orange cavities of dreams stir inside "The Poems" Whatever is going to happen is already happening Some people prefer "the interior monologue" I like to beat people up Rachel L. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 11:24:22 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Subject: Re: Repugnant selves Comments: cc: jrothenb@ucsd.edu Just for the record, the incident around rejection of Robert Duncan's previously accepted work (following his published article revealing his homosexuality) involved John Crowe Ransom rather than Robert Penn Warren. This is an unfortunate slip-up but a reminder of how fast gossip and rumor can spread via this medium, i.e. that whatever Ed Dorn (as a pertinent case in point) may or may not have said on some occasion that still hasn't been clarified or pinned down, the poetics rumor mill has now put him (& whoever else) into a racist league (etc.) that probably has little to do with him. In other words, this is a public & not a private medium, a form of broad casting that can rapidly disseminate misinformation in a way that can quickly and actually do harm to people. Nor would it surprise me if some of the dumping on Dorn in particular had some subtext -- of other resentments -- that isn't being stated. What did the man possibly say that puts him in a league (the way some of the correspondence sounds) with Pound's anti-semtism or fascism? What if anything? And if a triviality or not, how will he now get out from under it? Some thoughts, anyway, on a sunny a.m. in San Diego. Jerome Rothenberg jrothenb@ucsd.edu ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 11:42:34 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Repugnant selves In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:50 PM -0600 2/23/97, Maria Damon wrote: >I'd love to hear from Kevin (or anyone else, for that matter), what the >>function of anti-Semitism is in Spicer's work/psyche. >> >>Ron Silliman >>head totally fogged in a bad cold > >i think the function of spicer's antisemitism is >1) part oif a general east-coast phobia (part of what he complained of abt >nyc wa the "jewfaced children") >2)a sense that judaism was homophobic (cf the story of lot in sodom), and >that jews had a more public claim to oppression than gay people, which he >resented. It's Kevin Killian here. Maria, you have hit the nail on the head as far I know; I'd like to add a couple of other points too . .. 3)a pathological rebellion against various strains of Spicer's family myth; the hideous things Spicer wrote came directly after the death of his father 4) a psycho-dynamic between JS and Robert Duncan, in which Duncan was the "good" man and Spicer was cast as the wild fauve; and in general a poetic climate in which savage, problematized irony was valued, the thicker the better I guess I should share my dilemma with you all, what would you have done? (I've been writing, with Lew Ellingham, a biography of Jack Spicer for many years, and some of you know this story already.) A few years ago I was lucky enough to get to examine the papers, which are in private hands, of the poet Stephen Jonas; and imagine my delight when I found among them an "unknown" poem by Spicer. Then imagine my anguish when I read it and saw it was by far the most anti-Semitic of all his writings. A lot of you on this list are scholars, what would you have done? I had actually the option, I suppose, of destroying this poem; for what good would it do to show it to the world? I felt like a character in a Henry James novel--no, in an Irving Wallace novel! I tabled a number of Spicer experts, one of whom advised me gravely to "get rid of it. Spicer's reputation is bad enough already. Besides, does 'the world' need yet another piece of anti-Semitic propaganda?" What would you have done? I had the piece of paper right in my hand, and no one would ever have known. Except I probably would have told someone, I just can't keep myself to myself. Please give me your opinions on this. Thanks, Kevin K. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 14:57:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Wm's quote: "machine made of words..."? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" can anyone tell me where WC Williams defines poetry as "a machine made of words"? randall jarrell quotes it in the 1949 intro to "selected poems", but w/out naming th source... much appreciated luigi ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 12:02:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Repugnant selves In-Reply-To: <9702231924.AA22402@carla.UCSD.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:24 AM -0800 2/23/97, Jerry Rothenberg wrote: >Nor would it surprise me if some of the dumping on >Dorn in particular had some subtext -- of other resentments -- that isn't >being stated. What did the man possibly say that puts him in a league >(the way some of the correspondence sounds) with Pound's anti-semtism or >fascism? What if anything? Dear Jerry, and others, whatever, it's Kevin Killian here, and I have tried to stay out of the Dorn debate as long as possible, but I just can't keep myself to myself. A few years ago I wrote a letter to the editors of the Buffalo magazine "Apex of the M," prompted by an issue of the magazine which contextualized Dorn as a great human being and poet and thinker. My letter was pretty mean I suppose; the editors decided not to publish it because, they said, they don't publish "letters to the editors." This was a policy decision on their part, okay. Kevin Magee and Myung Mi Kim then printed my "Open Letter" in their poetry newsletter, whereupon it became part of the public record. If you would like me to send you a copy just let me know. (If anyone on this list or elsewhere would like a copy, send me your address.) After you read it, Jerry, you will have in fact the answers to some of the questions you pose above. Love, Kevin ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 12:07:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Repugnant selves Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" When did Spicer's father die? How did the family myth occasion "New York jew salesman of amethyst pyjamas?" Please elucidate; for the uninitiated this is all in cypher. I would have included the poem in the Spicer biography, and probably in an appendix to the poems. But I would have made it clear that Spicer didn't publish it. Often professional responsibility outways private feelings. I doubt, at any rate, that Spicer's poems are likely to reinforce anybody's antisemitism. He's not exactly a household name, and access to his work usually involves a fairly sophisticated education (formal or informal) that would likely make one a poor candidate for the skinheads. To have destroyed the poem would have been barbaric, to have suppressed it dishonest and in any case counter to the biographer's task. Even though I hate Spicer's antisemitism, and take it personally, his poetry is very important to me. He's dead, so I can't talk to him about it. But anything that aids my understanding of his work is useful. At 11:42 AM 2/23/97 -0800, you wrote: >At 12:50 PM -0600 2/23/97, Maria Damon wrote: >>I'd love to hear from Kevin (or anyone else, for that matter), what the >>>function of anti-Semitism is in Spicer's work/psyche. >>> >>>Ron Silliman >>>head totally fogged in a bad cold >> >>i think the function of spicer's antisemitism is >>1) part oif a general east-coast phobia (part of what he complained of abt >>nyc wa the "jewfaced children") >>2)a sense that judaism was homophobic (cf the story of lot in sodom), and >>that jews had a more public claim to oppression than gay people, which he >>resented. > >It's Kevin Killian here. Maria, you have hit the nail on the head as far I >know; I'd like to add a couple of other points too . .. >3)a pathological rebellion against various strains of Spicer's family myth; >the hideous things Spicer wrote came directly after the death of his father >4) a psycho-dynamic between JS and Robert Duncan, in which Duncan was the >"good" man and Spicer was cast as the wild fauve; and in general a poetic >climate in which savage, problematized irony was valued, the thicker the >better > >I guess I should share my dilemma with you all, what would you have done? >(I've been writing, with Lew Ellingham, a biography of Jack Spicer for many >years, and some of you know this story already.) A few years ago I was >lucky enough to get to examine the papers, which are in private hands, of >the poet Stephen Jonas; and imagine my delight when I found among them an >"unknown" poem by Spicer. Then imagine my anguish when I read it and saw >it was by far the most anti-Semitic of all his writings. A lot of you on >this list are scholars, what would you have done? I had actually the >option, I suppose, of destroying this poem; for what good would it do to >show it to the world? I felt like a character in a Henry James novel--no, >in an Irving Wallace novel! I tabled a number of Spicer experts, one of >whom advised me gravely to "get rid of it. Spicer's reputation is bad >enough already. Besides, does 'the world' need yet another piece of >anti-Semitic propaganda?" > >What would you have done? I had the piece of paper right in my hand, and >no one would ever have known. > >Except I probably would have told someone, I just can't keep myself to myself. > >Please give me your opinions on this. Thanks, Kevin K. > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 15:40:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: 2 readings Wed. Feb 26th 8PM Nancy Dunlop Rod Smith @ Juliana Spahr's abode, 182 Elm St, upper, Albany Thurs. Feb 27th 7:30 PM Louis Cabri Heather Fuller Rod Smith @ Segue, 303 East 8th (Between B & C), NYC ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 14:59:23 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Neruda/Stalin Dear Mark: What Neruda relates in Memoirs is that he met with Siqueiros on a number of occasions while the latter was in prison for leading the first attempt on Trotsky. The warden would let Siqueiros out, and the two would go off to a bar somewhere for a few rounds to return before morning. If Neruda's account is true, I'd say it raises some questions about his activities and associations in Mexico. I never said that Neruda bore any *central* responsibility in Trotsky's murder, only that his position, enthusiastic pro-Stalin allegiances, and warm liaisons with a person deeply implicated in the events would make it seem quite likely that his politics within the world of leftist factionalism may have been less romantic than the Il Postino variety. A few things in response to your last comments: 1) that Stalin ordered Trotsky's murder and called on leading Mexican Communist functionaries to help carry it out is no more an "assasination theory" than the CIA's involvement in the coup against Allende is a theory. What other "theory" is there? 2) I never said "Neruda was a party to any secret Stalinist plot to thwart the gains of unionized labor." The Third International was very open and eager in fact, during the popular front period, in telling workers that socialism was not an immediate goal. Here it's not a question of whether this was right or not, but it is relevant in so far that in various countries the local CP's branded workers who did not accept this "gradual road" to socialism as fascists and enemies of the working class. In Spain, a conflict Neruda was intimately involved with, this often came down to open attempts to crush the syndicalist unions and NKVD plots to murder individual union leaders. This is not speculation, nor is it speculation to think that Neruda was very clear on the factional politics of the Spanish Republic. 3) I didn't say that Neruda's close friendship with many of those writer's and artists around Trotsky was a convenience to aid the Kremlin's machinations, and Neruda never betrayed any of his friends to my knowledge. I was only suggesting (and I'll stand by the hypothesis) that Neruda's involvement with those in the artistic circle around Trotsky, his obvious approval of the Siqueiros raid, his international prominence as a supporter of Stalin, and his official Party position, make it highly unlikely that he was not consulted by Stalin's agents (who were surely meticulous) and makes it seem reasonable that as a loyal Party member he would have had no problem sitting down to talk if asked. If he could sneak the guy who pulled the trigger out of jail to drink tequila a bunch of times, why does this seem such an "original" strech? Anyway, I want to be clear that my purpose in raising the issue was not to promote Trotsky, who was surely a great deal more cold- blooded than Neruda and clearly capable of more human sacrifice with a clear conscience than most Marxists. Nor, by the way, do I retain any nostalgia, personal or political, for the paranoid and sectarian world of the U.S. old left. Sorry to have "sucked you in" as you say, to what I guess are some shared unpleasant memories! But I would confidently assert again that Neruda was in no way a naif vis a vis the blood-bath against the "Trotskyite class-enemies" in the USSR, and his apparent celebration of efforts to knock-off the leader of it all would seem to support such a position. In saying that I am mainly trying to suggest that passionate politics often lead even the most generously creative minds into very ungenerous stances, and this happened with Neruda in his support (eventhough in his mind, I'm sure, they were tragically necessary) for policies in the Soviet Union that were grossly criminal. Here's an interesting question: Are you aware of any statements by Neruda disavowing his support of Stalin following Khrushchev's revelations? He may well have made them, and if so it would be pleasing to know that. And above all, the underlying point to my previous post and in this one is the following: None of it, whatever the full truth might be, changes one iota Neruda's greatness as a poet. Kent ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 16:22:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: Repugnant selves Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In reply to Kevin's question What to do (or have done, now), I second Mark Weiss's post--preserve it, deal with it. Of course. But there's always one other option--put the poem back in its folder and walk away from the whole project. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 15:51:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: Wm's quote: "machine made of words..."? In-Reply-To: <199702231957.OAA20546@csu-e.csuohio.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII You're looking for "Author's Introduction to The Wedge"--which may be found in WCW's Selected Essays--in edition at hand--the exact phrase in on p. 256-- Thanks to David Israel for RUMI-- some lines of which brought to mind final chapter of Mohammed Choukri's For Bread Alone--when the 20 year old hustler Choukri decides to learn to read & write--(the book is written in classical Arabic; translation was made from a--as i recall--Moghrebi version--) Choukri also did fine book Jean Genet in Tangiers-- "The dog barks--the caravan passes" On Sun, 23 Feb 1997, robert drake wrote: > can anyone tell me where WC Williams defines poetry as > "a machine made of words"? randall jarrell quotes it in > the 1949 intro to "selected poems", but w/out naming th > source... much appreciated > > luigi > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 16:57:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Field of Roses Subject: Re: Repugnant selves Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I guess I should share my dilemma with you all, what would you have done? >(I've been writing, with Lew Ellingham, a biography of Jack Spicer for many >years, and some of you know this story already.) A few years ago I was >lucky enough to get to examine the papers, which are in private hands, of >the poet Stephen Jonas; and imagine my delight when I found among them an >"unknown" poem by Spicer. Then imagine my anguish when I read it and saw >it was by far the most anti-Semitic of all his writings. A lot of you on >this list are scholars, what would you have done? I had actually the >option, I suppose, of destroying this poem; for what good would it do to >show it to the world? I felt like a character in a Henry James novel--no, >in an Irving Wallace novel! I tabled a number of Spicer experts, one of >whom advised me gravely to "get rid of it. Spicer's reputation is bad >enough already. Besides, does 'the world' need yet another piece of >anti-Semitic propaganda?" > >What would you have done? I had the piece of paper right in my hand, and >no one would ever have known. "Does 'the world' need yet another piece of anti-Semitic propaganda?" Of course not. But it's good to know who the enemy is. Let it stand. Linda Charyk Rosenfeld ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 16:06:15 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: Wm's quote: "machine made of words..."? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" luigi, williams's _the wedge_ (1944)... see also cecelia tichi's chapter "machines made of words" in _shifting gears: technology, literature, culture in modernist america_ (u of north carolina p, 1987)... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 09:39:09 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Roberts Subject: AWOL: _Antithesis_ seeking poetry (forwarded) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 08:25:10 +1000 >To: awol@ozemail.com.au >From: awol@ozemail.com.au (AWOL) >Subject: AWOL: _Antithesis_ seeking poetry > >AWOL posting. > >____________________________________________________________________ > > > >_Antithesis_ is an interdisciplinary journal published by postgraduate >students of the University of Melbourne's English and Cultural Studies >Department. Distributed nationally by Australian Writing On Line, it >provides a forum for theoretical/literary/cultural debate and also >publishes short fiction, poetry and graphics. > >_Antithesis_ is curently seeking innovative but technically accomplished >poetry on the theme of Time and Memory. Please send submissions, with an >SSAE, to: The Poetry Editor, _Antithesis_, c/- the English and Cultural >Studies Department, University of Melbourne, Grattan St, Parkville, 3052, >or, if you're running late, to c.magree@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au. Submissions >are due by Friday, 7th March. > >_Antithesis_ is available through the AWOL Virtual Bookshop. To order >simply print this form and mail it (along with Aust$10 plus $3.50 postage and >handling) to AWOL: PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137 (overseas orders please >contact us first). Be sure to include a mailing address. > > > > >AWOL >Australian Writing On Line >awol@ozemail.com.au >http://www.ozemail.com.au/~awol >PO Box 333 Concord NSW 2137 Australia >Phone 61 2 7475667, Mobile 015063970 >Fax 61 2 7472802 > > > > Mark Roberts Student Systems Project Officer & User Representative SIS Team. Information Systems University of Sydney NSW 2006 Australia Phone 93517710 Mobile 015063970 Fax (02) 9351 7711 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 16:48:55 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Repugnant selves In-Reply-To: <199702232007.MAA02965@spain.it.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:07 PM -0800 2/23/97, Mark Weiss wrote: >When did Spicer's father die? How did the family myth occasion "New York jew >salesman of amethyst pyjamas?" Please elucidate; for the uninitiated this is >all in cypher. > >I would have included the poem in the Spicer biography, and probably in an >appendix to the poems. But I would have made it clear that Spicer didn't >publish it. Often professional responsibility outways private feelings. I >doubt, at any rate, that Spicer's poems are likely to reinforce anybody's >antisemitism. He's not exactly a household name, and access to his work >usually involves a fairly sophisticated education (formal or informal) that >would likely make one a poor candidate for the skinheads. > >To have destroyed the poem would have been barbaric, to have suppressed it >dishonest and in any case counter to the biographer's task. > >Even though I hate Spicer's antisemitism, and take it personally, his poetry >is very important to me. He's dead, so I can't talk to him about it. But >anything that aids my understanding of his work is useful. > this sounds sensible to me. actually, i don't know why, but i don't take spicer's or baraka's (former) antisemitism personally, as i do pound's. something to think about there for me. md ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 17:03:46 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: fwded query In-Reply-To: <970223154053_177785946@emout11.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" hey folks, here's a query i'm forwarding, cuz i want to know all of yr answers; good subject, huhn. hi maria - am writing chapter now on heterosexism of blake studies and am interested in contemp queer poets interested in blake - i know about ginsberg spicer merrill duncan and your stuff about angels/ghosts/fairies in your book - which is all wonderful - was wondering if you knew of any other relevant names (any women?) - thanks - andy ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 20:04:40 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: Re: Repugnant selves In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII For me there are antisemitisims and antisemitisms. Pound acted on his; I read his radio speechs in which he among other things (if I remember correctly) calls for the elimination of Jews. They're vile and hateful. Antisemitism "otherwise" - say in 19th or early 20th century Britain was such, that as a friend put it, if we didn't read the work of British anti-semites, we would hardly have any English literature to consider. It was convention, conventional. It was not yet an era when such hatreds were reificed, debated, etc, (maybe Dreyfuss opened the way). For me, likewise, Baraka, who has reconsidered, and always considers, it is different; I too read him. What I'm saying is just as there are _feminisms,_ so there are _hatreds,_ not all equivalent, functioning within different discursive formations, different institutionalizations, and it's a mistake to consider all of them equivalent. Alan http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html images: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Tel. 718-857-3671 CuSeeMe: 166.84.250.149 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 20:07:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: Red Mercury, How it Works MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII -- Red Mercury To have mix't plutonium well within the sphere That draws the thing towards its conclusion, near Mercury, Red Mercury, dissolved, amalgamated Between the doubled spheres, coagulated As source of particles, reaction, raw reaction That lends performance to another action's action: Detonation blurs the bomb; the sun is churned Within, while buildings, carbon, oxygen are burned Fierce among the doubled pounds of nitro gained Heat, more particles, cheap nuclear's attained. Don't run, hide _the thing_ within your fist; Nothing is left, and nothing's hardly missed. ______________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 17:36:37 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Vancouver report In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Rae Armantrout here to give her first Vancouver readings, Thursday and Saturday. Damn, I am living a life that is not easy these days, and I missed her Saturday night reading at the famous Kootenay School of Writing, had to help elsewhere, but made it out to UBC for the 5 pm Thursday reading, lotta excited young people there who have been turned on to Rae's poetry for a few years, and we were all so glad that she read from two books and then all of her new manuscript, no corny talk in between, just that really American woman's voice reading those clear lines, and everyone ate it up, and of course young Peter Carlos Peters was in 8th heaven all thru. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 14:37:49 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: Repugnant selves Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Antisemitism "otherwise" - say in 19th or early 20th century Britain was >such, that as a friend put it, if we didn't read the work of British >anti-semites, we would hardly have any English literature to consider. Daniel Deronda offers much food for thought here. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 17:58:45 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: bromige Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Date: Thu, 20 Feb 97 19:54:24 -0800 >To: bowering@sfu.ca >Subject: bromige >From: Lounge@mindlink.bc.ca (Lounge) > >Hello George > >It's Deanna Ferguson calling. Would you relay this note to David B. >Much appreciated. Wonderful reading this afternoon, eh? > > >David-- >I'm back on e-mail at the above address. Hope you will post me a note. > >Good bye David. > >Good bye George. > >Deanna > George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 19:22:05 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Repugnant selves Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Bravo. Why argue with the dead? the artifact in a different context is a different artifact (paraphrase of Victor Turner's entire corpus). Context is everything. At 08:04 PM 2/23/97 -0500, you wrote: >For me there are antisemitisims and antisemitisms. Pound acted on his; I >read his radio speechs in which he among other things (if I remember >correctly) calls for the elimination of Jews. They're vile and hateful. > >Antisemitism "otherwise" - say in 19th or early 20th century Britain was >such, that as a friend put it, if we didn't read the work of British >anti-semites, we would hardly have any English literature to consider. It >was convention, conventional. It was not yet an era when such hatreds were >reificed, debated, etc, (maybe Dreyfuss opened the way). > >For me, likewise, Baraka, who has reconsidered, and always considers, it >is different; I too read him. > >What I'm saying is just as there are _feminisms,_ so there are _hatreds,_ >not all equivalent, functioning within different discursive formations, >different institutionalizations, and it's a mistake to consider all of >them equivalent. > >Alan > >http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html >images: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ >Tel. 718-857-3671 CuSeeMe: 166.84.250.149 > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 00:17:05 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: playwrights / Vawter Comments: cc: "F.A. Templeton" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Fiona Templeton, discussing work of John Jesurun, writes -- > and b) check out his Philoktetes, in Yale Theatre mag a couple of > years ago, for some of the best American language onstage ever, in a > work of dizzying savagery. It was written for Ron Vawter before he > died. What a strong actor Vawter was. Might be I only caught him once, in The Temptation of St. Anthony (The Wooster Group), late '80s. (One hopes some of those remarkable events are well documented on video.) btw, Fiona, care to share what you're up to, back in the UK these days? regards, d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 01:06:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check Comments: cc: "F.A. Templeton" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT This is to toss in a cinema ref., by way of cross-pollination. Fiona writes -- > The problem is, that tonal change doesn't carry as far as we might > like to think. Try travelling. Even out of the "aesthetic > sphere",or out of where it's ok to insult your friends . . . and she raises questions, with various instances, abt. some of our assumptions as to the validity & scope & (even) nature of irony. Very tricky stuff, this. While not quite on so rarefied a plane, perhaps, this discussion happens to bring to mind a recent, under-rated "mainstream / independent" (think it could be called?) film -- *Mother Night* (w/ Nick Nolte, based on Kurt Vonegut's eponymous novel). There, some real basic-level problems with "not meaning what you say" find much scope for harsh reflection. I'm not saying that the film's stark situation is akin (or even *directly* relevant) to the very different, & much more complex species of not-meaning what's-said found in (e.g.) poetics practice. Rather, the Vonegut tale sets out, in a (so to say) clean, literalist manner, some (at least) simpler aspects of this really large & multiform issue & subject matter. best, d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 01:31:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: JDHollo@AOL.COM Subject: killian / pug selves Kevin Killian's ("public") response to Jerome Rothenberg's clearheaded comments on the potential for malicious and/or ill-informed e-mail gossip--strikes me as rather odd: 1) KK informs us all that his letter to the Apex editors was/is "mean;" 2) he tells us the A editors refused to print it, but that it was then printed in a no doubt fugitive poetry newsletter; 3) he offers to send copy of the letter to anyone of us who wants to see it. Is 1) some sort of preemptive self-criticism? If the author of a piece of writing characterizes it as "mean" even before anyone has set eyes on it, how can it be taken (seriously, as they say) as a 'definitive' answer to factual questions such as those asked by JR? And 3): Why, if it is indeed "the answer," does KK not simply post it on this listserv? Allow me to, hereby, formally challenge him to do so. (PS: Gwyn McVay--I bow deeply to your sweet wit.) Anselm Hollo ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 22:57:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: killian / pug selves In-Reply-To: <970224013158_1779303181@emout12.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear Anselm, Hi! It's Kevin Killian. Yes, 1) was a form of preemptive self-criticism. I don't expect you to take me "seriously." I felt drawn in to the ongoing discussion about Ed Dorn based on personal feelings, not definitive ones. I wrote my "open letter" as a friend and the literary executor of the poet Steve Abbott, who died of AIDS a few years after being awarded the "AIDS Award for Poetic Idiocy," in the pages of Ed Dorn's magazine "Rolling Stock." I write on behalf of one on whom a beaker of poisoned blood was poured by the talented staff artists on "Rolling Stock," one who on his deathbed still strove to understand the motives behind this attack, one who tried to forgive, one who tried so hard to forgive it broke my heart. He is no longer alive, but I am, and why shouldn't I say exactly what I feel? I decline your challenge to post my open letter on the poetics list. I have already offered to send it through the regular mail to anyone interested. However why should I waste the bandwidth of so many who have no interest in the subject? It's quite long and involved and also uses a lot of italics, Anselm. It was published in a "fugitive" poetry publication, true, but don't hold that against it. (You might say "Rolling Stock" was a fugitive publication: that doesn't mean people don't read it, people don't take it to heart, and people don't cry after reading it.) What's "fugitive" and what's not? I forget what happens in the pages of the New York Times Book Review a minute after I read it, but I have not forgotten many of your poems, for example, years after I spotted them in various "fugitive" publications over the years. Yours, Kevin K. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 23:14:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tosh Subject: Re: killian / pug selves Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This Ed Dorn thing is so weird. Especially reading it on the list. Slowly but surely, i am getting a story about his supposed racism, and so forth. But it took like how many letters to this list to get this story out? This is all very interesting, but I can't make a judgement on someone in this fashion. And I am not criticizing anyone on this list - this is for sure hitting a raw nerve (and perhaps rightfully so), but I don't feel comfortable talking about someone behind his back in such matter - meaning Dorn. Perhaps it is best that this subject matter is transmitted by backchannel to interested parties. The issue should be talked about,and it is a good subject to bring up..but again, I am not comfortable with all this. Maybe he has changed and regrets his actions, or perhaps he is a creep galore. Again, I think it is best to focus on the writing and deal with racism within the work,and not talk about someone's private life and their demons - unless of course it is part of their creative work. Tosh Berman TamTam Books ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 00:30:04 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: nico vassilakis Subject: lurkville MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII fuck these pompiss sic! REJOINDERS short n sloppy ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 00:34:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: lurkville Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" There's nothing wrong with being short. Stand tall. At 12:30 AM 2/24/97 -0800, you wrote: > fuck these > pompiss sic! > REJOINDERS > > > > short n sloppy > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 21:20:44 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: poets and their repugnant whatevers In-Reply-To: <331097B6.1DC8@concentric.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Sun, 23 Feb 1997, Rachel Loden wrote: > > My inner turntable keeps queueing up lovely snatches of (Berrigan's) > _Sonnets_ in this connection, particularly "A few rape men or kill coons > so I bat them!" from "Mess Occupations," or this variation on a theme: > > Orange cavities of dreams stir inside "The Poems" > Whatever is going to happen is already happening > Some people prefer "the interior monologue" > I like to beat people up > > > Rachel L. > which Berrigan took in large part from Mes Occupations by Henri Michaux. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 05:58:15 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: poets and their repugnant whatevers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Schuchat Simon wrote: > > On Sun, 23 Feb 1997, Rachel Loden wrote: > > > > > My inner turntable keeps queueing up lovely snatches of (Berrigan's) > > _Sonnets_ in this connection, particularly "A few rape men or kill coons > > so I bat them!" from "Mess Occupations," or this variation on a theme: > > > > Orange cavities of dreams stir inside "The Poems" > > Whatever is going to happen is already happening > > Some people prefer "the interior monologue" > > I like to beat people up > > > > > > Rachel L. > > > > which Berrigan took in large part from Mes Occupations by Henri Michaux. Yes--he credits Michaux ("after Michaux"), and I probably should have mentioned that. Rachel ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 09:22:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: Berrigan likes to beat people up MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Rachel and others: It's interesting to think about Berrigan's line "I like to beat people up," which has surely caused difficulty for many, in light of Ron Padgett's fascinating memoir of Berrigan, "Ted," which I've been reading in what few spare moments I have these days. Berrigan's relation to conventionally "macho" behavior--itself a complex cultural/class phenomena--is equally complex. He seems to have admired some of the more rough and tumble male members of his own family, and in particular admired Padgett's own father, who really did, it seems, have an urge to beat people up. On the other hand, as much as Berrigan would "admire" such people, he spent his life staying as far away from them as possible, and Padgett reports that as far as he's aware of, Berrigan never did get into fights. If I'm reading Padgett right, that Berrigan was NOT a fighter was both a key to his difference from the men he grew up around, and a source of shame for him--he wanted out of that world but remained under the thumb of its definition of male behavior. I'm not going to go on a huge psychological trip here, but there are many indications that Berrigan internalized a violence he disliked but couldn't shake--is there an element of self-hate, self-mocking running throughout his work and his tendency to abuse his body? Can't say because I didn't know him, but it wouldn't surprise me. Teaching at a community college in a small suburb, distant from Washington D.C., but which nonetheless has been reported in the local news as having "the largest amount of gang activity anywhere in Montgomery County," I'm used to dealing with students who have an obsessive relation to violence, even when they're on the run from it. More importantly, though, while I'm hardly in favor of "beating people up," it can be too easy to disassociate that kind of direct physical violence from the less apparent, but in some ways more successfully violent aspects of supposedly "safe" bourgeious society. My experience has been that some people from disadvantaged backgrounds are completely unprepard to deal with this kind of "indirect" violence--nobody punches you, but they deny you opportunities for reasons you never see coming. Indeed in some cases it might even be preferrable to have somebody violent standing in front of you--at least when the knockup punch comes, you have the opportunity to duck. The success of violence inside a disciplinary system is precisely that it no longer has to rely on beating you up directly--it has the incredible ability not only to bruise you permanently, but to leave you convinced that your only opponent was yourself. mark wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun | | to go to extremes" | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 08:24:56 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: killian / pug selves In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" bravo kevin. i have no wish to alienate so august a presence as anselm, but your initial post seemed clear enough to me. someone sez, what did dorn exactly do, you offer to clarify that matter, and your integrity gets impugned. as for the "fugitive publication" matter, perhaps i'm mistaken, but i thought one of the objects of this list, and certainly it is an object of my work, to bring the seriousness of such "fugitive" work to the fore and take it seriously. it does seem kind of weird when fugitivity is used to discredit an artifact *here* of all places. At 10:57 PM -0800 2/23/97, dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote: >Dear Anselm, > >Hi! It's Kevin Killian. Yes, 1) was a form of preemptive self-criticism. >I don't expect you to take me "seriously." I felt drawn in to the ongoing >discussion about Ed Dorn based on personal feelings, not definitive ones. >I wrote my "open letter" as a friend and the literary executor of the poet >Steve Abbott, who died of AIDS a few years after being awarded the "AIDS >Award for Poetic Idiocy," in the pages of Ed Dorn's magazine "Rolling >Stock." I write on behalf of one on whom a beaker of poisoned blood was >poured by the talented staff artists on "Rolling Stock," one who on his >deathbed still strove to understand the motives behind this attack, one who >tried to forgive, one who tried so hard to forgive it broke my heart. He >is no longer alive, but I am, and why shouldn't I say exactly what I feel? > >I decline your challenge to post my open letter on the poetics list. I >have already offered to send it through the regular mail to anyone >interested. However why should I waste the bandwidth of so many who have >no interest in the subject? It's quite long and involved and also uses a >lot of italics, Anselm. > >It was published in a "fugitive" poetry publication, true, but don't hold >that against it. (You might say "Rolling Stock" was a fugitive >publication: that doesn't mean people don't read it, people don't take it >to heart, and people don't cry after reading it.) What's "fugitive" and >what's not? I forget what happens in the pages of the New York Times Book >Review a minute after I read it, but I have not forgotten many of your >poems, for example, years after I spotted them in various "fugitive" >publications over the years. > >Yours, > > >Kevin K. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 07:27:33 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Wm's quote: "machine made of words..."? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > can anyone tell me where WC Williams defines poetry as > "a machine made of words"? randall jarrell quotes it in > the 1949 intro to "selected poems", but w/out naming th > source... much appreciated it seems you already have yr answer, but to broaden a bit you might look at Machine Art & other essays, a recent collect6ion of Pound stuff. c. .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) language code not found. illegal operation error. this program will shut down, & all unsaved data will be lost. if problem persists, consult your systems operator. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 09:37:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Berrigan, O'Hara, and machismo In-Reply-To: from "Mark Wallace" at Feb 24, 97 09:22:55 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark Wallaces comment, "Berrigan's relation to conventionally "macho" behavior--itself a complex cultural/class phenomena--is equally complex," reminded me of O'Hara, and of course of his relation to Berrigan. What he notes of Berrigan is all over O'Hara's work and biography too. Some have pointed to this as a complex dimension of his homosexuality - if he was going to love men, he was going to love *men* in their full, 1950's style cultural construction as tough-guys - hence his attraction to New York artistic toughs like Pollock, Baraka, Corso, and heterosexual men generally. What does this say? I don't know. In part it seems O'Hara's refusal to be stereotypically "gay" (what he couldn't stand in Warhol). In part it seems an indication that he was as trapped in the cultural constructions of his time as everyone else. Somehwere in btwn? -Mike Magee. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 06:43:15 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: Berrigan likes to beat people up MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark Wallace wrote (in part): > > Rachel and others: > > It's interesting to think about Berrigan's line "I like to beat > people up," which has surely caused difficulty for many, in light of Ron > Padgett's fascinating memoir of Berrigan, "Ted," which I've been reading > in what few spare moments I have these days. Berrigan's relation to > conventionally "macho" behavior--itself a complex cultural/class > phenomena--is equally complex. He seems to have admired some of the more > rough and tumble male members of his own family, and in particular admired > Padgett's own father, who really did, it seems, have an urge to beat > people up. On the other hand, as much as Berrigan would "admire" such > people, he spent his life staying as far away from them as possible, and > Padgett reports that as far as he's aware of, Berrigan never did get into > fights. If I'm reading Padgett right, that Berrigan was NOT a fighter was > both a key to his difference from the men he grew up around, and a source > of shame for him--he wanted out of that world but remained under the thumb > of its definition of male behavior. Actually, I have no trouble with those lines; I adore them. My post wasn't meant as any sort of comment on Berrigan's behavior (am not saying that Mark thought it was, but just to be clear). Something in the campiness of the lines convinced me that Berrigan did not go around popping people. I posted them as comic relief, or to turn the discussion on its ear. Rachel L. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 09:57:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Northcutt Subject: dorn, etcetera Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I understand all the fuss about Dorn. What he and T. Clark published re: AIDS is a horrible thing. I'd like to hear their side of it if any of you have contact with them and they're interetested in responding--or have they elsewhere? But on the other hand, it seems to me this list has taken a self-righteous turn. I admit, I don't know much about Dorn personally, but in my last decade + experience in the university, assholes abound and poets abound, and sometimes one is a subset of the other. Actually, it seems to me the university is concretising its self-righteous turn. Among the subjects that seems to always come up, and for good reason, is Pound. I agree, Pound's behavior was evil, no matter how much anyone finds reasons--Italian isolation, etc. But on the other hand, telling the one story, as Bob Perelman has done, gets only one part of the job done--that is, I disagree with whoever it was who lauded Perelman's book on Genius. Perhaps the Stein, Zuk, and Joyce chapters are okay, but I find the chapter on Pound a bit trendy, a bit facile. Perelman takes the Pound of the late 1930s on and reads backwards, mostly ignoring the Pound whose reaction to the avarice that brought on WWI prompted him to take some admirable chances in his early Cantos; I find Perelman's book equally as underdone as those books which look at some of Pound's earlier thought and try to press that over the truely evil shit in Pound's later work. I like Perelman's poetry. I like Dorn's poetry too, especially Slinger. I don't think one has to be schizophrenic to see in the work something useful and something humane, and to see at the same time that it may be set beside something awful in the human being who wrote it, or even in the very next line of the poetry itself. Rather than seeing the world in Hollywood black and white, wouldn't it be more useful to explore the complications of "good" and "evil" (as they've been labled on this list)? In the case of someone such as William Faulkner, for example. It's true of his work that his portrait of blacks is sometimes terribly condescending, and he wasn't exactly an advocate of the Civil Rights movement in the South, but it doesn't mean that his work doesn't have moments which might teach some biggot a lesson in humanity. Opening the subject is preferable to closing it, becoming Rush Limbaugh of the Left. William Northcutt Much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye. William M. Northcutt william.northcutt@uni-bayreuth.de ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 09:03:50 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: Berrigan likes to beat people up MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Rachel Loden wrote: > to turn the > discussion on its ear. Yes, lets. miekal -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 10:43:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check In-Reply-To: <199702212142.NAA19014@andorra.it.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I wouldn't offhand from his work in theory and verse find it likely Perelman is saying anything remotely like that, anything quietistic....Since your response sounds pretty unsympathetic, I have to chirp up to say that I thought his points were important. It is indeed a matter of macho and "street cred" to put your politics forward in a brash in-your-face sort of way. From working on the left as an activist as well as poet for 20 years, I'd say that that's often a temptation, whether in poetry or in life, if your politics are passionate (and especially if they are, as you see it, oppositional..) It is indeed true that from Pound to Andrews a rhetoric of heightened tension is used to sandblast poetry from its esthetic moorings and let politics in. (Perelman's own work has enough snickers about its own politically contradictory positions, to avoid truculence..) There is a closely-related current of political poets who often enact progressive politics in a way that talks around suffering and confusion, rather than ramming thru it with anger; Oppen, Zukofsky and John Taggart (see his book/sequence Loop). Mark Prejsnar On Fri, 21 Feb 1997, Mark Weiss wrote: > Just to be clear, I'm assuming that what you mean by "large political > ambitions" is a social agenda motivated by distress at the situation we find > ourselves in, as opposed to a desire for public office. > Do you think that what you describe is limited to poets? Male poets? Males? > Is it possible that these really are tough and demoralizing times for those > who believe in some sort--any sort--of equitable society? > Are you proposing aesthetic quietism as a proper, even a possible, cure for > those of us who continue to be afflicted with savage indignation? > > > At 03:42 PM 2/21/97 -0500, you wrote: > >Poets with large political ambitions seem to have a hard time avoiding > >stepping in real dreck the last few decades. > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 10:58:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The mention of Neruda and Mayakovsky is helpful....Altho' I'd take it somewhere a little different. The historical specificity of bolshie Communism gives the range of poets connected to it their own interesting twist. Compared to the examples Simon cites, we can put: Oppen; Cesar Vallejo; and the more densely surrealistic Neruda (especially the early sections of Residencia in la Tierra, but also Alturas de Macchu Pichu, which is an atypical part of the Canto General!) This is just to stick to (literally) card-carrying Communists. Oh, and another card-carrying red: Eluard. The latter group for me are among the poets that from my early teens helped define how good poetry interacts with the world..That they did so while actively belonging to as stifling a form of leftism as the 3rd International, is truely commentary on the human spirit, and tends to give me a whole lot of hope for people, progressive politics and the possibilities of poetry...Maybe even for myself. Mark Prejsnar ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 08:23:57 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: playwrights In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm glad that Templeton and Perloff have turned the discussion to playwrights. Dear Fiona and Marjorie, I'm sorry that you will be in the UK and in LA respectively since I am putting on my new play here in San Francisco on March 6. "'Political Animals' is Kevin Killian's farce about the 1996 conventions in which hundreds of cultural and politicial figures (Nancy Reagan, Guy De Bord, Dorothy Arzner, Liffy Dole, Bill Clinton, Scott O'Grady, Christopher Reeve, Mary Matalin etc. etc.) converge on two great US cities, San Diego and Chicago, to promulgate their own dreams of lust, power and despair." My cast includes the visual artists Kate Delos, Phoebe Gloeckner, Cliff Hengst, Scott Hewicker, Rex Ray, Michelle Rollman and Wayne Smith; the poets Norma Cole, Leslie Scalapino and Alicia Wing; the filmmakers Kota Ezawa, Craig Goodman, and Karla Milosevich; actresses Julia Brashares, Ethel Chase and Pauline Facciano; and prose writers David Buuck, Mark Ewert, Nicole Harrison and Kevin Killian. AND many more. The Ansel Adams Center for Photography is producing this play for one evening only, Thursday, March 6 at 7 p.m. They're at 250 Fourth Street (at Folsom). Please call the museum for reservations = (415) 495-7000. I know that on that evening John Jesurun and Mac Wellman will be trembling in trepidation! Thanks, everyone, please try to come if you'll be in the Bay Area a week from Thursday. --Kevin Killian ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 11:20:42 -0500 Reply-To: "Thomas M. Orange" Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: louisville In-Reply-To: <9702240502.AA14560@bosshog.arts.uwo.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII joe amato writes: > [snip]... tobias woolf read, who in fact i now see is completely > embroiled in the syracuse university creative writing program > controversy!... joe could you elaborate?....thanks, t. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 10:22:13 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: Berrigan likes to beat people up Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" mark, yknow, maybe i'm a bit punchy, but there really ARE some folks i've met in academe, and in industry, that i'd like to punch in the snoot... now as to industry: in fact there *were* more than a couple of physical confrontations at the miller brewing co. site where i used to work... in fact i was threatened on two occasions with physical violence (i shit you not), and in fact i ended up having---as in HAVING---to ask one of my "coworkers" who walked up and planted the bottom of his shoe on the side of my desk, HARD, to 'meet me out in the fucking parking lot'... he declined, i am happy to report, and the phenomenon ended there... but i offer this by way of not over-aestheticizing the issues: there are STILL very male, very macho environments "out there" where, sad to say, physical confrontation, largely between males, is, if not the rule, then at least the subtext... on another occasion, i was in a bar, attending a going-away-party, when a "coworker" poured an entire beer down the front of my shirt (at the prompting of his supervisor---"just doing what i'm told, joe")... took great effort on my part to avoid popping that motherfucker, to simply walk away... in fact, i think my behavior on the evening in question was downright *heroic*, but my more macho side has dreams about hitting him to this day... the point here anyway is that academe seems to have institutionalized, as you (and foucault) would suggest, an anti-violence that provides for other sorts of violence... i'm not really quite sure which is worse, provided of course i'm not choosing between a bloody nose and psychological strain... i mean, MY bloody nose... if i AM so choosing, i guess i'll take the strain, not so much b/c i'm such a 'civilized' guy, but b/c a bloody nose, yknow, that really fucking smarts... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 11:41:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Repugnant selves In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII In response to the conundrum of the Spicer poem. I'm not a scholar; a library professional and social activist and poet, however. The impulse to destroy, or even hide, doesn't pull as strongly on me, Kevin...I wonder why... (Spicer has been for me a central inspiration re what poetry can/should be, for 15 years) Apart from not being involved with him as scholar/biographer, what makes me less torn? Is it that given Pound, I feel desensitized to the issue--like, we've done that, we can accept the worst warts on the poets we love, after working the earlier problem through?? I do feel there is one component: As a socialist activist I have often encountered protests of screenings of Birth of a Nation; these are often taking place on a campus where I work in the library system. Usually what these protests say is: we demand that no one ever show this film, and that people boycott this screening, to help carry this out. What I realized long ago, is that it's destructive to tell people they shouldn't know about racist artworks, or to try to keep them out of the culture. Speaking against them, is more empowering both for us as users/makers of art stuff, and as people in a political world. Somehow I don't feel that hiding something done by a poet, changes things for the better. As a socialist I found it literally insane to tell people to join in condemning/avoiding a film they had never seen, to avoid seeing it because some leninist activists TOLD them is had a certain character..What's wierd is the implication that people can be INFECTED by the racist or reactionary character of a work, that they can't protect themselves if they are "exposed". (This reminds me again of the discussion of Pound's fear of infection by the welter of experience he unleashed in the Cantos, discussed by Bernstein.) Mark Prejsnar ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 08:46:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: Re: Berrigan likes to beat people up In-Reply-To: <199702241622.KAA20532@charlie.cns.iit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dear Morality Junkies: What if Ted Berrigan actually did punch someone once? What if a fine, morally pure, socially sensitive poet is mean to his/her partner or children? What if he/she has bad taste in movies? Or puts ugly art on their walls? Or occasionally drinks too much? Or once, in a moment of frail humanity, said something unkind about someone else? What if Gertrude Stein voted Republican? What if she didn't exercise her right of citizenship and vote at all? What if she was (or anyone else) is mean, weak, ill-advised? What if she were a flatterer or dishonest? Where does this end? If we want our writers to be righteous beyond reason, maybe we need to read... what? The fact that some misbehave publically and others (most likely) privately (at least at some point in their long lives) is a fact of most people's existence on earth. Even writers we love. Sorry folks, but it's true. Of us all. Maxine Chernoff ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 11:51:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Neruda/Stalin In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'd like to mention that most of this thread, with sharp contributions from a number of folks, and particularly the Kent/Mark exchange, has been awfully productive, and a very unusual model of political/poetical debate done with respect and with people quite often listening to each other in a non-exclusionary way...Not easily found in outer cyber space, where people are careless; not often enuff found on the non-poetic left, either, for sure! Mark Prejsnar ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 09:55:50 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Repugnant selves MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT kevin wroth: > What would you have done? I had the piece of paper right in my hand, and > no one would ever have known. id have to agree with mark on this one too kevin-- im sympathetic to the urge to destroy the poem (is that protecting spicer from others who will/do write him off as another worthless antisemite --or from himself?) but, yes, that act would have been antithetical to your task as i understand it. besides that, could you have destroyed the poem? or would the poem (& the having destroyed it) have come to underwrite you efforts as biographer? i realize theres a sharp difference between these positions--exposing the poem or concealing it -- & im not suggesting that you would somehow have legibly re-inscribed the absent poem, or not, at least, that the re-inscription would be immediately legible. the question is probably more ethical than textual, though both. oops, now it sounds like im questioning yr ethics--damn this language stuff is a tricky lot. "must...get to...the...point...." well, unless this was a confession, it sounds as if you made the right decision, or right by me. better to deal with these things openly, & the risk that entails, than hope theyll go away. spicer left plenty of antisemitism in his wake; i dont anticipate this instance will be less shocking for that, but, too, it isnt as if you could have purified him through this one destruction. for what its worth, i think you & maria damon are right in factoring in spicers monstrous self-image, which isnt an apology for him either (not that you make it out to be one). far from wanting to punch someone, id like to cry--even for spicer, ugly as he made himself. & im usually so geared up & macho, too. i guess, as mark says, i cant talk to him about it--cant even fight with him about-- & the distance that makes. but also because, well, one always feels hurt by these things. 57 carbuerator, not a candidate for--chris,[ reinscribing machismo .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) language code not found. illegal operation error. this program will shut down, & all unsaved data will be lost. if problem persists, consult your systems operator. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 11:55:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: AWOL: _Antithesis_ seeking poetry (forwarded) In-Reply-To: <199702232239.JAA09309@extra.ucc.su.OZ.AU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I do like one part of the Antithesis posting "innovative BUT technically accomplished poetry" (my emphasis) --just how you say things can speak volumes Mark Prejsnar ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 09:06:19 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I may certainly have misunderstood. It must be lovely for Mr. P to have so many people willing to answer his mail for him. I answer my own. At 10:43 AM 2/24/97 -0500, you wrote: >I wouldn't offhand from his work in theory and verse find it likely >Perelman is saying anything remotely like that, anything >quietistic....Since your response sounds pretty unsympathetic, I have to >chirp up to say that I thought his points were important. It is indeed a >matter of macho and "street cred" to put your politics forward in a brash >in-your-face sort of way. From working on the left as an activist as well >as poet for 20 years, I'd say that that's often a temptation, whether in >poetry or in life, if your politics are passionate (and especially if they >are, as you see it, oppositional..) It is indeed true that from Pound to >Andrews a rhetoric of heightened tension is used to sandblast poetry from >its esthetic moorings and let politics in. (Perelman's own work has >enough snickers about its own politically contradictory positions, to >avoid truculence..) > >There is a closely-related current of political poets who often enact >progressive politics in a way that talks around suffering and confusion, >rather than ramming thru it with anger; Oppen, Zukofsky and John Taggart >(see his book/sequence Loop). > >Mark Prejsnar > > >On Fri, 21 Feb 1997, Mark Weiss wrote: > >> Just to be clear, I'm assuming that what you mean by "large political >> ambitions" is a social agenda motivated by distress at the situation we find >> ourselves in, as opposed to a desire for public office. >> Do you think that what you describe is limited to poets? Male poets? Males? >> Is it possible that these really are tough and demoralizing times for those >> who believe in some sort--any sort--of equitable society? >> Are you proposing aesthetic quietism as a proper, even a possible, cure for >> those of us who continue to be afflicted with savage indignation? >> >> >> At 03:42 PM 2/21/97 -0500, you wrote: >> >Poets with large political ambitions seem to have a hard time avoiding >> >stepping in real dreck the last few decades. >> > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 11:14:49 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: syracuse university... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" thomas, there's a big feature in _the chronicle of higher ed_ (pertaining to that post forwarded in these regions) about how the creative writing program at syracuse university is now under attack from various quarters---from the marxist theory collective there, from grad. students there, from its former director (now at u of alabama)... again: the article, in my view, doesn't do a good job of drawing out the various subtexts... for example: the incident that prompted the brouhaha (the glass of scotch and insult i reported) is surely part of a structural reality that isn't being examined entirely... there's a reason why donald morton, colleague of mas'ud zavarzadeh (sp?) at syracuse (who is, last i knew, teresa ebert's partner---and ebert is at u of albany, where the "red theory collective" is located who signed that forward protesting the chronicle piece)---there's a reason why morton is quoted in the chronicle... and the insult---"stalinist bitch"---is not only a nasty gendered insult, but it would seem to pick up ("stalinist") on the theory-creative split that typifies most english depts... in this case, unreconstructed marxist theory... wolff has evidently been accused by the former director of the program, michael martone, of 'driving him [martone] out'... martone suggests that dobyns (the prof. who through the scotch etc) is being reinstated in part b/c of wolff, that dobyns should have been fired long ago (which sounds accurate to me---though i don't trust martone either, b/c he seems to be taking potshots from afar)... wolff's retort is that he tried to "exert what positive influence he could" in approaching dobyns about his drinking problem... at the same time, writer mary karr, who sides with wolff here, is being accused of using "vulgar language" in class... this latter i can identify with, having mself chosen not to censor my language practices (which are clearly working class in many ways)... anyway, the karr issue is, it seems to me, obscuring some very real structural problems with master-apprentice teaching, and some specific gender issues that are simply not reducible to marxist logics of consumption and production... for example: dobyns evidently "blew up" in one workshop, "using the 'F' word in criticizing a poem written by a student about her rape by her father"... dobyns evidently "explained [to the chronicle] that the poem didn't work because the student was telling the reader what to think rather than allowing the poem to evoke feelings"... the student in question ran weeping from the class... as many women in creative writing classes will tell you, this is precisely the sort of male response that denies women the right to their own 'voices' (setting aside for a second the convention of 'voice'... i am reminded of susan howe's response to olson's poetics in _in relation_ acts 10)... it's a MESS, in short... sure, the "red theory collective" is correct in pointing to structural problems with the hiring of individual 'talents' in creative writing programs, with the status of 'talent' as a commodity... but where, precisely, do the marxists stand on this question of gender, where do they STAND?... i mean, if false consciousness is thereby dismantled (i say IF---it's not clear that this is about althusserian ideology), to what end will it lead, if not the rather dogmatic end suggested by teresa ebert's recent piece in _college english_ (nov. 96 "for a red pedagogy: feminism, desire, and need"): that, over and against "libidinal pedagogy," "red pedagogy demystifies the seemingly unique experiences and the supposed autonomy of desire and shows how they are, in fact, the 'common' effects of the social relations of production in wage-labor capital"... those of you who teach will note that the instructor in this latter classroom scenario is clearly just another master, whose job is to convert students into like subjects... i don't find this especially liberating, though ebert does make some good points along the way... one final point: i have the letter written by jennifer cotter, the student whom dobyns assaulted with his drink and his mouth... i don't find it particularly persuasive, b/c it sounds very much as though she wants her case to be taken as an instance of the effect that the marxist collective wishes itself to surface... that is, while what happened is in my view decidedly part of various structural problems, these problems are not reducible to unreconstructed marxist logic... but that's just me talking... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 12:16:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Berrigan likes to beat people up In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Yes, we're all less than perfect...I dunno if most posts have been fixes for Morality Junkies, though..... Personally I've thought the passion people on the list have been putting into these questions pretty politically (& poetically) refreshing,,== Most of us live in a day-to-day world where real live political issues never get brought up with any seriousness at all!! ever! in relation to poetry, or anything else.. mark Prejsnar ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 09:18:58 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Repugnant selves Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I have another suggestion about how to deal with the Spicer poem and other objectionable writing. In the not-so-old days the custom was to translate prurient passages of texts into Latin, so as not to endanger the minds of those (usually from the lower orders) who had not been uplifted by the study of, say, Petronius. That would work. Need I say that I'm being facetious? At 09:55 AM 2/24/97 MDT, you wrote: >kevin wroth: >> What would you have done? I had the piece of paper right in my hand, and >> no one would ever have known. >id have to agree with mark on this one too kevin-- >im sympathetic to the urge to destroy the poem >(is that protecting >spicer from others >who will/do write >him off as another >worthless antisemite >--or from himself?) >but, yes, that act would have been antithetical to >your task as i understand it. > >besides that, could you have destroyed the poem? >or would the poem (& the having destroyed it) >have come to underwrite you efforts as biographer? >i realize theres a sharp difference between these >positions--exposing the poem or concealing it -- >& im not suggesting that you would somehow >have legibly re-inscribed the absent poem, or not, >at least, that the re-inscription would be immediately >legible. the question is probably more ethical than >textual, though both. oops, now it sounds like im >questioning yr ethics--damn this language stuff is a >tricky lot. "must...get to...the...point...." > >well, unless this was a confession, it sounds as >if you made the right decision, or right by me. >better to deal with these things openly, & the >risk that entails, than hope theyll go away. spicer >left plenty of antisemitism in his wake; i dont >anticipate this instance will be less shocking for >that, but, too, it isnt as if you could have purified >him through this one destruction. > >for what its worth, i think you & maria damon are >right in factoring in spicers monstrous self-image, >which isnt an apology for him either (not that you >make it out to be one). > >far from wanting to punch someone, >id like to cry--even for spicer, ugly >as he made himself. & im usually so >geared up & macho, too. i guess, as >mark says, i cant talk to him about >it--cant even fight with him about-- >& the distance that makes. but also >because, well, one always feels hurt >by these things. > >57 carbuerator, not a >candidate for--chris,[ >reinscribing machismo >.. >christopher alexander, etc. >calexand@alexandria.lib.edu >(Marriott Library Computer Systems) > >language code not found. illegal operation error. >this program will shut down, & all unsaved data will be >lost. if problem persists, consult your systems operator. > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 12:24:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: spell check and ethics check In-Reply-To: <199702241706.JAA07577@switzerland.it.earthlink.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Mark Weiss-- actually, since this little joke has been lobbed at several folks, not just me-- Most of us were trying to use Perelman plus various responses to his posting as a springboard for some comments of our own; the point of all those posts was really to carry the exchange forward..Perelman was a bit of a pretext (..we all use each other, as pretexts, at times..) --don't actually think he should feel that people were answering for him...most of us weren't.. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 12:31:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Repugnant radio poetry city Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Poetry City starts back up in the evenings and on the radio *** =46riday March 7 come see Lee Ann Brown read with Quentin Crisp Thursday March 28 in from the other side Lyn Hejinian and Travis Ortiz Thursday April 24 New York is visited by Maureen Owen and Eddie Berrigan =46riday May 16 Poets of similar temperament Bob Holman and Dug Rothschild r= ead Poetry City proper is in the offices of Teachers & Writers Collabora=DDive 5 Union Sq W NYC 10003 (7th fl) --- get off the air! poetry city begins its second season of radio broadcasts on WNYE's Poetry-in-the-Morning show, Tues and Thurs, 11:45 am-noon 91.9 FM = NYC 2/27 -- Steve Carll 3/4 -- (not po city) Donald Hall 3/6 -- Daniel Bouchard 3/11 -- David Mills 3/13 -- (not po city .. but only cause of schedule conflict) Karen Volkman 3/18 -- Anselm Berrigan tune in! we're on in stereo .. J ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 09:54:20 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: violence and the threat of violence Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Years ago, when I still lived in Brooklyn, I bought a car stereo at Crazy Eddie's and took it to the mechanic who did their installations. He told me what the service would cost me, which was pretty hefty. I was more than a little annoyed. "But they told me at the store that installation was included," I told him. "It isn't, but you can take it up with Sal, the guy fixing his car over there. He's the dapertment manager." So I went to talk to Sal, who got incredibly angry, and accused me of lying. "Wait a minute," I said, "I'm not accusing _you_ of anything. You weren't the salesman." "He works for me. You accuse him you gotta deal with me." Things went from bad to worse. Pretty soon I was threatening to talk to Sal's boss, and Sal was threatening to beat me up, to which I countered that if he did I'd call the police. There didn't seem to be any end in sight to the downward spiral. Then I was afflicted with a rare moment of clarity. I should have known better--I lived in the neighborhood. And I did social work with working class people every day. Sal didn't really want to beat me up, and I didn't really want to have him arrested or fired. We were invoking the power moves of our respective social classes. Sal was working class--he had not been raised with the assumption that he could appeal to higher authorities to do his dirty work for him, and he probably thought it dishonorable to do so. I was middle class--I had been raised to abhor violence and the threat of violence, but also to assume that I had the power to call in the troops. We were both doing the same thing, but in different languages. In my language Sal's provocation was to be taken more seriously than intended, as was mine in Sal's language. But they were both just power moves. This whole series of reflections took a lot less time than it takes to write about it. I realized that I was just venting: I would have to pay anyway. What was the point of the argument? Was my honor at stake? So I backed off, and we each went to our corners. Afterwards I reflected that I wasn't sure who was being more violent. I was threatened with a bloody nose. Sal was threatened with jail and loss of livelihood. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 18:20:07 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alaric Sumner Subject: Mac Wellman play Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I would be interested in a more detailed "enthusiasm" from Marjorie Perloff (or (forefend) the opposite) from other people who have seen Mac Wellman's play since I will not be able to see it (unless it tours to UK). Either list if you think others will be interested, or if preferred, email me direct with comments. Is Mac on this list? Is he emailable? Have the poems of his I published in "words worth 2:1" been published in book form? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 12:45:11 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Berrigan likes to beat people up In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i'm puzzled by the conflation of "morality" with the desire of some people on the list to discuss the intersections of politics and poetry, and where we stand with it. At 8:46 AM -0800 2/24/97, MAXINE CHERNOFF wrote: >Dear Morality Junkies: What if Ted Berrigan actually did punch someone >once? What if a fine, morally pure, socially sensitive poet is mean to >his/her partner or children? What if he/she has bad taste in movies? Or >puts ugly art on their walls? Or occasionally drinks too much? Or once, >in a moment of frail humanity, said something unkind about someone else? >What if Gertrude Stein voted Republican? What if she didn't exercise her >right of citizenship and vote at all? What if she was (or anyone else) is >mean, weak, ill-advised? What if she were a flatterer or dishonest? >Where does this end? If we want our writers to be righteous beyond >reason, maybe we need to read... what? The fact that some misbehave >publically and others (most likely) privately (at least at some point in >their long lives) is a fact of most people's existence on earth. Even >writers we love. Sorry folks, but it's true. Of us all. > >Maxine Chernoff ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 12:46:04 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Neruda/Stalin In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" yes. At 11:51 AM -0500 2/24/97, Mark Prejsnar wrote: >I'd like to mention that most of this thread, with sharp contributions >from a number of folks, and particularly the Kent/Mark exchange, has been >awfully productive, and a very unusual model of political/poetical debate >done with respect and with people quite often listening to each other in a >non-exclusionary way...Not easily found in outer cyber space, where people >are careless; not often enuff found on the non-poetic left, either, for >sure! > >Mark Prejsnar ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 13:43:53 -0800 Reply-To: evadog@bitstream.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Broad-cast MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Check. Check, one, two. Is this microphone on? Jerry Rothenberg wrote: > This is an unfortunate slip-up but a reminder of how fast > gossip and rumor can spread via this medium, . . . > the poetics rumor mill > has now put him (& whoever else) into a racist league (etc.) . . . > > In other words, this is a public > & not a private medium, a form of > broad casting > that can rapidly > disseminate misinformation in a way that can quickly and actually do > harm to people. . . . > What did the man possibly say . . . > (the way some of the correspondence sounds) So here we are narrow-casting to one an-other, poets mind you. Whispering in each others ears. Reading tightly, together. Because if we really othered the other, as opposed to just othering them they'ed be, well, us, only different, not even poets. And what of that difference? Are there any *others* on the list, out there in list-land, or is that an-other list on all the ships at sea? Broadcast information, or is that misinformation, one would think, is speed itself. Anon. The best sound quality broadcast is the unpacking of the libraries frequency. Tuned in on the dial the personal histories of the intimacies and assignations shared with a lover who wee discover, post-coital, was given to the ressentiment, of, say, jew hating, which of course is more severe than the manufacture of simulated pink-triangles of the human-immunodeficency virus. We can par-don that rolling-stock broad-cast because our library is ordered. Safe-sex. Slowed down to a card-catalog where the surgical aesthetic of beauty and death are kept in different drawers. A retrovirus in check in a meduium that can quickly and actually do harm to (other) people. Slow. Bob Perlman wrote: >This isn't something to be clarified in the rapidfire ouija board regime of the > listserv, probably. Rapid insemination and spectral speed regimes. So we move TOO FAST in this regime. A diagnosis. A metastasis. An opportunistic infection. Not post-modern, or post-auschwitz, but post-pound, post-pound-consciousness, post-pound-revelations, post-pound-nuanced analysis or is that past not post(?), what you and I are not about I assure you; rather than past(?) is that post-gulf-war, or is it post sarejevo, post-stonewall, or, maybe *during*, live broadcast, during the riot, like Rodney King ventriloquized in the voice of the LAPD during the riot to broadcast on the too fast ouija board, "can't we all just get along?". Post-today? Right. Now is now. Moving fast. Word up. A ctually doing harm. Is this the regime-brick road to the city of something to be clarified? Those in P-zones and P-zoos will be held to account when it is clarfied. At which point it will be broadcast. EzrA pOUND, radio broadcast transcript, "America Was Promises," 1941: "Europe callin', Pound Speakin', Ezry Pound speakin . . . "I do what I can to keep an even tone of voice; now when I drop my voice, they turn on more current. . . . "They git that way readin' jew papers for 40 years. They git that way hearin' kike radio, and I propose to use the word KIKE regardless of race. Use it to cover honorary jews AND TO EXCEPT honest jews where we find 'em. . . ." [emphasis in original] Join me on that band-width methodone program, you morality junkies, that methodone of 'regardless of race' that too is addictive, the liberal delirium tremens of 1st world satiation leading in the majority of cases in our sample to blindness in one eye, placebos notwithstanding. 12 steps minus one, or was that two. Check. Check, one, two. "The tension between the radio experience as a private experience and a public one is at the heart of radio ideology. Radio and telephone were the first electrical "personal appliances," . . . Radio gave the sense of intimacy with electricity, a sense of control over technology: at the same time radio's wirelessness, the invisibility of its method, made it subject to the greatest mystifications . . . In a prophetic misreading, the American Federal Communications Commission officials who monitored and transcribed the Italian broadcasts didn't recognize the word Celine and recorded it as Stalin, thus substituting a political totalitarian for what is now recognizable the quite specific telephonocentric of a French fascist aesthetic." Alice Kaplan, _Reproductions of Banality: Fascism, Literature and French Intellectual Life_. Slow. Quiet. Distinction must be clarified. Substitions made. A fugative publication is loose, high on amplification. Lock up your wives and daughters. Watch your mail. Take care with the phone, picking up the line. Our humane libraries are in order. Sustenence. Watch for others lurking about. They may not know you. Speak low when you speak of love as Lotte Lenya says. Check. Can you here me in the back? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 16:15:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Lorenzo Thomas, Erica Hunt Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Can anybody give me contact information (email or phone) for Lorenzo Thomas and Erica Hunt? Please send backchannel. Thanks. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg kellogg@acpub.duke.edu Box 90023, Duke University (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. --Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 11:01:59 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: dorn, etcetera Comments: To: William.Northcutt@UNI-BAYREUTH.DE The self-righteous turn: and here we are once again. It seems native to the list, every so often it has to revert to this silly mood. In what sense 'native' though? Because present poetics' issues somehow demand it, because it is inextricable from the poetic practices which are most compelling to list members. Or because it's 'native' to the culture, which is why its occurrence harmonizes so well with daily media experience, 60 minutes, National Inquirier etc. the same in the US as in NZ? Is this what I log on for in the mornings? And what IS this mood? this 'turn', this 'culture of'? This is: The Moral Imagination of Our Time. What is the difference from it, the 'resistance' to it which I look for on the list? Any answers? Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 17:16:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: dorn, etcetera In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII which self-righteous turn? is there only one? On Tue, 25 Feb 1997, Wystan Curnow wrote: > The self-righteous turn: and here we are once again. It seems native to > the list, every so often it has to revert to this silly mood. In what > sense 'native' though? Because present poetics' issues somehow demand > it, because it is inextricable from the poetic practices which are most > compelling to list members. Or because it's 'native' to the culture, > which is why its occurrence harmonizes so well with daily media > experience, 60 minutes, National Inquirier etc. the same in the US as in > NZ? Is this what I log on for in the mornings? And what IS this mood? > this 'turn', this 'culture of'? This is: The Moral Imagination of Our > Time. What is the difference from it, the 'resistance' to it which I > look for on the list? Any answers? > > Wystan > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 11:29:59 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: dorn, etcetera Dear Joseph, There are indeed many turns to self-righteousness. The phrase was William Northcutt's, who wrote: I understand all the fuss about Dorn. What he and T. Clark published re: AIDS is a horrible thing. I'd like to hear their side of it if any of you have contact with them and they're interetested in responding--or have they elsewhere? But on the other hand, it seems to me this list has taken a self-righteous turn. I admit, I don't know much about Dorn personally, but in my last decade + experience in the university, assholes abound and poets abound, and sometimes one is a subset of the other. Actually, it seems to me the university is concretising its self-righteous turn. Among the subjects that seems to always come up, and for good reason, is Pound. I agree, Pound's behavior was evil, no matter how much anyone finds reasons--Italian isolation, etc. But on the other hand, telling the one story, as Bob Perelman has done, gets only one part of the job done--that is, I disagree with whoever it was who lauded Perelman's book on Genius. Perhaps the Stein, Zuk, and Joyce chapters are okay, but I find the chapter on Pound a bit trendy, a bit facile. Perelman takes the Pound of the late 1930s on and reads backwards, mostly ignoring the Pound whose reaction to the avarice that brought on WWI prompted him to take some admirable chances in his early Cantos; I find Perelman's book equally as underdone as those books which look at some of Pound's earlier thought and try to press that over the truely evil shit in Pound's later work. I like Perelman's poetry. I like Dorn's poetry too, especially Slinger. I don't think one has to be schizophrenic to see in the work something useful and something humane, and to see at the same time that it may be set beside something awful in the human being who wrote it, or even in the very next line of the poetry itself. Rather than seeing the world in Hollywood black and white, wouldn't it be more useful to explore the complications of "good" and "evil" (as they've been labled on this list)? In the case of someone such as William Faulkner, for example. It's true of his work that his portrait of blacks is sometimes terribly condescending, and he wasn't exactly an advocate of the Civil Rights movement in the South, but it doesn't mean that his work doesn't have moments which might teach some biggot a lesson in humanity. Opening the subject is preferable to closing it, becoming Rush Limbaugh of the Left. William Northcutt Wystan Curnow ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 11:55:40 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: dorn, etcetera Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I think it is more righteous than self righteous. And i for one prefer righteousness to its opposite, whatever that maybe. Dan ps Here, the oun is shining, the tide is high and i have a new dog, or he has me. (A newfie pup named Moby - though for a while yet he's more of a sprat) Should whatsisname come roun' me i'll set me dog a lickin him >But on the other hand, it seems to me this list has taken a >self-righteous >turn. I admit, ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 12:01:41 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: dorn, etcetera Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sorry should have read... Um... Noun? >ps Here, the oun is shining, ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 22:19:40 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Neruda and Stalinism In-Reply-To: <199702221619.IAA21682@denmark.it.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mark Weiss's long message on Neruda and Stalinism in the USA was really interesting. Thanks for that. I am wondering, though: did USAmericans really believe that the overthrow of the government in Guatemala was somehow not done by the USA? I have never heard of anyone outside the USA that did not know that from the start. Oh, and if I remember rightly, Neruda helped the killers of Trotsky get out of Mexico, didnt he? Or am I mixing up a couple of things? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 22:28:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: people-not-here-talk -Reply In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >On Fri, 21 Feb 1997, George Bowering wrote: >> >> I was wondering why the anti-Dorn animus, too; only people I can remember >> his dissing are rednecks. > >Some of my best friends are rednecks . . . > >Cheers, >David ---hey, my mother's folks came from the Ozarks. They were part of the sort-of honky railroad, running for freedom to Canada. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 00:32:50 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Neruda/Stalin/Berrigan likes to beat people up/dorn, etcetera Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This seems to go on and on so I can't help adding my bit. In my reading of events more harm comes from those who seek perfection in themselves and others. I'll keep my feet of clay, allow them theirs, and cast not the first line: "I can no longer tell Which is beast Which man" Akhmatova, Requiem This is not to say that all sins are equal. tom bell ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 21:22:39 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Neruda and Stalinism Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I remember the coverage of the Guatemala coup at the time--big spread in Life magazine that was unadulterated CIA feed. In my family everyone knew--but we also knew that the CIA probably had something to do with the Dodgers losing the World Series. I doubt very much that the average estadosunidense, as they call us in Guatemala (really) questioned the official story, and I'd guess that most of my fellow citizens who know where Guatemala is still don't. As to Neruda's complicity with that gang, quien sabe? But I'd hope we don't go back into innuendos without presenting the evidence. The world is sad enough as it is. At 10:19 PM 2/23/97 -0800, you wrote: >Mark Weiss's long message on Neruda and Stalinism in the USA was really >interesting. Thanks for that. > >I am wondering, though: did USAmericans really believe that the overthrow >of the government in Guatemala was somehow not done by the USA? I have >never heard of anyone outside the USA that did not know that from the start. > >Oh, and if I remember rightly, Neruda helped the killers of Trotsky get out >of Mexico, didnt he? Or am I mixing up a couple of things? > > > > >George Bowering. > , >2499 West 37th Ave., >Vancouver, B.C., >Canada V6M 1P4 > >fax: 1-604-266-9000 >e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 01:21:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: JDHollo@AOL.COM Subject: the misunderstood fugitive Dear Kevin, Luigi-Bob, Maria Damon, & everybody: It was not my intention, in the least, to use the term 'fugitive' in any kind of pejorative sense, merely as--especially re: publications--as shorthand for here today, gone tomorrow. Like, for instance, the Piero Heliczer issue of Dennis Cooper's magazine Little Caesar--late Seventies, early Eighties? --which I lost & wd dearly like to retrieve (if anyone has a spare, or knows where one might be found, please backchannel)... As for the Rolling Stock AIDS number, it certainly was an instance of ill-informed and hence ignorantly excessive satire--*failed* satire, in every which sense: artistic, political, civil, human. I have always regarded it on a par with was it The Realist's? piece on the Kennedy assassination --offensive sledgehammer grossness. Part of a perhaps peculiarly U.S. strain of 'oppositional' journalism harking back to the Sixties (when it did have a few brilliant exponents-- the late Terry Southern comes to mind, and R. Crumb, of course). But to whom should, and would, creators of such misbegotten garbage now apologize? Ah, sigh. Buenas noches. Anselm Hollo ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 03:20:10 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: FRANK as HANK? Hey, is it okay if I agree with both Kevin Killian AND Maxine Chernoff? (oh, David Bromige, where are you?) But--I think I wanted most to respond to Michael Magee today. (any relation to Kevin Magee. Whatever happened to kevin Magee?) in reference to Berrigan getting his tough guy machismo from O'Hara--Well, I will try to brackett the question of Berrigan for now, but this will be hard to do, because a comparison has been urged and to me it seems that O'Hara definitely has less of this tough guy machismo than Berrigan--especially considering the fact that he was writing in a generally more macho time (Olson, and others) while Berrigan--though Tulsa--i still associate with the influx of many women writers (Mayer, Notley, Waldman, etc.). Of course, O'Hara didn't hang out with writers as much as Berrigan did....but he did hang with many female painters. Yeah, Mike, maybe compared to Warhol O'Hara is less "stereotypically gay" but not compared to, say, Ginsberg.....(and how stereotypically gay was even warhol?).... One thig I notice in my recent standing still AS sitting in cafes with poets is a tendency amongst younger poets (those who seem to react against the L school, or, never were very affected by them in the first place, and tend to see themselves more in a NYSCHOOL kinda thing, and more of the O'Hara/Berrigan/Mayer (and not even Ashbery as much) thing) to see O'Hara as primarily a poet who wrote about his friends, etc. I call this reading O'Hara THROUGH Berrigan...and sometimes there is a tendency to accuse O'Hara--again IN CONTRAST to Berrigan--as CLASSIST, and I've been wondering if this accusation of O'Hara's alleged classism (but see his essay on PASTERNAK!, for instance) may be a subtle kind of homophobia that comes out of the infinitely more heterosexual aesthetics of later ny school males. I am not suggesting that one must be rich to be gay or poor to be straight (or even "cruel to be kind/ in the right measure"), just trying to theorize history from scant little details of "deep gossip" and in so doing I see O'Hara can NOT really be pinned down to a kind of homosocial machismo that you, Mike, seem to attribute to him. I am not denying that there are elements there of this, but they seem--especially for his time (more the 50's than the 60's) to be not dominant......(his love for pollock being no greater than his love for frielecher or hartigan, or even joan mitchell, who are still quite underrated painters viz-a-viz the great DeKooning and yet more Picasso retrospectives at MOMA....)......Chris S. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 07:55:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: FRANK as HANK? In-Reply-To: <970225032009_1746548103@emout02.mail.aol.com> from "Chris Stroffolino" at Feb 25, 97 03:20:10 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit re: Chris Stroffolino's comment, "O'Hara can NOT really be pinned down to a kind of homosocial machismo that you, Mike, seem to attribute to him." Chris, I actually agree with you. I was posing the O'Hara/machsimo issue as a question rather than as a statement since it seems to be around as an issue - Gooch makes alot of O'Hara's attraction to heterosexual "macho" men in his very chatty biography and there's certainly some truth to that. BUt I like your notion that some of the conventional wisdom on O'Hara is a consequence of reading him through Berrigan. Thanks for the response. -Mike. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 09:33:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: Re: dorn, etcetera In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.16.19970224160115.45c7520a@btr0x1.hrz.uni-bayreuth.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 24 Feb 1997, William Northcutt wrote: > I understand all the fuss about Dorn. What he and T. Clark published re: > AIDS is a horrible thing. I'd like to hear their side of it if any of you > have contact with them and they're interetested in responding--or have they > elsewhere? I first heard about Dorn's madness almost ten years ago, when someone told me that Creeley had been awarded the AIDS prize. I didn't understand the frightening logic behind his vile attitudes and it wasn't until Kevin's writing on this was made available to me that I understood the depths of that problem. I appreciated Kevin's writing and have observed this kind of thinking in places other than Dorn-world (such as real world). I wish/hope that K.K. would post that text here. What else is this list for? I mean c'mon... As far as Mr. Northcutt's comment above: Ed & Jennifer Dorn tried to sign up to Poetics list several times. I deleted them like I would have Hitler, but to no avail, they kept re-subbing. Eventually, I let them pass through, with my finger on the "delete" key, I waited expectantly for some coke-induced froth from his evil lips--did he ever post? A search of the archives would reveal. As far as I know, they remained on this list until recently... ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 09:45:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: killian / pug selves MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Well, Maria, personally, I'd find it easier to accept the proposal that this discussion was about the intersection of poetry and politics if anybody ever mentioned any poetry (or, god forbid, poetics). The actual discussion seems about the intersection of personality and politics (YAWN!). Let's see, we're makin' a list and checkin' it twice . . . By the way, to the guy who named his newfie Moby (sorry, I lost your name), haven't you heard that Melville's work is now on the proscribed list because he allegedly abused his wife? Better change the dog's name quick. Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 09:59:12 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: jarnot@PIPELINE.COM Subject: Onward Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" in response to joel kuszai's post: "As far as Mr. Northcutt's comment above: Ed & Jennifer Dorn tried to sign up to Poetics list several times. I deleted them like I would have Hitler, but to no avail, they kept re-subbing. Eventually, I let them pass through, with my finger on the "delete" key, I waited expectantly for some coke-induced froth from his evil lips--did he ever post? A search of the archives would reveal. As far as I know, they remained on this list until recently..." I think it's very creepy that people are being kept off this list. I've actually found this whole discussion very disturbing. Aren't there more productive things to do in this forum than get involved with name calling, etc.? I mean really-- the "coke-induced froth from his evil lips"? I've been tired of this discussion since the idea of punching people out came up. It makes me think of something that Robert Duncan says about how you can't reject Mae West as vulgar or Hitler as the enemy because that potentiality exists in everybody. I thought the people on this list were progressive thinkers and writers-- if Dorn writes nasty crap it's because he wants a reaction like this-- he's succeeded in getting people to waste their time talking about him. yours, lisa jarnot ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:19:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Lewis Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thank you, Maxine C. on your comments re: Berrigan and Dorn. I've felt part of the marginalization of ted's work is less the occasional & mostly comical references to violence than to his references to his drug taking. Ted's poetry, in a way, broke the shabby curtain between personal life and public persona & more of his private life is in their than most poets. If you read the bios, folks like lowell, berryman, james wright & others were as big pillheads as ted, but THEY never wrote a line like "the pills aren't working" in fact, the keepers of their flames admit to their drinking problems (still ok in the culture), but keep drug use out the narrative (indication of an evil character). As for the question of violence: the potentiality of giving and receiving a knuckle sandwich was and still is part of the world of working class men (and if we go by G. Lakoff's theory that our metaphors shape our outlook on the world--the "jokey" violent metaphors that I always here on the street on hoboken between young men makes sure there is ready cannon fodder out there in the world). Ted, I think, struggled with that inheritance -- his workshop comment "The only men capable of writing a real love poem are gay men" reflects some of that conflict Around '69, ted was beaten up by two punks in Tompkins Square Park -- an incident he referred to in interviews and letters. It changed him somewhat-- tom clark feels it brings a dramatic change in his Late Returns memoirs. I think serious appreciation of Paul Blackburn's poetry was ruined at the time of the publication of the collected poems by speculation of his outlook towards women, etc -- without attempting to contextualize his stance against the attitudes of the time (a marvelous, tho' unknown account of gender relations in the Lower East Side in the early 60's occurs in Barbara Giurzatti Harrison's memoir of growing up as a Jehovah's Witness(?). Joel lewis ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:47:07 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco Subject: Re: violence and the threat of violence MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain Mark: YOU should have kicked HIS ass! No wait, I am being rash. Here comes a rare movement of clarity . . . In the lingo of the neighborhood I grew up in, when we discussed "power moves of respective social classes," etc. etc., you got "psyched out." A psych-out is a line in the sand (in the desert of intimidation) which the loser won't cross. It's my bet that that line is (or was) policy at Crazy Eddie's. In fact, if you had crossed just two more lines in that office you may have got what you wanted. A threat to call the police may work in some arenas, but here you were misplaying your cards. (How many metahpor-cliches can I go?) Actually, if you HAD called the police, 1) you would have had to leave the office-- you could hardly say, "oh shoot, Crazy Eddie, can I borrow your phone to call the cops on you?" and the game would have changed while you were gone, and 2) the cops probably would have arrested YOU for causing a disturbance. While you were sitting in the cruiser you would have seen Officer McGruff admiring your recent purchase and Eddie handing it to him for his own as a token of goodwill. No, the cops would have been no use to you there and therefore your threat was no good. Those offices--or shops, whatever-- are usually pretty messy. Now, I don't know if you would have been capable of kicking this guy's ass or anybody's ass for that matter, or not. From the tone of your posts you seem like a peaceful guy, not the ass-kicking type. But like I say, those offices are pretty messy and what you lack in violent behavior or ill-will you can make up for in brief spasms of psychotic tendencies; say, grabbing a broom, a crow bar, or one of those little gum ball or pistachio dispensers, and slamming it down on the man's desk as furiously as possible while screaming, "I'm not going to pay a lot for this muffler." You needn't worry about Crazy Eddie-- or whatever the hell the guy's name is-- attacking you because it was never his intention in the first place. They probably contract out work like that-- have someone else kick your ass in a 7-11 lot somewhere and then steal the radio back when they're done or something. This guy is a businessman after all, he can't spend the rest of the day selling stolen car parts and dealing with customers with your teeth sticking out of his knuckles and your blood all over his shirt. Anyway, I noticed in your post a big void: you say both of you went to your respective corners to reflect but it seems only you did. The other guy was probably figuring out what kind of time he was going to be set back by dealing with you. Ultimately, it would have been more "dishonorable" to let you get the better of him than it would be to appeal to a higher authority. What did happen anyway? If you paid for the installation, you got suckered. I mean that dispassionately and there's no other way to put it. And the rationalization you employed that cost you so much money greatly exaggerated your power in the situation, and greatly underestimated his. Did you really think you could have him arrested or fired? ho boy. . . in solidarity, daniel_bouchard@hmco.com To: POETICS @ LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU @ SMTPIN cc: (bcc: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco) From: junction @ EARTHLINK.NET (Mark Weiss) @ SMTPIN Date: 02/24/97 09:54:20 AM Subject: violence and the threat of violence Years ago, when I still lived in Brooklyn, I bought a car stereo at Crazy Eddie's and took it to the mechanic who did their installations. He told me what the service would cost me, which was pretty hefty. I was more than a little annoyed. "But they told me at the store that installation was included," I told him. "It isn't, but you can take it up with Sal, the guy fixing his car over there. He's the dapertment manager." So I went to talk to Sal, who got incredibly angry, and accused me of lying. "Wait a minute," I said, "I'm not accusing _you_ of anything. You weren't the salesman." "He works for me. You accuse him you gotta deal with me." Things went from bad to worse. Pretty soon I was threatening to talk to Sal's boss, and Sal was threatening to beat me up, to which I countered that if he did I'd call the police. There didn't seem to be any end in sight to the downward spiral. Then I was afflicted with a rare moment of clarity. I should have known better--I lived in the neighborhood. And I did social work with working class people every day. Sal didn't really want to beat me up, and I didn't really want to have him arrested or fired. We were invoking the power moves of our respective social classes. Sal was working class--he had not been raised with the assumption that he could appeal to higher authorities to do his dirty work for him, and he probably thought it dishonorable to do so. I was middle class--I had been raised to abhor violence and the threat of violence, but also to assume that I had the power to call in the troops. We were both doing the same thing, but in different languages. In my language Sal's provocation was to be taken more seriously than intended, as was mine in Sal's language. But they were both just power moves. This whole series of reflections took a lot less time than it takes to write about it. I realized that I was just venting: I would have to pay anyway. What was the point of the argument? Was my honor at stake? So I backed off, and we each went to our corners. Afterwards I reflected that I wasn't sure who was being more violent. I was threatened with a bloody nose. Sal was threatened with jail and loss of livelihood. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 09:55:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: killian / pug selves In-Reply-To: <199702251445.JAA01523@chass.utoronto.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" oh jeez, where did personality come in? i don't know these people, only what they say or do in the public realm. and as for "morality," (making the list and checking it twice) these are not matters of abstract morality or a debased sort of judgmentalness. if a guy is misogynistic, why wd i hang around him unless there were strong incentives in the area of learning something, or unless somehow i cd pass as a guy, or unless i cd use that misogyny to my advantage (a la groupie-ism). if a guy's anti-semitic, what's in it for me to stick around? sometimes there's something worth hanging around for, sometimes not. why are the pragmatics so hard to grasp? is it that folks don't believe there are practical consequences to someone's jewbaiting, woman-hating, etc, so that these are abstract ethical issues? At 9:45 AM -0500 2/25/97, Michael Boughn wrote: >Well, Maria, personally, I'd find it easier to accept the proposal >that this discussion was about the intersection of poetry and politics >if anybody ever mentioned any poetry (or, god forbid, poetics). The >actual discussion seems about the intersection of personality and >politics (YAWN!). Let's see, we're makin' a list and checkin' it twice >. . . > >By the way, to the guy who named his newfie Moby (sorry, I lost your >name), haven't you heard that Melville's work is now on the proscribed >list because he allegedly abused his wife? Better change the dog's >name quick. > >Mike >mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 11:18:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Neruda and Stalinism In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Surely you jest....the media in this country simply lies pretty much outright about most issues re social policy at home and imperial machinations abroad. Not because the lies are prescribed and required, a la the Stalinist systems, but because folks are hired to do the reporting who will actually believe the US government and not independent data. Most ordinary working-class people (the majority) don't have a source available against which to check the NYT, CNN etc. The much more recent and obscenely flagrant instance of Chile, most citizens don't in any meaningful sense "know about", altho' of course the facts are "right there" in the public sphere. The thing about the current forms of consciousness characteristic of our society, that's so peculiar, is that there is no direct relationship (at least in this country) between the formal availability of data and points-of-view, and their ability to make an impact on society. (something non-mainstream poetry people should be familiar with from other contexts!) I love the word USAmericans, by the way! mark prejsnar On Sun, 23 Feb 1997, George Bowering wrote: > Mark Weiss's long message on Neruda and Stalinism in the USA was really > interesting. Thanks for that. > > I am wondering, though: did USAmericans really believe that the overthrow > of the government in Guatemala was somehow not done by the USA? I have > never heard of anyone outside the USA that did not know that from the start. > > Oh, and if I remember rightly, Neruda helped the killers of Trotsky get out > of Mexico, didnt he? Or am I mixing up a couple of things? > > > > > George Bowering. > , > 2499 West 37th Ave., > Vancouver, B.C., > Canada V6M 1P4 > > fax: 1-604-266-9000 > e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 11:21:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: Please MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Please - I don't know if anyone was joking but the idea of keeping Dorn or anyone off this list vis-a-vis his or her politics is reprehensible, not funny as a joke. I think it would be wise to disconinue these threads; they're getting a bit like witch-hunting. None of us are pure. For that matter the thread about Pound has already cycled through the list before. I'd be interested in hearing more about the influx of women poets into the New York School. I think the same thing happened in film, Maya Deren etc. notwithstanding. There was a real shift in experimental cinema that opened the whole field (if it is such) to an entirely different form of content.. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:26:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Onward Comments: To: jarnot MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Brava, Lisa. I think we've beat the dead horse quite to death. Dorn's lesser sins - which I am not under any circumstances condoning, esp. with a brother who's HIV-positive - have been magnified here to assume the status of sacrificial scapegoat for the Sins of Poetry at large. A dubious notion, to be sure. The outrage Dorn's words provoke in us points at bottom toward a sense of betrayal many seem to feel - how could one of "our own" do this? I agree with Chomsky: writers and intellectuals do carry a greater responsibility to the community because of the nature of their work; their ability to discern, etc. And clearly Dorn has not lived up to this very well, at least not recently. But when I look at him at the front of the classroom (I'm taking Brit Lit 1 with him this semester) I don't see a monster at all. Rather, just another human being, somewhat muddled (the class has been a real disappointment to me). I like Lisa's Duncan quote. Keep the critical acumen baby - throw out the vindictive bathwater. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: jarnot To: POETICS Subject: Onward Date: Tuesday, February 25, 1997 9:41AM I think it's very creepy that people are being kept off this list. I've actually found this whole discussion very disturbing. Aren't there more productive things to do in this forum than get involved with name calling, etc.? I mean really-- the "coke-induced froth from his evil lips"? I've been tired of this discussion since the idea of punching people out came up. It makes me think of something that Robert Duncan says about how you can't reject Mae West as vulgar or Hitler as the enemy because that potentiality exists in everybody. I thought the people on this list were progressive thinkers and writers-- if Dorn writes nasty crap it's because he wants a reaction like this-- he's succeeded in getting people to waste their time talking about him. yours, lisa jarnot ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 11:38:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: question which will explain things Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" What attitude -- no, what facial expression do you find yourself assuming when you begin to write a poem? when you are in the middle of writing a poem? when you are editing a poem? Just curious, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:42:04 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: dorn deletion > Date sent: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 09:33:58 -0500 > Send reply to: UB Poetics discussion group > From: Joel Kuszai > Subject: Re: dorn, etcetera > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU On Tues, 25 Feb, Joel Kuszai wrote: > > As far as Mr. Northcutt's comment above: Ed & Jennifer Dorn tried to sign > up to Poetics list several times. I deleted them like I would have Hitler, > but to no avail, they kept re-subbing. Eventually, I let them pass > through, with my finger on the "delete" key, I waited expectantly for some > coke-induced froth from his evil lips--did he ever post? A search of the > archives would reveal. As far as I know, they remained on this list until > recently... Is this a joke? That Ed and Jennifer Dorn tried to subscribe to the list and were repeatedly censored out? If so, I'd suggest this discussion that people are "getting tired of" has acquired a new sense of urgency! Holy cow. Kent Kent> ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 11:46:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sherry Brennan Subject: Spell check Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks, Dean Taciuch, for the poem and the line - "and the time spent will be the poem." I have a question for whoever about using citation/found language. Probably because of my academic background I have a fear about using other people's language without spelling out what is quoted--even when I recombine the words rather than quote per se. So in the past I've usually specified when language was quoted. But I'm working on a long piece that incorporates language from Darwin and various gardening texts and find myself wanting to use the language without also specifying which words come from where. I'm not sure I understand why I want to do this, or what it means to the poem. Is there a difference between using quotation marks or some other indicator of source and not indicating the source specifically but treating the words as found language? How does this work? I don't mean technically how it works, but what kind of difference does it make to the poem or the reader? the writer? Just something I've been wondering about. Sherry >The call for spell-check and user dictionary files reminded me of a piece I >was working on a few months ago (still not finished)-- a long poem called >"rote" which is built from a 1930s speller. The speller itself simply >lists words, from grade 2 through 8, but there is a sound patterning to >them, based on similar spellings and words that might be confused by grade >schoolers. I placed the words into lines and stanzas adding nothing but >punctuation. I go back to it every once in a while, mostly to take out the >punctuation I put in--not having worked with found material very often, I >tended not to trust what I found. (Probably by next year I'll have worked >it back to the original--just lists, that'll be it, and the time spent will >be the poem.) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 12:23:02 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: threat of violence: what it means to "kick ass" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:47 AM 2/25/97 EST, daniel_bouchard@hmco.com wrote: >Mark: > >YOU should have kicked HIS ass! > >No wait, I am being rash. Here comes a rare movement of clarity . . . I have to say I somewhat disagree with db's interpretation of possible outcomes to Mark's situation (though, db, I imagine from your tone that you are a little tongueincheek), largely because I don't believe the popular ideologies of auto repair shops being nec. messy and blue collar workers having a nod and wink, free merchandise relationship with the "blue collar" cops. But I do like the continuation of the discussion along lines of "speech genres": >In the lingo of the neighborhood I grew up in, when we discussed "power moves >of respective social classes," etc. etc., you got "psyched out." Which continues one of Mark's points, namely that: >We were both doing the same thing, but in different languages. In my >language Sal's provocation was to be taken more seriously than intended, as >was mine in Sal's language. But they were both just power moves. Two different classes making the same point at each other: and the languages are both saying the same thing and, as Mark points out later, entirely different things as well: >Afterwards I reflected that I wasn't sure who was being more violent. I was >threatened with a bloody nose. Sal was threatened with jail and loss of >livelihood. I wanted only to point out how this story about a dialogue between classes beautifully points out the complexity of the interaction between language and the world. One the one hand the two languages meet as the individuals meet: the different speech genres are understand, translated in the immediate context: both people know what the other is getting at: "I really want you to install this thing for free." "I really don't want to." But on the other hand, the speech genres are mired in and drag with them their specific (according to class) social heteroglossia: the threat of a punch in the nose could actually become a punch in the nose, the threat of calling the cops could actually become a phone call. And here the utterances diverge wildly. So in this way language carried within it not only a model for looking at group interaction (played out in a mutual reinforcing of class in a manner similar to Satre's discussion in the _Critique_ of how different economic/social classes gain their self-identification by identifiying other classes), but ALSO a model for how language may be seen not merely as an abstract system of signifier/signified, as a structural or textual system of analysis, but also as the pathway of interaction between that abstract system and the material consequences in the concrete, daily history of the world. With this in mind, it is worth looking at the change in view effected by Michael Boughn in a neighbor thread when he charges the discussion as being not about "poetry" and politics, but about "personality" and politics. What effect does this change have on the proceeding material? In haste, Matthias ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 09:04:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: S.F. Reading Report 2-23-97 Comments: To: AERIALEDGE@aol.com, Lppl@aol.com, jms@acmenet.net, maz881@aol.com, Marisa.Januzzi@m.cc.utah.edu, drothschild@penguin.com, Daniel_Bouchard@hmco.com, jarnot@pipeline.com, jdavis@panix.com, lease@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU, wmfuller@ix.netcom.com, fittermn@is.nyu.edu, daviesk@is4.nyu.edu, lgoodman@ACSU.Buffalo.EDU, mwinter@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu, I.Lightman@uea.ac.uk, eryque@acmenet.net, kunos@lanminds.com, levyaa@is.nyu.edu, sab5@psu.edu, harris4@soho.ios.com, chris1929w@aol.com, poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu, akandab@ix.netcom.com, cah@sonic.net, andrew_joron@sfbayguardian.com, 102573.414@compuserve.com, acornford@igc.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Los Angeles poets Paul Vangelisti (editor of _Ribot) and Martha Ronk (who, alas, doesn't yet have her own magazine) flew up to San Francisco for a reading at Canessa Park Gallery on Sunday. Host Avery E.D. Burns introduced the two poets together and they briefly read from their (relatively) recent Sun & Moon books _State of Mind_ (Ronk) and _Nemo_ (Vangelisti). Paul then left the table and let Martha carry on with selections from _Destiny in L.A._ (based on _The Tale of Genji_) and a new ms, _Run On_. After a break, Paul returned to read from a work whose name I got distracted while writing down and can't remember now. Sorry. Some lines I picked up of Martha's were: their eyes unnervingly swerved I don't find you behind any eyes you open I can stir the air my powdered face nodding to the powdered moon I'll catch the moon in the poisoned water of a silver bowl, and drink it down the air came down to meet the paper the night is the waking blank as if knees were a causal principle for ground superimposed is the statue alive with birds things break under every stone backed to the wall, you think what you mean will come out of your mouth Paul's lines included: I cheered villains and loved no one but God, who I suspected had gone out at 5. angels are privileged in name only are married angels especially misnamed? space (noun)--1. see time love is a closet turned off and on traffic is looking up and down the stupid There were commemorative cards made by John McBride and other printed poetry from each poet given to all the guests in attendance, who, for those keeping track (for social histories or to gather other impressions of the reading for posterity) included Leslie Scalapino, Brian Lucas, Aaron Shurin, George Albon, Fran Herndon, Benjamin Hollander, Mary Sullivan-Roark, Eric Selland, Candice (who was in the same class as Mary at Santa Cruz, but neither of them can remember which one), Barbara Guest, Mary Margaret Sloan, Spencer Selby, Norma Cole, Carol Snow, Stephen Ratcliffe, the aforementioned John McBride and, I'm told, although I haven't yet been introduced to her personally, Fanny Howe. ********************************** sjcarll@slip.net Steve Carll http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym In seed- sense the sea stars you out, innermost, forever. --Paul Celan ********************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 12:09:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shoemakers@COFC.EDU Subject: Re: killian / pug selves In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I've only been able to read the list sporadically of late, so maybe i shld keep quiet--but i can't. I agree that there is a danger of holier than thou attitudinizing in the effort to discuss the "sins" of poets. The process can easily degenerate into unproductive fingerpointing. At the same time, i'm amazed at how ready some people are to consider any discussion of ethics as a necessarily self-righteous, misguided and "pc" sort of maneuver. We do talk about the "Pound problem" a lot on this list, and i think for many of us that's because we know precisely that we are talkinga about ourselves, and about poetry, and not just about some unexplainable rogue fascist. Perelman, for example, makes it clear in his Pound chapter that he is writing about Pound because Pound has been central to his (Perelman's) development as a poet: "I've learned to read his language and have absorbed his fervor concerning words; I no longer want to savor decontextualized lyricism. Certainly, the vividness of his struggle ot make each word both new and true to history has been a powerful influence on poetry in America. Pound's language presenets a charged image of speed and lucidity; this charge is valuable for the future of poetry. But I want the full dynamics of Poundian light to be acknowledged; what it illuminates is always accompanied by a phobic shadow." I think of a lot of use feel--as poets, readers, critics--that we, and poetry, *have* to deal with that shadow, that historically speaking poetry has too often assumed a privilege to itself (call it "decontextualized lyricism" if you like) that it can no longer afford. It's clear to me too that when we're talking about Pound we are also often talking, either implicitly or explicitly, about the Holocaust, about what it means to write poetry before, during, after Auschwitz. That's a fact of *our* global history that is inescapable exactly *now* as we continue to struggle with whit the question of globalness itself. But, still, when i say Pound's question is "our" question i want to say, yes, that we can't just read him as the evil other--but i also want to say that we can and should examine the man, and the poetry, carefully to see where he goes wrong. Pound is central to my understanding of poetry-- there's simply no way for me *not* to ask these questions. In my own work, which deals quite a lot with the thirties, it has been illuminating (to me) to see the various personal, political, and poetical routes taken through the period of fascism's rise. I think Pound had a lot of genuine care for the plight of the world in a period of crisis--and his response was to become a fascist. William Carlos Williams, in thrall to Pound in so many ways--and sympathetic at many points to Pound's social critique--explicitly refuses this development, and launches an attack on, and extremely compelling diagnosis of, Pound's fascism--at a relatively early point, 1941. Moreover, he does this throught a reading of Pound's poetry (specifically the opening of Canto XXX) that never denies the beautry of that poetry, even as it also never hesitates to read it for its ethical and political import. The beauty of the poem, Williams concludes, is to be found in "a pleasure and pain equally balanced which we cannot resolve." We owe it to ourselves, and to poetry, to acknowledge both that pleasure and that pain. WCW might not have been able to come to his (crucial) insight if he hadn't thought so hard about that conflict. And history isn't over yet. We've got our own historical difficulties to struggle with, and our own poetry to write. steve PS. So, no, Kevin, i don't think you shld have destroyed the poem. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 09:10:50 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: dorn, etcetera In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I agree with Ms. Jarnot -- once we get to "coke-induced froth from evil lips" we really have to step back for a while. Every so often there's glimmers of passionate intelligence regarding this topic, and then garbage. The thought of anyone censoring any presence on this list is repulsive. Lots of people have written in to express their frustrations with this continuing topic. For any of us who know Ed it's been frustrating for other reasons, mainly for reasons of unjust character assassination. I knew and mourned Steve Abbott myself, Kevin; in fact, I was with him in the Dorns' kitchen eating breakfast one morning in about 1985, a very pleasant interlude before we both got back on the road to California from some "beat convocation" at Boulder. I assure Maria that there are a multitude of reasons to "hang around" this particular poet, and many, many things to be learned; I have to say that in twenty years of off-and-on friendship my Jewishness was never the occasion for any Jew-baiting, and that his provocative manner doesn't discriminate: he'll take on anyone or anything, but his only enemy is sanctimoniousness. We can talk about misanthropy, but any special pleader is out of luck. I'm sorry he's offended some of you, but I also think that thin skin is seldom a virtue and can often lead to virulent misunderstandings, as evidenced by some of these postings. Let me close by quoting an early essay by Ed, "A Cup of Coffee," collected in _Views_ from Four Seasons Press in San Francisco, 1980. It dates from the same time as a letter quoted earlier on this list, but has the virtue of being his own words and thoughts, not what someone else accused him of. "Negroes, Mexicans, Indians, Whites don't seem awfully special. It is just that, black brown white, divisions, not complex, subject to broad and crude considerations only. A god-damn cup of stinking coffee at Walgreens. Pew! I am ashamed that my brothers get stopped because of their color or the way they dress. It seems simply correct that Mississippi and Alabama and South Africa be occupied. If it were my decision, those places and a few others would be occupied tomorrow. Talk IS cheap. Talk about 'human rights' is particularly cheap. Rights have nothing to do with general colors, shapes of eyes or forms of noses. Never. Anyone might be in danger, or might be safe, but that will be determined by the incredible meanness with which America handles its people, always has handled them. The ethic is behavioral. I am a poet. It seems to me a point of honor and deep responsibility that I not number among my friends a cop, or a doctor or lawyer, or a President of the United States, or the head of an insane asylum, or a gangster. Or anyone who thinks Negroes should stay in their place and be lynched. In the meantime, how I take any given man will be my own affair, always subject to more critical factors, how he carries his body, the cast of his eyes, the tone and cadence of his voice. Race IS an exotic recognition, mostly visual, and always a momentary interest." Joe Safdie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 11:29:08 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: the feast of plagiarism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sherry Brennan wrote: > > Is there a difference between using quotation marks or some other indicator > of source and not indicating the source specifically but treating the words > as found language? How does this work? I don't mean technically how it > works, but what kind of difference does it make to the poem or the reader? > the writer? sherry One possible response is a pamphlet I constructed for the 1988 Festival of Plagerism (sic) called The Plagiarist Codex; an old Maya Information Heiroglyph which can be viewed on line with a frames capable browser at: http://www.net22.com/qazingulaza/codex/codex.html Amendant Hardiker ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 11:27:30 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: dorn, etcetera Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" joel k., i have to ask you this publicly: did you really prevent the dorns from subbing to poetics?... that's a mistake i think---alan is right (he, uhm, beat me to the punch)... but really now: we all know that poetics is a "private" list of sorts, but exclusion based, say, on verifiably hateful speech is just not, in my view, the right thing to do... let me put it this way: if a neonazi poet wants to participate around here, that's OK with me... let me be clear: i despise neonazis, as i'm sure do the rest of you... now when said poet contributes in a way that reveals neonazi predisposition, why then we can, each of us to our liking, publicly correct said predisposition, or attempt to... i might argue, in another context, that this is our *obligation*... in any case, i have *faith* in our combined capacity, as a list of caring human beings, to generate the right moral-ethical-political response collectively... i doubt sincerely that permitting such an individual into these spaces will "corrupt" what i take to be the goodwill of the list in general... and in fact if i thought that the poetics folks, whatever our individual differences, were not collectively of good conscience, i wouldn't be here mself... and if i saw some "us" leaning in obviously hateful directions, i would in any case speak out, immediately, to that effect... reconsider, please... all best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 11:32:09 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: dorn deletion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" and to say that i'm with lisa and kent too, on this matter of deleting the dorns... joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 09:36:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ian Wilson Subject: Re: question which will explain things Comments: cc: Denise Stevens Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In both situations -- and I've had someone in the room videotaping to confirm this -- my expression exactly matches Blake's death face. IR Wilson ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: question which will explain things Author: UB Poetics discussion group at Internet Date: 2/25/97 11:38 AM What attitude -- no, what facial expression do you find yourself assuming when you begin to write a poem? when you are in the middle of writing a poem? when you are editing a poem? Just curious, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 12:35:58 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: question which will explain things In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Tue, 25 Feb 1997, Jordan Davis wrote: > What attitude -- no, what facial expression do you find yourself assuming > when you begin to write a poem? when you are in the middle of writing a > poem? when you are editing a poem? > I find that I use a number of facial expressions since I write while standing or pacing about my room. It's almost as if I am "acting" the lines. At times, I hear the cadence first and I mumble that to myself and then try to find the words that fit. Imagine a conductor walking among the musicians. That's what I look like. __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 12:43:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Onward In-Reply-To: <01IFTVORLA2Y9GYOFI@iix.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I think it's fine to move on, alright....But contrary to the fashionable dissing that's going on, lots of folks who posted on this should be commended--A very large percentage of 'em really weren't primarily interested in character-attacks on Dorn or others--just trying to work out some tangled problems, that are very real, about what it means to seriously believe that social values & politix have something to do with poetry. mark p. On Tue, 25 Feb 1997, Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume wrote: > Brava, Lisa. > > I think we've beat the dead horse quite to death. Dorn's lesser sins - which > I am not under any circumstances condoning, esp. with a brother who's > HIV-positive - have been magnified here to assume the status of sacrificial > scapegoat for the Sins of Poetry at large. A dubious notion, to be sure. The > outrage Dorn's words provoke in us points at bottom toward a sense of > betrayal many seem to feel - how could one of "our own" do this? I agree > with Chomsky: writers and intellectuals do carry a greater responsibility to > the community because of the nature of their work; their ability to discern, > etc. And clearly Dorn has not lived up to this very well, at least not > recently. But when I look at him at the front of the classroom (I'm taking > Brit Lit 1 with him this semester) I don't see a monster at all. Rather, > just another human being, somewhat muddled (the class has been a real > disappointment to me). I like Lisa's Duncan quote. Keep the critical acumen > baby - throw out the vindictive bathwater. > > Patrick Pritchett > ---------- > From: jarnot > To: POETICS > Subject: Onward > Date: Tuesday, February 25, 1997 9:41AM > > > > I think it's very creepy that people are being kept off this list. I've > actually found this whole discussion very disturbing. Aren't there more > productive things to do in this forum than get involved with name calling, > etc.? I mean really-- the "coke-induced froth from his evil lips"? I've > been tired of this discussion since the idea of punching people out came > up. It makes me think of something that Robert Duncan says about how you > can't reject Mae West as vulgar or Hitler as the enemy because that > potentiality exists in everybody. I thought the people on this list were > progressive thinkers and writers-- if Dorn writes nasty crap it's because > he wants a reaction like this-- he's succeeded in getting people to waste > their time talking about him. yours, lisa jarnot > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:12:17 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: dorn, etcetera In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:10 AM -0800 2/25/97, Joe Safdie wrote: >Let me close by quoting an early essay by Ed, "A Cup of Coffee," collected >in _Views_ from Four Seasons Press in San Francisco, 1980. It dates from >the same time as a letter quoted earlier on this list, but has the virtue >of being his own words and thoughts, not what someone else accused him of. > >" In the meantime, how I take any given man will be my >own affair, always subject to more critical factors, how he carries his >body, the cast of his eyes, the tone and cadence of his voice. A rather homoerotic passage, don't you think? I'd love to know what Dorn's criteria are for acceptable male body language. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 13:08:34 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: Re: dorn, etcetera In-Reply-To: <199702251727.LAA14173@charlie.cns.iit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Cybermind etc. we've had a policy (which we - Michael Current and I) agreed on in the beginning, to delete anyone promoting racial/gender/ religious slurring on the list. That is, if someone came on with the purpose of espousing slurs. Beyond that, it's not our business what any- one believes; there are some far right folk, far left folk, etc., and that's fine. I would never ever delete anyone based on knowledge of their beliefs; that's out of the question. As a footnote, you might know that there have been groups similar to alt.tactical.strategy that "attack" email lists with the purport of bringing them down, derailing them. As an aol list owner, I have add- resses (which are accurate; I've seen these people in action), and these have had to be added to the site ban slot on listserv. But that's the extent of it. Alan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 13:08:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Cheney Subject: Re: question which will explain things In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >What attitude -- no, what facial expression do you find yourself assuming >when you begin to write a poem? when you are in the middle of writing a >poem? when you are editing a poem? >Just curious, >Jordan okay, now we're talking STUFF! i think (because i've never looked) that when i begin to write a poem my eyes do most of the talking. i hope that my tongue moves around between my lips like i've seen kids do when they're trying to concentrate on their writing or maybe just like some cats i've seen where the tongue just stays there, slightly poking out. when i'm in the middle of writing a poem my ears do most of the talking. And when i'm talking my talking does most of the writing. see Lisa Douglass ("I hates speech"). when i'm eating a poem my mouth does most of the talking, though i'm hard to understand--thus the seeming opaqueness of some of my poems. Jordan, i love your questions. they're kinda like that episode of NIGHT STAND WITH DICK DIETRICK (which is a parody of daytime talk shows) where Dick shows his camping video where he mistakes a cocker spaniel puppy for a bear cub. when the video ends his guest says "Dick! Don't you know the difference between a bear cub and a cocker spaniel!" and dick says "No. but i love these! what IS the difference between a bear cub and a cocker spaniel?" and the guest starts crying and then says "My mother was killed by a bear!" To which dick, looking puzzled, asks, "that's the punch line?" that's the punch line, don cheney ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 11:18:50 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: question which will explain things MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > What attitude -- no, what facial expression do you find yourself assuming > when you begin to write a poem? when you are in the middle of writing a > poem? when you are editing a poem? probably just sort of a stern looking. no, videotaped evidently reveals I'm about to punch someone in the nose. mumbling or something. let's watching one now. here I am at taco bell, copying the menu onto notecards. I'd like "not gonna pay a lot for this muffle." hey. wait your turn. ok, your turn. .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) language code not found. illegal operation error. this program will shut down, & all unsaved data will be lost. if problem persists, consult your systems operator. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 12:29:38 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: Onward/censorship In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Many thanks to Lisa Jarnot and Maxine Chernoff for their letters. The spectre of censorship and violence being raised is disturbing--encountered a few times--back in late Sixties running a mimeo zine in basement banned by high school and attacked for a week by Manchester Union Leader on front page for a week--(only to be called by Library of Congress wanting a copy--)--and in Seventies doing book reviews for Gay Community News in Boston--an editor was killed--and the premises looted then fire bombed-- Being told at restaurants half empty there were no seats for my first wife and I--(no dirty half and mixed breeds allowed) had a strange kind of halfwaking dream--with voice over by Nicholas Cage--in the manner in which he narrates his dreams in the film Raising Arizona--and what would future biographers do--with the letters of the gentle religious poet who threated violence--and the poet who taped a critic and threatened its use in a debate--would these be taken out of the bio?--and onward the voice moved through many a time and place and came to that accused cleric killer and college robber M. Francois Villon--what to do with him?