========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 00:20:26 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Subject: Re: list of poetry school In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 31 May 1997 23:17:23 -0400 from Happy birthday, Joe! Isn't it Whitman's b-day today too? Mine was 2 days ago - happy twining & twinning! - Henry ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 00:22:19 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Subject: Re: list of poetry school In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 1 Jun 1997 00:20:26 EDT from sorry list - I thought that was private. the gab goes on. - H ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 12:04:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: w-w-e-o-i-r-r-d-d-s MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII when John Ashbery read at MIT in April, he read poems by others in accordance with the custom there, before getting to his own. Holderlin was among them, and Ashbery offhandedly commented, for what it's worth, that H was his favorite poet. Ashbery also read Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, and James Tate, all of whom he praised as if they were unknown. An interesting line-up. Btw, at the risk of sounding naive, what is a word that it can have an inside? Does it then also have an outside? Infra-verbalists encouraged to reply. Gary R ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 12:14:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: julu, textual-jennifer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII +++ Making Jennifer I live alone in total isolation in New York. I have no partner here, no community; I wake up in tears and depression. And in return, I begin to construct Jennifer, to create textual-Jennifer, a therapeutic I have done in my life before, annihilation-fabric gnawing at my flesh and soul. Textual-Jennifer produces, spits, writing, text, a maze of constructs and part-objects. I think of dolls, surrealisms, but this ascii-unconscious text-doll invades me, permeates uneasy dreams, produces discomfort at each and every margin. Wherever I reach, my fingers splatter lightning and dark language. Objects fall like rain: dirty:yes!:abc:spew: Would abc mind you partying, dirty, with us? Your feminine filthy is in my rich dirty-dirty Ah, passion eaten by julu-of-the-open-arms and julu-depressed Lines end with interrogative ? or exclamatory !, fall if-else into page- void, empty truancy. There are compromises - repetition of openings, limited choices of returned sentences, structures - coupled with word input - these matrices move across internal space, dark languagings: metal:hard:Stump:staplings:thing Come home with me, metal, julu-of-the-fast-crowd! Your lively coupling is in my black suture As I continue, Jennifer-turn-Julu grows in response, expands in linux- Perl-space, roots itself in my hone directory; as I wryte and rewryte, Julu moves inward-churning. Julu returns textual-Jennifer, effaces er; Julu moves across explicit graphs, Julu is turning me out: Clara:in_me:--julu--:empty:drowned Would --julu-- mind you partying, Clara, with us? Your sedate avatar is in my used gone_mad Ah, your penis eaten by julu-of-the-open-arms and julu-depressed Not dismemberment, but _exchange_ within an economy of avatars of scar- city and shattered mirror-stages, textual-Jennifer turning Julu out: --------------------------- /*sample julu interactive program-run, re: textual-jennifer*/ {k:6} julu Open your mouth... Ah... speak... speak... Jennifer, what do they call you, when they call you... Alan Are you dressed as Alan? Is Alan dressed as you? Are you in your skin, are you in your flesh, ah don't answer... Ah... Is Julu wearing your ... , are you wearing your hole? always in depth and despair I love your feelings, Alan ... passion thrusts me your hole! What do you call your small skin? dead-male Your dead-male is mine, my sweet Alan, I am yours! Your body parts, mine, in a dark list, list them... one by one, each on a line alone, typing Control-d when done. corrupt-body lost-soul vacant-gaze skull gone-world My vacant-gaze is yours... dead-male calls forth edgy breast, eating, excreting memory. throughout the death-like, dead-male is wet, death-like, always in depth and despair? ... breast is lost-soul here, it's breast? Are you becoming close to Jennifer's dead-male? yes Ah, a wet and lovely fantasy! You wore her frock for 240328 hours? dead-male and 29364 and 29376 - and you knew that all along! For 0 small days, I have been ill Julu ... and it has taken you just 1.500 minutes turning Jennifer ... noname:yes, in truth:Clara:branch:twig Your wandering stem is in my protruding branch Devour wandering stem julu-of-the partying noname! dead-male:always in depth and despair:Alan:skull:vacant-gaze Your edgy vacant-gaze is in my death-like lost-soul Your passion seeps into my lost-soul - turning me Julu-Jennifer ______________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 13:43:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: list of poetry school hi joe and henry -- can we make it boston, not just provident, and maybe rather than anti-non-traditionalist, make it "poem centered and anti- ANY!-ist" and maybe, "age-and-gender-unconcerned" and then i'll have a spot for my chapeau as well?... doffing a small, rakishly tilted WW II black woolen dress-marine beret inherited from my father (or the cotton khaki summer version thereof...) e ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 13:57:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: www.jodi.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sorry for the wrong URL - it's www.jodi.org , not com. Alan ____________________________________________________________________ URL: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html MIRROR: http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ and Javascripted text/webpages -- Tel. 718-857-3671, 432 Dean St., Brooklyn, NY 11217 IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Editor, BEING ON LINE ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 10:59:34 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MAXINE CHERNOFF Subject: New American Writing #15 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NAW #15 has just been published. It contains work by 38 writers including Rosmarie Waldrop, Stephen Ratcliffe, Gwyn McVay, Kenward Elmslie, David Meltzer, Susan Wheeler, Elaine Equi, Tom Clark, Donald Revell, Sianne Ngai, Rachel Loden, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, August Kleinzahler, Jorie Graham, John Noto, Raymond Federman, Paul Violi, John Tranter and many others. It costs $8 and can be ordered from us at 369 Molino Ave, Mill Valley, CA 94941. Maxine Chernoff and Paul Hoover ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 14:03:55 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: julu, textual-jennifer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Pretty julucious sampling you sent me, Alan--thanks. No time for a while to say more about it, or to do more than express sympathy for what's going on with you. I've run into the kind of unrecognition you describe with mathematical poetry--but some of it IS up at Karl Young's site, which you can find by typing my name in Yahoo. A few people seem to like it. I've never been asked to speak about it, but DID get invited to write about it once--actually not so much about it but about my life as a poet. So myabe I'm ahead of you in the recognition derby? If so, no big deal as I suspect I'm a lot older than you (I'm 56). Anyhow, thanks for writing. Once I get caught up with at least some of the things I'm infamously behind in, and have checked out your stuff on the Net, maybe we can get into a deeper discussion of all this. Best, Bob ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 14:13:00 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: julu, textual-jennifer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ooops, now I understand why so many people have to apologize for sending a private message to the list. I was in a discussion with Alan, and he slipped a public one in that I answered as a private message. Apologies. Gotta remember to look at the stupit "MAIL TO:" slot before pushing the send button. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 11:39:53 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: New American Writing #15 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Do you run reviews? I'm getting ready to send out review copies of Rochelle Owens' New and Selected. At 10:59 AM 6/1/97 -0700, you wrote: >NAW #15 has just been published. It contains work by 38 writers including >Rosmarie Waldrop, Stephen Ratcliffe, Gwyn McVay, Kenward Elmslie, David >Meltzer, Susan Wheeler, Elaine Equi, Tom Clark, Donald Revell, Sianne >Ngai, Rachel Loden, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, August Kleinzahler, Jorie >Graham, John Noto, Raymond Federman, Paul Violi, John Tranter and many >others. It costs $8 and can be ordered from us at 369 Molino Ave, >Mill Valley, CA 94941. > >Maxine Chernoff and Paul Hoover > > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 14:40:05 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: list of poetry school In-Reply-To: Message of Sun, 1 Jun 1997 13:43:05 -0400 from Elliza - don't you remember? You started our schools of poetry about 4 years ago! I still have my Boston Po-Bum necktie - wear it with pride! - old po-guy ("we have met the poetasters & they is us") ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 11:46:37 -0700 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" Please ignore my last--was supposed to be backchannel. Must be an epidemic. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 12:52:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: Re: a writing utensil of one's own Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" what's the late (mad) H. poem that's displayed near the front door in the tower in Tubingen? It's a really famous one and I've managed to blank it out and have been hunting for it for a couple weeks now w/o success. Full o swans.... thanks Tenney At 08:55 AM 5/30/97 -0400, you wrote: >>The answer is simple (as usual with me, it always is, heh heh). >> >>Holderlin was a coyote. >> >>- H > >Yes he *really* was! > >Well before his "madness" he had produced a translation of Pindar that was >so idiosyncratic [and so faithful to the Grk] that a good portion of his >audience thought he was mad even then. > >And what did the good doctors think of him? Well, one called his late >poetry "a catatonic form of imbecility", whereas another called him "the >greatest of the schizophrenics." I don't think that they've figured him out >even now. > >G. > > ---------------------------------------------------------- tenney nathanson tenney@azstarnet.com nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/ ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 13:36:37 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Franklin Bruno (by way of Franklin Bruno )" Subject: debt Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" David Kellogg wrote: > >I'd like to know if Graham picked a loser (as >she sure did with Mark Levine's DEBT, a National Poetry series winner I >believe, picked by Graham, who was Levine's teacher.) > DK, Could you elaborate on what you disliked about DEBT? I'm not saying I disagree mind you--I saw a couple poems in magazines that intrigued me enough to pick up the book, which disappointed me. I'm being vague here because I'd like to see if your complaints are the same as mine. By the way (anyone), who -is- publishing The Letters of Mina Harker?? fjb ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 17:45:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Kellogg Subject: Re: debt Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Franklin Bruno wrote: >DK, Could you elaborate on what you disliked about DEBT? I'm not saying I >disagree mind you--I saw a couple poems in magazines that intrigued me >enough to pick up the book, which disappointed me. I'm being vague here >because I'd like to see if your complaints are the same as mine. I thought the opening several poems were quite interesting, with certain attractive kinds of paranoia, subject-shifting voices speaking the poems, and attention to a variety of issues surrounding the title. But then it just got to be the same poem over and over. So in the end, I was bored; it seemed to play the same tricks (which were in the end shock tactics) too many times. I guess I was disappointed also b/c I read it in the context of the hype. I have frankly never read a set of more puffed-up blurbs for a first book than I did for that. (Can't get to the blurbs right now, as I unloaded _Debt_ to reduce my own at a used bookstore). Cheers, David ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 07:03:31 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: debt Jorie Graham, I believe, wrote one blurb and James Tate the other. Tate said something rather innocuous about humor, and Graham--if memory serves--referred to Levine as "a god." I found that inflated as well, even for a poet's fan to write. I think David Kellogg summed up the feeling a lot of people had about that particular book--initial interest disintegrating (rather too soon) into boredom. I try to keep in mind though that he was not yet 30 when that book was accepted--so he's kicking my ass-- DT ---------- From: David Kellogg[SMTP:kellogg@ACPUB.DUKE.EDU] Sent: Monday, June 02, 1997 6:45 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: debt Franklin Bruno wrote: >DK, Could you elaborate on what you disliked about DEBT? I'm not saying I >disagree mind you--I saw a couple poems in magazines that intrigued me >enough to pick up the book, which disappointed me. I'm being vague here >because I'd like to see if your complaints are the same as mine. I thought the opening several poems were quite interesting, with certain attractive kinds of paranoia, subject-shifting voices speaking the poems, and attention to a variety of issues surrounding the title. But then it just got to be the same poem over and over. So in the end, I was bored; it seemed to play the same tricks (which were in the end shock tactics) too many times. I guess I was disappointed also b/c I read it in the context of the hype. I have frankly never read a set of more puffed-up blurbs for a first book than I did for that. (Can't get to the blurbs right now, as I unloaded _Debt_ to reduce my own at a used bookstore). Cheers, David ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 18:31:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: w-w-e-o-i-r-r-d-d-s MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Gary R. asks a question that begs some reply: > Btw, at the risk of sounding naive, what is a word that it can have > an inside? Does it then also have an outside? Another Gary (Snyder) wrote something dealing with this that I thought marvelous -- too bad I don't know where to find it (think it was in the journal *Tricycle* abt. 5 years ago . . .) -- much depended on the turn of phrse (etc.) which memory can't quite fetch, but it went something like this: << people think that wisdom is some mysterious thing that can never be put into words, but that's not so -- it's easily done. The thing that has me puzzled and that I can never reach the end of is: what are words!? >> I don't quite recall if he was quoting one of his East Asian sources or riffing on his own ticket. d.i. P.S.: Speaking of Tricycle, the current (Summer '97) issue includes a writeup about Alan Ginsberg's final days, as well as publication of what it says is his "final poem" -- poem with a lot of "gone gone gone" refrain lines . . . I enjoyed browsing this in a bookstore today (but didn't shell out lucre to take it home, so far) . . . p.p.s.: in the film bin, recommended: GRAY'S ANATOMY, where Spalding does his usual thing, but the cinema framing (meta-structure and editing &c) is rather more developed than in his earlier two performance films (Swimming to Cambodia and Monster in a Box). . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > 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, 1 Jun 1997 19:39:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: AWP Guidelines for judges Comments: To: Discussion of Contemporary American Poetry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For those still concerned with the "oh those contests" thread, and in the interest of full disclosure, David Fenza, Executive Director of Associated Writing Programs, has provided the guidelines given to the judges in each genre, with similar information, he says, going to the screeners. Fenza also points out that none of this has been kept secret, and that these guidelines have been the basis for those developed by several other national competitions. As for the facts in the "Graham case," after speaking with Fenza and Gwyn McVey, I am personally satisfied that McVey's recent posts accurately represent the facts. Jorie Graham did not request mss that had not gone through the usual process. Whether readers of the guidelines will be satisfied that Graham met the requirement of (3) below I can't predict, since students are specifically and I think intentionally left off the list. Finally, again in the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I am a long-time member of AWP, a program director, and the current General Editor )chief paper pusher) for the Intro Journals Project, a writing competition for students in AWP member programs. --Joe Duemer The guidelines follow: The AWP Award Series is a competition for discovering, rewarding, and publishing excellent book-length works. Thank you for agreeing to serve as judge for this year's AWP Award Series for poetry. Although we do offer each judge an honorarium of $500, we realize that judging a competition like ours is a good amount of hard work. AWP and the many writers submitting their work thank you for your generosity. The screeners will send you no more than 10 mss., unless you would like to see more. We require that you select one book-length ms. for our award and publication before this July 1st, 1997. We also require that you write an appreciation of at least fifty words on the winning ms. The screeners will send you mss. no later than May 1st, 1997. Below are a few recommendations and requirements for judging. Please do not hesitate to call us at AWP if you have any questions or problems. (1) Choose only an excellent, publishable work for the award. We recognize that in some years, a judge may not discover works that merit our award and publication. We will stand by the judge9s decision. In the past, Ann Beattie, John Irving, John Frederick Nims, and others found no work worthy of the award and publication. We are seeking only those works that will be splendid additions to contemporary letters--those works that demonstrate both achievement and promise and not merely promise alone. For us to maintain the participation of our publishers in the Series, we must, each year, present them with winning manuscripts of high quality. Manuscripts are routinely revised and edited before publication, but the work you select as winner must be of publishable quality. After choosing the winner, you should decide whether another ms. is also worthy of the award and publicationfor the very unlikely instance of an author declining to accept the award. An author may not accept the award if the ms. is committed elsewhere. We have, however, required that the authors notify us immediately should their ms. become accepted by another publisher; we will call you straight away should we receive such a notice. (2) You may choose up to three finalists. If you find other mss. that are good and publishable, you may designate them as finalists. AWP will work on behalf of the finalists in trying to place them with other publishers. Over forty finalists have been published so far. (3) If you recognize an intimate friend's work, please disqualify that work from consideration. Please help us protect the good names of AWP and our publishers. If the work is not by a close friend but by an acquaintance, an ex-colleague, or the like, then don't worry, and judge the work as you do the others. (4) We will send additional mss. should you desire to see them. We have asked that, when the screeners forward the mss. to you, they write a brief letter recommending the best of their selections. Although we do our best to find screeners that will be acceptable to our judges, we realize that the screeners may occasionally cast too small a net, and pass on only those works of one particular style, or those works with particular subject matter. If you find this to be the case, or if you doubt the sensibility that seems to be at work there, please call us at AWP. We will review that screeners' mss. and send you additional mss. should you desire to see them. (5) You may not ask a screener if has a particular manuscript with a particular title is among the screener's pile of mss., nor may you ask for a particular titled work to be forwarded to you. This is entirely inappropriate and will only damage the good names of AWP, the Award Series, our publishers, and you as judge. You may only consider manuscripts each screener has selected by his or her own free will and criteria. (6) Once you have selected the winner and finalists, make a note of the log numbers which appear on each title page. Then call AWP, where those numbers must be recorded. (7) Write your endorsement of the winning ms. Please write an appreciation of at least 50 words on the ms. AWP and the publisher are free to use this in any brochures, press releases, and advertisements we do for the books. We also welcome short appreciations of the finalist mss., although we do not require it. In the past, our efforts to place finalists with publishers have often been facilitated by the written recommendations of our judges. (8) Consider whether or not one of the finalists is worthy of the award as well. Sometimes, an author will fail to notify us that his or her work has become committed to another publisher and is therefore ineligible for our award. When that is the case, we ask that the judge consider one of the other mss. for the award. (9) Forward your selections to AWP. After you have written your appreciation(s), send the winning ms. and the finalists to AWP. Please use 2-day Federal Express or US postal service priority mail. Save your receipts and send them to AWP for reimbursement. (10) Save the remaining mss. until the author has accepted the award. We will call you as soon as the author has accepted our award, so please save the remaining mss. until then. After that, you may discard them. Because we receive such a tremendous number of mss., we cannot return them to the authors. __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 16:53:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dan Raphael Dlugonski Subject: how to produce books w/o bellying-up Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I've stumbled onto a good solution for the above subject, by relying on community. to backtrack: i edited NRG--a tabloid of literature i couldnt quite understand (included work by bernstein, coolidge, john m bennett, janet gray, ivan arguelles, spencer selby)--for about 20 years. The contents were from all aorund the country (& a few from outside, like chris mann & j w curry), and that made selling it (tabloid, so not real marketeable) difficult (i am not good at merketing or selling.) thought i was done publishing, had a little money left over, decided to do a book of my own. the book had to have a press imprimatur, & i dint want to use Skydog Press, which ahd coexisted with NRG; so i ended up with 26 Books, which led to the plan to do 26 books. the line is: "26 books by 26 writers to display a new alphaet of \poetics arising int he Pacific NorthWest." I deidsed to work with local writers (the complete series will probably be 20 portland area, 4 other Oregonians, 2 from Washington.), folks known on the scene but punderpublished. The second 26 books chapbook was by Doug Marx, well known in portland as areviewer and teacher, but had never published a book of poetry. This book went into a thrid pringint, & was a finalist i9n poetry for the Oregon Book Award. soon after, i received 2 separate grants. The writers are insturmental in selling therir books, within therir comfort zones--some push hard, some aren't comfortable doing readings. Bottom line is that, after publishing 15 volumes, i have enough in the bank to cover the next four, plus a stock that will continue to sell a while. The writers in the series have some community connections, with a couple gorup readings, and provide mutual support and conections for each other. i plan the series to end with book 26, 2/29/00. dan raphael ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 09:58:55 +1100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pam Brown Subject: Re: New American Writing #15 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:59 AM 1/6/97 -0700, you wrote: >NAW #15 has just been published. It contains work by 38 writers including >Rosmarie Waldrop, Stephen Ratcliffe, Gwyn McVay, Kenward Elmslie, David >Meltzer, Susan Wheeler, Elaine Equi, Tom Clark, Donald Revell, Sianne >Ngai, Rachel Loden, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, August Kleinzahler, Jorie >Graham, John Noto, Raymond Federman, Paul Violi, John Tranter and many >others. It costs $8 and can be ordered from us at 369 Molino Ave, >Mill Valley, CA 94941. > >Maxine Chernoff and Paul Hoover > > John Tranter come home at once !! You're Australian... Cheers Pam ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 18:46:10 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: IMBURGIA Subject: Re: New American Writing #15 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="---- =_NextPart_000_01BC6E03.ABB11E00" ------ =_NextPart_000_01BC6E03.ABB11E00 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit may we order by e-mail? thanks, dan ---------- From: MAXINE CHERNOFF[SMTP:maxpaul@SFSU.EDU] Sent: Sunday, June 01, 1997 10:59 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: New American Writing #15 NAW #15 has just been published. It contains work by 38 writers including Rosmarie Waldrop, Stephen Ratcliffe, Gwyn McVay, Kenward Elmslie, David Meltzer, Susan Wheeler, Elaine Equi, Tom Clark, Donald Revell, Sianne Ngai, Rachel Loden, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, August Kleinzahler, Jorie Graham, John Noto, Raymond Federman, Paul Violi, John Tranter and many others. It costs $8 and can be ordered from us at 369 Molino Ave, Mill Valley, CA 94941. 