--who wrote these lines: I never work and yet I go all out To acquire wealth which I don't want, Who speaks most kindly irritates me most, Most truthfully will lie to me the most, The person is my friend who makes me think That a white swan is a black crow, He who harms me thinks he helps me out, Falsehood, truth, to me they're both the same, I remember all things and can't conceive of one, Warmly welcomed, rebuffed by everyone. (from "Ballade" in The Poems of Francois Villon french and english edition Translation and introduction by Galway Kinnell. NY: Signet Classic, 1965: 185-7) This world is one of violence and censorship. To be opposed to this--does it make sense to threaten these? The two go hand in hand. A few years ago, in a weekly group for dealing with violence at the Spanish Center, there was a man who spoke constantly of his missing younger brother--vanished by then for two years. One day the young man came in in complete shock. Jeffrey Dahmer had identified the young man's brother as one of his vicitims. As proof he gave the police the skull with wired jaw intact--and not a tooth missing. And all day long that silenced mouth screamed in the streets of Milwaukee--from the living mouth of the younger brother. --dbchirot On Tue, 25 Feb 1997 jarnot@PIPELINE.COM wrote: > in response to joel kuszai's post: > > "As far as Mr. Northcutt's comment above: Ed & Jennifer Dorn tried to sign > up to Poetics list several times. I deleted them like I would have Hitler, > but to no avail, they kept re-subbing. Eventually, I let them pass > through, with my finger on the "delete" key, I waited expectantly for some > coke-induced froth from his evil lips--did he ever post? A search of the > archives would reveal. As far as I know, they remained on this list until > recently..." > > I think it's very creepy that people are being kept off this list. I've > actually found this whole discussion very disturbing. Aren't there more > productive things to do in this forum than get involved with name calling, > etc.? I mean really-- the "coke-induced froth from his evil lips"? I've > been tired of this discussion since the idea of punching people out came > up. It makes me think of something that Robert Duncan says about how you > can't reject Mae West as vulgar or Hitler as the enemy because that > potentiality exists in everybody. I thought the people on this list were > progressive thinkers and writers-- if Dorn writes nasty crap it's because > he wants a reaction like this-- he's succeeded in getting people to waste > their time talking about him. yours, lisa jarnot > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:40:59 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: violence and the threat of violence Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I thought I was writing about the social meanings of behaviors and how they can be misinterpreted. Who "won" is rather beside the point. But I'm macho enough to set the record straight. Crazy Eddie's was a chain of discount houses, not a person. The garage was in fact an outside contractor. I could have used the phone. Sal was there using the facilities to fix his own car on his own time because he was a friend of the establishment, not as a perc. I was bigger than him. If he'd thrown a punch I could have insisted on his arrest--that's the law. I know this for a fact: I've seen it happen, and I've had to bail people out that it's happened to. The police might have tried to dissuade me from filing charges, but they couldn't have stopped me. And arrest probably would have resulted in firing. I have been known to use violence effectively and without reflection when my safety or the safety of others required. I also didn't think that I stood a chance with the bureaucracy of that particular establishment. And it was still a pretty good price for a stereo that now lives in my truck, having survived two cars. I was raised on the same streets that Sal was, and by the same rules. But those are the rules of children and adolescents. We were two guys in our late thirties; I had the option to change the rules. I don't care in the slightest what Sal made of all this, nor do I understand why I should. There is the question of cost-effectiveness. Predators often pass up prey because, although they could take the beast, the risk of even minor injury is too great--being off-peak can mean certain death. That factor is always in play. But humans, with our long memories, make other calculation. What would I have gained? "The expense of passion in a waste of shame," as the man said, "is death in life." What jungle do you live in? At 10:47 AM 2/25/97 EST, you wrote: >Mark: > >YOU should have kicked HIS ass! > >No wait, I am being rash. Here comes a rare movement of clarity . . . > >In the lingo of the neighborhood I grew up in, when we discussed "power moves >of respective social classes," etc. etc., you got "psyched out." A psych-out >is a line in the sand (in the desert of intimidation) which the loser won't >cross. It's my bet that that line is (or was) policy at Crazy Eddie's. In >fact, if you had crossed just two more lines in that office you may have got >what you wanted. A threat to call the police may work in some arenas, but >here you were misplaying your cards. (How many metahpor-cliches can I go?) > >Actually, if you HAD called the police, 1) you would have had to leave the >office-- you could hardly say, "oh shoot, Crazy Eddie, can I borrow your phone >to call the cops on you?" and the game would have changed while you were gone, >and 2) the cops probably would have arrested YOU for causing a disturbance. >While you were sitting in the cruiser you would have seen Officer McGruff >admiring your recent purchase and Eddie handing it to him for his own as a >token of goodwill. No, the cops would have been no use to you there and >therefore your threat was no good. > >Those offices--or shops, whatever-- are usually pretty messy. Now, I don't know >if you would have been capable of kicking this guy's ass or anybody's ass for >that matter, or not. From the tone of your posts you seem like a peaceful guy, >not the ass-kicking type. But like I say, those offices are pretty messy and >what you lack in violent behavior or ill-will you can make up for in brief >spasms of psychotic tendencies; say, grabbing a broom, a crow bar, or one of >those little gum ball or pistachio dispensers, and slamming it down on the >man's desk as furiously as possible while screaming, "I'm not going to pay a >lot for this muffler." > >You needn't worry about Crazy Eddie-- or whatever the hell the guy's name is-- >attacking you because it was never his intention in the first place. They >probably contract out work like that-- have someone else kick your ass in a >7-11 lot somewhere and then steal the radio back when they're done or >something. This guy is a businessman after all, he can't spend the rest of the >day selling stolen car parts and dealing with customers with your teeth >sticking out of his knuckles and your blood all over his shirt. > >Anyway, I noticed in your post a big void: you say both of you went to your >respective corners to reflect but it seems only you did. The other guy was >probably figuring out what kind of time he was going to be set back by dealing >with you. Ultimately, it would have been more "dishonorable" to let you get >the better of him than it would be to appeal to a higher authority. > >What did happen anyway? If you paid for the installation, you got suckered. I >mean that dispassionately and there's no other way to put it. And the >rationalization you employed that cost you so much money greatly exaggerated >your power in the situation, and greatly underestimated his. Did you really >think you could have him arrested or fired? ho boy. . . > >in solidarity, > > >daniel_bouchard@hmco.com > > > > > >To: POETICS @ LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU @ SMTPIN >cc: (bcc: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco) >From: junction @ EARTHLINK.NET (Mark Weiss) @ SMTPIN >Date: 02/24/97 09:54:20 AM >Subject: violence and the threat of violence > >Years ago, when I still lived in Brooklyn, I bought a car stereo at Crazy >Eddie's and took it to the mechanic who did their installations. He told me >what the service would cost me, which was pretty hefty. I was more than a >little annoyed. "But they told me at the store that installation was >included," I told him. > >"It isn't, but you can take it up with Sal, the guy fixing his car over >there. He's the dapertment manager." > >So I went to talk to Sal, who got incredibly angry, and accused me of lying. >"Wait a minute," I said, "I'm not accusing _you_ of anything. You weren't >the salesman." > >"He works for me. You accuse him you gotta deal with me." > >Things went from bad to worse. Pretty soon I was threatening to talk to >Sal's boss, and Sal was threatening to beat me up, to which I countered that >if he did I'd call the police. There didn't seem to be any end in sight to >the downward spiral. > >Then I was afflicted with a rare moment of clarity. I should have known >better--I lived in the neighborhood. And I did social work with working >class people every day. Sal didn't really want to beat me up, and I didn't >really want to have him arrested or fired. We were invoking the power moves >of our respective social classes. Sal was working class--he had not been >raised with the assumption that he could appeal to higher authorities to do >his dirty work for him, and he probably thought it dishonorable to do so. I >was middle class--I had been raised to abhor violence and the threat of >violence, but also to assume that I had the power to call in the troops. > >We were both doing the same thing, but in different languages. In my >language Sal's provocation was to be taken more seriously than intended, as >was mine in Sal's language. But they were both just power moves. > >This whole series of reflections took a lot less time than it takes to write >about it. I realized that I was just venting: I would have to pay anyway. >What was the point of the argument? Was my honor at stake? So I backed off, >and we each went to our corners. > >Afterwards I reflected that I wasn't sure who was being more violent. I was >threatened with a bloody nose. Sal was threatened with jail and loss of >livelihood. > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 10:48:52 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Spell check Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Standard in such cases is a brief note at the head or after. At 11:46 AM 2/25/97 -0500, you wrote: >Thanks, Dean Taciuch, for the poem and the line - "and the time spent will >be the poem." I have a question for whoever about using citation/found >language. Probably because of my academic background I have a fear about >using other people's language without spelling out what is quoted--even when >I recombine the words rather than quote per se. So in the past I've usually >specified when language was quoted. But I'm working on a long piece that >incorporates language from Darwin and various gardening texts and find >myself wanting to use the language without also specifying which words come >from where. I'm not sure I understand why I want to do this, or what it >means to the poem. > >Is there a difference between using quotation marks or some other indicator >of source and not indicating the source specifically but treating the words >as found language? How does this work? I don't mean technically how it >works, but what kind of difference does it make to the poem or the reader? >the writer? > >Just something I've been wondering about. Sherry > >>The call for spell-check and user dictionary files reminded me of a piece I >>was working on a few months ago (still not finished)-- a long poem called >>"rote" which is built from a 1930s speller. The speller itself simply >>lists words, from grade 2 through 8, but there is a sound patterning to >>them, based on similar spellings and words that might be confused by grade >>schoolers. I placed the words into lines and stanzas adding nothing but >>punctuation. I go back to it every once in a while, mostly to take out the >>punctuation I put in--not having worked with found material very often, I >>tended not to trust what I found. (Probably by next year I'll have worked >>it back to the original--just lists, that'll be it, and the time spent will >>be the poem.) > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 12:26:41 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: dorn deletion In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i assumed this dorn/list thing was a joke, cuz of the analogy to hitler, which no one, in my memory of the discussion, invoked. At 10:42 AM +0600 2/25/97, KENT JOHNSON wrote: >> Date sent: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 09:33:58 -0500 >> Send reply to: UB Poetics discussion group >> >> From: Joel Kuszai >> Subject: Re: dorn, etcetera >> To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > >On Tues, 25 Feb, Joel Kuszai wrote: >> >> As far as Mr. Northcutt's comment above: Ed & Jennifer Dorn tried to sign >> up to Poetics list several times. I deleted them like I would have Hitler, >> but to no avail, they kept re-subbing. Eventually, I let them pass >> through, with my finger on the "delete" key, I waited expectantly for some >> coke-induced froth from his evil lips--did he ever post? A search of the >> archives would reveal. As far as I know, they remained on this list until >> recently... > >Is this a joke? That Ed and Jennifer Dorn tried to subscribe to the >list and were repeatedly censored out? If so, I'd suggest this >discussion that people are "getting tired of" has acquired a new >sense of urgency! Holy cow. > >Kent > >Kent> ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 12:04:44 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: Spell check MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT sherry wrtt: > Is there a difference between using quotation marks or some other indicator > of source and not indicating the source specifically but treating the words > as found language? How does this work? I don't mean technically how it > works, but what kind of difference does it make to the poem or the reader? > the writer? its an interesting question, sherry. most of my material comes from other (known) sources--ie, others' speech, books, my own speech or wrtg done at times other than the wrtg of the poem-- & occurs with varying degrees of intervention, from verbatim to a radically altered state. but my treatment of that material has apparently been the opposite of yours, i.e. ive never cited anything except the epigraph to a book--& even thats about to go by the wayside i think. suppose this treatment because it seems to me that all utterance comes from elsewhere--that even when i speak in my own name etc. so that my wrtg from other sources could almost be said to b for the manner in which the self is assembled. ive thought some about why people do cite. in the context of academic work it seems to be at times a kind of mooring, either for the argument (auctores etc) or the article (situating itself via the conventions of a larger discourse)--but also just a way of saying read these books. of course theres the plaigarism thing--a sort of enforced/accepted practical division. in poetry it probably sometimes has to do with establishing/maintaining/ respecting discreet personal identity, others with a desire to make evident for political/critical/philosophical reasons an interaction with certain specific texts--ie "this is a critique [or extension or appreciation or "reading"] of darwins [tennysons burkes]" etc. as to how that effects the reader might be something "oh i wonder how this relates to". wouldnt say its an apparatus external to the poem in any case, but there can be a variety of possible situations aimed at with any one device. im curious to see how others approach this issue. chris .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) language code not found. illegal operation error. this program will shut down, & all unsaved data will be lost. if problem persists, consult your systems operator. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 14:09:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: deletion a while back, i remember someone pennamed "filch" posted what he claimed was a graffiti exchange he found on bathroom walls. the graffiti was a very disturbing plea from a woman to a man for him to meet her -- foreign names, phones numbers, extremely private if genuine, and, whether genuine or fake, having absolutely nothing to do with any discussion past or ongoing on list and a complete intrusion on people's time. "filch" continued posting bits of uninteresting, pointless texts along with flamebait. his posts, large in number (we only get 50 posts per day... ONLY! are we crazy! but we use them up frequently, so assume some limitations on space to post) began overwhelming mailings. after a number of these numerous posts (his posts always went out in duplicate, making his electronic "loudness" even more distressing), some of which were over 5 "screen" pages in length (i remember one was something like 18), he disappeared from list to my great relief. shortly after, he confirmed everything i had disliked about the posts and intolerable mail-bombing by sending out a series of spam letters to members on list -- spam is, for uninitiated, electronic "junk" mail which, in sufficient numbers, can and frequently does shut down servors and is strongly rejected by internet community. i think it has even been made illegal. on receipt of spam, usual mode is to write host of spammer, inform them customer/client is spamming, and request offending account be closed down, and, and this is what i mean by STRONG internet disapproval, it usually is. several list members did this and i (don't know about anyone else) got a somewhat threatening, and certainly unpleasant, note from "filch" regarding my note to his host. i, too, have some problems with "deletion" of listmembers, but would like to see possibility kept on if only for the particularly noxious problems like filch. the problem with neo-nazi type poster, to my mind, would be waste of electron space, potential for abuse of list members, and possibility that some newbie might get taken by innocuous-seeming post and then sucked into electronic vacuum of energy-sapping correspondence, perhaps even threatened, before they found out enough to extricate. i suppose what i am saying at too-great length is that i would reserve deletion for only VERY extreme cases. but i would like to see it kept as a possibility. i know i wrote to po-listmaster to ask that filch be taken off -- i believe that was after his four over-20,000 bit postings caught me off gaurd in my mailreading and tied my computer up for about 10 minutes... not frothing at the mouth but i was then... e --OAA22669.856897441/life.ai.mit.edu-- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 14:36:49 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: question which will explain things Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:18 AM 2/25/97 MDT, you wrote: >> What attitude -- no, what facial expression do you find yourself assuming >> when you begin to write a poem? languid. relaxed. eyes half closed. gentle breathing, soft sigh thru the nose. This is because try as I might to shake it loose some unremembered teenage inner voice of angst got confused and now my muse speaks in the sonorous & somnolent, breathy tones of garrison keillor I do my best to write despite (to spite) that inner voice ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 11:25:38 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ian Wilson Subject: Re[2]: question which will explain things Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit don cheney wrote: >that episode of NIGHT STAND WITH DICK DIETRICK (which is a parody of daytime >talk shows) My claim to fame has to do with the actor who plays Dick. His name is Tim Stack and, prior to this latest show of his, I was his computer tutor for about 5 years. IR Wilson ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 13:46:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: question which will explain things personally, i find myself getting this completely blank, walled over expression. i'll blaze away, feel quite frantic if there is any time pressure on me to go somewhere else (there usually is), and when i get the last bit i can off, frequently find my hair sticking straight on end (espeically in the front) where my hands have pushed it back, my muscles (esp. back) hurt from being completely immobile, and it is at least forty-five minutes later than i thought... same editing/ same working on already started poem/ same prose i cannot KNOW what my expression is, because i can't see myself, but suspect from facial muscles that i look like an extra from Coma except my eyes are open. e ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 13:10:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: found [e]-poetry Comments: cc: SPMILLER@Vela.filg.uj.edu.pl INTRA-OFFICE EMAIL brings this little sonnet (orig. words verbatim w/ linebreaks + title added): / / / / *It Only Takes A Moment* Just as a reminder, please be conscientious when using supplies and/or machinery in the copy rooms. I have just spent the last 25 minutes removing a very lovely Jackson Pollock-esque creation from the doors, walls, floors and cabinets of copyroom 1, because someone failed to screw the cap back on a bottle of white-out. :::grumbling::: It only takes a moment to put things back in order. // orig. text-author initials C.D. dated 11/25/97 11:30 a.m. // (comment: only lucky it wasn't a cross between J. Pollack & the Michelangelo of the S. Chapel) happy birthday m. -d.i. (in Wash. DC) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 13:58:13 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Re: deletion Eliza: No argument on your comment. But the point/concern with the apparent censorship of the Dorns on this list is that it happened before he/she had been able to type a word! I, for one, don't want a censor deciding for me what I can and cannot have access to on this wonderful place of discussion. If the matter is true, I propose that the Dorns be written to, that apologies be made, and an invitation extended to come aboard. Kent > Date sent: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 14:09:48 - 0500 > Send reply to: UB Poetics discussion group > From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest > Subject: deletion > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > a while back, i remember someone pennamed "filch" posted what he claimed > was a graffiti exchange he found on bathroom walls. the graffiti was a > very disturbing plea from a woman to a man for him to meet her -- foreign > names, phones numbers, extremely private if genuine, and, whether genuine > or fake, having absolutely nothing to do with any discussion past or ongoing > on list and a complete intrusion on people's time. "filch" continued posting > bits of uninteresting, pointless texts along with flamebait. his posts, > large in number (we only get 50 posts per day... ONLY! are we crazy! but > we use them up frequently, so assume some limitations on space to post) > began overwhelming mailings. after a number of these numerous posts (his > posts always went out in duplicate, making his electronic "loudness" even > more distressing), some of which were over 5 "screen" pages in length (i > remember one was something like 18), he disappeared from list to my great > relief. > > shortly after, he confirmed everything i had disliked about the posts and > intolerable mail-bombing by sending out a series of spam letters to members > on list -- spam is, for uninitiated, electronic "junk" mail which, > in sufficient numbers, can and frequently does shut down servors and is > strongly rejected by internet community. i think it has even been made > illegal. on receipt of spam, usual mode is to write host of spammer, inform > them customer/client is spamming, and request offending account be closed > down, and, and this is what i mean by STRONG internet disapproval, it usually > is. > > several list members did this and i (don't know about anyone else) got a > somewhat threatening, and certainly unpleasant, note from "filch" regarding > my note to his host. > > i, too, have some problems with "deletion" of listmembers, but would like > to see possibility kept on if only for the particularly noxious problems > like filch. the problem with neo-nazi type poster, to my mind, would be > waste of electron space, potential for abuse of list members, and possibility > that some newbie might get taken by innocuous-seeming post and then sucked > into electronic vacuum of energy-sapping correspondence, perhaps even > threatened, before they found out enough to extricate. > > i suppose what i am saying at too-great length is that i would reserve > deletion for only VERY extreme cases. but i would like to see it kept > as a possibility. i know i wrote to po-listmaster to ask that filch be > taken off -- i believe that was after his four over-20,000 bit postings > caught me off gaurd in my mailreading and tied my computer up for about > 10 minutes... > > not frothing at the mouth but i was then... > e > > --OAA22669.856897441/life.ai.mit.edu-- > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 15:05:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "k.a. hehir" Subject: Re: question which will explain things In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.16.19970225203649.36c7e970@mercury.chem.nwu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII > At 11:18 AM 2/25/97 MDT, you wrote: > >> What attitude -- no, what facial expression do you find yourself assuming > >> when you begin to write a poem the boy with the faraway eyes. right hand cranking an invisible victrola. long body pretzled. soundtrack (off-camera)"quick, somebody unfold kevin!" kevin hehir ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 09:14:43 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: killian / pug selves Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sorry too late i'd have to get a virgin to piss in the bilges DAn >By the way, to the guy who named his newfie Moby (sorry, I lost your >name), haven't you heard that Melville's work is now on the proscribed >list because he allegedly abused his wife? Better change the dog's >name quick. > >Mike >mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 16:20:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shoemakers@COFC.EDU Subject: Re: dorn deletion In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I dunno, i think it's probably not a joke. And if not, it's very disturbing. No way anyone shld be barred from the list before the fact, i.e. before actually posting material that might be felt by list administrators to violate acceptable standards. And just for the record, i really admire Slinger, so some of the same things i said about Pound, about having to read for both the pleasure and the pain, wld (for me) apply to Dorn too. steve On Tue, 25 Feb 1997, Maria Damon wrote: > i assumed this dorn/list thing was a joke, cuz of the analogy to hitler, > which no one, in my memory of the discussion, invoked. > > At 10:42 AM +0600 2/25/97, KENT JOHNSON wrote: > >> Date sent: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 09:33:58 -0500 > >> Send reply to: UB Poetics discussion group > >> > >> From: Joel Kuszai > >> Subject: Re: dorn, etcetera > >> To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > > > >On Tues, 25 Feb, Joel Kuszai wrote: > >> > >> As far as Mr. Northcutt's comment above: Ed & Jennifer Dorn tried to sign > >> up to Poetics list several times. I deleted them like I would have Hitler, > >> but to no avail, they kept re-subbing. Eventually, I let them pass > >> through, with my finger on the "delete" key, I waited expectantly for some > >> coke-induced froth from his evil lips--did he ever post? A search of the > >> archives would reveal. As far as I know, they remained on this list until > >> recently... > > > >Is this a joke? That Ed and Jennifer Dorn tried to subscribe to the > >list and were repeatedly censored out? If so, I'd suggest this > >discussion that people are "getting tired of" has acquired a new > >sense of urgency! Holy cow. > > > >Kent > > > >Kent> > Steve Shoemaker ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 17:15:07 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: dorn deletion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 12:26 PM 2/25/97 -0600, Maria Damon wrote: >i assumed this dorn/list thing was a joke, cuz of the analogy to hitler, >which no one, in my memory of the discussion, invoked. Is Hitler on the POETICS list? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg kellogg@acpub.duke.edu Box 90023, Duke University (919) 660-4357 Durham, NC 27708 FAX (919) 660-4381 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ There is no mantle and it does not descend. --Thomas Kinsella ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 16:20:28 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: deletion Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i'm sure folks are tired of reading my posts on this thread, but just one more (i hope) to gloss eliza's post... if a list member threatens another list member with violence --- if list conduct devolves even to back and forth name calling --- why then it's clear to me that some intervention from the moderator/listowner may be necessary, and that said member(s) may be deleted from the list by moderator/listowner if the circumstances so deem, esp. if matters don't improve... this has happened in the past on lists with which i am familiar... the relative liberation we may feel in and about these regions should not be interpreted as license to actually threaten somebody in this space with harm (i am not alluding to tom mandel's virtual punch, which in retrospect seems to be aimed at a hypothetical situation and is in this sense a rhetorical gesture)... i would suggest that the question of threatening in ascii is less a matter of netiquette than it is a matter touching on the law, on menacing... as in, menacing missives, menacing phone calls... though i understand only too well how fuzzy the lines can seem... i've seen things get really nasty, ("you're an asshole") only to cool off... at the same time, i've seen listowners who were unwilling, unfortunately, to intervene even when things escalated to clear threats of personal injury (generally from men to women, in fact, precipitated by intellectual disagreement, moving from one medium to another---which, btw, is yet a further complication)... anyway... offered as a former listowner, who has seen more than enough flames for a lifetime, some circling around my own list presence... but more food for thought, i guess... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 17:24:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dave Zauhar Subject: Re: question which will explain things Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > At 11:18 AM 2/25/97 MDT, you wrote: > What attitude -- no, what facial expression do you find yourself assuming > when you begin to write a poem > Seriously? Well, my wife says I look like Marty Feldman if he were playing a wacky gynecologist in a John Waters movie. I'm not sure what she means by that, nor do I want to know. David Zauhar ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 17:44:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: Spell check Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sherry, you might take a look at some of David Gordon's work to see how a conscientious collagist works with the citation problem. The National Poetry Foundation is publishing his (ongoing) ten volume work, & you can see descriptions of it on the NPF website http://www.ume.maine.edu/~npf/ I also published a piece of the forthcoming fourth volume (or now perhaps 2-volume sequence) STEM as #8 in my Backwoods Broadsides Chaplet Series. If you send me your address, I'll send you that--it's essentially 5 pages of poetry, and one of notes documenting sources, but the poetic text is free of numbers or symbols. Simple, elegant, ethical, legal! p.s. Which Darwin texts are you working with? >Thanks, Dean Taciuch, for the poem and the line - "and the time spent will >be the poem." I have a question for whoever about using citation/found >language. Probably because of my academic background I have a fear about >using other people's language without spelling out what is quoted--even when >I recombine the words rather than quote per se. So in the past I've usually >specified when language was quoted. But I'm working on a long piece that >incorporates language from Darwin and various gardening texts and find >myself wanting to use the language without also specifying which words come >from where. I'm not sure I understand why I want to do this, or what it >means to the poem. > >Is there a difference between using quotation marks or some other indicator >of source and not indicating the source specifically but treating the words >as found language? How does this work? I don't mean technically how it >works, but what kind of difference does it make to the poem or the reader? >the writer? > >Just something I've been wondering about. Sherry > >>The call for spell-check and user dictionary files reminded me of a piece I >>was working on a few months ago (still not finished)-- a long poem called >>"rote" which is built from a 1930s speller. The speller itself simply >>lists words, from grade 2 through 8, but there is a sound patterning to >>them, based on similar spellings and words that might be confused by grade >>schoolers. I placed the words into lines and stanzas adding nothing but >>punctuation. I go back to it every once in a while, mostly to take out the >>punctuation I put in--not having worked with found material very often, I >>tended not to trust what I found. (Probably by next year I'll have worked >>it back to the original--just lists, that'll be it, and the time spent will >>be the poem.) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 17:51:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: Re: question which will explain things In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sorry for my sarcasm,\ but I find myself sick of reading of people who are willing to punch other people in the nose. I have to add and delete people to the list and only one time did I ever delete anyone against their will, and that was after great distress and consultation with Charles and Loss. The Dorns wrote and asked if they could sub and I subbed them. I am not sure, and this is my whole point (if you need to be let in on it) when it was that they unsubbed. It is a tedium-exhaustium cleaning up around the poettics store, mopping up after this often brilliant exchage goign on here--I don't often keep track of when people leave. But a check yesterday showed there were no longer on the list... A question: if you are going to say these things, does it change them if that person is listening? I wish I could say he wasn't... ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 06:59:05 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: question which will explain things In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII No face. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 16:57:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: question which will explain things Comments: To: Dave Zauhar MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Michael Jordan - full extension - tongue lolling out. "Ohmigod it's off the rim!" ---------- From: Dave Zauhar To: POETICS Subject: Re: question which will explain things Date: Tuesday, February 25, 1997 4:46PM > At 11:18 AM 2/25/97 MDT, you wrote: > What attitude -- no, what facial expression do you find yourself assuming > when you begin to write a poem > Seriously? Well, my wife says I look like Marty Feldman if he were playing a wacky gynecologist in a John Waters movie. I'm not sure what she means by that, nor do I want to know. David Zauhar ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 17:55:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: Re: deletion In-Reply-To: <199702251909.OAA01216@toast.ai.mit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Filch was the only one I ever deleted although I am sure he eventually tried and did resub under a different name address. He wrote threatening stuff to me for a while but figured he gave up (he didn't seem to be interested in poetics, which is a criteria for list membership, btw) On Tue, 25 Feb 1997, Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest wrote: > a while back, i remember someone pennamed "filch" posted what he claimed > was a graffiti exchange he found on bathroom walls. the graffiti was a > very disturbing plea from a woman to a man for him to meet her -- foreign > names, phones numbers, extremely private if genuine, and, whether genuine > or fake, having absolutely nothing to do with any discussion past or ongoing > on list and a complete intrusion on people's time. "filch" continued posting > bits of uninteresting, pointless texts along with flamebait. his posts, > large in number (we only get 50 posts per day... ONLY! are we crazy! but > we use them up frequently, so assume some limitations on space to post) > began overwhelming mailings. after a number of these numerous posts (his > posts always went out in duplicate, making his electronic "loudness" even > more distressing), some of which were over 5 "screen" pages in length (i > remember one was something like 18), he disappeared from list to my great > relief. > > shortly after, he confirmed everything i had disliked about the posts and > intolerable mail-bombing by sending out a series of spam letters to members > on list -- spam is, for uninitiated, electronic "junk" mail which, > in sufficient numbers, can and frequently does shut down servors and is > strongly rejected by internet community. i think it has even been made > illegal. on receipt of spam, usual mode is to write host of spammer, inform > them customer/client is spamming, and request offending account be closed > down, and, and this is what i mean by STRONG internet disapproval, it usually > is. > > several list members did this and i (don't know about anyone else) got a > somewhat threatening, and certainly unpleasant, note from "filch" regarding > my note to his host. > > i, too, have some problems with "deletion" of listmembers, but would like > to see possibility kept on if only for the particularly noxious problems > like filch. the problem with neo-nazi type poster, to my mind, would be > waste of electron space, potential for abuse of list members, and possibility > that some newbie might get taken by innocuous-seeming post and then sucked > into electronic vacuum of energy-sapping correspondence, perhaps even > threatened, before they found out enough to extricate. > > i suppose what i am saying at too-great length is that i would reserve > deletion for only VERY extreme cases. but i would like to see it kept > as a possibility. i know i wrote to po-listmaster to ask that filch be > taken off -- i believe that was after his four over-20,000 bit postings > caught me off gaurd in my mailreading and tied my computer up for about > 10 minutes... > > not frothing at the mouth but i was then... > e > > --OAA22669.856897441/life.ai.mit.edu-- > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 18:35:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Steal home Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I suppose David Jones' locka is the one to break into here .. anathemata being a hill of footnotes, yes? I understand poets at the wrtrs wrkshp in w have to cite any sources of found text in poems they workshop -- speaking as someone who has been shakespeare-shy because of the folger experience of interrupted reading -- sorry! textual people -- I am grateful that Pound Olson and Berrigan didn't find it necessary to append notes, preferring to include their sources when they were _poetically_ interesting as well .. steal home .. J ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 18:36:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: shoemakers@COFC.EDU Subject: Re: deletion In-Reply-To: <199702252220.QAA08469@charlie.cns.iit.edu> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Ok, glad the post from Joel was a joke (tho one might be forgiven, perhaps, for succumbing to the uncertainties--of tone, stance, motive etc-- inherent in this medium, and thus not being quite sure...). i too have found the whole "punch in the mouth" approach to ethics pretty tiresome... Steve Shoemaker ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 15:30:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: Re: Mac Wellman play Comments: cc: djmess@sunmoon.