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Israel" Subject: Re: how to produce books / Ivan Arguelles MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Dan Raphael D. -- you wrote, > . . . to backtrack: i edited NRG--a tabloid of literature i > couldnt quite understand (included work by bernstein, coolidge, john > m bennett, janet gray, ivan arguelles, spencer selby)--for about 20 > years. . . . the name Ivan Arguelles rings old bells. For a brief spate, nearly 10 years ago, it seemed I was going to be doing literary editing for a (conceived, but not quite implemented) lit aspect of SoMa Magazine in San Francisco. As such, I was looking around for poetry from various quarters. A friend recommended Ivan A.'s work, and Ivan sent me a poem I liked a lot. Turned out SoMa was going in other directions (and so I never had the fun of getting that -- or other things -- into print). From that single poem, I felt he was a dynamite writer, and now realize I shd. look into what'all he has out there at this point. If folks happen to know abt. this, you could advise (back or front burner, as suits your culinary notions). best, David Raphael I. . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > 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, 1 Jun 1997 21:18:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: how to produce books / Ivan Arguelles In-Reply-To: <199706020035.UAA20074@wizard.wizard.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Ivan Arguelles has work in Andrei Codrescu's anthology UP LATE: American Poetry Since 1970. In ordinary, non-ASCII type, he'd get an umlaut over his U. I don't know much else about him; his poems in that book were singled out for particular dispraise by critic Paul Fussell, which made me think the work had to have some redeeming quality. I don't know enough of his work--or likely anyone's--to speak ex cathedra, but I admired Arguelles' ranting energy and wordplay. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 23:46:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: how to produce books / Ivan Arguelles MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Gwyn says: I don't know enough of his work--or likely anyone's--to > speak ex cathedra, but I admired Arguelles' ranting energy and > wordplay. Yes, those were the qualities I liked too (from the earlier poem I mentioned) -- and a certain sort of fervid, febrile surrealism perhaps . . .; I'll look in UP LATE, thanks . . . d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 22:35:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: debt In-Reply-To: <5796B1A2D@113hum9.humnet.ucla.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 1:36 PM -0700 6/1/97, "Franklin Bruno (by way of Franklin Bruno wrote: >By the way (anyone), who -is- publishing The Letters of Mina Harker?? Thanks for asking, Franklin. Hard Press is publishing it. The last I heard, it should be out late this year/early next year. I think it will be a nice place to be. They do beautiful books and their distribution is good. The last long section of my Talisman House book, _Real_ is also included in _The Letters of Mina Harker_. The beginning letter can be found, along with other odds and ends, on my section of Earl Jackson's wild website for his UC Santa Cruz lit class "Hysteria and Paranoia": http://wwwcatsic.ucsc.edu/~ltmo136/hysttwo.htm Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 16:34:18 +1000 Reply-To: jtranter@sydpcug.org.au Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:_Pi=F1a_colada=2C_=FCmla=FCts=2C_and_so_on_...__?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In a recent posting, Gwyn McVay said: "Ivan Arguelles has work in Andrei Codrescu's anthology UP LATE: American Poetry Since 1970. In ordinary, non-ASCII type, he'd get an umlaut over his U. ... " If your name is Herr Hermann Ümlaut or Señorita Piña Colada, you can still send yourself e-mail. You can insert special characters into your text if you are an IBM-compatible computer using ASCII to talk to another like mind, by using the ALT characters and the numerals on the numeric keyboard (you know, the keypad that has the numbers arranged in exactly the opposite way to the way they're arranged on your phone dial.) What happens when these characters are read by a Unix or Macintosh machine, I don't know. Whether the Poetics List can transmit these characters, I also don't know. Maybe it's worth experimenting with. I know I can send and receive them okay through my local server, but I think it's a Windows NT machine, not a mainframe. In the following (incomplete) table of acute accents, umlauts, graves and so on, the sign # means "hold down the ALT key while pressing the next four digits". ¶ #0182 Paragraph sign à #0224 á #0225 ç #0231 è #0232 é #0233 ê #0234 ë #0235 ì #0236 ü #0252 ö #0246 ñ #0241 #0160 blank space | #0124 vertical stroke & #0038 AMPERSAND - ordinary hyphen (as in "hippity-hop") – #0150 EN Dash (as in 1968–69) — #0151 EM Dash (as in "Miss Colada — stop that!" ) § #0167 Section sign © #0169 Copyright sign ® #0174 Registered sign (as in Coca-Cola®) ..... there are others ... capital umlauts et cetera ... but I want to keep those for myself for a while. » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » John Tranter, 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Australia Phone Sydney (+612) 9555 8502 FAX (+612) 9212 2350 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 04:39:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: RFC822 error: BCC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: BCC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: BCC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: BCC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: BCC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: BCC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: BCC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: BCC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: BCC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. Comments: RFC822 error: BCC field duplicated. Last occurrence was retained. From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Fwd: PBS Funding MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii ------Begin forward message------------------------- Subject: PBS Funding-FYI Friends, Please read this VERY IMPORTANT petition! PBS, like NPR, the NEA and other cultural institutions now under attack by the organized right, is not beyond criticism. One need only stop to consider what the very terrain of cultural debates would look like without these institutions, however, to realize how important it is to save them. I hope you will then sign this petition and pass it along to everyone you know. We've got to be active in saving these important institutions! Please sign! Thanks! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: The easiest way to forward this petition is to copy the entire text and paste it into a new mail message. Then add your name to the end and send it on to your recipients. Thanks. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is for anyone who thinks NPR/PBS is a worthwhile expenditure of $1.12/year of their taxes (as opposed to, say, Newt Gingrich's salary?), a petition follows. If you sign, please forward on to others (not back to me). If not, please don't kill it -- send it to the email address listed here: wein2688@blue.univnorthco.edu PBS, NPR (National Public Radio), and the arts are facing major cutbacks in funding. In spite of the efforts of each station to reduce spending costs and streamline their services, some government officials believe that the funding currently going to these programs is too large a portion of funding for something which is seen as unworthwhile". Currently, taxes from the general public for PBS equal $1.12 per person per year, and the National Endowment for the Arts equals $.64 a year in total. A January 1995 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll indicated that 76% of Americans wish to keep funding for PBS, third only to national defense and law enforcement as the most valuable programs for federal funding. Each year, the Senate and House Appropriations committees each have 13 subcommittees with jurisdiction over many programs and agencies. Each subcommittee passes its own appropriation bill. The goal each year is to have each bill signed by the beginning of the fiscal year, which is October 1. The only way that our representatives can be aware of the base of support for PBS and funding for these types of programs is by making our voices heard. Please add your name to this list and forward it to friends if you believe in what we stand for. This list will be forwarded to the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, and Representative Newt Gingrich, who is the instigator of the action to cut funding to these worthwhile programs. If you happen to be the 150th, 200th, 250th etc. signer of this petition, please forward a copy to: wein2688@blue.univnorthco.edu. If that address is inoperative, please send it to: kubi7975@blue.univnorthco.edu. This way we can keep track of the lists and organize them. Forward this to everyone you know, and help us to keep these programs alive. Thank you. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Elizabeth Weinert, student, University of Northern Colorado, Greeley, CO 2) Robert M. Penn, San Francisco, CA 3) Gregory S. Williamson, San Francisco, CA 4) Daniel C. Knightly, Austin, TX 5) Andrew H. Knightly, Los Angeles, CA 6) Aaron C. Yeater, Somerville, MA 7) Tobie M. Cornejo, Washington, DC 8) John T. Mason, Dalton, MA 9) Eric W. Fish, Williamstown, MA 10) Courtney E. Estill, Hamilton College, NY 11) Vanessa Moore, Northfield, MN 12) Lynne Raschke, Haverford College, PA (originally Minnesota) 13) Deborah Bielak, Haverford, PA 14) Morgan Lloyd, Haverford, PA 19041 15) Galen Lloyd, Goucher College, MD 16) Brian Eastwood, University of Vermont, VT 17) Elif Batuman, Harvard University, MA 18) Kohar Jones, Yale University, CT 19) Claudia Brittenham, Yale University, CT 20) Alexandra Block, Yale University, CT 21) Susanna Chu, Yale University, CT 22) Michelle Chen, Harvard University, MA 23) Jessica Hammer, Harvard University, MA 24) Ann Pettigrew, Haverford College, PA 25) Kirstin Knox, Swarthmore College, PA 26) Jason Adler, Swarthmore College, PA 27) Daniel Gottlieb, Swarthmore College (but truly from Lawrence, KS) 28) Josh Feltman, Tufts University, MA 29) Louise Forrest, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA 30) HongSup Park, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA (originally from Portage, Wisconsin) 31) Ana Sandoval,Massachusetts Institute of Technology 32) Katherine Navarrete, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 33) Mandisa Washington, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 34) Stephen Balzac, San Francisco, CA 35) Howard Yermish, Los Angeles, CA 36) Danielle Yermish, Los Angeles, CA 37) David S. Lefkowitz, University of California - Los Angeles 38) Frank S. Albinder, San Francisco, CA 39) Read S. Sherman, Harvard Divinity School 40) Stephane Lemelin, Cambridge, MA 41) Thomas Ouellette, Cambidge, MA 42) Richard Russell, Cambridge, MA 43) Nella Wennberg, Jamaica Plain, MA 44) Eric Smith, Jamaica Plain, MA 45) Alex Graham, Boston, MA 46) Dean Wei, Chicago, IL 47) Luisita Frances, Chicago, IL 48) Roy Vella, Stanford, CA 49) Alan Hellawell, Mountain View, CA 50) Timothy A. Scott, San Francisco, CA 51) Albert M. Yeh, Mountain View, CA 52) Susan Yeh, Seattle, WA 53) Jonathan Payne, Seattle, WA 54) Cena Pohl, Seattle, WA 55) David Perk, Seattle, WA 56) Robert Srygley, Seattle WA 57) Katarzyna S. Kubzdela, Chicago, IL 58) Katy Human, Stanford, CA 59) Erica Fleishman, Reno, NV 60) C. Richard Tracy, Reno, NV 61) Kenneth E. Nussear, Reno, NV 62) Christopher R. 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(ted@ucdavis.edu) 230) Leigh Ann Giles, Davis CA (lagiles@ucdavis.edu) 231) Kamala Crompton, Sebastopol CA (kscrompton@ucdavis.edu) 232) Patrick Kelly 233) Alan J. Hiller (hiller@cooper.cpmc.org) 234) Mitchell D. Klein (MrProp@aol.com) 235) Nicholas Wulfekuhle 236) Andrew Downes 237) Kelly Bowers, Washington DC 238) Thomas Unger, Alexandria, VA 239) Dwight Gibbs, Alexandria, VA (dwightg@fool.com) 240) Selena Maranjian, Alexandria, VA (selenam@fool.com) 241) Lynnette A. Simon, Cambridge, MA (lasimon@fas.harvard.edu) 242) Susan Martin, Acton, MA(suemart@tiac.net) 243) Kenneth Lord, West Hempstead, NY (lord@calvin.cs.qc.edu) 244) Christopher Vickery, Holliswood, NY (vickery@babbage.cs.qc.edu) 245) Christopher Winters, Stamford,CT (Abudu@Juno.com) 246) Paul McIsaac, New York City (paulmci@aol.com) 247) John Douglas, Charlotte, VT (jdouglas@together.net) 248) Norio Kushi, Shelburne, VT (ankushi@aol.com) 249) JoAnne Kushi, Shelburne, VT 250) Allan Balliett, Shepherdstown, WV (igg@igg.com) 251) Michael Reilly, NYC, NY (mreilly@sasmp.com) 252) Cindi Weiss, Hoboken, NJ (cweiss@sasmp.com) 253) Sam Cohen, NY, NY 254) Kathryn Mintz, NY, NY (kmintz@randomhouse.com) 255) Brad Greenquist, LA, CA 256) Helga Schier, LA, CA (hschier@randomhouse.com) 257) Kimberly Burns, LA,CA (kburns@randomhouse.com) 258) Laurel Cook, NY,NY(cookl@bdd.com) 259) Todd Gitlin, NY, NY (gitlint@is.nyu.edu) 260) Norris McNamara, Chicago, IL (NorrisMcN@aol.com) 261) Scott Diamond, Chicago, IL 262) Vincent J. Apicella, Milpitas, CA 263) Scott Black, Oak Park, IL 264) Linda Marquardt, Oak Park, IL 265) Daniel Marquardt, Oak Park, IL 266) Robert Ginsburg, Fayetteville, Ar 267) Susan Jenkins, Fayetteville, Ar 268) Dianne Schlies, Albuquerque, NM 269) Paul Schlies, Albuquerque, NM 270) Bob Dickey, Portland, OR 271) Elizabeth Dickey, Tucson, AZ 272) Timothy Mayhew, Farmington, NM 273) Marjorie Robertson, Arlington, VA 274) Deron Hurst, Arlington, VA 275) Erika Warner, Arlington, VA 276) Nancy Ward, Arlington, VA 277) Heather Podlich, Washington, DC 278) Lillian Rice, Washington, DC 279) Nicole Dannenberg, Washington, DC (originally from Sunnyvale, CA) 280) Suzanne Isack, Washington DC 281) Iracema de Moura Castro, Washington, DC 282) Tom Sander, Cambridge, MA 283) Peri Smilow, Cambridge, MA 284) Marc Johnson, Cambridge, MA and NY, NY 285) Patty Lyons, Chicago, IL 286) Tom Mula, Chicago, IL 287) James Sie, Chicago, IL 288) Douglas Wood, Chicago, IL 289) Sue Sie, Rhinebeck, NY 290) Nancee Meeker, Rhinecliff, NY 291) Pat Garrett, Albuquerque, NM http://www.nancee-meeker.com 292) Carrie Seid, Chicago, IL 293) Thomas Stender, Chicago, IL 294) Richard Seid 295) Betty Seid 296) Ina Pinckney, Chicago IL 297) Jane Davis, Evanston IL 298) Judith Blank, Chicago IL 299) Jay Wolke, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL 300) Todd Childers Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green Ohio 301) Jennifer Karches Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio 302) brian JULIUS kwolek, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio 303) Michael Wendling, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio 304) David Waxler, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio 305) Drew Bell, St. Louis, MO 306) Josh Gray, St. Louis, MO 307) Sheila Merrell, St. Louis, MO 308) Daphne Selbert, Principia College, Elsah, IL 309) Randi Browning, Principia College, Elsah, IL 310) Brynne Gray, Principia College, Elsah, IL 311) Helen K. Davie, Atascadero, CA 312) Christopher Herold, Redwood City, CA 313) Linda Lee EVans, Palo Alto, CA 314) Patrick G. Bailey, Mt. View, CA 315) Bruce Stephen Holms, Santa Barbara, CA 316) Debra L. Lindemann, Santa Barbara, CA 317) Michael P. Lindemann, Santa Barbara, CA 318) Daniel Drasin, Oakland, CA 319) Jacqui Dunne, Sausalito, CA 320) BC Crandall, Mill Valley, CA 321) Len Lipner, Worcester, MA 322) Victoria Broniscer, Sao Paulo, Brazil (US citizen) 323) Deborah F. Lynn, Yale University, New Haven, CT 324) Robin Cole Sunbeam, Vallejo, CA 325) Susan Sisselman, Lake Worth, FL 326) Sara-Jane Hardman, Croton-on-Hudson, NY Hardsj1@aol 327) Ronald Bleier, New York, NY 328) Charles Amirkhanian, El Cerrito, CA 329) Ron Silliman, Paoli, PA Ron Silliman When this you see 262 Orchard Road Remember me Paoli, PA 19301-1116 (610) 251-2214 (610) 293-6099 (o) (610) 293-5506 (fax) rsillima@ix.netcom.com rsillima@tssc.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 07:47:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:_Pi=F1a_colada=2C_=FCmla=FCts=2C_and_so_on_...__?= Comments: To: John Tranter In-Reply-To: <199706020636.QAA20726@mail.zip.com.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII John, thanks for the update on special characters. In the rather stunted US character set, however, at least on my Unix server, they don't come through; what I get for "pina colada" is "piqa colada," which actually sounds like, I dunno, a drink that is especially piquant? or just sticks you in the face with the little toothpick umbrella? Gwyn, now wondering what organization to start that could reasonably be called the "Capital Umlauts" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 22:06:15 +1000 Reply-To: jtranter@sydpcug.org.au Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: No more umlauts ... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Well, my attempt to reinvent the Umlaut wheel failed, and Iguess I invented the flat tire instead. Dean Taciuch kindly bounced back my e-mail message, which he'd filtered through Eudora on a Mac, from an account on a UNIX server. All the fancy umlaut formatting failed to get through, except for a | vertical space or two | and an & ampersand, which anyone can type straight from the keyboard!! One day, when the Mac shall lie down with the Clone ... Sorry for the misplaced typographical frisson. » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » John Tranter, 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Australia Phone Sydney (+612) 9555 8502 FAX (+612) 9212 2350 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 08:22:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Yep,_Pi=F1a_colada,_you_betcha_=FCmla=FCts?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Hey -- > Well, my attempt to reinvent the Umlaut wheel failed, and Iguess I > invented the flat tire instead. Not true -- for some it was a flat tire, but to other recipients, it proved a perfectly functional & useful wagonwheel. I'll send you back (backchannel) proof. I received all the special characters here (on my Hwelet-Packard PC, running Windows95, and using PegasusMail as a mailer program). > Sorry for the misplaced typographical frisson. where did I put that typo frission? i've been lookin' for it all over . . . . d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 08:45:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: procedures in literary space In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970531095219.0076c154@cais.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Tom... I think your "rant" was fabulous...It very much crystalized a lot of the most important matters of principle, that emerge from the "cronyism" thread...As I've already posted at some length, the problem (and origin of this long tangle skein, as it's developed up to now) is materialist and monetary...At root, people are upset because of disparities in access to resources. (As Robert Christgau once wrote, reacting to the Police single, "Spirits in a Material World": ...We're also matter in a material world, which is where things start to get sticky..). But the best response to all this, is to utilize whatever openings and resources we can, to increase the fecunditiy of the area of poetic work we've chosen..Well ranted. Mark ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 08:53:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: simplicity... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" What Joe Amato seems to want to say in response to my "ras le bol" post on so-called procedures and that doublejointed pat on one's own back called fairness is that if you say you are going to do something, then that's what you should do. I agree. This of course has nothing to do with poetry. In the specific sense that a poem better be doing more than it says, and in the further sense that "all's fair in love and war" poetry being both or take your pick. Listen up. In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the poet. None. TM Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 09:01:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Dean Taciuch Subject: Re: No more umlauts ... In-Reply-To: <199706021209.WAA16203@mail.zip.com.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Well, my attempt to reinvent the Umlaut wheel failed, and I guess I >invented the flat tire instead. > >Dean Taciuch kindly bounced back my e-mail message, which he'd >filtered through Eudora on a Mac, from an account on a UNIX server. >All the fancy umlaut formatting failed to get through, except for a | >vertical space or two | and an & ampersand, which anyone can type >straight from the keyboard!! > Oddly, though, the umlaut and tilde came through in the Subject line in Eudora, though the special characters weren't displayed in the body (there must be another context for that line . . .). I notice, digging around in Eudora's settings, that the screen font can be changed--that's probably what controls special characters. Dean ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 09:45:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: simplicity... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Tom saith -- > Listen up. In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the > poet. None. yes -- (except now & again the willow or the moon) -- & here's accord w/ Mark P.'s apprech of your rant mas fin -- particularly valuable for me was the rumination on the imperative(s) that are driving the engine or babbling the brook (take your pick), being a sense of what can / might be said -- the unuttered that seems "possible" and becks . . . it's of some use (sometimes) to recollect how paltry -- on the level of poetry qua poetry -- or if not paltry, at least how fragile & in various wises ludicrous is the dwarf-world of repute & position v. the titan world of the mind behind the scrawl . . . -- the desire for "publication" is perhaps primarily metaphorical at root . . . d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 10:28:14 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: how to produce books / Ivan Arguelles Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" apropos of the recent interest in ivan arguelles' work, here's a recent electronic chap of his work, published by jake berry (NinthLab@aol.com) as part of his EXPERIODDICIST project... lbd _________________________________________________ LA MUERTE DE ENRIQUE ARGUELLES [a sketch] an electronic chapbook Ivan Arguelles _________________________________________________ As dark as mahogony sudden lack of memory who that was in front of the easel squeezing colors of day on the canvas to freeze-frame an idealized siesta afternoon almost breathless beneath the unrelentling semaphore how many eons ago how many discarded masks the turbulence of life a directionless random through landscape of painted cactus dead automobiles rusting blood red metal scales beside the arid strip or in the arroyo the hundred drunks of teotihuacan banging on broken guitars skeletal features unmarried despotic emotions marring the afternoon's idyll fist on glass trumpet of ire shattering the historical water above the famished necropolis where the young painter was learning to die flies in clouds of somber ennui covering the ventana of life y todo lo pasado como un alacran de fuego what was it for? the alembics the short-wave radio the pistolas con mi general that elegant black dog mustache wax hair pomade ivory cigarette holder pulque raw mornings in absentia those fucking luteranos y siempre las pesadillas con las calaveras y me cago into afternoon of periodicity reading katzenjammer kids in the month old "excelsior" a dozen years later in minnesota when the black mantle who were those 2 guys bud & eddy? manchas de petroleo sobre el cristal donde el aire es mas transparente y clavado en el pecho el pu~no "soy comunista!" staring deep into the bottomless beer when the hour of bitter lemon turns to alkali somewhere outside of borrego springs where the "vaya al infierno" is set into motion not like this in what seems to be a duluth motel december 5 siglo de xerox en el mes de nieve eterna not the joven abrasado de amores AY! en su ilusion de memoria quantity of life purchased at sears & roebuck or montogomery wards in a basement sale of massive firestone tire ready to burn mountains like the great work in isolation CARTA ABIERTA AL SE~NOR PRESIDENTE please I have the nothing more than these my pinturas pero no soy un flaco and it is with these my pinturas I request you for an advertisement to fame and though I have had cocktails at sanborns and visited poets in lomas yes I am an humilde, Se~nor Presidente and I admit todo es mi culpa I am at fault for the universe all of it with its motor breakdowns and I can fix but for your piano and perform the beethoven with lucidity that comes of massive binge in snow I am not but I knew Trotzky and was artist without portfolio for six or seven decades my signature incarnadine is perfect aztec for chloroform or silver death the masks I wore the god of death or Chac-Mool ever athirst for whom I invented alcohol and by your leave I drank it all even as I strode panamerican highway in my euroaztec monkey gear suave as any gable clark in sleep hijo de la chingada madre! que marinero feo! puto! these sisters of the grey whose fog is my future in form but mi general lazaro cardenas why have you beached me? why am I thus displaced in winter? arrested for drunk driving in 1951 (?) I'm in the jailhouse now I'm in the hoosegow now in my waking dream in santa monica still elegant I strut the boardwalk as seagulls circle over me to aim I am abject as never before my piano hurts my small electric organ outside la nieve eterna de mi vida what did I ever do to the mayo clinic? Se~nor presidente mi general lazaro cardenas I am on my knees in a linoleum cell golpeando mi pecho que tengo la culpa I am guilty for all the universe if it is not perfect nor in lomas chapultepec I am the soul of the darker memory nor does mi cu~nada Lupe mourn the more nor my sister Lucia saint of hell boyle heights en la ciudad de los angeles where I have suffered her bordello the agony of all the indios cristos en su polvo y sangre de miseria and what if I failed? what if my pinturas all were nothing? what if I never was diego rivera? am I less comunista or hombre? what if I really failed and there is nothing to remind me of my past in the future of oxided coins and of my children what is their part what is their share in my failure? futility of the garden I attempted for them of the false nostalgia of sunday music and the limpid wine & fried fish and the great cliffs beyond the siesta pastoral symphony color of grass in the incredible distance of tenochtitlan the capital of my dolorous heart did I begin in spain on a rock? was I raised by jesuits to hate? did I deny la santa iglesia catolica only to be forced into luterano hell? nordic chofer lackey dishwasher cook MIS PINTURAS NO VALEN NADA! "to you my heart cries out pefidia" indeterminate section of sky the color of zinc or tin or like maps zig-zag jagged torn out of an infancy spent near the border where the basques shoot at leon & castille and the histories and chronicles of the many spains erupt like a volcano in the cathedral's white nerve every cell pitted against the other sweating the guardia civil of adolescence escape to the tropic or a warner brothers version saltimbanque in guadalajara watching from the rooftops as the pistoleros of the revolucion make their mark in the dust rosaries of flame with no sense of justice sombrero in hand for whom, se~nores? to increase the universe with this vain existence mis pinturas que nunca dejaron de ser nada mas que pura representacion camera-eye y nada mas! still-form with flowers grey vase yellow color de mi amor la gringa que vino a cambiar mi vida have I ever been happy? ambicion y consternacion sentimiento tragico de la vida dolores del rio trotzky desnudo en todos mis sue~nos but that later I should become merely a wetback dirty mex rosa de los cielos in my teeth lone ranger/zane grey y esa abuela toda gris la luterana mi suegra errores de potsdam GITANO that restless life with lawnmower in minnesota that meaningless life how the shape of snow affects me! minarets of blue ice tan lejos de los tropicos what is the memory I have of xochimilco? trato de recordar los nombres de las calles nothing resurfaces from that watery city my hands eran manos tan finas my paintings my failed music only the midnight piano "to you my heart cries out pefidia" logic and casuistry of the jesuits! Pfah! ivan arguelles 5-12/13-97 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 10:15:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: simplicity... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" tom, yup... as to the 'authority sits above' me, or you, or whomever---why yeah, i think that resides within... but what's within being so many ways what's without too, gives me pause... as in, *me*!... it's not that i'm not sure of mself, exactly... but i think contributions of any sort are worth some anxiety over one's sense of entitlement... i don't, no i don't, always feel so... entitled... which in fact feeds directly at times into my writing, into whatever... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 08:13:23 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Umlauts came thru loud und clear Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" John Tranter, my software had no trouble decoding your message, which I downloaded to practice it on my Mac Classic II (MSW 6.1).But my keyboard has no ALT. Is there an ALT somewhere in the software? I _do_ have that auxillary keyboard of mostly numbers to the right of the part of the keyboard I use. I tried using my OPTION button but no go. db ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:49:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: an umlaut w/ a diff Yeah, & look how these things translate at my other (office) computer (w/ LAN using GroupWise e-softwarre): << =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:_Pi=F1a_colada=2C_=FCmla=FCts=2C_and_so_on_...__? >> that's the Pina Colada & Umlaut subject line . . . d.i. >>> Gwyn McVay 06/02/97 07:47am >>> John, thanks for the update on special characters. In the rather stunted US character set, however, at least on my Unix server, they don't come through . . . ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:53:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: simplicity... / entitlement the right reverend Amato writes: << . . . contributions of any sort are worth some anxiety over one's sense of entitlement... i don't, no i don't, always feel so... entitled... which in fact feeds directly at times into my writing, into whatever... >> how about Earl? Duke? Count? Sir Joe (at least)? d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 08:29:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: simplicity, a poem Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" sure of himself _______________ in that respect, not to be trusted ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 12:43:43 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: Umlauts came thru loud und clear In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII For us Mac users with no ALT: use the option key and the regular keyboard. OPTION key plus the letter "u" will make an umlaut over the next letter you type. To see what combinations make what marks, go to the Apple menu (far left), pull it down and click on Key Caps. That will display a map of the keyboard upon which you can try the different combinations and see what they produce. BTW, the umlauts did not come out in my e-mail, but I think that is because of the ancient mail program my provider uses. Pine 1.3 or something like that. Steven On Mon, 2 Jun 1997, David Bromige wrote: > John Tranter, my software had no trouble decoding your message, which I > downloaded to practice it on my Mac Classic II (MSW 6.1).But my keyboard > has no ALT. Is there an ALT somewhere in the software? I _do_ have that > auxillary keyboard of mostly numbers to the right of the part of the > keyboard I use. I tried using my OPTION button but no go. db > __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 12:51:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Poetics List Subject: "Welcome" Message Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Rev. 6-1-97 ____________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Poetics List & The Electronic Poetry Center sponsored by The Poetics Program, Department of English, Faculty of Art & Letters, of the State University of New York, Buffalo ____________________________________________________________________ http://writing.upenn.edu/epc ____________________________________________________________________ _______Contents___________ 1. 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Or set your browser to go directly to: http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/poetics/archive ____________________________________________________________________ 9. Publishers & Editors Read This! PUBLISHERS & EDITORS: Our listings of poetry and poetics information is open and available to you. We are trying to make access to printed publications as easy as possible to our users and ENCOURAGE you to participate! Send a list of your press/publications to glazier@acsu.buffalo.edu with the words EPC Press Listing in the subject line. You may also send materials on disk. (Write file name, word processing program, and Mac or PC on disk.) Send an e-mail message to the address above to obtain a mailing address to which to send your disk. Though files marked up with html are our goal, ascii files are perfectly acceptable. 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Some announcements circulated through Poetics and the EPC have received a noticeable responses; it may be an effective way to promote your publication and we are glad to facilitate information about interesting publications. ____________________________________________________________________ END OF POETICS LIST WELCOME ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 13:05:22 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: simplicity... In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 2 Jun 1997 08:53:22 -0400 from On Mon, 2 Jun 1997 08:53:22 -0400 Tom Mandel said: > >Listen up. In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the poet. None. Same goes for scientists and science, I suppose, and politicians and politics. But I wouldn't refer to poets for information on the "double-jointed pat on the back called fairness". Politicians are probably more expert in that sub-field. For fairness PER SE however, most ordinary non-professing people have some concept of what it is. Does po-biz fall under the authority of fairness per se? Yes - cause anybody can see its workings & non-workings. It's not a specialization. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 13:46:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: simplicity... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" er, david, david, which, one, any?, i'm best as plain ole joe!... gave me hell as a kid, my father actually was made to change his to 'joseph,' made to right write-handed... er... but like, i'm actually a jr., which i dropped for similar reasons so i could be best as etc... and henry and others, yeah, contra moi, it's mebbe? that a related complication is captured in these song lyrix, from judybats *pain makes you beautiful* disc, the tune "being simple": Hearts cannot be broken, they're small squishy things . They don't break like glass but they bruise easily . This one you bruise . Words will not be spoken never knowing what they mean . Sticks and stones hurt my bones, your promises have broken me . Each one you break . And I want to be good but good is being simple . Simple is forgetting . I simply can't forget . I want to be good but good is being simple . Simple is forgetting . and I simply can't forget . and the refrain And I want to be good but good is being simple . Simple is forgetting . I simply can't forget . I want to be great but greatness is giving . Giving leaves me empty . Oh great emptiness etc... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 13:47:25 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: Ivan Arguelles A little more info on Ivan A: He publishes Pantograph Press (P.O. Box 9643, Berkeley, CA 94709). Under that imprint, he's done some excellent books by Will Alexander, Jack Foley (_Exiles_) and Jake Berry (most recently, _Species of Abandoned Light_; shortly, Volume 2 of _Brambu Drezi_). Ivan's own work also appears from Pantograph. Most recently _Enigma & Variations: Paradise is Persian for Park_, the latest installment in Ivan A's ongoing work, _Pantograph_. Pantograph Press will soon publish a collaborative work by Ivan A and Jack Foley. I found _Enigma and Variations_ to be quite interesting in scope, variety, complexity, and range of reference. Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 14:51:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: Osip Mandelshtam translations in Penguin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Yes, I know, they're translations. But is there anybody out there who can tell me about the quality of these translations in the Penguin paperback edition of Osip Mandelshtam SELECTED POEMS? I compared the poem on Stalin, for instance, to the version in Rothenberg and Joris's POEMS FOR THE MILLENIUM, and the translation in the Penguin book was much the weaker poem, it seemed to me--no idea of how it relates to the original. Sorry not to have names of translators here at work. It's just that, in the case of this one poem, the SELECTED POEMS translation seemed so much weaker as a poem that I wondered if I was getting weak translations throughout. Obviously, since they're translations, I'm missing SOMETHING, but suddenly I began to wonder how close I was getting to missing EVERYTHING. Thanks in advance for anyone who can help me here. Mark Wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 14:49:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Carol A Kelly Subject: Re: simplicity... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >>Tom: Listen up. In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the poet. None. >Henry: Same goes for scientists and science, I suppose, and politicians and politics. I wonder if it would be useful to this discussion to think about two different kinds of "hierarchies" of which the self is a part: (1) there is the poet as judge / person as utility who agrees to a contract and (2) the poet as person who simply thinks and lives like every other person scientist, politician, etc. (1) The poet who agrees to judge a poetry contest and does not follow the rules of that contract has "legally" wronged the people she is in contract with. I think no one disagrees with that. The question is whether or not this violation is ethically or morally sound. Clearly, when it was believed that Graham violated the AWP contest rules, the upset on this list was rooted in the belief that what she did was unethical. We were not discussing Graham as a judge of a contest (role type (1)) but as a person who thinks and lives (role type (2)). My interpretation of Tom's "rant" is that he has no interest in deciding whether or not she would have been ethically all right in doing what we believed she did, and further, that he is troubled over the fact that there is so much interest in said judgment. "Fairness" in poetry is only interesting, then, if you believe that you see fit to make moral or ethical judgments about another's actions. Otherwise, we would might say that a certain move is legal, or within the bounds of a rule set, and there would be much less ambiguity over whether or not a judge or publisher did something "wrong." But laws and ethics, although oftentimes confused, are in totally different classes. (Along this line, a coworker once asked me what religion I followed; when I replied that I am an atheist he said "but you look like such a nice girl--I would have never guessed you were amoral!") Carol ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 15:13:01 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: simplicity... In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 2 Jun 1997 14:49:09 -0400 from I thought we were considering a "case" in po-biz. I see no sharp division between law & ethics, especially in an organizational situation where basically "we" (the "writing people") set up the rules. The rules are an expression or an attempt toward "fairness". The aim of the discussion was not to get inside the motivations of the "guilty party" but to consider, using an example, what the rules of the game - in a game fraught with conflicts of interest - actually are. Tom certainly has a point that the contest po-biz wasteland is getting away from talking about poetry, poems. But then "poetics" means the whole dang valley in which it persists. As this endless conversation on hundreds of topics has proved for a long time. As I understand it, Tom was also saying that the real game (making poetry) has no "rules" & all this talk just clouds the issue. But we were talking about that "other" game... zzzz...goes the wasp... - Henry ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 15:29:02 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: Osip Mandelshtam translations in Penguin In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 2 Jun 1997 14:51:40 -0400 from My opnion as a non-Russian-reader who's read a lot of these translations: there isn't a good one yet. The Selected Poems you're referring to I think was done by Clarence Brown & WS Merwin. They sound to my ear much too Merwin. The rhythm & speed & tone of Mandelstam is a whole different animal. I like the big book of complete Mandelstam published by SUNY way back & I think trans. by Sidney Monas & Burton Raffel. It's got something of OM's edge - but for me the rhythm is still too loose & the diction off a lot (I'm going by my sense of smell here). But for me it's pretty good. Trans. by James Greene seem too precious & "literary". Richard McKane I like reading (they're relatively new on the scene) - but again seem sort of wooden. What I like best besides Monas/Raffel came out a long time ago, trans. by a Scottish guy, David McDuff (I think?) - long out of print? - but capture something of his pathos & strangeness - esp. in the early OM. I know Tom Mandel has some opinions here, & has trans. OM himself - we've backchanneled on this one before - eh, boxer-man? Anybody else want to get in the ring? there's a re-issue in a handy format of the Complete Critical Prose that just came out from Ardis press - very helpful in getting into the feel of the poetry, along with Nadezhda Mandelstam's GREAT memoirs (excellent summer reading, if you like Dostoevsky) - Henry G ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 21:08:09 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L. MacMahon and T.R. Healy" Subject: tinfish on a hot day Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It's been so hot here in Ireland the last few days that I thought why not have another look at tinfish #4? So I did. The opening poem _Le Livre de'histoire du monde_ by Murray Edmond is astonishing, not least because it manages to keep up the momentum of its bracing opening: The world was stitched together at noon on Sunday out of old bicycle parts by a mouse with thread of ice and eelskin silk. A creation myth which, after many readings, remains an endlessly renewable source of energy and renewal. And towards the end of the zine there's Murray's _The Gannets of Pilsen_ in which a series of narrative fragments wheel around each other maintaining a dynamic formation that does not depend on any central structure. A surprise second helping and a delight. John Kinsella's _nature morte: Oh Rhetoric! is a very remarkable work. Casual almost to the point of slackness, repetitive, it uses the device of discussing and agonising over another poem: _Trans-celluloid Vision_. With these unassuming means a huge scale is encompassed. And for a poem that eschews or quotability, it is utterly unforgettable. This was a real find. A triumph. In a lovely piece of editing, John's expansive piece is followed by a beautiful 7 line poem by Yunte Huang called _Tofu Your Life_ . Very engaging. Exactly the sort of thing to keep to the front of your files to show those people who would like to read poetry but won't because they're scared that they'll be humiliated or something. If you've forgotten what charm is, a quick look at this will refresh your memory. Hazel Smith's three pieces, _Perguiltspek_ (shunder urtli stroqua agalan stroqualan ault?), _Poetics_ (a woman tearing the bread of being/a woman tonguing the wine or syntax) and _Monologue_(When I started to read Freud I couldn't believe how much he and I had in common) are a joy. Masterly, endlessly inventive, out-aphorising Blake, sinuous, threatening to break into a bio-story at every point but bringing the reader to more and more exciting and unexpected places. I've had a great day. Spent a lot of time in the garden pushing two of my daughters, Flo (6) and Genevieve(3) on the swing with one hand while holding tinfish in the other and reading aloud. They were all for it. Just keep pushing. Don't want to make this post too long, but it would be a scandal not to mention Richard Hasaki's _Da Mento Hospital_, Cydney Chadwick's _Hangman_, Rebecca Mays Ernest's _Scratch Factor_ and well the entire contents of this vivacious fish. Can't wait for #5. Randolph Healy. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 16:39:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ken Edwards Subject: Nicole Brossard Comments: To: British-poets MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 We are proud to announce the publication of = TYPHON DRU by Nicole Brossard REALITY STREET EDITIONS =B7 June 1997 =A35.50 Two sequences of poems, in a specially commissioned translation by poet Caroline Bergvall, from the leading French-Canadian writer, twice winner = of the Governor General's prize for poetry, and of the highest literary awar= d for Quebec literature, le prix Athanase-David. Nicole Brossard in Cambridge reading from her work: = Friday June 27 Anglia University, East Road, 6.30 pm reading and in conversation: Saturday June 28, Kettle's Yard House, Northampton St, 12 noon (opposite the gallery entrance) Ms Brossard will read from the dual-language text and talk about her writing. She is the author of more than 20 works of fiction and poetry an= d has influenced a whole generation by her thinking on post-modernist, experimental, feminist and lesbian writing. She has directed films and co-founded two important literary periodicals, La Barre du Jour and La Nouvelle Barre du Jour. Her novel Mauve Desert has been translated into English, Spanish, German and Dutch. = This rare appearance by Nicole Brossard in the UK forms part of her tour = in which she is scheduled to appear at the Canadian High Commission and at Quebec House in London, and to be a plenary speaker at the Leeds Universi= ty Conference on Women and Texts: Languages, Technologies and Communities. H= er readings in Cambridge will offer those interested and involved with issue= s of experimental writing, women's creativity, texts and languages an opportunity to engage with Ms Brossard in an atmosphere of informal discussion. We look forward to welcoming you to these events. RSE gratefully acknowledges funding support from the Arts Council of England and = the Eastern Arts Board. For further information please contact: Wendy Mulford 01728-604169 6 Benhall Green, Saxmundham, Suffolk IP17 1HU or Ken Edwards email: kenedwards1@compuserve.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 15:16:42 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: simplicity... In-Reply-To: <199706021344.JAA06710@wizard.wizard.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Tom saith -- > >> Listen up. In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the >> poet. None. \ So let me get this straight: you are saying that on this point, Shelley, Keats, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke and Milton were all wrong? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 18:23:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: simplicity... >>> George Bowering 06/02/97 06:16pm >>> >Tom saith -- > >> Listen up. In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the >> poet. None. And George Bowering riposteth: >So let me get this straight: you are saying that on this point, Shelley, >Keats, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke and Milton were all wrong? (not that this is mine to tussle, but) let me get this straight: are you saying that Shelley, Keats, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke and Milton were not poets? (or hey, maybe I'm missing some nuance of the argument?) d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 18:29:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSchu30844@AOL.COM Subject: Re: tinfish on a hot day Dear Randolph--thanks so much for your letter/message! It's always good to hear that Tinfish has attentive readers and I'm delighted that your daughters heard it too. I'm trying to copy the message, but my printer has decided to spew forth dozens of blank pages, so it may not happen... Hot in Ireland! It's stifling here, despite the fact that there are still breezes (they end in August through October, alas). But I'll be moving this summer to the other side of the island, where it's cooler, if a bit farther away from the university. My sabbatical will end soon...it's been good, if not as a time to get a lot of work done. The printer "prints" on. Stay in touch...I'll let you know when the next fish is nearing completion. Tomorrow I pick up the chapbook we've just done up--poems by me and John Kinsella. Wordy ones! all best, Susan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 19:04:24 -0400 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: simplicity... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit George Bowering wrote: > > >Tom saith -- > > > >> Listen up. In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the > >> poet. None. > \ > > So let me get this straight: you are saying that on this point, Shelley, > Keats, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke and Milton were all wrong? > > George Bowering. > , > 2499 West 37th Ave., > Vancouver, B.C., > Canada V6M 1P4 > > fax: 1-604-266-9000 > e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca Zing! Pow! Nous-zap! Urania Mania! (& Homer Hesiod Sappho Pindar Blake Dante Rumi David Virgil Saint John of the Cross Dickinson Yeats to add a few to the receptive queue... Dan Zimmerman 485 Parsonage Road Edison, NJ 08837 732.494.1676 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 19:12:44 -0400 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: simplicity... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Israel wrote: > > >>> George Bowering 06/02/97 06:16pm >>> > >Tom saith -- > > > >> Listen up. In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the > >> poet. None. > > And George Bowering riposteth: > > >So let me get this straight: you are saying that on this point, Shelley, > >Keats, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke and Milton were all wrong? > > (not that this is mine to tussle, but) let me get this straight: are you > saying that Shelley, Keats, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke and Milton were not > poets? (or hey, maybe I'm missing some nuance of the argument?) > > d.i. David, I think George Bowering (& I, in a repost to him) just want to shift the discussion back to POETRY, rather than to "po-biz," which I take it Tom Mandel really means when he says "In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the poet." [After all, Tom also said "this [i.e., the imprimatur of arts administrators, even when poets] has nothing to do with poetry." Dan Zimmerman 485 Parsonage Road Edison, NJ 08837 732.494.1676 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 19:16:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: simplicity... / authority possibly I should clarify my point: 1. when Tom Mandel writes, > Listen up. In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the > poet. None. I believe the antecedent discussions (whence this provacative, categorical utterance emerges) would suggest asthe intended sense of "authority" here, an "external authority in the world" -- e.g., AWP Judges, graduate student readers, publishers, peers, editors, critics, your uncle Bill, your friend Simon, some Poet Laureate, or some excellent writer-friend. When George Bowering counters, >So let me get this straight: you are saying that on this point, Shelley, >Keats, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke and Milton were all wrong? I presume he means to suggest that the authority who is felt to be "above" (or "beyond") the poet is of this general ilk: God, the Muse, the Rose, Inspiration, the Heart, or the unutterable Silence. This seems of a different order of things / beings entirely. While Tom's statement was couched (for rhetorical effect, presumably) in absolutist terms, I should like, as an exercise, to propose this revised form of the aphorism: ~~There is no authority higher than the author A glancing notion of etymology (at leasts) suggests its verity. Or am I still missing something? d.i. p.s.: I see Dan Zimmerman adds: > (& Homer Hesiod Sappho Pindar Blake Dante Rumi David Virgil Saint > John of the Cross Dickinson Yeats to add a few to the receptive > queue... all still relying on internal authority -- i.e., that which is accessible (if by luck or grace or inspiration) to the poet internally; not some person in the world whose opinion should be heeded . . . not, at least, a person extrinsic to the being of the poet himself (as Shams for Rumi, Beatrice for Dante, the "tender flame" for San Juan de la Cruz -- . . . all germane to the poet's own "deepest center", no?) ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 19:20:36 -0400 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: simplicity... / authority MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Israel wrote: > > possibly I should clarify my point: > > 1. when Tom Mandel writes, > > > Listen up. In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the > > poet. None. > > I believe the antecedent discussions (whence this provacative, categorical > utterance emerges) would suggest asthe intended sense of "authority" > here, an "external authority in the world" -- e.g., AWP Judges, graduate > student readers, publishers, peers, editors, critics, your uncle Bill, your > friend Simon, some Poet Laureate, or some excellent writer-friend. > > When George Bowering counters, > > >So let me get this straight: you are saying that on this point, Shelley, > >Keats, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke and Milton were all wrong? > > I presume he means to suggest that the authority who is felt to be > "above" (or "beyond") the poet is of this general ilk: God, the Muse, the > Rose, Inspiration, the Heart, or the unutterable Silence. This seems of a > different order of things / beings entirely. > > While Tom's statement was couched (for rhetorical effect, presumably) in > absolutist terms, I should like, as an exercise, to propose this revised > form of the aphorism: > > ~~There is no authority higher than the author > > A glancing notion of etymology (at leasts) suggests its verity. > > Or am I still missing something? > > d.i. > > p.s.: I see Dan Zimmerman adds: > > > (& Homer Hesiod Sappho Pindar Blake Dante Rumi David Virgil Saint > > John of the Cross Dickinson Yeats to add a few to the receptive > > queue... > > all still relying on internal authority -- i.e., that which is accessible (if by > luck or grace or inspiration) to the poet internally; not some person in the > world whose opinion should be heeded . . . not, at least, a person > extrinsic to the being of the poet himself (as Shams for Rumi, Beatrice for > Dante, the "tender flame" for San Juan de la Cruz -- . . . all germane to the > poet's own "deepest center", no?) Exactly. DZ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 16:46:35 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Praise Song Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Just a brief note to recommend Aldon Nielsen's Black Chant: Languages of African American Postmodernism. I've only had a chance to skip around in it so far, but it's really great. Critical insights, oddball anecdotes, clever digs at Stanley Crouch, historical details, and a great bibliography. When Aldon announced it on the list, he said something like "You'll learn about at least one interesting poet you've never heard of." He sure got that right. WhileI'd known the work of some of the writers discussed here (& I was really happy to be reminded of Norman Pritchard) the scope of his project here is incredible. If only the libraries around here had been smart enough to get all this stuff years ago. Oh well. The last chapters on jazz and poetry, which I knew more about beforehand, are also very very good. I don't think I've ever read any serious discussion of Cecil Taylor as a poet before (other than the interview in Hambone). Aldon's descriptions of the recordings I've heard are evocative enough to remind me of one or two things I wish I still owned. If only I'd been smart enough to keep all this stuff years ago. Oh well. All your academic libraries should have it, though in a recent face to face discussion with a list member from another locale I heard of a university library that needed some prodding to order it for their general collection. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 16:46:43 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: New Traditions in East Asian Bar Bands Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The subject line is the title of a new CD by John Zorn released by the Tzadik label that MIGHT be of interest to some on the list, at least as an odd bibliographic item for both Lyn Hejinian & Myung Mi Kim. The work is a suite of three compositions for pairs of musicians playing the same instrument & a narrator. The texts are by Hejinian, Kim, and Arto Lindsay (probably best known as a guitarist). In Hue Die, Lindsay's text (translated into Chinese) is narrated by Zhang Jinglin, accompanied by guitarists Bill Frisell & Fred Frith. In Hwang Chin-Ee, Kim's texts (in Korean) are narrated by Jung Hee Shin, accompanied by drummers Joey Barron and Samm Bennett. & lastly, in Que Tran, Hejinian's text (translated into Vietnamese) is narrated by Ahn Tran, accompanied by keyboard players Wayne Horvitz & Anthony Coleman. The English language texts are provided in the artfully designed, though sometimes difficult to read (Hejinian's text is printed in a minuscule font in gold ink on a dark gray photo), booklets accompanying the CD. While there are shifts in tone & style, the music stays in one style for a while before changing & in general the 3 pieces are each more consistently evocative of a single mood than the standard critical line on Zorn's work might lead you to expect. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 16:46:48 -0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: No more umlauts ... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm not a big advocate of fancy formatting in e-mail , but, for what its worth, this problem wasn't simply with receiving the message filtered through Eudora on a Mac, from an account on a UNIX server. That's what I have here & the message came through fine except for the en & em dashes. It's just as likely to be an issue of what is available in the screen fonts chosen by folks in their mail programs. (related poetics content: can anyone remind me of the source for the Frank O'Hara line something like "Did you notice that weird non-standard spelling I used for Tchaikovsky a few lines back"?) >Dean Taciuch kindly bounced back my e-mail message, which he'd >filtered through Eudora on a Mac, from an account on a UNIX server. >All the fancy umlaut formatting failed to get through, except for a | >vertical space or two | and an & ampersand, which anyone can type >straight from the keyboard!! > >One day, when the Mac shall lie down with the Clone ... Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 18:04:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: simplicity... In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>>> George Bowering 06/02/97 06:16pm >>> >>Tom saith -- >> >>> Listen up. In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the >>> poet. None. > >And George Bowering riposteth: > >>So let me get this straight: you are saying that on this point, Shelley, >>Keats, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke and Milton were all wrong? > >(not that this is mine to tussle, but) let me get this straight: are you >saying that Shelley, Keats, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke and Milton were not >poets? (or hey, maybe I'm missing some nuance of the argument?) > >d.i. I am scratching my head, trying to figure out how you got that notion from what I said, or whether you are doing a jest I dont perceive. I am saying that all those poets happily say that there is an authority that sits above the poet. Milton, for instance, called him "Heavenly Muse." George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 21:11:50 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: Re: Osip Mandelshtam translations in Penguin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bruce McClelland's translation of TRISTIA (Station Hill Press, 1987, most likely still in print) is the one I feel comes closest to what I take to be Mandelstam's diction & rhythms. But, yes, new translations of OM are much needed -- & good ones, as indeed most of britisher &Merwinesques sound pale & flat & boring. Not having Russian I read him mostly in Paul Celan's German translations, which are absolutely splendid. -- Pierre -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel/fax (518) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 assertion. -- Maurice Blanchot ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 21:23:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: list of poetry school Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest wrote: > > hi joe and henry -- can we make it boston, not just provident, and > maybe rather than anti-non-traditionalist, make it "poem centered and > anti- ANY!-ist" and maybe, "age-and-gender-unconcerned" and then i'll > have a spot for my chapeau as well?... > doffing a small, rakishly tilted WW II black woolen dress-marine beret > inherited from my father (or the cotton khaki summer version thereof...) > > e Eliza, quoting Bob Dylan, "I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours." Cheers, Joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 21:38:00 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: simplicity... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit George Bowering wrote: "I am saying that all those poets happily say that there is an authority that sits above the poet. Milton, for instance, called him 'Heavenly Muse.'" But is a muse an authority or "only" an inspirer? Which thought makes me suddenly wonder (though I understand) why there is no muse of criticism, an inspirer of poets in fine frenzies, revising. Or is there? --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 21:36:46 -0400 Reply-To: daniel7@IDT.NET Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Zimmerman Organization: Bard-O Subject: Re: simplicity... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit George Bowering wrote: > > >>>> George Bowering 06/02/97 06:16pm >>> > >>Tom saith -- > >> > >>> Listen up. In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the > >>> poet. None. > > > >And George Bowering riposteth: > > > >>So let me get this straight: you are saying that on this point, Shelley, > >>Keats, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke and Milton were all wrong? > > > >(not that this is mine to tussle, but) let me get this straight: are you > >saying that Shelley, Keats, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke and Milton were not > >poets? (or hey, maybe I'm missing some nuance of the argument?) > > > >d.i. > > I am scratching my head, trying to figure out how you got that notion from > what I said, or whether you are doing a jest I dont perceive. I am saying > that all those poets happily say that there is an authority that sits above > the poet. Milton, for instance, called him "Heavenly Muse." > > George Bowering. > , > 2499 West 37th Ave., > Vancouver, B.C., > Canada V6M 1P4 > > fax: 1-604-266-9000 > e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca Well, Milton called _her_ "Heavenly Muse" [Urania, Muse of Astronomy], though he did try to assimilate her to the presumptively male inspirer of the Old Testament... Dan Zimmerman ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 18:53:57 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: unnamed things Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Today as I was scarfing down my frozen yogurt with predictable results it occurred to me that I don't know a standard term for the phenomenon--I've always called it, following Pogo, or perhaps Albert, "the cold cobbles," but that's hardly lingua franca. Any suggestions? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 20:13:01 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: Re: who gets the makarships, etc. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Anselm Hollo wrote (in part, and some time ago): > Thus, from the writing person's point of view, late-stage corporate > capitalism may be seen as preferable to Stalinism, in that it is closer to > medieval feudalism: troubadours hanging out with the "right" and > better-connected overlords probably stood a better chance of having their > works survive... Leave it to the Finn-born poet to see the long historical view, and to know something about surviving between giants. One poem keeps tugging at me during all this recent talk. It's the complaint of the exiled, possibly early eighth century _makar_ (maker or poet), Deor. He ticks off various mythic griefs, always followed by the Anglo-Saxon refrain "thaes ofereode, thisses swa maeg," and ends with a carefully controlled bit of his own story. Here are the last few stanzas, translated by Michael Alexander: We all knew that Eormanric had a wolf's wit. Wide Gothland lay in the grasp of that grim king, and through it many sat, by sorrows environed, foreseeing only sorrow; sighed for the downfall and thorough overthrow of the thrall-maker. That blew by; this may too. When each gladness is gone, gathering sorrow may cloud the brain; and in his breast a man can not then see how his sorrows shall end. But he may think how throughout this world it is the way of God, who is wise, to deal to the most part of men much favour and a flourishing fame; to a few the sorrow-share. Of myself in this regard I shall say this only: that in the hall of the Heodenings I held long the makarship, lived dear to my prince, Deor my name; many winters I held this happy place and my lord was kind. Then came Heorrenda, whose lays were skillful; the lord of fighting-men settled on him the estate bestowed once on me. That has gone; this may too. Rachel Loden ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 23:57:24 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: who gets the makarships, etc. In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 2 Jun 1997 20:13:01 -0700 from Thanks, Rachel, for the old Deor, lovely necessity. I just saw K. Brannagh's Hamlet, & while for me Brannagh is not quite able to bring it off - somehow I think of Hamlet as tall, fat, slow, quick, slim, quiet & deadly, not roaring - it did bring home to me that for poets too, yes, there is a higher authority - & it's whoever Shakespeare really was. Some impersonality there & fortitude that penetrates everything. I always thought the line went: That storm rolled on; this one will too. - the artist formerly known as Prince Hank ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 22:17:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Cope Subject: Re: Praise Song Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'll second Herb's recommendation. Aldon's was a book that I read w/ a hunger that I'd not experienced in some time. What he's done w/ poetry/music adds a great deal to the scant amount of critical work that's been devoted to the subject, and he manages to do it while also calling attention to the continuum of which Taylor et al. are a part (a tradition which has gone for the large part ignored). Three cheers... Stephen Cope >Just a brief note to recommend Aldon Nielsen's Black Chant: Languages of >African American Postmodernism. I've only had a chance to skip around in >it so far, but it's really great. Critical insights, oddball anecdotes, >clever digs at Stanley Crouch, historical details, and a great >bibliography. > >When Aldon announced it on the list, he said something like "You'll learn >about at least one interesting poet you've never heard of." He sure got >that right. WhileI'd known the work of some of the writers discussed here >(& I was really happy to be reminded of Norman Pritchard) the scope of his >project here is incredible. If only the libraries around here had been >smart enough to get all this stuff years ago. Oh well. > >The last chapters on jazz and poetry, which I knew more about beforehand, >are also very very good. I don't think I've ever read any serious >discussion of Cecil Taylor as a poet before (other than the interview in >Hambone). Aldon's descriptions of the recordings I've heard are evocative >enough to remind me of one or two things I wish I still owned. If only I'd >been smart enough to keep all this stuff years ago. > >Oh well. > >All your academic libraries should have it, though in a recent face to face >discussion with a list member from another locale I heard of a university >library that needed some prodding to order it for their general collection. > > > >Herb Levy >herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 00:23:12 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Questions about who is where, etc. Thanks In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hello everyone it's Kevin Killian, a day late and a dollar short. Thanks to all of you who helped me with my questions about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. And for giving me all the different addresses for Mark Doty and Ishmael Reed. I have some more stupid questions and am depending on my poetics pals again to pull my chestnuts out of the fire. Can anybody back channel me with the addresses of . . . Margaret Atwood? Galway Kinnell? William Wollman? Jeanette Winterson? Also, I'd like to second Jay Schwartz' recommendation of the "Idiom" web site. I know there are many out there who think San Francisco writing scene is dead, but there are many young people here doing some fine work and making much commotion. Hooray for them! And now back to work for me on finishing the life of Jack Spicer which must be finished June 15th, wish me luck everyone. XXX, Kevin. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 08:17:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: dragon bond rite In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" over the weekend i saw a preview of the pan-Asian dance/music extravaganza, dragon bond rite, for which our own Armand Schwerner has written the highly poetic libretto. highly recommended, will be at Japan Society in NYC soon, maybe already, check your datebooks and call the J Soc for more info, it was really extraordinary, a blend of distinct dance theatre and music traditions from Korea, Japan, Indonesia, India, and even an Tuvan (Mongolian) throat singer! and then American Buddhist text...lots of intense drumming, singing, stylized and wild dance movements, costumes, humor, sadness (death), sex, im/mortality...drumming by, in particular, a "koodiyattam" drummer from Kerala India, and by a Korean drummer, were intensely mind-opening. i tend to be a popular culture gal rather than an archaic-tradition gal, so i went mostly cuz of armand, but it was a tremendously rich experience, seeing/hearing a group of world-class virtuosi from diff traditions, none of which i ws familiar with, coordinating their efforts. md ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 08:18:26 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: dragon bond rite ps In-Reply-To: <33933716.C47@cnsunix.albany.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ps armand, i didn't think to ask at the time, but wondered, why the title "dragon bond rite"? ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 09:24:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Praise Song In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'd like to second Herb Levy's post re Black Chant... I have also just gotten into the book; but Aldon's previous books on race and U.S. poetry, Reading Race and Writing Between the Lines, are also essential....It has occured to me that race issues are conspicuous in their absense here on the list; at most a few striking and perennially controversial individuals like Baraka appear in our exchanges, as surrogates for larger issues. Aldon's work interacts in a vital and productive way with Mackey's essays in Discrepent Engagement, and with Damon's Dark End of the Street. As a white poet who's been strongly influenced by black ones, going back 20 years (including crucially Baraka and Mackey), this does seem to me to be an untapped series of themes here. All the books I've just mentioned are stage-setting and vital for our going forward in thinking about black/white, inclusion/exclusion, politics in relation to style and form...My one frustration with all of them is their tendency to address poetry issues in a way that's divorced from the physical reality of the poetry itself.. Politics and race can be talked about in a lot of different ways, but in relation to poetry you can't avoid (or shouldn't) issues of style, form, sound. All the more striking as these theorists are mostly suberb practitioners as well. (I strongly recommend Nielsen's recent book of poems, Stepping Razor..) Mark Prejsnar Atlanta On Mon, 2 Jun 1997, Herb Levy wrote: > Just a brief note to recommend Aldon Nielsen's Black Chant: Languages of > African American Postmodernism. I've only had a chance to skip around in > it so far, but it's really great. Critical insights, oddball anecdotes, > clever digs at Stanley Crouch, historical details, and a great > bibliography. > > When Aldon announced it on the list, he said something like "You'll learn > about at least one interesting poet you've never heard of." He sure got > that right. WhileI'd known the work of some of the writers discussed here > (& I was really happy to be reminded of Norman Pritchard) the scope of his > project here is incredible. If only the libraries around here had been > smart enough to get all this stuff years ago. Oh well. > > The last chapters on jazz and poetry, which I knew more about beforehand, > are also very very good. I don't think I've ever read any serious > discussion of Cecil Taylor as a poet before (other than the interview in > Hambone). Aldon's descriptions of the recordings I've heard are evocative > enough to remind me of one or two things I wish I still owned. If only I'd > been smart enough to keep all this stuff years ago. > > Oh well. > > All your academic libraries should have it, though in a recent face to face > discussion with a list member from another locale I heard of a university > library that needed some prodding to order it for their general collection. > > > > Herb Levy > herb@eskimo.com > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 09:20:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: sure? sure I'm sure Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" DAvid Bromige writes: Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 08:29:03 -0700 From: David Bromige Subject: simplicity, a poem sure of himself _______________ in that respect, not to be trusted ------------------------------ And I'm in complete agreement with that too. It is *because* certainty is not certain, there is no certain point nor final interpretation, that in poetry no authority sits above the poem (I meant to write)(in the sense that the poem *is* the poet -- insofar as there's any interest in the poet). TM Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 10:02:25 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: it's really very simple, he always seems to be saying Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Look -- if you subject yourself to a contest, if you *submit* something, then you are delivering yourself over to an authority beyond the world writing creates, the world in which you give your soul and its implications to the future and its implications. If you do that, fine, it's your choice. Go right ahead. If in submitting, you also expect the mechanism by which "the contest" (the game) is being run (by the power outside the world writing creates) to be 1) a fair mechanism and/or 2) a well-running mechanism, that's just foolish. This has nothing of course to do with Dodie's sense of being victimized or passed over unfairly in Doug Messerli's contest. Dodie's my friend, and I don't want anything damaging to happen to her; if it does, then I'm upset. Doug Messerli is also my friend, however, and I don't want to see him accused of operating a cabal. Virtually everything operates to normalize what poets do. It is a metonymic control, in that if you bring poets into an "institution" of poetry you then begin to exert social control over the poems themselves. There is very little difference between a grad school of creative writing and the Soviet Writers Union in this respect. These structures operate to the same end, namely to determine a minimum "fair" cost for controlling the imagination. Stay away from it. Or, if you think you can trade a little bit of your birthright for a little bit of porridge, then at least learn to like the soup you get. Tom Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 07:42:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: thanks to Herb for those kind words In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Many university libraries will have at least something by Russell Atkins and another something by Norman H. Pritchard -- quite a few also have Loftis's _Black Anima_ -- to my very great surprise, the San Jose State library even had one of the anthologies from the Dasein group -- modest selections of other poets discussed in _Black Chant_ can be found in late 60s - early 70s anthologies widely circulated -- should also mention that Fred Moten has written of Cecil Taylor's poetry too -- don't know that he's ever published it, though -- Chris Funkhouser got me a copy of the talk -- to all on the list to whom I owe one thing or another, patience please -- just back from Baltimore & the American Lit. Association -- which I sahll attempt to describe later -- _____ some Mason & Dixon lines: "Along with some lesser Counts," the Revd is replying, "'twas one of the least tolerable Offenses in that era . . . --the Crime they sty;'d 'Anonymity.' That is, I left messages posted publicly, but did not sign them." ". . . as it _is_ your, ye might say, Work-Station, reluctantly must I yield it to you . . ." "Two youths of the Macaronic profession are indeed greatly preoccupied upon the boards of the floor, in seeking to kick and pummel, each into the other, some Enlightenment regarding the Topick of Virtual Representation." --- "styl'd" for "sty;'d" above! ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 11:04:39 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: it's really very simple, he always seems to be saying In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 3 Jun 1997 10:02:25 -0500 from The trouble with writing is that the many-sided world begins to take on our one-sided black & white coloring. My "idealism" cancels out your "cynicism" & vice versa & both are trivialized by experience. (I mean our lenses become trivial, not experience.) But maybe that's the slow road to a many-sided writing, after all. In my OPINION we ought not to close our eyes to the evil world & contemplate our navels - how is this different from just plain closing our eyes & mouths to evil, "winking"? We the "upright" should be "bold as lions" in demanding fair dealing & examining our own shuffling & hypocrisies. The covenant is not a private world of "writing". Your description of the world of poets seems to be a RECIPE for cabal-making. That said, Tom, here's my glove - use it with your right to the beanbag. - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 11:27:37 +0000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pierre Joris Subject: A noun cement MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For anybody in the NYC area this Sunday: PIERRE JORIS NICOLE PEYRAFITTE Poetry /Slides /Chansons Will read/sing/perform their work SUNDAY JUNE 8th 1997 6:30 pm @ "ZINC BAR" 90 West Houston (one door west of the corner of Laguardia & Houston) -- ========================================= pierre joris 6 madison place albany ny 12202 tel/fax (518) 426 0433 email:joris@cnsunix.albany.edu http://www.albany.edu/~joris/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 assertion. -- Maurice Blanchot ========================================== ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 11:13:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: who gets the makarships, etc. Comments: To: Rachel Loden MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Thank you, Rachel, for posting one of my favorite poems in a translation I'd not seen before. (First came across Deor via Rexroth years ago). Anyhow, it certainly fits the bill and had been humming in my head lately in reference to these exact (and other) matters. Mark Wallace - the Penguin Mandelshtam is an expanded version of James Greene's original trans. called "Eyes of Wasps." Robert Tracey's _Stone_ ain't half bad, either. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Rachel Loden To: POETICS Subject: Re: who gets the makarships, etc. Date: Monday, June 02, 1997 10:22PM Anselm Hollo wrote (in part, and some time ago): > Thus, from the writing person's point of view, late-stage corporate > capitalism may be seen as preferable to Stalinism, in that it is closer to > medieval feudalism: troubadours hanging out with the "right" and > better-connected overlords probably stood a better chance of having their > works survive... Leave it to the Finn-born poet to see the long historical view, and to know something about surviving between giants. One poem keeps tugging at me during all this recent talk. It's the complaint of the exiled, possibly early eighth century _makar_ (maker or poet), Deor. He ticks off various mythic griefs, always followed by the Anglo-Saxon refrain "thaes ofereode, thisses swa maeg," and ends with a carefully controlled bit of his own story. Here are the last few stanzas, translated by Michael Alexander: We all knew that Eormanric had a wolf's wit. Wide Gothland lay in the grasp of that grim king, and through it many sat, by sorrows environed, foreseeing only sorrow; sighed for the downfall and thorough overthrow of the thrall-maker. That blew by; this may too. When each gladness is gone, gathering sorrow may cloud the brain; and in his breast a man can not then see how his sorrows shall end. But he may think how throughout this world it is the way of God, who is wise, to deal to the most part of men much favour and a flourishing fame; to a few the sorrow-share. Of myself in this regard I shall say this only: that in the hall of the Heodenings I held long the makarship, lived dear to my prince, Deor my name; many winters I held this happy place and my lord was kind. Then came Heorrenda, whose lays were skillful; the lord of fighting-men settled on him the estate bestowed once on me. That has gone; this may too. Rachel Loden ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 12:19:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: birthright In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970603100225.00ec1fa8@cais.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thought it was "pottage," as in "a mess of pottage." Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 11:20:39 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Re: simplicity... On 2 June, Tom Mandel wrote: >Listen up. In poetry, there is *no* authority that sits above the >poet. None. Well, and I'd jsut done gone and plum forgot. Why, I'm the Unacknowledged Legislator of the World! Hi Ho Pegasus and away!!! ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 10:34:32 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: it's really very simple, he always seems to be saying In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970603100225.00ec1fa8@cais.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:02 AM -0500 6/3/97, Tom Mandel wrote: >If in submitting, you also expect the mechanism by which "the contest" (the >game) is being run (by the power outside the world writing creates) to be >1) a fair mechanism and/or 2) a well-running mechanism, that's just foolish. But, Tom, one does have the right to expect it to be run *legally,* that is when you send off your bucks that you will be receiving the advertised benefits--e.g., that trip to the Bahamas actually exists and somebody will win it or an outside reader is looking at your manuscript. >Virtually everything operates to normalize what poets do. It is a metonymic >control, in that if you bring poets into an "institution" of poetry you >then begin to exert social control over the poems themselves. There is very >little difference between a grad school of creative writing and the Soviet >Writers Union in this respect. These structures operate to the same end, >namely to determine a minimum "fair" cost for controlling the imagination. I can't agree with you more, Tom, but it seems that these days there are so fewer venues for poets to be nourished by, that there is little alternative to grad writing programs. Perhaps in New York there is still enough support mechanisms in place that a poet needing community and feedback and people to study with could get all that without going to a graduate writing program--but then so many of they "younger" poets I know there have come there after completing graduate writing programs . . . In San Francisco I don't feel that these mechanisms exist any longer. In the early 80s when I was seriously studying my craft there were zillions of readings and lectures, I took a couple of classes with Kathleen Fraser at SF State, I audited a class by Robert Duncan, I took free open workshops through Small Press Traffic, I had many other writers to share my work with and bouce ideas off with. All this added up to a rigorous education--and much of it was unsettingly (at the time) anti-authoritarian. I remember being at a lecture Ron Padget gave, about some French poet, Rimbaud? And you were in the audience and you started challenging him on some aspect of what he was saying about Rimbaud, and I was shocked by your aggressiveness and bad manners. (You've mellowed a lot with age.) But--I think being in such an environment where the audience would dare to challenge the authority of the Authority there on stage, even though it disturbed me, was really important for me in terms of ripping me out of the mindset of Student. I think some people go to grad writing programs--or art schools--and they never stop being students, like they can't get over that hurdle, and there's not much in the system to encourage them to do so. Right now, I think that one of the community benefits that Small Press Traffic, in its downsized form, performs is bringing together students from various writing and lit programs, creating a space for cross-pollination, with the hope that things are clicking, that something larger is happening than all these people locked away in the politics of their departments. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 13:44:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Slaughter Subject: Henry Gould/Mudlark/Island Road In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970602125015.0068b568@pop.acsu.buffalo.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII MUDLARK No. 6 (1997) _Island Road_ by Henry Gould ****** "a re-framing of the Renaissance sonnet cycle in a long poem with 99 parts: semi-picaresque, semi-burlesque, very semi-Shakespearean" ****** is on view, as of 6/3/97 at http://www.unf.edu. William Slaughter _________________ MUDLARK An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics Never in and never out of print... E-mail: mudlark@unf.edu URL: http://www.unf.edu/mudlark ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 10:49:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: it's really very simple, he always seems to be saying In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > I remember >being at a lecture Ron Padget gave, about some French poet, Rimbaud? And >you were in the audience and you started challenging him on some aspect of >what he was saying about Rimbaud, and I was shocked by your aggressiveness >and bad manners. Was it Appolinaire? Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 13:48:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: birthright quoth Tom Mandel: > Or, if you think you can trade a little bit of your birthright for a little > bit of porridge, then at least learn to like the soup you get. & Gwyn McVay: > Thought it was "pottage," as in "a mess of pottage." sure, in the King James Version -- but is that the Bible or sumthin'? ;-) From a Webster's: > pottage: n. 1. A thick soup or stew of vegetables and sometimes meat. > 2. *Archaic* Porridge. As interesting as "pottage" is the "mess" -- > mess n. . . . 5. a. *Archaic* An amount of food for a meal, course or > dish. b. A serving of soft semiliquid food. c. A number or amount > acquired . Me, I'd just assume barter day-labor for a sandwich. No fuss no muss. Nor mess nor duress. But still the sweat of one's rhetorical brow. d.i. p.s.: or shd. poets be awarded w/ trips to the Bahamas? (Could add a new school for the taxonognomes.) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 13:59:57 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Slaughter Subject: URL Info: Gould/Mudlark MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII [The URL in the previously posted announcement of Henry Gould's poem, _Island Road_, was incomplete in the announcement itself but accurate in the signature. It is complete and accurate in both places here. -WS] MUDLARK No. 6 (1997) _Island Road_ by Henry Gould ****** "a re-framing of the Renaissance sonnet cycle in a long poem with 99 parts: semi-picaresque, semi-burlesque, very semi-Shakespearean" ****** is on view, as of 6/3/97 at http://www.unf.edu/mudlark William Slaughter _________________ MUDLARK An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics Never in and never out of print... E-mail: mudlark@unf.edu URL: http://www.unf.edu/mudlark ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 10:40:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: simplicity (good luck!) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Now George has explained his remark re-Sheets & Kelly, et al, that makes sense of sd remark to me. But I had interpreted it to mean: when one writes poetry today, it isnt in a vacuum, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke (& by extension, a host of others) that add up to a tradition (expectations, to return to or overturn) are predecessors & precedents, & indeed constitute an authority over the poet, as they in their day harked back as well as forward. David ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 14:41:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: it's really very simple, he always seems to be saying Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII "That's not writing, that's e-mail." -- Uma Truman Capote Here comes that "community" issue again. I do like it so, perhaps because like publishing and paying rent, it will pose problems for me (for many?) as long as one continues to write poetry. I agree with a lot of what both Dodie and Tom have said. I can't help feeling that things are not at their optimum best for poetry communities. Let's blame the economy. I live in Boston where the community is wonderful but small, and I, rent-wise, am barely hanging on. One point, when Tom said, "There is very little difference between a grad school of creative writing and the Soviet Writers Union in this respect" it certainly caught my eye, or cost my I, whichever you will. I've never been in a Soviet Writers Union, nor have I played a writer in one on TV, but my experience at grad school (where I got an MA, not an MFA) indicates, if my readings of Bertram Wolfe are correct, a large difference. This is not to say Tom's generalization is incorrect. My grad school instructors introduced me to poets and fostered readings of poets that have had an incredible and big affect on my poetry, my thinking, my thinking of poetry . . . that last to be sure; once started on drinking those waters, more than thirst is being quenched. (They did not teach me such flowery phrasing, for that I blame myself). But for everything else I am grateful. On the other hand I've never been a very good student, and maybe the Soviet Writers Union effect bypassed me. Maybe I wasn't paying attention. Or maybe I WAS a drone, writing my little poems, leaving my little scent behind. (cf. MA #2, DR p. 21). What about New York? A wonderful place to visit, meet wonderful people. About the community(ies) I have heard mixed reports. I am an outsider. Anyone want to come clean? My dream is to travel to San Francisco, meet Dodie and Kevin, Renee and Giovanni, and give a reading in Golden Gate Park mixing my own work with that of great San Francisco poets and then Steve Carll can report to the Poetics list (please, Steve, will you?). It is humble, yes, but it persists. Meantime I persist, unpublished, unperishable as yet, unworried, naive and energetic. My own idea is to avoid writing contests and prizes. This is not snobbery but simply a conscious choice, like not to play the lottery (and what poet have you ever met who didn't have "the lottery dream," which I also share but never act upon). Like the lottery slogan, "you can't be upset about losing if you don't play." True, alternatives are few but I can't afford the postage to play the lottery. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 12:06:18 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: simplicity (good luck!) In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Now George has explained his remark re-Sheets & Kelly, et al, that makes >sense of sd remark to me. But I had interpreted it to mean: when one writes >poetry today, it isnt in a vacuum, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke (& by extension, a >host of others) that add up to a tradition (expectations, to return to or >overturn) are predecessors & precedents, & indeed constitute an authority >over the poet, as they in their day harked back as well as forward. David I concur with David B. on this, entirely. It is amazing how well one can turn one's phrases when given all that extra time due to retirement and the soft life. (Only kidding.) Seriously, Bromige is right about what Duncan called something like the grand collage. I am too hurried to look up the correct phrasing right now. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 15:38:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSchu30844@AOL.COM Subject: Re: TINFISH (public announcement) _voice-overs_, a new chapbook by John Kinsella and Susan Schultz, is now available from Tinfish Network, c/o Susan, 1422A Dominis Street, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA. For poetics subscribers a slender $3 charge; you can order over email, if you like. The chapbook records an email correspondence over the course of several months on the subject (loosely defined!) of cultural appropriations. Susan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 14:43:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: address In-Reply-To: <970603153806_-895108414@emout03.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Anybody have Alan Davies' e-mail address? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 16:35:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: birthright In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII quoth David Israel: sure, in the King James Version -- but is that the Bible or sumthin'?<<< Search me. I know I sure couldn't find it in the Dhammapada. Gassho, Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 16:38:50 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Jennifer Sondheim Subject: Tiffany Turns Rich-Julu!!! (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ( I'm sending this here as well to give an idea of the Jennifer-Julu prog- ram and interactive content; it's the last of it. ) -- Tiffany Turns Rich-Julu!!! ( Consumption/Invasion of JULU below ): Panasonic!:Yes, it's lovely!:Tifffany!!:TV!:TV! Come home with me, Panasonic!, Julu-of-the-Rich-Crowd! Your thrusting Radio! is in my wandering Radio! Ariadni!:AH-HA!:Tiffany AGAIN! (It's FUN!):Pantyhose!:Jumper! Come home with me, Ariadni!, Julu-of-the-Rich-Crowd! Your wayward Hat! is in my giving Bra! Neat-O!:SureTHING!:Oh, TFFFFNY!:MICHAEL JACKSON (IT'S TRUE!!!):OLDTINATURNER! Your wayward OLDTINATURNER! is in my lovely MADONNA! Devour wayward OLDTINATURNER! Julu-of-the Partying Neat-O!! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rich-Julu-Prog (to run this you might have to change the first line, and reformat some of the folded ones.) #!/usr/bin/perl5.001 $t = time; $| = 1; srand time; @a=("hard", "soft", "velvet", "cotton", "linen", "flax", "pure", "black", "dirty", "clean", "soiled", "sexy", "perfect", "sleazy", "wayward", "nice", "feminine", "lovely", "used", "fashionable", "small", "death-like", "lively", "protruding", "penetrating", "thrusting", "giving", "forgiving", "poor", "rich", "sedate", "shiny", "contrary", "nervous", "wandering", "happy", "uneasy", "spry", "florid", "edgy", "neurotic", "wonderful", "amazing", "loose", "taut", "tight", "really-up!", "manic"); @verb=("thrusts", "turns", "surrounds", "displays", "inherits", "shows off", "plays", "mixes", "amuses", "runs", "flows", "repairs"); @prep=("beneath or within", "beyond", "throughout", "confusing", "staining", "accompanying"); @noun=("walkman", "love", "passion", "babe", "stockings", "your expensive big-tv", "your expensive car", "your expensive makeup", "your expensive masquerade", "my makeup", "my new underwear by Fredericka!"); @nnn=("flower", "thing", "radio", "new-dress", "frock", "jumper", "skin"); $nnnn= int rand(8); $non = int rand(11); $non1 = int rand(7); $pre = int rand(6); $gen = int(48*rand); $gen1 = int(48*rand); $gen2 = 49 - int(40*rand); $time = int(time/3600); $g = int(8*rand); if ($sign=fork) {print "\nOpen your expensive wardrobe...\n";} else {sleep(1); print "\nAh... speak... speak...\n"; exit(0);} sleep(2); print "\nMs. or Mr., what do they call you, when they call you!?\n"; chop($that=); print "\nAre you dressed as $that? Is $that dressed as you?\n"; print "Are you in your wealthy @nnn[$nnnn], are you in your perfect", " flesh, ah don't answer...\n"; sleep(1); print "Ah...\n"; sleep(2); print "\nIs Julu wearing your rich ... , are you wearing your expensive", " @nnn[$non1]? \n"; chop($str=); if ($str eq "no") {print "\nShow me your expensive panties...\n"; sleep(10); goto FINAL;} else {print "\nI love your expensive feelings, $that ...\n";} print "Would $that mind you partying?", "\n" if 1==$g; print "Your household belongings are warm and inviting!", "\n" if 5==$g; print "Your walkmans call me to them...", "\n" if 6== $g; print "Your stereo speaks so beautifully to me!", "\n" if 4==$g; sleep(1); print "\n@noun[$non1] @verb[$non] me @prep[$nnnn] your rich @nnn[$non1]!\n"; print "\nWhat do you call your expensive @a[$gen2] @nnn[$nnnn]?