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Marjorie Perloff wrote: > > Have just had the good fortune to see Mac Wellman's new play at the Ivy > Substation in LA and want to urge those of you in the LA area to go! It's > called "The lesser Magoo" and has music by Michael Roth from San > Diego--really brilliant. Anyway, Mac's play takes off on just about > everything in our society from political rhetoric to New Age to the > standard interview (which made me think of the MLA interviews for job > candidates)--and the language is extraordinary--with its "unusualists". > It's only one one more week (through Sat night March 1) and I hope some > readers of this list will get to see it--great acting too. > > Marjorie Perloff I can certainly second Marjorie's comments. The play was just spectacular--in true sense. A musical that is at the same time a remarkably serious satire and slightly crazed family saga. Douglas Messerli ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 15:35:25 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: Re: playwrights Comments: cc: djmess@sunmoon.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I might just mention that Sun & Moon is about to publish John Jesurun's EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE. Sun & Moon is also the publisher of four of Mac Wellman's plays, a book of his poetry, and two of his novels. I'll soon post a listing and poetics discount for these books. And----I might add that we are soon to publish Fiona Templeton's play DELIRIUM OF INTERPRETATIONS. Douglas Messerli F.A. Templeton wrote: > > Not to downplay Mac's talent (Mac Wellman), which I applaud, but I have > another candidate here: John Jesurun. John is not as published as Mac, > but a) his Chang in a Void Moon is a landmark in theatre. It was a > serial, (much imitated since as a form) every Monday night, 2 showings, at > the Pyramid Club in the early 80s. (Speaking of prolific) John would go > home after the show, write the next episode, cast and rehearse it by the > next week. The main character was played by a man and a woman, one > character (the Infanta) was played by a chair, and the action took > place in several centuries simultaneously. His staging (he directed > too) was absolutely seminal. Actors included John Kelly, Steve > Buscemi, Anna Kohler etc etc. The plot proliferated to the point where > John's intro before the show of the story so far was a verbal tour de > force which should have been saved for literary history. Chang has been > revived in continuation a couple of times, including upcoming this March > or April at The Kitchen, for episodes 50-something to 60-something. > > and b) check out his Philoktetes, in Yale Theatre mag a couple of years > ago, for some of the best American language onstage ever, in a work of > dizzying savagery. It was written for Ron Vawter before he died. > > And lots more in between. John's EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE > should at last be coming out from Sun & Moon soon (eh, Douglas?) but > there's also a huge body of produced work. > > GO SEE IT! That's what playwrights write for. > > And let's not forget Richard Foreman. > > On Sat, 22 Feb 1997, Mark Weiss wrote: > > > I don't think Mac ever published a mag; if he did, it was before he came to > > New York in the 70's. He did edit a collection of theater criticism and I > > think two collections of contemporary plays. And of course he has published > > several books of poems and novels, mostly with Sun&Moon. I wrote the intro > > to his first major poetry collection, which was published by New Rivers. > > Mac has one a bunch of Obies. He may be the most prolific playwright since > > Lope da Vega, and he's probably the best we've got. At his best he's great. > > And I use the term advisedly. > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 15:49:01 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: Re: Mac Wellman play Comments: cc: djmess@sunmoon.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Alaric Sumner: Mac is not on this list, but I'll be glad to forward the comments to him. Incidentally, this new play, THE LESSER MAGOO, is the fourth play in what is now called the CROWTET. The first two plays of the CROWTET were A MURDER OF CROWS and THE HYACINTH MACAW (winner of The America Award for the best drama of 1994), published together by Sun & Moon Press as TWO PLAYS. We're reissuing this volume along with CROWTET 2 (consisting of SECOND-HAND SMOKE and THE LESSER MAGOO) this next season. Douglas Messerli Alaric Sumner wrote: > > I would be interested in a more detailed "enthusiasm" from Marjorie Perloff > (or (forefend) the opposite) from other people who have seen Mac Wellman's > play since I will not be able to see it (unless it tours to UK). Either > list if you think others will be interested, or if preferred, email me > direct with comments. Is Mac on this list? Is he emailable? Have the poems > of his I published in "words worth 2:1" been published in book form? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 16:28:26 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: question which will explain things Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Maybe it would be a good idea if we all pretended that whoever we're going after is in fact listening. This wouldn't preclude criticism, but it might temper it so that it fell short of character assassination. Except in life and death situations manners do count (and sometimes even then). > >A question: if you are going to say these things, does it change them if >that person is listening? I wish I could say he wasn't... > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 18:41:58 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Bookfair fire (Calcutta) Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu I take the liberty of reproducing the following letter, which appeared in the Times (London) a few days ago. Apologies for anyone who receives it twice (cross-posting). Jane Stemp Oxford University Early Printed Books Project +++++++++ Bookfair fire >From Mr Matthew Evans Sir, At 3.25 pm on February 3 the Calcutta Bookfair burnt down (News in brief, February 4). Behind this bald statement lies the fact that in just over 40 minutes fire, aided by a strong wind, burnt down more than 600 publishers' stands, killing one person and injuring 44. The 22-strong delegation of British publishers, led by me, were well insured and their livelihoods were not threatened by what had happened. However, of the 600 or so stands destroyed about 400 were manned by small publishers, publishing in Bengali, whose stands were not insured. In many cases money had been borrowed to exhibit at the fair. Book-purchasing in Calcutta is quite different from elsewhere. There are very few bookshops in the city and the fair is the focal point of the year for these small publishers, where they do about 50 per cent of their annual business. Many of not most of them have been ruined by the fire and imaginative ways must be devised to get them back on their feet. In consultation with the British Council in Calcutta those British publishers who attended the fair have started a fund to help the smaller Indian publishers. We hope that enough money will be raised to alleviate in some small way the horrific burden on firms which lost everything. Yours sincerely. Matthew Evans, c/o Publishers Association 19 Bedford Square, [London] WC1 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 18:43:54 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: question which will explain things Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" joel, thanx for the clarification... happy to hear you were joking... best, joe, who obviously will get fooled again ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 16:51:51 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: question which will explain things Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >A question: if you are going to say these things, does it change them if >that person is listening? I wish I could say he wasn't... Just a reminder: although this list is private as far as signing up & being able to send mail out to everyone is concerned, every post is available to be read by anyone with Web access at the EPC site, so functionally anyone has access to the complete contents of this "closed" list. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 20:28:11 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: brief explano Comments: To: poetics@listserv.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm sorry if my stress about the projects which are coming "to a head" (and where did that expression come from?) caused me to bristle at some of the recent discourse on the list. It is an important place for me and I'm an ardent defender of the poetics-list here (in buffalo, not internet) even when my friends dismiss it for lack of time, the ennui it often causes (or presupposes), or for the petit simulacrum of a conversation that many of us are lucky to have in the college-type-environment. My stress is related to the fact that I am presently extended about as far as is humanly possible and am about to hand in 1) chapter of diss. on Mac Low, Goodman, and "anarcho-formalists" and their theories of education, among other things. It's actually a couple of chapters but it's "what I want to do" now, and the first chapter deadline is a bureaucratic requirement which will enable me to stay here an "indentured servant" at Buffalo for one more year. 2) another project: a book manuscript, for which the publisher has been wanting for some time, edited by me (of all people). 3) Meow Press. If you have sent something to me in the last year, please be patient. I am more than a year behind and was ready to give up the project (I'll post something to poetics that I sent out here locally, a "eulogy" for Meow Press which I wrote last December). Since meeting with D.J. Messerli of SUN & MOON, and seeing what he's up to while out in Cali in January (working in UCSD archives) I have decided NOT to give up Meow Press, which I thought I would let die once I finished out the 12+ books which are on the hotplate. Thanks Douglass. But it will be summer before I pick up the ball and run with it again. The afternoon with him reinvigorated my desire to get good literature out there and to keep at it even though I have this giant grey-streak of hair a la pepe lepew...So, if you have sent something, please be patient. The press is currently dormant. I'll be moving at the end of April and will instigate a new workshop at new address (in Buffalo). Sorry for the delays. Finally, a final project haunts me, my commitment to the Small Press Collective which was born in 1990 at Reed College and which is about to be ressurected here under the auspices of Alicia Cohen (who worked on the original with me and others back then) and others yet to be determined. This is a big project which will have a minimal investment from me, but it seems that without my push and insanity might not really get going (if no one is finally interested, it wont). We are operating under the signs of David Cohn-Bendit and Angela Davis, let alone Bayard Rustin and MAC LOW--my eternal hero. More on all this later... I will post something that I'm posting here locally, where most of the buffalonian poetic-tasters do their own chat...in the hopes of catching someone who might be astray, gaining emotional, financial or support in the form of labor and energy...I'm sorry if it seems too local. Again, I apologize if my attempt at humor went astray. Please forgive. Your humble janitor, JK ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 20:40:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: SMALL PRESS COLLECTIVE MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII return of the SMALL PRESS COLLECTIVE The first meeting of the newly reconstituted SMALL PRESS COLLECTIVE will be on Thursday, February 27, 1997, at 5pm at Spot Cafe, on the corner of Chippewa and Delaware in the heart of downtown Buffalo, New York. The purpose of this meeting is organizational, to announce the intentions of the group, which are still in formation. Recent events have made it necessary that we meet and discuss our plans as a "group" or "program." At our last hearing, the status of the future possibility of renting a shared space was left undecided. The two main proposals for the use of such space are basically as follows: 1) a so-called clubhouse, multi-purpose shared facility; and 2) a shared workshop or production space. These two positions are not necessarily opposed so much as they are both wrongly aimed and based on misconceptions of certain key questions concerning issues of community. Unlimited access to a shared space is highly unlikely. Therefore, there can be no "open" space such as Room 412 in Clemens Hall. But limited access to a space supposedly shared by all [in whatever group is defined at the beginning] is bound to be a difficult issue, not only socially, but also in terms of security and liability. It is an issue not easily resolved without either (1) constructing a hierarchy; and/or (2) some form of limited access. Assuming that there would be public events held at the space (perhaps a party or a reading) perhaps a pre-constructed limit is the best way of resolving Responsibility in its many forms. A smaller group will handle the distribution of responsibility/burden and problem of authority with greater ease than a large group, especially when often the only thing shared by the members of the group is grad-student status [we're seeking non-graduate student members and soon none of us will be graduate students and will have to face up to our various professionalisms in the face of real desires]. Besides, a smaller, independent student club is more likely to have success obtaining a lease than is a nebulous amalgam of disinterested bystanders whose tacit consent is buoyed only by a rigorous but impotent argumentativeness. The Poetics Program isn't anything to us, we don't avow even disavowal of its ways. We propose that several of us students and interested partisans of all sorts and types meet together to form an action committee. The committee's basic activities would be to serve as an association of self-starters and communalist co-conspirators in producing written and encoded documents of all kinds, in all media, forms and venues. We'll invite our fellow compatriots among department Faculty and those from the so-called "real world." With the option to buy a letter press and an offset press for $500 and with the immediate necessity that we make up our collective minds about seeking space in the coming ArtSPACE @ Tri-Main complex, the time to act is now. We propose a publishing collective as essentially collaborative, with the benefit of being fully optional. Who of us is willing to work? A general informational-organizational meeting will be called soon. All interested are welcome! Needed positions/skills include: writers, editors, printers, critics, poets, artists, designers-- what else?--contact us at Small Press Collective, 438 Clemens Hall, SUNY-Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260 [we will eventually secure an address "off-campus"]. Or inquire at the following e- mail addresses (do not post replies to Poetics or Core-L lists, PLEASE! This will be the last public posting on this matter) for more info: AACOHEN@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU KUSZAI@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 22:56:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brigham Taylor Subject: Manhattan Share/Apt. available Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I wouldn't normally post this on the list, but I'm exploring every option. I need someone to share a (really) large 2 bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side (Ridge Street, 2 blocks south of Houston) by March 15 or April 1. It's $1200 a month ($600 each), and you have the option of taking over the whole apartment on the first of July. It's a great space at a good price. If you or anyone you know might be interested, backchannel me, Thanks Brigham Taylor btaylor@cuny.campus.mci.net ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 21:55:32 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Marjorie Perloff Subject: Re: Ed Dorn discussion In-Reply-To: <199702260501.VAA10387@leland.Stanford.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I doubt any of us would know who Ed Dorn is were it not for his poetry. Yet thus far I have not read one word in this discussion of Dorn's purported culpability that has anything to say about the poetry. And since when are poets necessarily nice people? With the "right" ideas? I agree with Maxine Chernoff! Let's stop being the Thought Police! What would most of the people on this list say if Baudelaire suddenly turned up, what with his fetishism, his arrogance, etc. etc.? And what about DH Lawrence with his strong man cults? And, let's see, then there's Virginia Woolf, whose letters to Vanessa are full of the nastiest, anti-Semitic remarks you can imagine! And spiteful comments about charladies and so on. So: who shall 'scape whipping? Marjorie Perloff ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 01:53:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: question which will explain things Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Intriguing question. You might want to take a look at Mark Turner's new _Literary Mind_, Polanyi's _Tacit Knowledge_, and some recent research showing that facial expressions "cause" emotions. tom bell At 11:38 AM 2/25/97 -0500, Jordan Davis wrote: >What attitude -- no, what facial expression do you find yourself assuming >when you begin to write a poem? when you are in the middle of writing a >poem? when you are editing a poem? > >Just curious, > >Jordan > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 02:52:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: JAC: Jennifer, Attis, Catullus MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 24 Attis for Cybele Which I began to inscribe, from Catullus, memory, having launched Himself down on the Phrygian Grove across the wine-dark sea, there To incise himself, flint-cut the lower edges of the sac, scrotum, His testicles flayed to the ground, blood circulating as she would Have appealed to gender-morphology, but this, irreversible, could No longer sustain the space she found herself in, this Jennifer Produced from the holy mysteries of the Magna Mater. She pranced, Declaimed loudly, Cybele screaming in the background, always a threat Holding onto her virgins, but these balls spattered on the holy earth Were something else again, while Jennifer sits, inscribes another Surface, servers crashing around her like waves on wine-dark waters. Again, again, she begins her description of Attis for Cybele, Attis Having likewise launched, a router on the Internet, turned towards her Or others, Aegean, Dea magna, dea Cybebe, dea domina Dindymi, procul a mea tuus sit furor omnis, era, domo: alios age incitatos, alios age rabidos, get out of here, furious, Make them crazy, rabid, swallow balls like seeds furrowed, the Net Splits, opens wide, Alan's driven mad, Jennifer writes in repetition, All these skinned wounds, all these Fisher Kings. _______________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 03:03:47 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jen Sondheim Subject: JAC: last, what was lost MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++stone, granite burned_program:archaos:rabidos:grave:cain:14187:7:Jennifer,lost:grave:rabidos+ dust:catacomb:skull_script:tomb:betach:14222:2:lost_Jennifer:tomb:skull_script lost:here:stone:bone:shtut:14232:0:Jen-gone:bone:lost+++++++++++++++++++++++++ wraithe:wrythe:wryte:ghost:be'emet:14248:3:gone,Jen:ghost:wraithe+++++++++++++ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++stone, marble >> ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 23:44:17 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: question which will explain things Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 04:28 PM 2/25/97 -0800, you wrote: >Maybe it would be a good idea if we all pretended that whoever we're going >after is in fact listening. This wouldn't preclude criticism, but it might >temper it so that it fell short of character assassination. >Except in life and death situations manners do count (and sometimes even then). WHAT? EVEN POUND? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 06:15:18 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ron Silliman Subject: Politics of The List Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu I will by-pass the temptation to send a message that includes all 65 messages that were in this morning's Poetics Digest (many of which include many additional messages). My eyes blear over. However. The prospect of anyone even attempting to prevent the Dorns from participating on this list is disturbing in the extreme and sort of turns a lot of the questions of the past week on their head, doesn't it? But exclusion, of this or any other sort, does seem to be the logical conclusion of the List's sense of itself as "private." And while obviously the intention behind that initial impulse was/is good (as in protecting the list from becoming simply a listserve variant of those poetry usenet groups), the short & slippery slope from there to here is always shorter and more slippery than we would imagine. Maybe it's time to end the List's sense of itself of as "private." Ron Silliman PS, My apologies to the heirs et al of RP Warren for confusing him with JC Ransome in an earlier note (thanks to Jerry & Aldon for catching this). I've tried to figure out how I made that mistake (beyond writing when I had a bad cold). Three alternatives come to mind: (1) all those agrarians look alike; (2) since I take Warren more seriously than I do Ransome, my memory made the "crime" of it seem worse by attaching it to the "serious" figure; or (3) having actually appeared in Southern Review myself in my callow youth, I wanted to dissociate my own publication history from such dishonorable events. I think the "real" answer is #1 above. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 09:01:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: Townes Van Zandt MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Does anyone on this list have specific information about the death, apparently around January 1 of this year, of the Texas singer-songwriter folk-country musician Townes Van Zandt? A long heroin problem I know, etc etc, but also some of the best southern songs of the last 20 odd years. My own sense is that MY MOTHER, THE MOUNTAIN is the best (and an amazing collection it is) of his sometimes hit-and-miss studio albums, but he was also a great live musician too--perhaps his best moment is the song "Early In The Morning" from a late 80s album called LIVE AND OBSCURE--a truly terrifying incursion into incest, violence and drunkenness. I'd appreciate either backchannel, or perhaps better, any information on the list itself. Mark Wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun | | to go to extremes" | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 09:15:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joel Kuszai Subject: QUARTET #1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Now available: QUARTET #1 Featuring: Wanda Coleman Alexis DeVeaux Eric Gansworth Ted Pearson Send a check for $6 ($5 + $1 for postage) to: just buffalo literary center 2495 Main Street Buffalo, NY 14214 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 09:25:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: how people behave MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII how people behave is relevant to their poetry their poetry is relevant they behave is relevant to how they behave they behave is relevant to how their poetry behaves The issue, for instance, of how poets respond both in their work and in their lives to constructions of male behavior in a male dominated society is relevant to how they behave is relevant to their poetry to how they behave is not a matter for simple condemnation is relevant to how they behave is relevant to the poetry When the poet and visual artist John Havelda was here in D.C. two weekends ago we were all at a bar (is relevant to how they behave) having a drink and a fight broke out well not a fight really just this big guy started shouting at a much smaller guy and then hit him and then was surrounded by people saying "oh you're a big man such a big man for hitting him" and the big guy was humiliated and left or else you could have said his behavior is not relevant to poetry we could have been in a bar in which it was okay for someone to hit someone is that relevant to poetry are you macho do you hate it when people talk about behavior let's talk about poetry right the beautiful poetry we're all here for poetry are you macho do you hate it when people talk about your behavior why do you hate it when people talk about your behavior Ted Berrigan's work exhibits an intense struggle for the issue of how they behave is relevant to the poetry how he behaved was relevant he wanted it relevant it was how he behaved to the poetry is relevant he saw what life was like in Tulsa and went to NYC is NYC really better than Tulsa really In Tulsa in 1921 the relatively prosperous black section of town was burned down in a riot started by a false accusation by a white woman that she had been assaulted by a black man the accusation might have gone no further except a Tulsa paper made it first page news for weeks until finally there was literally a war the whole black section of Tulsa was burned and afterwards several black men were prosecuted and one prosperous black hotel owner ran away to Chicago and escaped prosecution and the historical memory of the incident was in the hands of white papers so that UNTIL THE LATE 1980S there was no official record or acknowledgement in this country of what happened in Tulsa in 1921 Ted Berrigan and Rod Padgett lived in Tulsa but they didn't know what happened in Tulsa in 1921 what facial expression do you have when you write a poem when you want to beat somebody up your poem has an expression I didn't learn to fight until I was beaten up a bunch of times as a kid and then I learned to fight back is it a good thing that I learned to fight back that I actually know how to "kick your ass" if I need to is that relevant to behavior in poetry is it relevant to poetry that I may have just indulged in a bit of macho posturing but nonetheless can still "kick your ass" if I need to but guess what I'm not going to it is easy to be reductive about the issue it is easy to avoid the issue but if you don't talk about the construction of maleness in Berrigan's work in O'Hara's work than you're not seeing part of what mattered to them as poets and as men and they were both they were poets and they were men I suppose (what's the definition anyway of "man") and how could being a poet not be intimately related to being a "man" or just to being behavior and poetry and relevance is all relevant to poetry every time somebody says "that's not relevant" they're just plain fucking wrong Mark Wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun | | to go to extremes" | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 08:28:15 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: QUARTET #1 In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" looks good joel; what's alexis deveaux up to thiese days. At 9:15 AM -0500 2/26/97, Joel Kuszai wrote: >Now available: > > QUARTET #1 > >Featuring: > > Wanda Coleman > Alexis DeVeaux > Eric Gansworth > Ted Pearson > > > >Send a check for $6 ($5 + $1 for postage) to: > >just buffalo literary center >2495 Main Street >Buffalo, NY 14214 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 08:35:50 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: how people behave Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" yeah, i'd have to say i'm with mark on this -- it's all relevant, and all a matter of what you want to emphasize... i don't think relevance = condemnation either (or for that matter, say, beatification)... so i don't think that establishing relevance is a holier-than or less-holier-than activity, or needs to be... joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 09:54:34 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard/College/hmco Subject: a Boston post: 2/24 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain She is beautiful. The room is full, she is beautiful and everyone in the room is watching her. She pays me no attention but I don't mind. There is an intense, quiet joy brought about by her presence and the room is quiet while everyone looks intently at her and smiles. It is a rare moment in my life and maybe in her life too. She rolls her head, almost casually, and her bright eyes bounce from one object to the next, from one person to the next. She is all smiles and giggles. She is a peach. She is cute as a button. She is bald and has no teeth and perhaps others are wondering, like me, if she may spit up soon on Ange's shirt or something. I muse quietly in a corner, when she-- Julia-- turns her head quickly at the sound of her father's voice. It is Joe Torra, who pops in from the kitchen asking if anyone needs more wine or some other refreshing beverage. Soon all the guests arrive, and the reader too-- Ed Barrett -- and we begin. Here is a portion of one poem that he read: (from THE MUMMY) "While I'm not defining terms I also won't define poetry since what I recognize as poetry you may not and what's the point of making a big deal about it? Or if poetry is life (since terms at either end of an equals sign are identical) then maybe I should make a big deal about it, the way life does: remember how you used to get beat up in grammar school if you weren't careful, and even if you were? The time we hiked across Prospect Park to the Brooklyn Museum to see the Indian child mummy and on the way back because I asked these other kids what direction we should take they naturally assumed we needed to get jumped, and how I was able to keep this jerk away from me by swinging my toy army rifle around me like a helicopter blade? My friend was wearing an army helmet (plastic) and I don't remember being asked to check our rifles and helmets at the museum. I guess you just know if someone is playing seriously and you go along with it, our mission that day was to see what a dead child looked like." Ed reads for about a half-hour and is funny and startling and his reading is so enjoyable that when I ask my girlfriend later if she liked it she tells me she wishes Ed had read longer than he did. This gives me pause and I purse my lips, scratch my head . . . "never wants a second cup at home." But Ed was fabulous, read new unpublished work, as well as poems written for the occasion and also poems for Joe and Molly Torra and their infant daughter Julia. It's a good Boston turnout at the Torra's: Michael and Isabel Franco, Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno, Patricia Pruitt, Lisa Amber Phillips, Elliza McGrand, Bill and Beverly Corbett, Rafael and Lina De Gruttola, Bob D'Attilio, Ange Mlinko, Steve McNamara, Dan Farrell and Craig Snyder. We eat calzones and drink wine till it gets late and I leave, singing in my mind "please come to Boston for the springtime . . . " unable to recall the singer's name and not knowing to whom it is directed. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 10:33:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kristin Gallagher Subject: Re: Townes Van Zandt In-Reply-To: from "Mark Wallace" at Feb 26, 97 09:01:24 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit he had a heart attack, i think. he left a wife and adolescent daughter behind. his wife divorced him a while back but she took care of him and let him sleep on the couch until the end. i have a great quote from him on my frig. when asked what you have to do to make it as a musician, he said "first you gotta get a guitar. then you gotta blow everything else off. you gotta blow off your family. you gotta blow off your job. you gotta blow off money. you gotta blow off security. you gotta blow off your ego. and just play your guitar. sleep with it. even if you're hungry. i say that to young people . . . you'd be surprised how many it scares off." ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 07:16:55 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Organization: Sun Moon Books Subject: Sun & Moon offers for Wellman and Jesurun plays Comments: cc: djmess@sunmoon.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm thankful to Marjorie Perloff and Fiona Templeton for opening a discussion (hopefully a discussion) of poetic theater and its relationship to poetics. There are wonderful American playwrights -- many of them grouped together as the "Language" playwrights -- who focus on concerns of language and poetry that is very similar to many of the poets discussed on this list. These include writers such as Mac Wellman, Erik Ehn, Len Jenkin, John Steppling, Suzan-Lori Parks, Fiona Templeton,Naomi Iizuka, and many others. To help encourage this discussion and the readership of some of these plays, Sun & Moon offers the following specials. Works by Mac Wellman: ANNIE SALEM: An American Tale In this, his second novel, Mac Wellman continues his exploration of a low-rent rural America, fes- tering in the backwater pollution from the urban enviornment. Wellman's astonishing Ohio-like world has been tagged by some theatergoers and critics as "Macland," a world peopled by cantankerous, wistful, confused, and frightened people who have lost parts of their bodies, their minds, and their souls to the perpetual machine of the American dream. Regular price $12.95/slightly hurt copies sold at a special price of $5.00 BAD PENNY at Bow Bridge A short play, winner of the Obie Award, about a man who picks up a bad penny (tails up) and finds his day his metaphysically altered in Central Park. Regularly $5.95/20% discount to members of the Poetics List THE PROFESSIONAL FRENCHMAN This play by Mac takes place after a Thanksgiving dinner in a northern Virgina suburb. Jacques and Sam, dangerously imperfect confidence men, close in on Blaise Duykick, who smelts stolen silverware in the basement bathroom unbeknownst to his wife, Femke. Regularly $7.95/We offer a 20% discount to members of the Poetics List THE FORTUNTELLER Wellman's first long fiction is a "murder mystery." A murderer stalks the art community of SoHo in New York City. The narrator of this wildly satiric fiction seeks to uncover the killer before each of his friends (and enemies) becomes a victim. Regularly $11.95/slightly hurt copies for $5.00 A SHELF IN WOOP'S CLOTHING A poetry of wit and language. Here "polydactyl" meets "pumpkinfication" head on in a kaleidoscope of verse. Regularly $8.95/Special offer of $4.00 THE LAND BEYOND THE FOREST: Dracula and Swoop In these two plays Wellman explores the Dracula myth. This time the vampires whoop in up not only in their Transylvanian back/badlands in the last minutes of 1899, but fly over New York City (in Swoop) discussing the awful tastes of the blood of critics. Regularly $12.95/slightly hurt copies for $5.00 THEATER OF WONDERS: SIX CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN PLAYS Plays by Len Jenkin, Jeffrey Jones, Des McAnuff, Elizabeth Wray and Wellman. Regularly $12.95/slightly hurt copies for $5.00 ==================== Works by John Jesurun EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE will be published by April 1, 1997 pre-publication offer of a 20% discount to members of the Poetics List. Order from Sun & Moon Press through my E-mail address: djmess@sunmoon.com Be sure to include your name and address. Douglas Messerli ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 10:01:53 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: Politics of The List Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" there's an old caution (by now) about email -- you don't post *anything* to *anybody* w/o understanding that it may turn up someplace else, with somebody else, even years later... this is owing to the versatility of the digital, its permanence, ease of transmission, convertibility... so it's exactly on the continuum from private to public (or the axis if you like) that so much of this discussion turns, even setting aside the fact that this is a list... it's a function of the medium, i mean... and obviously, our posts *here* are in the hands/minds of -- what is it currently? -- 450 subscribers?... located on several continents, no less... with all sorts of systems gaps that permit prying eyes to pry... i've never really thought of poetics as a "private" space... on the other hand, i've always assumed that the point of calling it a "private" space was rhetorical-functional... a way of checking the possibility of a cast of thousands, and of maintaining some semblance of *individualized* control, even (and i don't mean this latter in any insidious sense)... charles, our host, should probably jump in here... but ron is right -- if each of us hasn't already, perhaps it *is* time that "we" disabuse our collective self of the notion that what is going on hereabouts is what we customarily take to be "private correspondence"... that stuff over there, i mean, in hardcopy land... which isn't always all that "private," either... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 08:50:46 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Sun & Moon offers for Wellman and Jesurun plays Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Please send me and bill accordingly 1 copy of slightly-hurt Annie, 1 special order Shelf, and three hurt copies of Richard Elmans's Tar beach (I've already given three copies away). Send and bill to: Mark Weiss, PO Box 40537, San Diego CA 92164. Phone 619-282-0371 Fax 282-0297. >ANNIE SALEM: An American Tale > In this, his second novel, Mac Wellman continues > his exploration of a low-rent rural America, fes- > tering in the backwater pollution from the urban > enviornment. Wellman's astonishing Ohio-like world > has been tagged by some theatergoers and critics > as "Macland," a world peopled by cantankerous, > wistful, confused, and frightened people who have > lost parts of their bodies, their minds, and their > souls to the perpetual machine of the American > dream. > Regular price $12.95/slightly hurt copies > sold at a special price of $5.00 > > >>A SHELF IN WOOP'S CLOTHING > A poetry of wit and language. Here "polydactyl" meets > "pumpkinfication" head on in a kaleidoscope of verse. > Regularly $8.95/Special offer of $4.00 > >> ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 17:18:47 -0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: matt Subject: Re: Spell check MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit a little behind here though others may not always agree, this being in the eye, as they say. as to your questions. reading gently through the work a tone differs without signpostsings or an echo of previous words, perhaps movements slight return in mind. i think there is a greater (ooh, be 'ware of the generality I'm told) sense of temporality - the ghost of language allowed to live if you don't curtail its presence by the quotation marks, these walls of pastureyesation. but then they can always be used to distance. that, the most basic response (keeping closer to 'you' without, further away with; more alive without, more dead with etc). but more basely, the voice predominates rather than the intellect in the absence of quotes (invented in the seventeenth century, so definitely enlightened) and this aurality increased. but always go with how you feel i say. matt > >Is there a difference between using quotation marks or some other indicator > >of source and not indicating the source specifically but treating the words > >as found language? How does this work? I don't mean technically how it > >works, but what kind of difference does it make to the poem or the reader? > >the writer? > > > >Just something I've been wondering about. Sherry > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 13:37:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: Townes Van Zandt In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Townes Van Zandt did gorgeous work, absolutely tough: I heard him once live and it was very important for me: I read about his death in a local newspaper here in Boston, the paper said heart attack On Wed, 26 Feb 1997, Mark Wallace wrote: > Does anyone on this list have specific information about the > death, apparently around January 1 of this year, of the Texas > singer-songwriter folk-country musician Townes Van Zandt? A long heroin > problem I know, etc etc, but also some of the best southern songs of the > last 20 odd years. My own sense is that MY MOTHER, THE MOUNTAIN is the > best (and an amazing collection it is) of his sometimes hit-and-miss > studio albums, but he was also a great live musician too--perhaps his best > moment is the song "Early In The Morning" from a late 80s album called > LIVE AND OBSCURE--a truly terrifying incursion into incest, violence and > drunkenness. I'd appreciate either backchannel, or perhaps better, any > information on the list itself. > > Mark Wallace > > > /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ > | | > | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu "I have not yet begun | > | to go to extremes" | > | GWU: | > | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | > | EPC: | > | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | > |____________________________________________________________________________| > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 13:55:09 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: recent threads and the influence of henry g. Jane and Ngozi by Copley Square All of winter stands still for this. We are walking by the brood of an alley, its crushed boxes and piss and cans filmed with rotting food. You hold my hands, beautiful women from a warm country, as you laugh, formally. Your hair, latticed by a regiman of ropes and pleats, keeps nothing warm but raps against the down-gorged nylon of your collars. The sun, distanced and thin, collects on your boots, your mittens, and still you are cold. The veldt of grass, the lions of Kenya, occlude the brittle wind of Boston, your hands in mine unchilled. E. McGrand ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 10:59:33 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: nico vassilakis MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII this Dorn thread's a noose what's the relationship between L/A/N/G/U/A/G/E writing and e-(writing)mail? are the westerns, who's in attendance lists, clothing, job conferences, and previous items it? the chatting is voyueristic in such a weird way. i just don't get it (e-mail psych.) would changing the structure be of interest to anyone? something similar to A.BACUS, or magazines that present 15-20 pages of individual writing (open format). tid bits could be backchanneled provided by a complete daily list of poetics list subscribers, and like that. these exchanges could be presented. or maybe a second, a poetics list 2 to manage the 'other' talk and essential publishing info pertinent to the group. poetics list 2 discussing poetics list 1. somebody, a year ago, spoke about the tension involved in communicating e-mail. even coming out of lurk is a difficulty. extracurricular polite? night, in yr hand smoke-stuffed box or room enough to fall thru scaffolding (is that electronically feasable?) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 13:51:26 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: poetics, the ling of it MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit nico vassilakis wrote: > > this Dorn thread's > a noose there's lotsa bandwidth for as many threads & nooses we wanna untie > what's the relationship between L/A/N/G/U/A/G/E writing and > e-(writing)mail? writing > are the westerns, who's in attendance lists, clothing, job conferences, > and previous items it? bring to it each ours > the chatting is voyueristic in such a weird way. i just don't get it > (e-mail psych.) born & bred voyeur, overcoming is the mediation (community built) > would changing the structure be of interest to anyone? > something similar to A.BACUS, or magazines that present 15-20 pages of > individual writing (open format). listvision, need that listvision, want that listvision > tid bits could be backchanneled provided by a complete daily list of > poetics list subscribers, and like that. these exchanges could be > presented. to some degree this is happening already, cowriting where it can be heard, beats those memories of cutting out typography from oldmags & pasting them letter by letter to make a book which we made ten copies which we put in 10 envelopes & sent to 10 people. > or maybe a second, a poetics list 2 to manage the 'other' talk and > essential publishing info pertinent to the group. poetics list 2 > discussing poetics list 1. I think hypertexting our posts is much to be desired spidery way, because everyone can easily establish submailing lists & mail selected audiences. > somebody, a year ago, spoke about the tension involved in communicating > e-mail. even coming out of lurk is a difficulty. man, I long to hear more of what you have to say, its why I put time in here. > extracurricular polite? > night, in yr hand > smoke-stuffed box they deliver those words on platters, they do, serve em right up... > or room enough > to fall thru scaffolding > > (is that electronically > feasable?) my own approach to using the computer, internet, email, webpages, is to think of it as completely synchronous with my activities of publishing xexoxial, Im motivated in a way to approach from a standpoint of electronic wildernesse, & aggressively carving niches in the endless edges & crannies of the net, as well as planting some of my own. my approach is anything but passive, but partly too its been incubating since 84-85 when I made my first hypermedia & understood then that everything we have now is possible. I just didnt think it would take this many years to get here. I think there are many workarounds for the given limitations one feels. while I have enough of dealing with issues of gender & politics here at Dreamtime to be interested in participating in these threads, I like the opened medium, I just wish somedays there were 3-10,000 other threads to choose from. more is more. miekal who is hopefully taking a vacation to nc & tn for the first time in 3 years, back in 2 weeks -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# Dreamtime Village website: http://net22.com/dreamtime QAZINGULAZA: And/Was/Wakest website: http://net22.com/qazingulaza e-mail for DT & And/Was: dtv@mwt.net ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 10:49:47 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: Sad News In-Reply-To: <199702261739.RAA23207@hinge.mistral.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I just learned that Tony Williams died of a heart attack in Daly City at age 51. A Tony Williams memorial fund has been set up -- address is: Tony Williams Memorial Fund P.O. Box 1429 Pacifica, CA 94044 contributions sent here will be controlled by the family -- funeral details not yet announced -- Listening again to "In A Silent Way" -- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 15:15:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Issa Clubb Subject: Re: Sad News In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" For those of you in NYC, I believe the radio station KCR (89.9 FM) is playing Tony Williams all 24 hrs today (Wed)... Sad news indeed. >I just learned that Tony Williams died of a heart attack in Daly City at >age 51. _________________________ Issa Clubb Voyager Art Dept. mailto:issa@voyagerco.com ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 14:26:06 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: Sad News Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" thanks for sad indeed news; 51 is young. i feel lucky to have seen williams here at the dakota bar and grill a few years ago, where he thanked folks for coming to the show because "not a lot of people understand this kind of music; it's loud, it's aggressive, and some people are afraid of it." those few words made a deep impression, as did the thrillingly loud, aggressive music. At 10:49 AM 2/26/97, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote: >I just learned that Tony Williams died of a heart attack in Daly City at >age 51. > >A Tony Williams memorial fund has been set up -- address is: > >Tony Williams Memorial Fund >P.O. Box 1429 >Pacifica, CA 94044 > >contributions sent here will be controlled by the family -- > >funeral details not yet announced -- > >Listening again to "In A Silent Way" -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 00:18:02 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: cris cheek Subject: Re: Irony, drama, sanity, prophecy, LangPo Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I've just spent today in the studio, recording pieces by Clive Bell for release by Sound and Language on CD early this summer. Clive is, alongside Evan Parker and John Butcher and Peter Brotzmann and Steve Lacy one of the most extraordinary of solo wind improvisers. His attitude is, perhaps, worth recounting in relation to Steve Benson's more recent work as flagged up by Ira under this thread. "Having something you need to say is already a closing to what might be said" It would be a shame for a writer such as Steve Benson to be expected to repeat early successes (not that I'm reading Ira as suggesting such). I too was surprised by the materials with which Steve was engaging in his Ear Inn '94 and Cambridge '95 performances. Yet the acuity with which he examines language even as he formulates and utters it remains for me as finely tuned as ever. The mood is wry. The bounce material distractions have changed. I don't, personally, find them any more ironic, although his cadence is less urgent. They are certainly partially steppings back, from harshness: 'I could feel myself looking over the hill a long time, after the carriage had passed, and my story had been told, and ran in the opposite direction, imagining that the police were after me, and that the cold water tragically fixed into my confused opinions of my situation until I improperly tore myself out of the middle of that book, leaving the page numbers intact, and watched the light from the east strike an awkward pose in the corner, imagining it would do itself good by offering a body there: a dance that they do, when they hate to do what is private, and so publicly enunciate and announce that a game is going to come and be played in this trick ball park where what they have on the ground is like a red rug, and you have to wear special glasses to see it as green, and long after we have passed, there is only just now a relationship between what is sexual and what is a second individual.' ( from 'The Birds' - Language aLive 2) love and love cris ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 16:59:36 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Call for Submissions Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu, AERIALEDGE@aol.com, Lppl@aol.com, jms@acmenet.net, maz881@aol.com, Marisa.Januzzi@m.cc.utah.edu, drothschild@penguin.com, Daniel_Bouchard@hmco.com, jarnot@pipeline.com, jdavis@panix.com, lease@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU, wmfuller@ix.netcom.com, fittermn@is.nyu.edu, daviesk@is4.nyu.edu, lgoodman@ACSU.Buffalo.EDU, mwinter@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu, I.Lightman@uea.ac.uk, eryque@acmenet.net, kunos@lanminds.com, levyaa@is.nyu.edu, sab5@psu.edu, harris4@soho.ios.com, chris1929w@aol.com, wr-eye-tings@sfu.ca Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Antenym, a xeroxed 8 and a half by 11 stapled magazine, invites submissions of poetry, fiction, critical and/or philosophical essays, visual art, and other varieties of work on the theme "Ontological Activism and its possibilities" to which issue #13 of the magazine will be dedicated. Submissions may be emailed to or analog-mailed to Steve Carll at 106 Fair Oaks St. #3, San Francisco, CA 94110-2951, with an SASE for reply (and return of mss. if desired). Deadline is June 15, 1997. On Ontological Activism: It's often pointed to as the oldest and most fundamental complex of questions to occur in human consciousness: "Who am I, and what am I doing here?" Questions of this type, along with the resources needed to ask them and give them adequate reflection, are increasingly proscribed by the conditions currently structuring much of our daily experience, which ultimately threatens that human consciousness that makes such questioning possible and even necessary. The phrase "ontological activism" announces itself as the public asking of the questions of being, transforming the individual "who am I?" through re-integration with the communal--"who are we?" in such a way that the opening up of personal perspectives may continually transform the communal as well, by offering examples of investigative strategies. In this way, the question becomes, "Do we as human beings wish to continue being, and if so, how?" ********************************** sjcarll@slip.net Steve Carll http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/mags/antenym http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/antenym In seed- sense the sea stars you out, innermost, forever. --Paul Celan ********************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 20:36:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: question which will explain things what's the whelm swash <> Jordan Davis varies with medium (inkpen v. keyboard) energy tending to focus about the eyes around the open nostrils? the pivotal forehead? often a pursing of lips or making eyeslits to look into distance? (there is no distance) some literal yonder? (assume there is one) or this tilt of the head (rightward? leftward?) resembling sadness (abhogi? imp's grin?) porch sat a summer reaching pink dawn? who'd conclude what masquerade gilts glassen features? no what's the whelm swash quicks the slow heap bedrifts the clouds d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 01:02:53 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Franklin Bruno Subject: cd info Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A week or so ago, someone (Maria Damon, I think) posted some information about a CD magazine that sounded quite interesting. I don't remember the details, though I thought an upcoming volume was about Stein. I managed to lose the info. Could someone post it again. Backchannel is fine. Tony Williams (very sad) died young, but he started young too--he first played with Miles Davis at 17! Townes Van Zandt was indeed quite a songwriter (see "Lungs," "Pancho & Lefty"), but I shudder to imagine what his politics might have been. All you people got me to dig out Berrigan's -The Sonnets-. No cogent comment, but thanks. Special to Stroffolino (the only one interested, I bet)--I'm seeing Pavement tomorrow, if I see Malkmus, I'll get to the bottom of this Ashbery thing. fjb ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 01:28:18 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: how people behave In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hey, people out there over the brown bulge of the continent and all: What kind of facial expression do you have when you punch a nazi poet in the eye? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 01:09:12 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: question which will explain things In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Sorry for my sarcasm,\ but I find myself sick of reading of people who are >willing to punch other people in the nose. You wanna step outside? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 01:00:06 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: question which will explain things In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >On Tue, 25 Feb 1997, Jordan Davis wrote: > >> What attitude -- no, what facial expression do you find yourself assuming >> when you begin to write a poem? when you are in the middle of writing a >> poem? when you are editing a poem? >> I havent got a clue. When I am writing I am not in front of a mirror. I know the expression on my face when I am shaving. But I dont see any connection with expression of any sort and my poetry. I am too busy listening. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 07:55:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark W Scroggins Subject: Re: question which will explain things In-Reply-To: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT As the Pythons used to say, this is a very SILLY thread--but didn't Mallarme compose in front of a mirror? On Thu, 27 Feb 1997, George Bowering wrote: > > I havent got a clue. When I am writing I am not in front of a mirror. I > know the expression on my face when I am shaving. But I dont see any > connection with expression of any sort and my poetry. I am too busy > listening. > > > > > George Bowering. > , > 2499 West 37th Ave., > Vancouver, B.C., > Canada V6M 1P4 > > fax: 1-604-266-9000 > e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 06:47:22 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Special to Stroffolino MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Franklin Bruno wrote: > Special to Stroffolino (the only one interested, I bet)--I'm seeing Pavement > tomorrow, if I see Malkmus, I'll get to the bottom of this Ashbery thing. Franklin, when you get to the bottom of this Ashbery thing, set off a flare, will you? The rest of the expedition is hopelessly lost. P.S. Kisses to Malkmus. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 09:52:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: Spell check Comments: cc: Sherry Brennan MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Sherry -- yesterday I thought I was posting to the Poetics brood, but inadvertantly (instead) backchanneled my note(s) to you; oh well. If I start tossing around names like TS Eliot too much, the hipsters will raise eyebrows anyway, I suppose. Jorie Graham is a curious case (in point) too. I'd say she's been quite influenced by certain LangPo & such developments -- & I think she's wonderful. But my general impression is that to many Poetics types, she's prob. beyond the pale, since she's so mainstream-published, so well-awarded, etc. Hmm -- now I'll put my foot in it & post this (though was to backchannel), since I'm curious for some poss. response re that. Here then, tacked on, is my 2/26 note, too. cheers all, d.i. p.s.: another tack on the citations / quotations issue. It's interesting that in much of Alice Notley's writing, EVERY sentence is in quotation marks! (My late friend Lynne Beyer pointed this out to me, merely wondering what Alice was up to.) Certainly it's not a question of borrowed language in the literal, Brennan-asked sense. Seems (in effect) more like thoughts / words "overheard" -- eh? > Subject: Re: Spell check > Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 11:51:55 -0500 > Following up Sherry Brennan's question yesterday abt. citations for > borrowed language -- > > 2 poss. interesting instances spring to mind. The recent book > *Materialism* by Jorie Graham is chock-full of borrowed texts. I > think (if memory serves) she merely mentions what authors she's > borrowed from; -- or perhaps gives some bit more detail, but is > anyway not exhaustive or too detailed. You might want to give the > book a glance, -- as one example of contemporary practice. > > The other case that came to mind was T.S. Eliot's wholesale lifting > of a passage from San Juan de la Cruz. In that case, my impression > (or recollection) is that there's no annotation identifying the > original -- but rather, Eliot prefaces (in the poem itself) the > appropriated text by some phrase like "Has it not been said?" -- > > so that's one other approach to this. But likely you'll find your > own solution. > > have fun w/ Ch. Darwin + the gardeners > d.i. > > (p.s.: I get the Poetics package in digest, so if I post mid-day > (like this), I'm writing blind as to what's meanwhile transpiring. > Was thus slightly amused to note my "found poem" of yesterday > appeared (unwittingly) in the wake of this query. I didn't mention > that the tose words comprised the *complete* (unaltered) text of the > orig. office-mail msg. -- minus a single closing word: "Thanks!"). . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ========================= | thy centuries follow each other | perfecting a small wild flower | (Tagore) //////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\///// ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 09:55:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: cd info Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" What the hell do you mean, the only one interested!!! Mr Bruno for the sake of humanity, let us all know when you find out -- is Malkmus for real about Ashbery, or is it a put-on? and how much text does he get from him ... Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:08:41 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: the archibras Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" (a friend of mine who's doing some work on the utopian body sent me this, and I thought maybe some on the list would enjoy it too) S. Here's something to think about on your drive today: "Fourier predicted that the men and women of the new order would grow to the height of seven feet and live to the age of 144. They would acquire replaceable teeth and develop the capacity to withstand severe pain. Their senses would undergo extraordinary refinement, and they would also become sufficiently amphibious to make full use of the bottom of the sea. But the most remarkable physical change in mankind, which would only take place after sixteen generations of Harmony, was the development of a new member, an archibras, the properties of which were described by Fourier in a manuscript censored by his disciples: 'The Harmonian arm or archibras is a veritable tail, a tail of immense length and with 144 vertebrae. . . . This member is as redoubtable as it is industrious. It is a natural weapon . . . The archibras terminates with a very small elongated hand, a hand as strong as the claws of an eagle or a crab. . . . When a man is swimming, the archibras will help him move as fast as a fish. It can stretch to the bottom of the water, carrying fish nets and making them fast. With its help a man can reach a branch twelve feet high, climb up and down the tree, pick fruit at the very top of the tree, and put in in a basket tied to the archimain. It serves as a whip and a rein to a man who is driving a horse-drawn plow. . . .It can be used to tame a wild horse: the rider can tie up the horse's legs with his archibras. It is infinitely useful, and in the playing of musical instruments it doubles a person's manual faculties since its fingers, although very small, are extremely stretchable.'" Surprising that Fourier didn't expound upon its erotic potential, since that's a subject he rarely leaves out elsewhere! Bon voyage, N. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:01:40 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Blau DuPlessis Organization: TEMPLE UNIVERSITY Subject: Re: how people behave In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 26 Feb 1997 09:25:43 -0500 from Re TULSA in 1921, the pogrom against the African-American community: Ron Padgett has a poem from, I think, the early 1970s, or even earlier (1968?) in which he explicitly refers to the Tulsa events, in the context of the rebellions/riots of the late 60s. (This as a correction to Wallace); since I am sitting without RP's poetry (at school) I can't cite title, but it is a long, explicit, and moving work. Rachel Blau DuPlessis ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 08:24:14 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Political Animals In-Reply-To: <970227.110511.EST.RDUPLESS@VM.TEMPLE.EDU> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It's Kevin Killian. I know I have used this space already to announce my play on March 6 but I wanted to announce a late-breaking development. After many years away from the stage, Mr. Nick Robinson will be joining my cast of international stars, essaying the pivotal role of fallen Ubermensch Christopher Reeve. Nick Robinson was the man whose work with Poet's Theater here in the Bay Area first made me want to write for the stage. Now he returns in "Political Animals." I feel the puffed up pride of MGM's Louis B. Mayer when he told the world, in 1945, to promote "Adventure" (Victor Fleming), -- "Gable's Back--and Garson's Got Him!" ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 08:32:10 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Oliveros/Fullman CD Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Oops. I left the wrong POBox key while I was out of town, so the discs for those of you who've already mail ordered Suspended Music: Deep Listening Band & Long String Intrument are just going out today. Sorry for the delay. Snail or e-mail orders at the US$15 price will be honored through Monday March 3rd. Hope to meet some of you all at the CD release parties in mid-March. Bests Herb Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:27:46 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Coffey Subject: Re: how people behave -Reply Comments: To: RDUPLESS@VM.TEMPLE.EDU more on tulsa incident: there is a novel by Susan Straight called The Gettin' Place, published by Hyperion last year, that tells the story of a family since moved to a California town much like Riverside (calla Rio Seco), but which began in Tulsa during those riots. Very fine book, as Straight, a white woman from Swiss stock who was raised and now lives in pretty much a black Riverside community, is an excellent writer. I interviewed her for Publishers Weekly a few years ago and she would blanch at my foregrounding her racial background and the environs she grew up in, but her perspective on the black, vietnamese, hispanic communities she knows so well are terrific: it is the perspective of someone who has seemlessly been assimilated. about other atrocities (how people behave): look for a memoir by the poet Peter Balakian, coming in may, about his eventual understanding of the Armenian genocide of 1915, engineered by the turks. His discovery of poetry is entwined with the historical consciousness of what happend to his "people," and is effectively, beaautifully told. And for anyone who grew up in a middle-class household in the 60s in new york or new jersey, the wealth of perfectly remembered cultural references of the time is entertainiang enough; but the book is heavy, heavy; I think bound to be a small classic of the memoir genre, much like Nabokov's speak memory, it is about a family's disposesssion and exile and structured with the integrity of a long poem. Basic Books, oddly enough, is the publisher. Balakian, i believe, teaches at Colgage in upstate new york. >>> Rachel Blau DuPlessis 02/27/97 11:01am >>> Re TULSA in 1921, the pogrom against the African-American community: Ron Padgett has a poem from, I think, the early 1970s, or even earlier (1968?) in which he explicitly refers to the Tulsa events, in the context of the rebellions/riots of the late 60s. (This as a correction to Wallace); since I am sitting without RP's poetry (at school) I can't cite title, but it is a long, explicit, and moving work. Rachel Blau DuPlessis ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:47:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: how people behave In-Reply-To: <970227.110511.EST.RDUPLESS@VM.TEMPLE.EDU> from "Rachel Blau DuPlessis" at Feb 27, 97 11:01:40 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I just started reading a book called *Death in a Promised Land* about the 1921 Tulsa Riots, veri interesting and very horrifying. As the author describes the rise of Tulsa's black middle class the sense of the inevitability of serious white backlash grows in a creepy, uncomfortable way and the photographs in the book enhance that - one picture, of several white men throwing torches into the second story of a black man's very large house which has started to smoke all over, literally made me feel ill. Tulsa is actually quite an amazing 20th century cultural space - lots of literary figures in the area as well as jazz musicians (a prime secondary site for band's like Basie's in the 20's). Then there's the fact that the Native Americans who were forced there around the turn of the century ended up sitting on a lot of oil land. Somehow laws were instituted which made the city hier to that land if the particular native American owners died - unsurprisingly, they started dropping like flies. More recently there's Larry Clark's (he dircted the movie *Kids*) book of photographs *Tulsa* (1971?) - photos of white tulsa teengaers shotting amphetamine, having sex, wielding guns, etc. -Mike Magee. According to Rachel Blau DuPlessis: > > Re TULSA in 1921, the pogrom against the African-American community: > Ron Padgett has a poem from, I think, the early 1970s, or even earlier > (1968?) in which he explicitly refers to the Tulsa events, in the context > of the rebellions/riots of the late 60s. (This as a correction to Wallace); > since I am sitting without RP's poetry (at school) I can't cite title, but > it is a long, explicit, and moving work. Rachel Blau DuPlessis > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:55:30 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Chris Stroffolino Subject: Fwd: Cheryl Dunye, etc. Oh yeah and on a related note, DEANNA FERGUSON are you there? If you are and are still trying to get in touch with DAVID BROMIGE, he will be back on the list in a fortnight or so he said....he had some minor surgery on his 5th toe (I said little toe, but he corrected me and on no uncertain terms) and can not walk from his computer terminal. He can walk TO it, but then he'd be stuck there. And you wouldn't want that, now, would you? Chris --------------------- Forwarded message: Subj: Cheryl Dunye, etc. Date: 97-02-27 11:51:22 EST From: CHRIS1929W To: POETICS@listserv.acsu.buffalo Hey, in this week's VILLAGE VOICE, there is an article about filmmaker Cheryl Dunye. She and I used to be roommates in Phila. She used to cut my hair and helped me get one job. It was VERY good to see that she's doing well for herself (her fame of course the result of negative publicity--being blacklisted by Jesse Helm for her black lesbian "agenda" a la Todd Hayne's fame being result of offending Dick Carpenter). I bring this up for those of you who may remember my SCHMIDT-DEAN GALLERY reading series of the early 1990's when I had her films shown with ABBY CHILD'S and Bob Perelman and Francie Shaw sat in the front row of the audience, asking pointed comments, etc. (Oh, gossip, gossip). Would anybody here know how to get in touch with Ms. Dunye? I have not seen her in years. Has anybody seen this new film? All for now, Chris Stroffolino ------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 08:59:37 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: question which will explain things In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Yes, it IS a silly thread, but it's like TV, it gets our mind off things. Stultifyingly dull "Grammys" last night, I couldn't watch more than a half hour or so. I, too, have been told I stick out my tongue when writing (and teaching) ala Michael Jordan. Would like to thing that's because I'm tasting the words. Can anyone confirm for me that there's a college basketball player at the moment (Minnesota?) who's been called "the Jewish Jordan"? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:29:39 -0800 Reply-To: evadog@bitstream.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: how people behave MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Michael Magee wrote: > Then there's the > fact that the Native Americans who were forced there around the turn of > the century ended up sitting on a lot of oil land. Somehow laws were > instituted which made the city hier to that land if the particular native > American owners died - unsurprisingly, they started dropping like flies. On the Osage of Oklahoma and white folks orgasm for oil see Linda Hogan's 1990 novel _Mean Spirit_. The usual raw materials for 20th century amerrycan poetico-ethics. Relatedly, to Tulsa and such conflagrations that is, see Michael D'Orso's book of last year _Like Judgement Day: The Ruin and Redemption of A Town Called Rosewood_. This as a corrective to the hollywoodization of the story in the new John Singleton and warner bros movie _Rosewood_. D'Orso's book is more the rendering of how the story of the racist destruction of the town has been variously remembered, narrated and memorialized. mc mc ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:03:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Spell check Comments: To: "David R. Israel" MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN I'll confess I find some of Jorie Grahm's work quite bracing tho lately it's become rather attentuated and verging on the pompous. Her appropriation of LangPo and Olsonite techniques begins with "End of Beauty," tho she applies these to rather different ends. Notley's quotation marks are fascinating. They function more as metrical units than anything else. And in _Alette_ they act as analogues for the stroboscopic flashings of the subway itself. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: David R. Israel To: POETICS Subject: Re: Spell check Date: Thursday, February 27, 1997 10:43AM Sherry -- yesterday I thought I was posting to the Poetics brood, but inadvertantly (instead) backchanneled my note(s) to you; oh well. If I start tossing around names like TS Eliot too much, the hipsters will raise eyebrows anyway, I suppose. Jorie Graham is a curious case (in point) too. I'd say she's been quite influenced by certain LangPo & such developments -- & I think she's wonderful. But my general impression is that to many Poetics types, she's prob. beyond the pale, since she's so mainstream-published, so well-awarded, etc. Hmm -- now I'll put my foot in it & post this (though was to backchannel), since I'm curious for some poss. response re that. Here then, tacked on, is my 2/26 note, too. cheers all, d.i. p.s.: another tack on the citations / quotations issue. It's interesting that in much of Alice Notley's writing, EVERY sentence is in quotation marks! (My late friend Lynne Beyer pointed this out to me, merely wondering what Alice was up to.) Certainly it's not a question of borrowed language in the literal, Brennan-asked sense. Seems (in effect) more like thoughts / words "overheard" -- eh? > Subject: Re: Spell check > Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 11:51:55 -0500 > Following up Sherry Brennan's question yesterday abt. citations for > borrowed language -- > > 2 poss. interesting instances spring to mind. The recent book > *Materialism* by Jorie Graham is chock-full of borrowed texts. I > think (if memory serves) she merely mentions what authors she's > borrowed from; -- or perhaps gives some bit more detail, but is > anyway not exhaustive or too detailed. You might want to give the > book a glance, -- as one example of contemporary practice. > > The other case that came to mind was T.S. Eliot's wholesale lifting > of a passage from San Juan de la Cruz. In that case, my impression > (or recollection) is that there's no annotation identifying the > original -- but rather, Eliot prefaces (in the poem itself) the > appropriated text by some phrase like "Has it not been said?" -- > > so that's one other approach to this. But likely you'll find your > own solution. > > have fun w/ Ch. Darwin + the gardeners > d.i. > > (p.s.: I get the Poetics package in digest, so if I post mid-day > (like this), I'm writing blind as to what's meanwhile transpiring. > Was thus slightly amused to note my "found poem" of yesterday > appeared (unwittingly) in the wake of this query. I didn't mention > that the tose words comprised the *complete* (unaltered) text of the > orig. office-mail msg. -- minus a single closing word: "Thanks!"). . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > david raphael israel < >> washington d.c. << | davidi@wizard.net (home) | disrael@skgf.com (office) ========================= | thy centuries follow each other | perfecting a small wild flower | (Tagore) //////////////////////////////////////////\\\\\///// ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 12:30:42 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: how people behave Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The poem is called "Radio", and it's in _Toujours L'Amour_. Jordan Davis 11:01 AM 2/27/97, Rachel Blau DuPlessis wrote: >Re TULSA in 1921, the pogrom against the African-American community: >Ron Padgett has a poem from, I think, the early 1970s, or even earlier >(1968?) in which he explicitly refers to the Tulsa events, in the context >of the rebellions/riots of the late 60s. (This as a correction to Wallace); >since I am sitting without RP's poetry (at school) I can't cite title, but >it is a long, explicit, and moving work. Rachel Blau DuPlessis ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 09:40:08 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: question which will explain things Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Isn't that a political position? Can anyone confirm for me that there's a college basketball player >at the moment (Minnesota?) who's been called "the Jewish Jordan"? > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:56:50 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: query Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" cd someone backchannel me a phone # for lee anne brown? the # i have is a nonworking # for time incorporated. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:47:00 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: question which will explain things Comments: To: Joe Safdie MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Joe, you shoulda watched the fabulous "Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" on AMC. A seminal work from my TV matinee childhood. Best line: "There's a certain inexorable chronology to these events." I think I'll "sample" that one. The way it uses very grainy stock footage of glaciers, US Airforce planes, etc. charmingly and naively anticipates use of same scratched, artificially aged postmod stuff in music vids, etc. Ray Harryhausen's monsters are a thousand times more poetic than Spielberg's. Or maybe I'm just being nostalgic. Patrick P. ---------- From: Joe Safdie To: POETICS Subject: Re: question which will explain things Date: Thursday, February 27, 1997 11:26AM Yes, it IS a silly thread, but it's like TV, it gets our mind off things. Stultifyingly dull "Grammys" last night, I couldn't watch more than a half hour or so. I, too, have been told I stick out my tongue when writing (and teaching) ala Michael Jordan. Would like to thing that's because I'm tasting the words. Can anyone confirm for me that there's a college basketball player at the moment (Minnesota?) who's been called "the Jewish Jordan"? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 10:16:28 PST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jerry Rothenberg Subject: san diego readings For those of you in or near San Diego, the following may be of interest: Wednesday March 5 7:00 p.m. at Jerome Rothenberg's studio (Visual Arts 451 on UCSD campus): a performance by the Dutch poet / soundtext artist Jaap Blonk, along with improvisations by contrabassist Bert Turetzky. Friday March 7 6:30 p.m. at the Porter Troupe Gallery (301 Spruce Street): a reading and performance by Ed Sanders. Both events free and open to the public. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 13:55:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Why I asked? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks, I think, Don Cheney, for liking the questions I ask. This particular question about the facial expression one assumes while writing is pretty silly, yes. Poe's story "The Purloined Letter" has a nice passage about studying facial expressions to understand what decisions people will make. I remember (and I know that remembering doesn't prove the truth value of one's statements about the past -- however, I've slowly been coming to the conclusion that epistemology is for suckas) that Wittgenstein made many gnomic remarks about a hypothetical naive observer imitating the facial expressions of people performing tasks such as thinking and writing, imagining that by imitating those expressions, this observer would then able to perform those tasks. (Of these tasks, I'm pretty sure Wittgenstein says that to an observer, it must seem that a 'queer process' is taking place.) In the twin interests of coincidence and disclosure, Don, I've noticed that I sometimes make the cat face when I write. Frusen gladje, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 14:59:07 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Matthias Regan Subject: Re: Spell check (quotations) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" THEY ACT AS ANALOGUES [a poem written on lunch break, composed entirely of words and phrases (slightly altered, sometimes) taken from the day's posts to this and another list.] I for one fail to see the intelligence in "My Ding-a-ling", but maybe something is escaping me. A friend of mine who's doing some work on the utopian body, the story of a family since moved to a California town-- their senses would undergo extraordinary refinement, adolescence, lassitude, fecklessness and apathy. Bon voyage. (Several white men throwing torches, in the context of the rebellions/riots of the late 60s. This so-called "Opera", "Art-Song" and their various spawn.) Are you there? There's a college basketball player (Minnesota?) who's been called "the Jewish Jordan". A man can reach a branch twelve feet high, climb up and down the tree, pick fruit at the very top, and put it in a basket tied to the archimain. Then there's the fact that the Native Americans who were forced there around the turn of the century ended up sitting on a lot of oil land. A nostalgia for a future that didn't happen. And while 'we' live in the bruised sentimentality of too high techno-expectations, they act as analogues for the stroboscopic flashings its hard to give over to, an ironism of the saccharine picaresque: once again, you're correct, except you have it all backwards. The # I have is a nonworking #. She would blanch at my foregrounding her racial background for Time Inc. I feel the puffed up pride of MGM's Louis B. Mayer. Oops. For the sake of humanity, let us all know when you find out -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:45:11 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Laura Moriarty Subject: Robinson/Roush Sat not Fri Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Kit Robinson and Tricia Roush will be reading for Small Press Traffic at New College, part of the Prosodia Benefit Series, at 7:30 on Saturday March 8th - (the poster accidentally says Friday) - New College is located at 777 Valencia in San Francisco. (When I called to check about the time, Dodie said it was okay if I posted this.) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 14:57:31 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Creative Reading In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII just published by the National Council of Teachers of English, _CREATIVE READING_ by Ron Padgett .. thought I'd mention it ... J ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 15:13:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Cheney Subject: Re: Why I asked? In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Thanks, I think, Don Cheney, for liking the questions I ask. This >particular question about the facial expression one assumes while writing >is pretty silly, yes. jordan, my like was sincere, even if stated on one of your self-proclaimed "pretty silly" questions. > In the twin interests of coincidence and disclosure, Don, I've >noticed that I sometimes make the cat face when I write. yes! >Frusen gladje, >Jordan shake it up, baby! don ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 14:30:38 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: question which will explain things Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" patrick, harryhausen nostalgia is a good thing, don't sweat it!... while we're at it, i'll go for o'brien nostalgia too... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 16:06:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: how people behave Re: Tulsa & Ron Padgett - In case no one else mentioned this, Ron P. has an essay, "Among the Blacks", which is an autobiographical exploration of his relationships to blacks as he was growing up in Tulsa. (The essay is paired with his translation of Raymond Roussel's work of the same title.) There is no mention of the 1921 conflagration. Why not might be a question, or might have been a provocative exploration - in terms of pairing the two essays - in that the Tulsa event took place while Roussel was still actively producing 'his' African works. Cheers, Stephen Vincent ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 11:02:37 GMT+1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Wystan Curnow Organization: The University of Auckland Subject: Re: Why I asked? Comments: To: jdavis@PANIX.COM Jordan, On the subject of, welljust round the corner from, there is this (in the words of the execrable Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington; I have another account but in a book at home so I think its genuine) : Picasso was back in Paris, shaving in his bathroom at the Hotel Lutetia, when the telephone call came announcing the news [ of Apollinaire's death]. His terrified expression in the mirror shocked him, and his instinctive, immediate response was to draw his self-portrait with that undisguised look of mortality he had seen staring back at him. Wystan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 21:04:55 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: Re: deletion & the politics of the list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I have been out of e-mail range for about a week and am trying to read through the accumulated Poetics messages. But I hope it is now apparent to one and all that the policy at Poetics is to welcome anyone interested in joining the list and (virtually) *never* remove anyone from the list (except in the extremely rare sort of cases outlined by Eliza McGrand, Alan Sondheim, and Joe Amato, which have not been a problem for this list). I find it odd that I should even have to write such a sentence in this context, but I am reluctant to torque it in a way that might be misunderstood -- although anything you say can and will be misunderstood (isn't that Amberian's 99th Law of Community?). I think one reason Joel felt his sarcasm would be understood as ironic is that the possibility that he would delete folks from the list in the way he described is so far-fetched to him, as it is to me, as to be patently absurd. But of course, the lesson is (if we need one): it is *not* too far fetched to be believed and that reasonable, sympathetic people can imagine that we could actually conduct this list in such an abhorrent fashion. I know the problem from the inside too: that odd feeling I have more than I'd like of not knowing if something is a joke or not, or for that matter the similar feeling that the people I have grown to trust could somehow not be who I thought they were. Somehow this e-space foments these unmoorings, since, as many have noted, one doesn't see that the person making the "appalling" remark can hardly keep from laughing; and where the frames, established in a poem or essay to indicate a (yes, indeed, *possibly*) nonauthorial point of view, may not be noted even if they are marked. So we land again on the problem of the ironic or indeed the dramatic, if I understood Fiona Templeton's recent point about shifting tones. (I can confirm, by the way, that Herr A. Hitler is not subscribed to this list despite active efforts to reach him in his multi-e-media- equipped bunker, with the expectation that participating in the list might encourage him to reconsider his views on "degenerate" art, which I, for one, have always found problematic. However we do hope to have both Evita and Larry Flynt on board soon.) [Joke emoticon removed for further genetic study.] I want also to register my appreciation to Jerry Rothenberg for his remarks on the responsibility we all have in posting to this or any list. I have always felt that the spontaneity of response that seems the very heart of the list at its best also has the darker side of circulating ideas that have not been well considered (or considered also by another reader -- editor or friend). Given this is the case, though, one has to read this genre of communication for what it is and always with some skepticism. The problem is when we read what is more like a spontaneous comment made in the heat of exchange as if it were revised or edited essay. That is, the reader bears some responsiblility for keeping in the mind the context of the writing. I realize I may be belaboring the obvious here, but it is because I am interested in what are the specific characteristics of exchanges on email lists, which tend toward the improvisational rather than the compositional. As to the (recurring) discussion of the politics of the poets, I recommend Jerome McGann's "Canonade" in New Literary History (25;3, Summer 1994), which takes up the problem from a somewhat different point of view, and one which I suspect would bring into agreement some of those lately disagreeing. McGann's focus is on the attempts on both sides of the academic "canon wars" to contruct a canon of, let's say, saintly poets. McGann's is a critique of the ever-resurgent idea (on both left and right) that art should be uplifting. Indeed, McGann won't let us forget that range of poetry that dwells, without disavowing -- that is, dwells in ways that make readers anxious -- on the foulest thoughts and darkest visions of a culture. He quotes Blake's idea that "The greatest Poetry is immoral" but also Byron's He left a [Poet's] name to other times, Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes [to use the substitution for "Corsair" that McGann, in effect, suggests]. McGann goes on to say about Eliot's most notorious poem: "Yet what a remarkable poem--indeed, how remarkable exactly because it has sunk into its own disgusting imagination!... Serpentine, garage-door, phlegm: all have, like the beast Ahab, their humanities. Their eyes are watching God, even when they watch from that cesspool titled `Sweeney Among the Nightengales.'" ******** A Short Note on the Privacy of This List The Poetics List does have a wide open front door: it's called the Electronic Poetry Center. We make every effort to have the EPC listed as a link at poetry and art sites and guidebooks and lists. Through the EPC it is relatively easy to find out about the list -- if interested. Also the 473 list subscribers, and hundreds of nonsubscribers who are familiar with the list, recommend the list to interested people. As I have written in previous posts, the issue of inclusion/exclusion in this medium is complex. For many reasons, a number of subscribers on this list would not be willing, or in many cases able, to participate if the list volume increased substantially from what it is now or if the list took on the character of a news group of strangers meeting for the first time. We have here a semblance of knowing one another, and beyond that many of us do know one another, or end up meeting one another at one time or other. The aim is to maintain an open space for exchange among people with specific and related, if necessarily undefined and polydictory, poetic commitments. That is, to have a list such that the participants generally (want to) read (most or all of) the posts and have some sense of the history of what has transpired here. This requires a long-term commited relationship, like they (used to?) say (which is not to say that other kinds of e-relations might not have other values). As I've put it when the list had half the current number of subscribers: "The paradox is that in an attempt to be open and nonexcluding one can end up excluding those who are unable to handle the volume: people are drowned out rather than kept out -- until Dreamworks Interactive, Inc., guides us and we asphyxiate." And speaking of being swamped, this also has to do with the limited capacity of those of us dealing with administering the list to handle any greater volume. For example, Joel's daily work on list maintenance, not a particularly fun job, though somewhat interesting at times. Thanks again, Joel. (As to Loss Glazier's Herculean labors on the EPC: enough cannot be said.) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 21:57:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Why I asked? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Wd be a silly question I think to those cerebral poets who hope their work has no connection to the body, but (notwithstanding Poe and Wittgenstein's tangential points)this is not consistent with research. tom bell At 01:55 PM 2/27/97 -0500, Jordan Davis wrote: >Thanks, I think, Don Cheney, for liking the questions I ask. This >particular question about the facial expression one assumes while writing >is pretty silly, yes. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 23:02:06 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Holy Moly! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Lisa Jarnot mentions: "...something that Robert Duncan says about how you can't reject ...Hitler as the enemy because that potentiality exists in everybody." I certainly hope Robert Duncan never wrote anything as foolish as that. Tom Mandel Tom Mandel ************************************************************ Screen Porch * tmandel@screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ************************************************************ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 23:06:13 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Dorn on the list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It would have been more useful to leave Dorn on the list than to delete him without mention and without the knowledge of those whom the list comprises. It would have been interesting to see what his contributions were. Given what they might have been (speculative tho that is) it would have been interesting to see how this group of people reacted. It is interesting in utopian structures (and a conversation is one) to see how people react to whatever develops. In fact, it's more than interesting, it's crucial. I'm sure Joel acted in good faith (and in irrepressible revulsion too), but I would have preferred Dorn here than locked out. Tom Tom Mandel ************************************************************ Screen Porch * tmandel@screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ************************************************************ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 17:22:44 +1300 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: Dorn on the list Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" . It is interesting in >utopian structures (and a conversation is one) I am astonished by this statement. Power structures exist in everything. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 23:27:35 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: apt. to share? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > From: Brigham Taylor > Subject: Manhattan Share/Apt. available > I wouldn't normally post this on the list, but I'm exploring every option. > I need someone to share a (really) large 2 bedroom apartment on the Lower > East Side (Ridge Street, 2 blocks south of Houston) by March 15 or April 1. > It's $1200 a month ($600 each), and you have the option of taking over the > whole apartment on the first of July. It's a great space at a good price. > If you or anyone you know might be interested, backchannel me... I think Ed Dorn might be looking for a place. It's incredible to watch the waves of convention wash across this list. The sense of potential gaffe at resisting vile remarks, the unwillingness to treat a person as a person if that person is a poet, and the love love love of rhetoric, as in Dorn's "how *I* take a man" -- that *I* that somehow takes it oh so differently. Ok, ok. If he talks nice, he can come around me. I'd hate to diss someone just for jew-baiting, just for AIDS-bashing. That kind of "Hollywood black and white" is so much less interesting than for example finding some kind of "interpretive space" for the "discourse" and then having a "conference" about it? After all, who can't identify with giving Steve Abbott the screw? None of us is perfect, right? Start over. Tom Mandel Tom Mandel ************************************************************ Screen Porch * tmandel@screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ************************************************************ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 06:03:03 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: deletion & the politics of the list Comments: cc: davidi@wizard.net Our worthy listmeister's remarks -- beyond being welcome on several planes -- also served to bring (back) to mind a question re: the surprising Emily Dickinson epistolary excerpt that happened to surface -- last week? -- amid the helter-skelter of the other E.D.'s contretemps. I can't now locate the original post (from, I believe, Aldon Nielsen) -- but the brief quotation was (as you'll recall) from a (probably chatty) letter of Emily's, wherein an apparently egregious, exceedingly xenophobic remark was tossed out in a maybe parenthetical (& poss. lighthearted?, perhaps self-ironical? &/or poss. even -- can this be? -- bullseye sarcastic of others who were wont to offer such remarks dead-*serious*?) manner. Charles B. notes -- << . . . I think one reason Joel felt his sarcasm would be understood as ironic is that the possibility that he would delete folks from the list in the way he described is so far-fetched to him, as it is to me, as to be patently absurd. But of course, the lesson is (if we need one): it is *not* too far fetched to be believed and that reasonable, sympathetic people can imagine that we could actually conduct this list in such an abhorrent fashion. I know the problem from the inside too: that odd feeling I have more than I'd like of not knowing if something is a joke or not, or for that matter the similar feeling that the people I have grown to trust could somehow not be who I thought they were. . . .>> Question: how far-fetched is it (would it be) to read Emily's utterance in a context akin to the above? Since I know precious little anent ED's RW life & its social surround, I ask this out of frank ignorance. d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 08:07:38 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Providence readings acoming Joshua Saul Beckman & Ange Mlinko will read at Native Gallery, 387 Charles St. Providence, at 8 pm on Fri March 7th, right after the opening. Free w/pass the hat. Stuff to eat & drink plus art on walls. Call 401-521-3554 for directions etc. sponsored by Poetry Mission. On April 23rd the Mission is planning a "poetry action" at its incipient space (see Luigi Spgnrti's article in Digestacritics #12, "Literair and Underwear : Incipient Space as Meter? Metamorph?" for info on this glistening topos), starting at 7:30 pm. Said space is Hall Memorial Library in Cranston (a few blocks from birthplace & pilgrimage center of St. Ted (Bargoon)). Resident real-live critic Tom Epstein will attack poetry from perspective of Jos. Epstein & other poetry-scoffers (Jos. Ep no relation) - poets, local literati, and would-be local-literati (could this be you?) will respond with ad hummer attacks and ad lib poems etc. on the theme of "what's poetry" etc. It will be Shakespeare's birthday & He has Promised to Attend. All part of the whole which is the Annual Bergeron Memorial Reading sponsored (annually!!!!) by the Library in honor of a deceased beloved librarian name of Bergeron who liked poetry and science fiction and who also has Promised to Attend (see L. Pgstrni's other essay "Incipient Space, Other Dementias - Is there Life Before Poetry?" in Swallowacritics #21 for info on your literary prospects on other planets). don't write to me, I'm not here. - Spandrift ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 09:06:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: jarnot@PIPELINE.COM Subject: Re: Holy Moly! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Lisa Jarnot mentions: > >"...something that Robert Duncan says about how you can't reject ...Hitler >as the enemy because that potentiality exists in everybody." > >I certainly hope Robert Duncan never wrote anything as foolish as that. > >Tom Mandel > In "Man's Fulfillment in Order and Strife" Duncan writes: "Reject Mae West as vulgar or Hitler as the enemy, reject them as fellows of our kind, and you have to go to battle against the very nature of Man himself, against the truth of things." I kind of thought it made sense in the context of the Dorn discussion since there has been talk of counteracting ignorance with physical violence. there's not much foolishness in Duncan. Yours, LIsa ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 09:23:48 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: Spell check / Jorie G. Comments: cc: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Patrick -- thanks for note responding to my Q. abt. Jorie Graham. What you say -- > Her appropriation of LangPo and Olsonite techniques begins with "End > of Beauty," tho she applies these to rather different ends. sounds about right. I heard her give a reading in DC last year -- only caught the final part (due to office work situation), but much enjoyed her intelligent (I felt) performance & writing. Come to think of it, also saw her read in NYC circa '90, in a somewhat odd (but likeable enough) program with a couple of poets (Bob Creeley being one of 'em) & a couple of painters, up at the Jewish Y (as I believe it's nicnamed). Anyhow, perhaps I've simply developed a liking for what Jorie Graham is up to. True, she takes those methods & modes in her own direction. > Notley's quotation marks are fascinating. They function more as > metrical units than anything else. . . . Metrical -- breath regulation -- (have to give it more look / thought). d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 09:03:43 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christina Fairbank Chirot Subject: Re: recommend san diego readings In-Reply-To: <9702271816.AA03631@carla.UCSD.EDU> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Having heard/witnessed/met Jaap Blonk at Woodland Pattern here in Milwaukee last fall highly recommend taking up the following invitation: On Thu, 27 Feb 1997, Jerry Rothenberg wrote: > For those of you in or near San Diego, the following may be of interest: > > Wednesday March 5 7:00 p.m. at Jerome Rothenberg's studio (Visual Arts 451 > on UCSD campus): a performance by the Dutch poet / soundtext artist Jaap > Blonk, along with improvisations by contrabassist Bert Turetzky. > > Friday March 7 6:30 p.m. at the Porter Troupe Gallery (301 Spruce Street): > a reading and performance by Ed Sanders. > > Both events free and open to the public. > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 08:12:27 MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: U of U Marriott Library Staff Net Subject: Re: the feast of plagiarism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT > One possible response is a pamphlet I constructed for the 1988 Festival > of Plagerism (sic) called The Plagiarist Codex; an old Maya Information > Heiroglyph which can be viewed on line with a frames capable browser at: > > http://www.net22.com/qazingulaza/codex/codex.html amendant - this is a beautiful page, Im really amazed at the work youve done here. wld yr mind if I add a link from my (unfinished) page to quaz? oh, one thing - yr href at the end of the plagiarism codex is coded as "index.shtml" right now. thought yd like to know. doesnt that look like yiddish? "that boy, let me tell you, hes nothing but a shtml." provisionally chris .. christopher alexander, etc. calexand@alexandria.lib.edu (Marriott Library Computer Systems) language code not found. illegal operation error. this program will shut down, & all unsaved data will be lost. if problem persists, consult your systems operator. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 11:51:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brenda Ellen Uchman Subject: Hannah Hoch Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII At the MOMA from Feb. 27th-May 20th a retrospective of the brilliant photomontages of HANNAH HOCH will be up. Went last night-penetrated my inner sensibility-had to get it out to the po-list (she did attend her fair number of Dada po-readings) And, Thurs. nites are pay what you like. Brenda Iijima ----------------------- beu1@columbia.edu Sociology Department 413 Fayerweather Hall Columbia University Tel.: 212 854 3686 ======================= ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 12:23:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: the feast of plagiarism In-Reply-To: <9390B4860@alexandria.lib.utah.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 28 Feb 1997, Christopher Alexander wrote: > > oh, one thing - yr href at the end of the plagiarism codex is > coded as "index.shtml" right now. thought yd like to know. > doesnt that look like yiddish? "that boy, let me tell you, hes > nothing but a shtml." > There's something wrong maybe with being a shtml?! __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 13:30:28 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: The Dorn/Pound Affair MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Here's a poem by Gary Geddes, a Canadian poet who read at the Louisville conference -- it does a better job of saying what I want to say about all this than I could do on my own. (Don't know what Geddes thinks about Dorn, but I take his point here to be a general one). Robert Archambeau The Last Canto I seldom budge from Rapallo. Venice is no Byzantium these final days. Stench from the canals worse than the cattle ship I sailed to Europe on. Mr Nixon was half right: poetry did not pay, but there was a future in it. The age demanded a scapegoat and a saint. Being American I applied for both jobs. The world has been my whale-road, wanderer and seafarer among the lost manuscripts, charting connections few had ever dreamed of. I've gone about my business like a pack rat. You have to do that, have on hand ten times what you can ever hope to use. Tennyson was right about being part of all he met, but he hadn't met enough. As the range broadened my speech became barbarous, that of a man who's lost contact with the words of his fellows, though he knows their hearts' most intimate desires. I once advised trashing the metronome and composing with the music of the speaking voice. Now I say: Exercise the mind and school the heart; voice will rejoice in its tender chains like a bridegroom. While my former countrymen have given up on ideas, except in things, whatever that means, and play with themselves like clergymen, less out of need than habit, I dream of ideas in action and of forma, even the canetto, where the dance of the ear and intellect draw dormant filings into the pattern of a rose. I wrote in an article in T.P.'s Weekly in 1913: The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery, is of little worth. I still hold that view though at times, I admit, I counted the cost. I have spoken too much of usura, or not enough. Even the air we breathe is rented for a price. Forget my dicta: direct treatment of the thing and all that rot. The thing, so-called, has yet to be revealed. I have found poems to be wiser abd more honest than poets. Remember the ideogram from the Chinese, the one representing truth which shows a man standing beside his word. Nothing more. The merchant's wife dying alone in her unkempt garden by the river praises my irregular feet, though she draws the line at Social Credit. Forget me too: listen to the poems. You see, I'm prescriptive to the end, a weakness acquired in Hailey, Idaho and never shaken. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 13:33:37 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: Geddes MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Let me just plug Geddes' book, while I'm at it. The poem comes from: Active Trading: Selected Poems 1970-1995 Fredrickton, New Brunswick: Goose Lane, 1996. ISBN: 0-86492-198-5 $12.95 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 15:55:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: Holy Moly! In-Reply-To: from "jarnot@PIPELINE.COM" at Feb 28, 97 09:06:08 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks, Lisa. I don't know why this would be a surprise. This is the core of Duncan's argument with Denise Levertov (or Leveton as the NY Times has it in Mitchell Goodman's obit) and the foundation of his poetics. Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca > In "Man's Fulfillment in Order and Strife" Duncan writes: > > "Reject Mae West as vulgar or Hitler as the enemy, reject them as fellows > of our kind, and you have to go to battle against the very nature of Man > himself, against the truth of things." > > I kind of thought it made sense in the context of the Dorn discussion since > there has been talk of counteracting ignorance with physical violence. > > there's not much foolishness in Duncan. > > > Yours, LIsa > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 17:08:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM Subject: Re: how people behave >What kind of facial expression do you have when you punch a nazi poet in >the eye? guess that would depend on how "thick-skinned" OH NEVER MIND.