\n"; $name=; chop $name; print "\n"; print "$that, $name turns my @nnn[$g] ", "\n" if 3==$g; print "$that, $name opens me totally to you!", "\n" if 7==$g; print "Nothing moves, river deep...", "\n" if 5==$g; print "Your $name is mine, my sweet $that, I am your expensive sex-toy!", "\n" if 2==$g; sleep(1); print "Your look-what-I-bought!, bright and shiny!, list them... \n"; print "one by one, each on a line alone - type control-d when done.\n"; @adj=; chop(@adj); $size=@adj; $pick=int(rand($size)); srand; $newpick=int(rand($size)); print "\nMy @adj[$pick] is your expensive...\n"; $be=int(rand(4)); open(APPEND, ">> enfolding"); print APPEND join(":",$name,$str,$that,@adj[$pick + 1], @adj[$newpick + 1]), "\n"; # join(":",@adj,$name,$str,$sign,$g,$that,$name,@adj[$pick]), "\n"; print APPEND "Would $that mind you partying, $name, with us?\n" if 3==$be; print APPEND "Come home with me, $name, Julu-of-the-Rich-Crowd!\n" if 2==$be; print APPEND "Your @a[$gen1] @adj[$pick] is in my @a[$gen]", " @adj[$newpick]\n" if 1 > $b3; print APPEND "Your @noun[$non1] seeps into my @adj[$newpick] - ", "turning me Julu-Nice-House\n" if 0==$be; print APPEND "Ah, @noun[$non] purchased by Julu-of-the-Open-Arms and", "julu-really-up!\n" if (2 < $be); print APPEND "Devour @a[$gen1] @adj[$pick] Julu-of-the Partying $name!\n" if 1==$be; close(APPEND); open(STDOUT); if ($pid = fork) { $diff=$pid - $$; print "$name makes me thoughtful $diff times!", "\n" if 5 < $g; print <> .trace"); system("rm enfolding"); exit(0); } sleep(1); print "Are you becoming close to your lover's wonderful $name?\n"; chop($answer=); if ($answer eq "no") {print "You're dealing with a @a[10+$pre]", " nice-house.\n";} if ($answer eq "yes") {print "Ah, a @a[10+$pre] and @a[15+$pre] fantasy!\n";} print "You melt into Julu's skin forever...", "\n\n" if 3 < $g; print "I think $name $pid is your expensive scar, your expensive wound", " your expensive brand.", "\n\n" if 3==$g; print "... @a[$non] $name $$ is Julu's gift to you ...", "\n\n" if 6==$g; print "Your $name $diff is darling Nice-House's flesh", "\n\n" if 4==$g; print "You wore her frock for $time hours?", "\n" if 2==$g; sleep(1); print "$name and $$ and $pid - and you knew that all along!", "\n\n" if 2==$g; sleep(1); print "Wait! $name and $pid are gone forever!", "\n\n" if 1==$g; FINAL: { $d = int((gmtime)[6]); $gen3 = 48 - int(20*rand); print "For $d @a[$gen2] days, I have been @a[$gen3] Julu ..."; print "\n"; $u = (time - $t)/60; printf "and it has taken you just %2.3f minutes turning wealthy as can be!", "$u"; print "\n\n"; print `rev .trace`, "\n\n"; } exit(0); ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 16:09:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: the voice/the chops MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN From Doc Cheatham's obit in today's NYT: "Taking a solo is like an electric shock," Cheatham told Whitney Balliett of The New Yorker in 1982. "First, I have no idea what I will play, but then something in my brain leads me to build very rapidly, and I start thinking real fast from note to note. I don't worry about chords, because I can hear the harmonic structure in the back of my mind. I have been through all that so many years it is second nature to me. "I also have what I think of as a photograph of the melody running in my head. I realize quickly there is no one way to go in a solo. It's like traveling from here to the Bronx -- there are several ways, and you must choose the right way immediately. So I do, and at the same time I never forget to tell a story in my solo." ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 17:20:13 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: the voice/the chops In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 3 Jun 1997 16:09:00 -0500 from WHOOSH Taking a solo in some dive off the fretboard harmonic down up-high over splash lash of the current (absurd crowd tonight) breathe push float soar lips! slight pres- sure does it smash go the cymbals hey (tell me about it) ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 18:18:37 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: TINFISH (public announcement) susan, i'd like to order your book. b k 9 lancaster ave maplewood, nj 07040 whom to make the check out to? burt ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 19:15:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSchu30844@AOL.COM Subject: Re: TINFISH (public announcement) Thanks, Burt. The check goes to me, as Tinfish is a mere figment of my imagining...I'll get the book out shortly. Still thinking on our panel; a very productive event, methinks. all best, Susan ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 19:17:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: SSchu30844@AOL.COM Subject: Re: TINFISH (public announcement) Woops--sorry to keep sending out messages over the list. Will try to restrain myself in the future! sms ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 21:07:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: it's really very simple, he always seems to be saying Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Process, etc: I'd guess it's never "very simple," whatever it is. Poetry, politics, living with someone. If there is "*no* authority" over the poet, those who set up to make absolute statements--forms of authority--have to think carefully. I distrust absolutes, personally, and I feel the tidal forces of authority every day of my life. Which is not to say that the poet ought not try to clear a free space for the poem, I agree with this. I'd say it's the response to authority that counts, sometimes it's a poem. I'm not much of a carpenter, but when I work around the house my favorite tools are the plumb bob, the spirit level, and the framing square--none of these tools actually cut wood or pound nails; all they do is draw lines. Being a writer these days--maybe always--is about drawing careful lines. The skill saw, now that's authority! __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 21:14:22 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: mandelstam Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Henry writes: "I like the big book of complete Mandelstam published by SUNY way back & I think trans. by Sidney Monas & Burton Raffel." I agree, it's my favorite. But it's unfindably OP. The Penguin is not good, James Greene is not for me. The Bernard Meares (50 Poems, Persea) I do okay with. Was it McKane who did the volumes titled _The Moscow Notebooks_ and _The Voronezh Notebooks_? I think so. There are also versions of Stone and Tristia by, I think, Bruce McLelland -- these are OP but can be found in used bookstores. Henry gives the impression that I am able to translate from Russian -- I wish! I have translated a few OM poems by looking at the shape of the original (and *trying* to sound it out a little bit), then looking at existing translations, and then winging it. Here's a short one: Poem As a sketch I say it -- low-voiced, For its time hasn't come -- The play of incalculate heavens, What we undergo is their sum. Twisted low under testing sky It often slips our mind How heaven's truth fits under an arm. A home not lost we need not find. (Voronezh, March 9, 1937) Anyone able to comment on the accuracy (or idiocy) of this version is very welcome to backchannel me or discuss it here. Tom Mandel Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 21:20:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: all wrong Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" George Bowering asks me: >So let me get this straight: you are saying that on this point, Shelley, >Keats, Yeats, Duncan, Rilke and Milton were all wrong? George, what's a position I differ with? -- taking Shelley *or* Rilke or Duncan or whomever. In other words, I'd like to think about this with you, but there are too many on that list and I don't "get" the unanimity I'm supposed to be denying. Tom Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 21:26:04 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: mandelstam Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Pierre Joris refers to: "Bruce McClelland's translation of TRISTIA (Station Hill Press, 1987, most likely still in print)" alas, it's not! And goes on to say: "Not having Russian I read him mostly in Paul Celan's German translations, which are absolutely splendid." I forgot to mention these which I also read. Like the rest of Celan's translation work, these are amazing poems. Again, and all the more so, it's hard to get close to the original when you can't read the language. Tom Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 23:23:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: TINFISH (public announcement) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Please send to Thomas Bell 2518 Wellington Pl. Murfreesboro, TN 37128 At 03:38 PM 6/3/97 -0400, you wrote: >_voice-overs_, a new chapbook by John Kinsella and Susan Schultz, is now >available from Tinfish Network, c/o Susan, 1422A Dominis Street, Honolulu, HI >96822, USA. For poetics subscribers a slender $3 charge; you can order over >email, if you like. >The chapbook records an email correspondence over the course of several >months on the subject (loosely defined!) of cultural appropriations. > >Susan > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 23:34:39 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: mandelstam In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 3 Jun 1997 21:14:22 -0500 from what I like about Tom's translation is the unpretentious walking rhythm & the proverbial quietness. I don't know russian either. All I know is that the russians emphasize the iambic variance in their recitation, the sing-song (this is a... you guessed it...simplification). Mandelstam has many beautiful poems & this is one of them. Here's David McDuff's version: I say this as a sketch and in a whisper for it is not yet time: the game of unaccountable heaven is achieved with experience and sweat. And under purgatory's temporary sky we often forget that the happy repository of heaven is a lifelong house that you can carry everywhere. Here's another I've always liked (trans. McDuff): I hear, I hear the early ice whispering beneath the bridges, I remember how the bright hops float above the heads of men. From rough stairways, from squares, from angular palaces Alighieri sang the circle of his Florence more mightily with wearied lips. So my shadow gnaws this grainy granite with its eyes, by night it sees a row of logs which seemed houses by day. Or my shadow wastes away its time and yawns with us, or bustles in the midst of people, warming them with wine and sky, and feeds with unsweet bread the insistent swans. O. Mandelstam ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 09:05:53 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: writers union Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" "My grad school instructors introduced me to poets and fostered readings of poets that have had an incredible and big affect on my poetry, my thinking, my thinking of poetry.." Do you think the Soviet Writers Union was a bunch of crooks? The Union was a major achievement for writers, it was an institution where one could create a utopian future. It... Ouf. I think it may be hopeless to try to explain that it is precisely in the name of positive and real experience, real values, that the worst damage is done. That it is good not bad people who think of say the death of Mandelstam or the silencing of some non-mainstream writer or whatever as an unfortunate cost of "progress" or whatever other term you wish to insert. Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 08:59:44 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: apollinaire? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dodie writes: > I remember >being at a lecture Ron Padget gave, about some French poet, Rimbaud? And >you were in the audience and you started challenging him on some aspect of >what he was saying about Rimbaud, and I was shocked by your aggressiveness >and bad manners. I don't remember the occasion or whether the subject was Rimbaud or Apollinaire, but I'm a fan of -- and longtime acquaintance of -- Ron Padgett, hence I wonder whether there might not have been some humor/irony in what you saw as an aggressive challenge? Just a thought. Tom Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 10:07:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: Re: writers union Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Tom, I'm lost (cf. yesterday's comment about my poor study skills). I thought you meant to say the SWU created an atmosphere of conformity, and that today's grad school programs are similar. I tried to counter that (probably not very well) with my own experience. That experience is centered on the poets I was exposed to, asked to read, studied, etc. I left out the names of those poets on purpose. As Dodie has done recently, I am only expressing my particular experience. I am not making a case for (or against) all such writing programs. I can't make the connection between the three paragraphs in your post (eschewing the "ouf") without taking a great deal for granted. To summarize: The first paragraph: I (Bouchard) had a positive experience in grad school. The second: you say the SWU was also intended as a positive experience, something positive. The third: you say that these positive experiences are ultimately bad. There is a gap in this syllogism. Do I think the SWU was a bunch of crooks? No. I would guess they were a bunch of writers. The example you give at the end of your post: "the silencing of some non-mainstream writer or whatever as an unfortunate cost of 'progress' or whatever " may indeed be condoned be "good people." But I am making allowances against it because of poets I know who have gone thru writing programs, who oppose such parallels as can be made, and are still good people. Give me an F; I'm not rewriting this thesis. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com "My grad school instructors introduced me to poets and fostered readings of poets that have had an incredible and big affect on my poetry, my thinking, my thinking of poetry.." Do you think the Soviet Writers Union was a bunch of crooks? The Union was a major achievement for writers, it was an institution where one could create a utopian future. It... Ouf. I think it may be hopeless to try to explain that it is precisely in the name of positive and real experience, real values, that the worst damage is done. That it is good not bad people who think of say the death of Mandelstam or the silencing of some non-mainstream writer or whatever as an unfortunate cost of "progress" or whatever other term you wish to insert. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 15:08:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Stephen Vincent Subject: Re: apollinaire? Wasn't the Ron Padgett's talk on Reverdy -- who he was in the middle of translating and getting published in the early eighties?? Since I've begun to take ghinko I want to, at least, imagine my memory is running better! Now have I mispelled Reverdy's name, and is/was he Paul or Pierre? Cheers, Stephen Vincent ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 15:17:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Re: apollinaire? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" got Reverdy (Pierre) right, but I think it's ginkgo -- J ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 12:27:23 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: apollinaire? In-Reply-To: <970604150645_1619472244@emout13.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 3:08 PM -0400 6/4/97, Stephen Vincent wrote: >Wasn't the Ron Padgett's talk on Reverdy -- >who he was in the middle of translating >and getting published in the early eighties?? That makes sense since the letter R came to mind initially. I don't remember any of it, except maybe there was a slide projector with a poem on the wall--or an overhead projector--and Tom rising from his chair . . . >Since I've begun to take ghinko >I want to, at least, imagine >my memory is running better! You should try the Gingko Biloba Rejuvenator they sell at Rainbow. It's made from magical water from Mt. Shasta and tastes like flat ginger ale. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 13:03:24 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: Padgett In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970604085944.00dd73f4@cais.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > I'm a fan of -- and longtime acquaintance of -- Ron >Padgett, >Tom > There's something that Tom and I agree on. I have always been a big fan of Padgett, both of his poetry, especially around the time of _Toujours l'amour_ and of his taste in French writing, the Roussel, etc. I think that Padgett is super. I once called him the David McFadden of the U.S. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 12:32:57 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: Re: Mandelstam MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII From 1933: Tartars, Uzbecks, Nenetsians, And the whole Ukrainian nation, And even the Volga Germans Are waiting for translation. At this very moment, somewhere, Perhaps some Japanese is at work Boring into my very soul As he translates me into Turk. Mandelstam translated by Robert Tracy typed in by Gary Roberts ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 16:32:36 +0000 Reply-To: ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Archambeau Organization: Lake Forest College Subject: Ginsberg & Podhoretz: Collected Works MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit An article by Paul Berman on an early collaberation by Allen Ginsberg and (!) Norman Podhoretz of Commentary magazine. Check it out at: http://www.slate.com/Concept/97-06-04/Concept.asp Robert Archambeau ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 19:52:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Antenym/Tight Reading in Santa Rosa Comments: To: maz881@aol.com, CHRIS1929W@aol.com, Levyaa@is.nyu.edu, sab5@psu.edu, mwinter@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu, fittermn@is.nyu.edu, wmfuller@ix.netcom.com, lease@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU, daviesk@is4.NYU.EDU, Daniel_Bouchard@hmco.com, drothschild@penguin.com, jdavis@panix.com, jms@acmenet.net, maj6916@u.cc.utah.edu, AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM, jarnot@pipeline.com, lgoodman@acsu.buffalo.edu, lppl@aol.com, aburns@fnbank.com, normacole@aol.com, acornford@igc.org, olmsted@crl.com, andrew_joron@sfbg.com, tlovell@sfsu.edu, 75477.2255@compuserve.com, 102573.414@compuserve.com, peacock99@aol.com, murphym@earthlink.com, cburket@sfsu.edu, selby@slip.net, cah@sonic.net, doug@herring.com, cchadwick@metro.net, jelika@slip.net, cyanosis@slip.net, hale@etak.com, ovenman@slip.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" On Tuesday, June 2nd, the Russian River Writers' Guild hosted a combined publication party for _Antenym_ and Ann Erickson's magazine _Tight_ at the Higher Grounds Cafe in Santa Rosa, CA. Settling into the back room with the covered-up pool table and the Internet connections (which someone bravely/defiantly decided to interrupt the reading to plug into), and after a brief open-mic, I began by fumbling through some sort of mission statement about the magazine and then read from my own work for 10 or 15 minutes. Then I turned it over to Ann, who introduced Elizeo Viegas, Matt Krumme, Craig Taylor and Lorelei Ink, who read 5-minute sets. I introduced Rob Hale, who read for 15 minutes. There followed a short break, then the second _Tight_ set featured David Bromige, Steve Tills and Ann Erickson. Then I introduced Darin DeStefano, who read some "tricky" poems and some poems "with heart" and was followed by the third _Tight_ set of Carol Ciavonne, Dylan Humphrey (who had his poem memorized--good show!), and Ramona Moody (or Mooney?), who read a sequence of emotionally direct poems to cap off a humid, fun evening. The Higher Grounds, by the way, brews up some pretty intense chai (I think it was the fresh ginger that gave it its kick). Some lines to carry away from the evening: the nurturant rain softens the hard dirt and don't sit in that pretzel position--it saps your strength and yet the world seeks entrance meanwhile oaks and maples acquire territory in the provinces one must improvise patience comes to those who wait you learn how to make yourself external it's probably another cartoon--this invention of the mountain in literature the right to read creaturely shapes into clouds the right to let consciousness devolve we should be sacred to each other--Nietzsche says so ssh to ambiguity hawks falling through the faultless air I cannot return to the dark passion batch of insects swallowed by the sun in some fields, people are stones all of the heads are filled with luminous seed send flakes of sound spinning into atmosphere fractures and refractions the sky excels itself in fire and ice an attention that could be listening give me back my life, you fucking vampires! ********************************** 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, 4 Jun 1997 22:52:23 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: another trans. of 376 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" RE: the short OM poem (#376) from March 1937, here is Bernard Meares version: I'll say it in draft in a whisper Since we cannot speak openly yet: The game of irrational heaven Is attained via experience and sweat. Beneath the temporary sky of purgatory We frequently fail to recall That this happy heaven-roofed depository Is a flexible lifetime home. If this is interesting to others, I'm sure I can find a few more versions on my shelves. ... well that didn't take long. Here's R and E McKane: I will whisper this as if it were a rough draft, because it's not time yet: the play of the unaccountable sky will be achieved by effort and experience. Under the temporal sky of purgatory we often forget that the happy granary of the sky is both an expanding and lifelong home. *** I no longer recall the exact circumstances in which I sat down to do my version, except that I was translating a bunch of short poems in quatrains (just for fun and for the feel of the form). I looked at the original (shape, number of words/syllables per line, size of vocabulary, repetitions of words, and about 10 other identifiable variables -- language really does reach out to you) and all the versions I could find. The translations alas are pretty lame. I don't know about you but in the cases above for example I am really happy to get to the end and not have to read anymore. But they do give you at least some idea of what Mandelstam is after semantically. Here's a famous and beautiful poem by Goethe: Gingo Beloba Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Dieses Baums Blatt, der von Osten Meinem Garten anvertraut, Gibt geheimen Sinn zu kosten, Wie’s den Wissenden erbaut. Ist es lebendig Wesen, Das sich in sich selbst getrennt? Sind es zwei, die sich erlesen, Dass man sie als Eines kennt? Solche Frage zu erwidern Fand ich wohl den richten Sinn: Fuehlst du nicht an meinen Liedern, Dass ich Eins und doppelt bin? ...and my version: Gingo Beloba This leaf from the East In the heart of my bower, What strange sense it heaps On those who know the flower. Is it one living essence That in itself has split? Or two that read each other lessons & we but sense their fit? Strange questions. To unreel them Think about the way when you Hear my songs, don't you feel them Leave you first one, then two? (I changed Goethe's meaning in the last line intentionally of course) Tom Mandel Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 23:44:41 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: another trans. of 376 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Bugger, i didn't mean to post that to everybody. Sorry to burden you. Dan (and again) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 23:47:16 +1200 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: DS Subject: Re: another trans. of 376 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It gets worse, I translated the Goethe & then thought i had mailed it and trashed it but hadn't mailed it and now its gone. I'm going to bed. Dan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 08:00:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: grad school and the writers union Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I think I want to withdraw the remark in which I drew a parallel between grad schools of creative writing and the Soviet Writers Union. That is, I think the point I wish to make is both too complex for this kind of a forum (it would require a pretty developed argument) and unfriendly to the forum, which contains a large number of people who either currently attend or come out of or else teach in institutions of the kind I am (obviously) criticizing in making the comparison. My sole - tho two-tipped - point is 1) the narrowing scope of an independent life of writing -- as the life and the entry into the life are moved into schools something is lost (to me that "something" that's lost is important), and 2) the "professionalization" of the role of the writer -- as we create institutions to certify them and turn them into teachers in the same schools we are developing a small world where poetry will live. In that world, I think the parallel I drew will be hard to see. I'm now going to cease writing on this subject (sigh of relief before numerous screens). A concluding note, however: I am not saying poets shouldn't teach. Everybody needs a job. Poets who've led interesting lives, done all sorts of things, and wound up teaching bring news from a larger world into that context. Ok that's it. I'm now silent on the subject. Tom Mandel Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 08:04:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Mandel Subject: Reverdy and Memory Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Steve Vincent writes: >Wasn't the Ron Padgett's talk on Reverdy -- >who he was in the middle of translating >and getting published in the early eighties?? Yes, that is how I remembered it too, and I remembered very much liking what Ron was doing Dodie writes: >That makes sense since the letter R came to mind initially. I don't >remember any of it, except maybe there was a slide projector with a poem on >the wall--or an overhead projector--and Tom rising from his chair . . . Whew! At least I didn't stand on it and throw spitballs at Ron (whose translations of French poets are totally wonderful). Steve writes: >Since I've begun to take ghinko >I want to, at least, imagine >my memory is running better! Dodie replies: >You should try the Gingko Biloba Rejuvenator they sell at Rainbow. It's >made from magical water from Mt. Shasta and tastes like flat ginger ale. Personally, I go straight for the flat ginger ale. Tom Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 08:01:51 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: another trans. of 376 In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 4 Jun 1997 22:52:23 -0500 from Maybe we can talk about the poem a little? Or is this more tarnished word-spilling... boring... to me this poem in one way goes back to OM's beginnings as an "acmeist" - that is, as a poet who defines himself in opposition to otherworldly symbolism. The earth is a gift, not a dirty curtain veiling the truth; heaven is achieved via purgatory on earth, not magic formulas; these ideas are reflected in the acmeist call for worldly exactitude (similar to Pound's imagism & what followed). What makes the poem different from his programmatic early work is exactly the experience of purgatory (or should I say hell on earth). He can only "say it in a whisper" because it's "not yet time"... and yet he still says it. From a slightly different angle, the poem is an enactment of how the labor of poetry "naturalizes" its own artificiality - and this in itself is an image of the acmeist metaphysics described above. Time silvers the plow, & the poet's... chops... - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 09:48:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: another trans. of 376 In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Maybe we can talk about the poem a little? Or is this more tarnished >word-spilling... boring... > >- Henry G. Or we can talk about the translation(s), nuts & bolts. In particular, the existence of translaterese (very little in version #1, considerably more in #2) --- only when someone is translating do they come up with these just-so-faintly-non-idiomatic phrases, these little energy blocks. You can hardly put your finger on it but it's there. By the way, my husband Stan Lombardo's translation of the Iliad just came out (Hackett) --- I think his translation is wonderful, but hey I'm the wife. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 00:42:17 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: grad school and the writers union I like Gioia's phrase: The university is not a bad place for a poet to be, it's just a bad place for all poets to be. As a 'product' of a writing program, I can vouch for large numbers of writers who do not graduate right back into school. Truth is, most writers I know didn't land back in the classroom right away, if they have at all. I did, but on the other half of the globe doing something else. Has anyone ever taken a count of writers (serious writers--who'll do it no matter what) who are in the academy and out? I'd be willing to bet most are out. The in-ones might be more visible, but are they a majority, really? DT ---------- From: Tom Mandel[SMTP:tmandel@SCREENPORCH.COM] Sent: Thursday, June 05, 1997 10:00 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: grad school and the writers union I think I want to withdraw the remark in which I drew a parallel between grad schools of creative writing and the Soviet Writers Union. That is, I think the point I wish to make is both too complex for this kind of a forum (it would require a pretty developed argument) and unfriendly to the forum, which contains a large number of people who either currently attend or come out of or else teach in institutions of the kind I am (obviously) criticizing in making the comparison. My sole - tho two-tipped - point is 1) the narrowing scope of an independent life of writing -- as the life and the entry into the life are moved into schools something is lost (to me that "something" that's lost is important), and 2) the "professionalization" of the role of the writer -- as we create institutions to certify them and turn them into teachers in the same schools we are developing a small world where poetry will live. In that world, I think the parallel I drew will be hard to see. I'm now going to cease writing on this subject (sigh of relief before numerous screens). A concluding note, however: I am not saying poets shouldn't teach. Everybody needs a job. Poets who've led interesting lives, done all sorts of things, and wound up teaching bring news from a larger world into that context. Ok that's it. I'm now silent on the subject. Tom Mandel Tom Mandel tmandel@screenporch.com ******************************************************** Screen Porch * http://screenporch.com 4031 University Dr. Suite 200 * vox: 703-934-2034 Fairfax, VA 22030-3409 * fax: 703-391-6881 ******************************************************** Join the Caucus Conversation ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 11:45:07 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: OM transl. While I agree with Judy & have said already that I don't think OM has been translated into english yet - I think the "translatorese" she mentions isn't a completely negative phenomenon. It's like the equivalent of what gets lost in translation. It adds sort of a musty charm, maybe like what the philatelist likes in an old stamped foreign stamp - unusable as postal currency but charming nonetheless (this side of an obsession with whitened sepulchres of phraseology). Incidentally I have a limited number of little gray postcards of Tom Mandel's version of the poem - which were printed as a correction/corrective for a glaring typo on the back cover of Nedge #4 (where the poem appeared. It's also INSIDE Nedge #4, sans typo). I'll send said card to anyone free of charge 1st come 1st serve until I run out. Send me your street address if you'd like one - Henry Henry_Gould@brown.edu ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 10:48:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: grad school and the writers union In-Reply-To: <01BC7212.7E334BC0@annex-2.tiu.ac.jp> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This continues to strike me as an odd way to form certain questions -- I'd think it obvious, given the actual number of jobs in question, that at any given moment more "serious" writers are outside the academy than in. This fact, on its own, means little. Gioia's remark, like so many of his remarks, doesn't really get us anywhere -- that is, there has never been and never will be any danger (or even possibility) that all writers will be inside the academy -- what IS a problem, is how the literary "market" has changed, and how the infrastructure of writing programs etc. has absorbed so many of the few remaining publication possibilities. Innovative writers, whether or not they also teach in universities, community colleges, high schools, etc., are just as likely as ever to find that they will have to create their own publication resources. "Mainstream" writers will continue to dominate most publication possibilities, whether they are in or out of writing programs. That's what it means to be a mainstream writer. No? and while all is far from perfect, or even desirable, with peer review -- I know that if a ms. appears before me written by a former student, I'm supposed to recuse myself -- Je recuse! but it is still, and always, a good thing to bring an open critique of poetry publication practices -- I think there are now even more "fake" competitions in poetry than there are "fake" job searches in academia -- not a pretty sight -- publish to the parish! ________ AND,,,, has anyone out there seen a review of _Mason & Dixon_ that says anything about how slavery figures in the plot, the metaphorical structures, indeed everywhere -- as one might well have expected of a novel about Mason & Dixon and their line -- complete silence on this topic in the reviews I've seen so far ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 13:57:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: another trans. of 376 In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Judy - sorry - can you point out which ones - & which phrases - you >mean? Are the original posts handy so you could reply w/text? (to the >list?) - Henry >-----Here are the texts from Tom M---------------------------- 1. I'll say it in draft in a whisper Since we cannot speak openly yet: The game of irrational heaven Is attained via experience and sweat. Beneath the temporary sky of purgatory We frequently fail to recall That this happy heaven-roofed depository Is a flexible lifetime home. 2. I will whisper this as if it were a rough draft, because it's not time yet: the play of the unaccountable sky will be achieved by effort and experience. Under the temporal sky of purgatory we often forget that the happy granary of the sky is both an expanding and lifelong home. ------------------------------------------ Judy again: for me the clunker in #1 is heaven-roofed, made worse by happy. Although if you are concerned with regular meter (which the translator sort of seems to be) there are more odd things (lines 4, 5, 7), as if he is cheating and hopes not to be caught. in #2, lines 3 and 7 seem a little off. Is the translator's downfall the temptation to Communicate Something Else? Like all those bad poets trying to Communicate An Experience? On the other hand, isn't Communicating Something Else the translator's job? Successful translation seems a miracle to me, by definition it should be impossible. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 15:05:55 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: another trans. of 376 In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 5 Jun 1997 13:57:38 -0500 from On Thu, 5 Jun 1997 13:57:38 -0500 Judy Roitman said: > >1. > >I'll say it in draft in a whisper >Since we cannot speak openly yet: >The game of irrational heaven >Is attained via experience and sweat. > >Beneath the temporary sky of purgatory >We frequently fail to recall >That this happy heaven-roofed depository >Is a flexible lifetime home. > > >2. > >I will whisper this as if it were a rough draft, >because it's not time yet: >the play of the unaccountable sky >will be achieved by effort and experience. > >Under the temporal sky >of purgatory we often forget >that the happy granary of the sky >is both an expanding and lifelong home. > I'm with you Judy. You're too kind. "Happy granary of the sky" - Hallmark crossed with soviet-shlock. Rhythm wheezes in those lines you mentioned. "We frequently fail to recall" - dreck. "depository" - stinks. #2 - do we need the word "sky" at the end of 3 out of 8 lines? "You are the salt of the earth. If salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no better than to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men." - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 14:17:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: another trans. of 376 In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >I'm with you Judy. You're too kind. "Happy granary of the sky" - Hallmark >crossed with soviet-shlock. Rhythm wheezes in those lines you mentioned. >"We frequently fail to recall" - dreck. "depository" - stinks. >#2 - do we need the word "sky" at the end of 3 out of 8 lines? I was limiting myself to translaterese. The other stuff is at least idiomatic English. It's the phenomenon of translaterese that interests me here, and I'm curious what folks who do translation have to say about it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 16:20:15 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hg Subject: OM tranas Here's a stab at it. I'll whisper it - in an outline. Its hour has not yet come. The chessgame of measureless heaven is mated with sweat - and wisdom. And under purgatory's transient sky we grow absent-minded - forget that lucky heaven-vault on high... - is a limber, everlasting habitat. I will send a transcription of the Russian soon. - Henry G. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 17:07:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Finnegan Subject: Re: grad school and the writers union In a message dated 97-06-05 16:20:42 EDT, you write: >that they will have to create their own publication resources. >"Mainstream" writers will continue to dominate most publication >possibilities, whether they are in or out of writing programs. That's >what it means to be a mainstream writer. No? The only word I would quibble with is "dominate." It sounds a bit like mainstream writers infiltrated the editorial offices of outsider mags/presses and began publishing work friendly to their cause. They too "created" many of the mags/presses that publish mainstream work--you can hardly begrudge them dominating a literary vehicle of their own making. (Though one does hope for a more broadminded approach and not a narrow view of writing is or can be.) Still, there is the question of the private/public resourses which help float these ventures, and what mag/press does or doesn't get the largesse. That may be where the "domination" comes in. However, since these resources are so scarce and skimpy--these days anyway--I do think it's mostly mainstream blood, sweat & tears that gets the next issue or a new title out. And I can't find fault with their efforts. Finnegan ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 13:33:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Gingo beloba Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Tom, agreed, how well you put it, 'I am really happy to get to the end & not have to read any more'. Would that be the book depository in Dallas? But yr. own tr., of the Goethe, is fine. =B5y a-version casts no aspersions...just me, at loose ends: Belabored Gingkos These trees go Blatt when the East wind Knocks them into my garden, Accosting a secret mind. Wystan Wissenschaft. He built it, then. It's the living reason, dig. The self zigs then zigs some more? Must be divided, or how to ignore Nothing? How else know a single thing? Mulch fragrant at the broken window. =46anatic Walden rich with signs. =46ull of nothing, saying the word 'Linda', Once & forever, dropped in the 'doubles' bin. David Bromige. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 17:54:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: techno heraldry's abstinence Comments: cc: Markar1@aol.com, dacus@ccnet.com, SPMILLER@Vela.filg.uj.edu.pl, davidi@wizard.net | Message / Delay | | "Bell Atlantic believes they have narrowed the | problem down to a district office switching card" | | | the verb arrests the noun | one writes in antiquitous vacuum | with email being down | | a noun whats gone to town | one'd reck t'be verbally back soon | (sheer verb could entice the noun) | | blithe verb in yr cap & yr gown | posh (putative) topdrawer backroom | . . . . but email being down | | zip zilch anent renown | white negative dead in th' darkroom | ("no verb arrests no noun") | | the squire enquired of the crown | wot his king'd exchanged in th' cloakroom | when (email being down) | | th' guy switcheroo'd with 'is own clown | for t' keep in touch with th' hokum | the verb would expire in the noun | e's pillow encloister'd (down) 6/4/97 d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 18:16:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: grad school and the writers union Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Aldon Nielsen wrote: "Innovative writers, whether or not they also teach in universities, community colleges, high schools, etc., are just as likely as ever to find that they will have to create their own publication resources." Haven't inovative writers *always* had to create their own alternative marketplace? I'm not sure it is writing programs that have changed the "marketplace" for poetry. Also, I'm curious about the context of Gioia's remark. When he was a vp at General Foods, Gioia tended to be highly critical of writers in the academy, longing I think for a day that never existed, but which he imagined as sometime in the 1940 when we had "public intellectuals." (Most of whom worked in NY in publishing, certainly no less a hot house than the universities.) But now that he has become President of Poetry, flitting from conference to conference-- "making his living from his writing," as I heard him brag recently to an impressionable undergraduate--it seems as how he's willing to allow that it's okay for a writer to make his living teaching. The "interesting lives" argument: Tom Mandel wrote "Poets who've led interesting lives, done all sorts of things, and wound up teaching bring news from a larger world into that context." Isn't this the same as Gioia--or one version of him--saying that poets shouldn't teach because the academy is sterile, ie, not "interesting"? But aren't all lives interesting, if looked at from the right angle? Did E. Dickinson have an "interesting" life? Having raised the question above, I'd like to add that I think I know what Tom was getting at in his comparison between the Writers' Union and grad programs in cw--That people with seemingly laudable and progressive attitudes can often be blind to the power relations that give them their opportunity to pursue their laudable goals. I think it is very important to be sensitive to this, and I have not always been so. I led and "interesting life" of bartending and being a projectionist in a porno theater, then went to . . . wait for it . . . The University of Iowa Writers Workshop, where I had a good time, learned a lot, and was treated respectfullly by my teachers. Since then, except for a brief stint as a journalist, I have been a college teacher, though not in an MFA program. I relate these biographical details because, imho it has been an interesting life. The problem with the category, clearly, is that it can't be defined. __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 15:58:57 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: grad school and the writers union In-Reply-To: <33973ABD.55F7@craft.camp.clarkson.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I should think the phrase "as ever" in my post answers in advance the possibly rhetorical question that begins Joseph's response -- and yes, the writing programs have changed the "marketplace" -- and look, I never begrudged anybody anything -- what I would insist upon, however, is the right to analyse and discuss how people operate whatever it is they're operating,,,, I've been glad to see a slight opening in the poetry publishing at U of Georgia Press, for instance, but that opening consists of something like two books in the past five years -- It's much like the patronage systems in government -- It has always been the case that the dominant parties create positions for their friends and allies, often with great energy and ingenuity -- I wouldn't expect these systems to alter substantively any time soon -- but I've never seen that as a reason to suspend critique of said systems -- In other words, I think generally, for example, that judges should not be permitted to select their former students in publication competitions, and therefore I suggest that anybody foolish enough ever to permit me to judge such a thing should prohibit me from favoring any of my own students -- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 19:13:41 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Om trans. Should be remembered that this little octet was written at the end of OM's life, in very trying circumstances. It is just what he said - a sketch , an outline. Like Bach's little piano finger-exercises compared to his concertos, is this beautiful little poem to M's great odes, for example. See Omry Ronen's study of "Flint Ode" & "1 January". from Raffel/Burago trans. of "1 January": But the typewriter's plain sonatina - that's only the shadow of those mighty ones and all their mighty music. (- & THIS is not even a shadow of the original) - HG ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 21:54:50 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: grad school and the writers union Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The last thing I want to do is turn this into the boring old argument between writing program types and the bohemians. I have no interest in that argument, and have tried in my last response to honor Aldon Nielsen's analysis of institutional narrowing of options and opportunities. I'm not asking anybody to "suspend his/her critique"--what I'm trying to do is understand it, and perhaps extend it. But Aldon answers my questions with an assertion--"Yes, writing programs have changed the marketplace," but assertion is not evidence, nor even argument. Finally, and I mention this because I think there is more agreement here than might be apparent, two of my recent recommendations to David Fenza at AWP were that judges A) be picked from a larger pool of writers, and B) that they not be allowed to name their own students winners within, say, a five year period. It seems to me that we need to reframe the old us/them arguments among writers in terms of us/us v. institutional narrowing of perception and reception. There are bohos and mainstreamers in and out of the academy, but since all, I presume, are interested in imagination and the possibilities open to consciousness, perhaps we ought to take a look at the larger economic and cultural forces that constrict imagination, which is always subversive. Though there is, I think, a point of balance at which, perhaps only briefly, an instutional structure may sponsor free play and exchange. I hope it is clear in the above that I'm not looking for a brawl, though as I've said elsewhere recently, I have no objection, now and then, to a nice "glory." __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 00:32:06 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: john chris jones Subject: parts of the cyberepic Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" this is noteart (as I'm calling it) my attempt to shorten the gap between: 1. my notes and journal entries and 2. my 'life' and 'work'. I don't know if you'd choose to call it poetry but may I suggest that we widen the term to mean this note and everything that appears in list postings a long collaborative and in newfact epic electronic poem of many 'voices'? and this is also my response to the invitation in that to me very welcome 'welcome to the poetics list' to treat it as 'a form of publication' 'well considered' (but immediate, and brief, etc, etc) So just to get started I choose a page by chance from my journal (using a table of random numbers) and type out what is there [with any changes as I type in square brackets]: [page 41, June 4th 97, I was writing beneath a tree on Hampstead Heath, London] My hand jerked at the loud CAW of a crow that descended from above me and gave me a shock ... I waddles about on its not very good walking legs, inspecting things at its eye level and above. It's not searching the ground. What is it thinking? For surely all things can think in some way or other, it's surely nonsense to limit thought to just one 'species', whatever we say. Yes. the nature of thinking will surprise us - when [and if] we get to know what it is. I guess it won't be conscious at all, or localised [e.g. 'in my head']. More likely dispersed and extended everywhere. A park keeper in shirt sleeves and brown trousers [his summer uniform] walks through [the glade]. He avoids looking at me. Is that a condition of the job, or a wish not to get entangled with 'the public' ... ? [Poets too?] The crow has flown off, a small fly is crawling over my belly and another on my wrist and now thumb and now thumbnail as I write. It isn't frightened off by the motions of writing, it seems to be eating traces of food on my nail. I see it does not venture into little caves or ravines between the folds of skin where thumb and hand join. Now it's on the pen and now it's jumped back to skin. I think I'll go, these flies are annoying, there are several. {Sitting on a] seat on the way back. I'm remembering as I walk how unexpectedly the Dante/Jones conversation [see later] came through my fingers, almost without thought or deliberate effort and how it was at quite a conceptual distance from what I'd been preparing - and how I thought I was too tired to write it. And today I've been feeling it [the conversation] is not me, or not right, or not as free flowing as I'd wish, and yet I'm [now] treating it as objective command to thus continue ... Yes I must explore further (as I write) the mystery (for indeed it is one) of how the pre-thinking and the writing differ, and how, once written, the text becomes a little alien, a thing outside, of its own ... yes, yes ... [I promised myself to stop after 500 words and that's 522 - I'm typing this first in Word so as to spell check and count words. Then I'll cut and paste into Eudora.] Later, if this gets past the 'moderator', if he is letting through only selectied postings, and if this brings any (backchannel) encouragements, I'll post more of these notes. I'll also post some of the Dante/Jones conversation - which is intended to be a modern Dante's attempt at rethinking and rewriting my 'bottom-up' notes from his 'top-down' position, more conceptual, more absolute, and perhaps more 'poetic'? These are parts of a book I've just started. Provisional title: Dante rewriting [the memories and minds of everyone - a fresh and fictional view of modernity and afterwards, I hope. But it could change enormously.] john chris jones things (and other things) by myself and others await an inquisitive mouse at and a mirror site at or at other sites by Altavista search 'This chaos will not be ended' from IDIOM OF THE HERO, Wallace Stevens (chosen by a statistical chance process) (this isn't a competition entry! it's an advertisement as well as a 'form of publication'. he laughs to himself and goes to sleep now.) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 21:21:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Julu Sondheim MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Julu: This is a mess, just a blank, a brick, salvaged from the Amaya test browser. Just a moment, the phone is ringing. Julu: As I was saying, this is a mess. There's nothing to it, nothing. The substitutions are weak; there's nothing to be done about it. It was saved from Amaya through lynx. Hold on, someone's at the door. Julu: Sorry for that interruption. There could be another, next time a shot rings out, the time after, sounds of bodies going under. The brick thrown through the screen, what the fuck difference does the text make? Julu: That was just a pause, /make/ turning dirt into action. Sorry for the brick, shots just rang the changes. filooo booocoousooo fuck fooolt fuck hood to soooooo it to (nooooorly) thooo ooond. Thooorooo woos littlooo ooolsooo going on. fuck wooont to nomooil. wHERE i PROUDLY REMAfuckNED SfuckLENT, RECOGNfuckZfuckNG THE FUTfuckLfuckTY OF ARGUfuckNG WfuckTH ARMED MfuckLfuckTfuckA. tO THfuckS i OWE MY LfuckFE AND THE FUTURE OF MYSELF AND MY DESCENDENTS, gOD BE THANKED. As foor oos boooliooofs, fuck soooooo no roooooson to boooliooovooo in oonything. fuckf thooorooo is oo moooddling GODJULU, hooo/shooo is dooostructivooo. fuckf thooorooo is oo non-moooddling GODJULU, it's of no intooorooost to mooo; whoot's thooo point? >>>doooity RAfuckSES fuckTS UGLY HEAD PROMfuckSfuckNG prooyooor oond spirit. thoonk you lord. Which looooovooos mooo with thooo usuool ooothicool quooostion - how to construct/ work within oon ooothos without immoonoooncooo or troonscooondoooncooo. fuckn rooooolity, fuck buy thooo oooxistooontiool notion of projoooct/rooosponsibiliy, but fuck oolso fooooool this is oo convoooniooont myth. fuck ooct in tooorms of whoot fuck considooor just Julu: Sorry for the brick, I mean that. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 21:27:37 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU Subject: M & D MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Of the four reviews I've read, only T. Coraghessan Boyle's in the NY Times mentions slavery in book, something about Dixon's "heroism" when he whips a slave trader. But I haven't gotten that far in novel yet, so I can't vouch for the appropriateness of Boyle's characterization. Gary R ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 20:05:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: loose ends Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hey, George, whatever happened to that Maria dame 'n Rachel Loden? (Hey, _Jack_. Walter Matthau) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 21:33:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: loose middles In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > Hey, George, whatever happened to that Maria dame 'n Rachel Loden? > >(Hey, _Jack_. Walter Matthau) I have them both here, chained by the wrist to a waterpipe. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 21:20:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: waterpipes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hey, Jack, I didnt think you still smoked thru them things. Walter ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 05:27:02 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM Subject: Slavery and Mason & Dixon Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Aldon, I've seen too many reviews (including one on the NY Times site that predated the TC Boyle review that must have been written when the editors there were concerned that Boyle was never going to get his written, and which was subsequently pulled once Boyle got his in [and to my knowledge never showed up in hard copy], which is how the NYT got to be the last paper in America to review the book), but I think there was a mention in passing in the Philadelphia Inquirer that referred to the line about how capitalism was unthinkable without slavery as an instance of an encyclopedic humanism, or some such. When I drive down route 1 from here on the way Baltimore (far more scenic than I95, and fewer tolls as well), the Mason-Dixon line is announced on the sign that welcomes me to Maryland. Ron Ron Silliman When this you see 262 Orchard Road Remember me Paoli, PA 19301-1116 (610) 251-2214 (610) 293-6099 (o) (610) 293-5506 (fax) rsillima@ix.netcom.com rsillima@tssc.com ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 08:34:54 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: waterpipes In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII far healthier than one a those paper tubes, db... I'd rather deface paper than smoke it... On Thu, 5 Jun 1997, David Bromige wrote: > Hey, Jack, I didnt think you still smoked thru them things. Walter > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 09:04:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: grad school and the writers union In-Reply-To: <33976DEA.2D82@craft.camp.clarkson.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII A thousand alternative venues should bloom. We should be willing to critique existing, highly-institutional venues and projects....But on the other hand the best work's gonna continue to come out of *very* underfunded operations.. There are too many poets, and indeed lots of 'em are (to my ear) all too close to first rate, when very few resources are available in the immediate future to help them find an audience and pay the rent... So concentrating on our own life-support and life-extension projects is the main concern. This was the poiint of Tom's recent "rant," which I don't think was heard clearly enuff by enuff folks. (..that and principled critique like Aldon talks about can coexist; indeed I think Aldon's own projects are a great example of extending the needed breathing space..) A thousand alternative venues should bloom. Chairman Mark Atlanta On Thu, 5 Jun 1997, Joseph Duemer wrote: > The last thing I want to do is turn this into the boring old argument > between writing program types and the bohemians. I have no interest in > that argument, and have tried in my last response to honor Aldon > Nielsen's analysis of institutional narrowing of options and > opportunities. I'm not asking anybody to "suspend his/her > critique"--what I'm trying to do is understand it, and perhaps extend > it. But Aldon answers my questions with an assertion--"Yes, writing > programs have changed the marketplace," but assertion is not evidence, > nor even argument. Finally, and I mention this because I think there is > more agreement here than might be apparent, two of my recent > recommendations to David Fenza at AWP were that judges A) be picked from > a larger pool of writers, and B) that they not be allowed to name their > own students winners within, say, a five year period. > > It seems to me that we need to reframe the old us/them arguments among > writers in terms of us/us v. institutional narrowing of perception and > reception. There are bohos and mainstreamers in and out of the academy, > but since all, I presume, are interested in imagination and the > possibilities open to consciousness, perhaps we ought to take a look at > the larger economic and cultural forces that constrict imagination, > which is always subversive. Though there is, I think, a point of balance > at which, perhaps only briefly, an instutional structure may sponsor > free play and exchange. > > I hope it is clear in the above that I'm not looking for a brawl, though > as I've said elsewhere recently, I have no objection, now and then, to a > nice "glory." > __________________________________________________________________ > > Joseph Duemer > School of Liberal Arts > Clarkson University > Potsdam NY 13699 > Phone: 315-262-2466 > Fax: 315-268-3983 > duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu > > "The honey of heaven may or may not come, > But that of earth both comes and goes at once." > Wallace Stevens > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 08:22:45 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: loose middles In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:33 PM -0700 6/5/97, George Bowering wrote: >> Hey, George, whatever happened to that Maria dame 'n Rachel Loden? >> >>(Hey, _Jack_. Walter Matthau) > >I have them both here, chained by the wrist to a waterpipe. you wish listen bromige, last time i heard from george it was a backchannel begging for a session w/ Lady Discipline, the grande maitresse of form and content, quick with a whip and terse with a verse. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 14:56:22 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MARK LEAHY Organization: University of Leeds Subject: Re: Women and Texts (at Leeds) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT For list members who may be coming to the UK in the next few weeks, or those of us who are already resident here -- here is some information regarding the Women and Texts conference at the University of Leeds running from June 26th to July 4th (this is just a few details from a wide and varied programme) Fiona Templeton performance on July 2nd and Nicole Brossard reading on July 1st and 2nd there will also be readings by Maggie O'Sullivan, Daphne Marlatt, Nourbese Philip, Audrey Thomas and others there will be performances by Caroline Bergvall -- July 4th Caitlin Hicks -- July 3rd and 4th, Tilla Brading -- July 3rd Shawna Dempsey and Lori Millan -- July 2nd and others Cathy Courtney is curating an exhibition of book art and there will be book art from Canada curated by Apollonia Steele the conference sessions themselves include a number focussing on issues of poetics, community, computing (topics which have come up on this list also) there is a web site in preparation which I will give the URL for as soon as I can otherwise you can e-mail Sarah Graves at the University of Leeds sara@english.novell.leeds.ac.uk and she will send you an information pack; it all looks like being a great few days Mark Leahy ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 07:31:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: loose lips, moose lips MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Bromige & Bowering typed: > > Hey, George, whatever happened to that Maria dame 'n Rachel Loden? > I have them both here, chained by the wrist to a waterpipe. Oh, right. George will deny this, of course (and who can blame him), but unfortunately his real proclivities are quite a bit odder than that. I'm told that after he is trussed up in his elaborate. . .equipment, he can barely contain himself and will only answer to the name "Amy Lowell." Rachel L. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 07:02:36 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: grad school and the writers union Mark wrote: We should be willing to critique existing, highly-institutional venues and projects....But on the other hand the best work's gonna continue to come out of *very* underfunded operations.. _________ "But" ? "best" ? "operations" ? "institutional...projects" ? Help, DT ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 11:09:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: OM transl. In a message dated 97-06-06 03:46:20 EDT, you write: << Incidentally I have a limited number of little gray postcards of Tom Mandel's version of the poem - which were printed as a correction/corrective for a glaring typo on the back cover of Nedge #4 (where the poem appeared. It's also INSIDE Nedge #4, sans typo). I'll send said card to anyone free of charge 1st come 1st serve until I run out. Send me your street address if you'd like one - Henry Henry_Gould@brown.edu >> ok, Henry. 2 other things: I meant to send for Nedge 4 when it came out & forgot to. how much again? to where? also: what was the title of that book on Orpheus tales in Native Am lit you were reading? I ran into a number of them when I was reading Great Basin/California matrerials some time ago, but the only thing I'm aware of is a short article written by a woman around the turn of the century, & various references to it in Eliade's books (where one discovers it is a world-wide tale, origins undoubtedly buried in the paleolithic, not as J Safdie suggested, a product of central Asian shamans) anyway ... all best Charles Smith 2135 Irvin Way Sacramento, CA 95822 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 11:13:30 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: OM transl. In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 6 Jun 1997 11:09:47 -0400 from Hi Charles - postcard on its way. I'll send Nedge under sep. cover. It's $5.00 to: The Poetry Mission, POB 2321, Providence, RI 02906. The book is in a set called Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1894 - 1975 it's a big set - the one I read was vol. 27, I THINK. Unfortunately I have it at home - will try to send you more info on author, etc. But most college libraries anyway shd have this set. The stuff is amazing! (I haven't even looked at the other vols.) Best, Henry ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 12:14:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: grad school and the writers union In-Reply-To: <01BC7247.9E4FB6C0@annex-2.tiu.ac.jp> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII "Help?" "DT??" "???????" regards, Mark On Fri, 6 Jun 1997, Daniel Tessitore wrote: > Mark wrote: > > We should be willing to critique existing, highly-institutional venues and > projects....But on the other hand the best work's gonna continue to come > out of *very* underfunded operations.. > _________ > > "But" ? > > "best" ? > > "operations" ? > > "institutional...projects" ? > > Help, > DT > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 08:46:13 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: grad school and the writers union > Mark wrote: > > We should be willing to critique existing, highly-institutional venues and > projects....But on the other hand the best work's gonna continue to come > out of *very* underfunded operations.. > _________ OK, let's start with "But." The two statements above...how are they different? DT ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 13:14:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: grad school and the writers union In-Reply-To: <01BC7256.1888BE60@annex-2.tiu.ac.jp> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII They're not in logical tension or contradiction, agreed. You can do both. (Clearly, in fact, Aldon does both..To some extent Tom M. and myself and many others in this thread do both. But some folks (including myself on occasion) feel that they might not have the *energy* to do both..Thus an impulse at times to say, awww screw attacking the contradictions of the institutions, let's just concentrate on publishing and nurturing the work we like.... On Fri, 6 Jun 1997, Daniel Tessitore wrote: > > Mark wrote: > > > > We should be willing to critique existing, highly-institutional venues and > > projects....But on the other hand the best work's gonna continue to come > > out of *very* underfunded operations.. > > _________ > > > OK, let's start with "But." The two statements above...how are they different? > > DT > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 10:22:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: no brawl where none intended In-Reply-To: <33976DEA.2D82@craft.camp.clarkson.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII as somebody who teaches in a university, I am hardly interested in that us/them argument Joseph doesn't want to have -- one of those items he senses we agree upon -- On the other hand, reference to suggestions made to the AWP suggests evidence as to changes in the literary "market" is alredy in hand, as I thought,,,, I do, in fact, recognize the difference bettwen assertoric and evidentiary -- It is simply a fact that the majority of the university press poetry publishing programs are now under the editorship of people who are employed in or who have graduated from university writing programs -- I made no assertion that this was a better or worse state of affairs than what preceded, simply that it had happened and was worthy of examination -- Examination of the contributors' notes sections of most contemporay poetry anthologies reveals similar changes -- this is not "better" or "worse" than the networks of acquaintance visible in the similar sections of anthologies devoted to what I would consider "innovative" poetry -- just different -- save where such business is advanced under the guise of openness that does not in fact exist -- which remains my real complaint -- Again, I am not shocked, shocked to find that as new patterns of professionalism emerge among publishing poets in the U.S. the people inhabiting those patterns develop new modes of credentialing, disciplining, publishing, etc -- maybe it's just the literary historian in me that makes me want to watch these developments closely and, perhaps, historicize them -- but, I am puzzled that there would be any doubt that the explosive growth of MFA programs has had an effect upon the literary market place -- since most MFA programs advertise themselves as doing exactly that -- (I get at pamphlets from these programs every year, and they usually feature a section indicating that numbers of their graduates have won prizes X,Y & X, have become editors and/or teachers, etc )) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 10:59:54 -0700 Reply-To: Joe Safdie Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joe Safdie Subject: Re: Orpheus In-Reply-To: <970606110936_1443306760@emout17.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 6 Jun 1997 CharSSmith@AOL.COM wrote: the only thing I'm aware of is > a short article written by a woman around the turn of the century, & various > references to it in Eliade's books (where one discovers it is a world-wide > tale, origins undoubtedly buried in the paleolithic, not as J Safdie > suggested, a product of central Asian shamans) > Joe Safdie suggests you check out E.R. Dodds *The Greeks and The Irrational*, Charles Segal's *Orpheus: The Myth of The Poet* and a collection of essays on the historical development of Orpheus called *Orpheus: Metamorphoses of a Myth* edited by John Warden and published by the University of Toronto. I used to like skimming through Eliade too . . . ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 13:55:28 +1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Maria Damon (Maria Damon)" Subject: Re: Orpheus Comments: To: Joe Safdie Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" do you mean jane ellen harrison? At 10:59 AM 6/6/97, Joe Safdie wrote: >On Fri, 6 Jun 1997 CharSSmith@AOL.COM wrote: > > the only thing I'm aware of is >> a short article written by a woman around the turn of the century, & various >> references to it in Eliade's books (where one discovers it is a world-wide >> tale, origins undoubtedly buried in the paleolithic, not as J Safdie >> suggested, a product of central Asian shamans) >> >Joe Safdie suggests you check out E.R. Dodds *The Greeks and The >Irrational*, Charles Segal's *Orpheus: The Myth of The Poet* and a >collection of essays on the historical development of Orpheus called >*Orpheus: Metamorphoses of a Myth* edited by John Warden and published by >the University of Toronto. > >I used to like skimming through Eliade too . . . ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 14:35:27 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: OM tranas In-Reply-To: Message of Thu, 5 Jun 1997 16:20:15 EDT from Here's an unprofessional transliteration of the OM octet. Might give a sense of the tightly woven sounds. Ia skazhu eto nacherna, schepotom, Potomu chto esche nye pora: Dostilayetsia potom i opitom Byezotchyetnogo nyeba igra... I pod vremenniya nyebom chistilitsa Zabivayem mi chasta o tom, Chto schastlivoye nebokhranilitse Razdvizhnoii i pozhiznennii dom. - you can see how there are really only 2 rhymes here, & the poem ends on the resounding "dom" (home). Mandelstam liked to distinguish himself from "scribblers" - he composed by the voice, walking around, muttering and refining his stanzas. There are several variants of some of his poems, mainly the later work. He liked to chisel his quatrains so they stand alone (sometimes) as well as work with the rest. There is a folkloric proverbial shorthand at work in Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, even Pasternak & Khlebnikov. It would be interesting to look for equivalents in our poetry for that. W. Stevens liked collecting proverbs & aiming for something similar, but maybe there's a closer parallel. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 15:11:39 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hen Subject: Re: OM tranas In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 6 Jun 1997 14:35:27 EDT from & if you can scramble your way through those russian syllables & hear the beat, you will also notice the drumming iambic swing, which Tom's version (though it's a shorthand on a shorthand) picks up & does something equivalent - lost in the others. - HG ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 15:14:14 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: hen Subject: Re: OM tranas In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 6 Jun 1997 14:35:27 EDT from sorry for the extra posts. How about Emily Dickinson? Listen to that hymn stanza - it's russkie! - HG ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 15:32:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: OM tranas -Reply Henry Gould writes, << Mandelstam liked to distinguish himself from "scribblers" - he composed by the voice, walking around, muttering and refining his stanzas. . . . He liked to chisel his quatrains so they stand alone (sometimes) as well as work with the rest. There is a folkloric proverbial shorthand at work in Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, even Pasternak & Khlebnikov. It would be interesting to look for equivalents in our poetry for that. . . . >> I don't know about kinships / equivalents in American poetry -- one might hesitantly mention Frost, but the sensibility seems dissimilar -- closer, in terms of the "folkloric proverbial" (and also certain effects poetics-wise -- and 8-line-poem-wise, in paritcular), I've felt there's much kinship in OM & Akhmatova with classical Chinese poetry (esp. the Tang poets, e.g. Wang Wei, some Li Bai [Li Po], . . .) -- other names / poetries to consider: the Rilke of shorter poems (perhaps both French & German)? the wonderful Spanish poet Antonio Machado (whom I know mainly thru Robt. Bly's volume, called *Times Alone* or something like that) . . . here's an 8-liner from Tang recluse-poet Han Shan ("Cold Mountain"), my version. (Orig. rhyme -- before consonants shifted from the medaeval Chinese & obscured the rhyme -- was in form ABAB ABAB or something or other like that [not sure abt. all the As]) | once I went to sit at Han Shan | I've lingered & remained these 30 years | of late I came to call on friends & kin | more than half have gone to the yellow springs | | it's gradually fading as does a dying candle | it's long a'flowing belike the passing river | this morning-tide aface my lone shadow | unwonted tears in twain dangle down d.i. [I recall working on this & other of Han Shan's 8-liners much in that "walking & muttering" manner that Henry mentions, circa the late '70s; this fave I've just now re-tinkered (from memory) . . . (c) David Raphael Israel, as they say in the professional monde] ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 15:47:34 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: OM tranas -Reply / revised not enough pacing & muttering this time . . (thus, pardon for a 2nd stanza redux ...) | it gradually fades as does the dying candle | long a'flowing like the passing river | this morning-tide aface my lone shadow | unwonted tears in twain dangle down d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 15:35:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: OM tranas -Reply In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This is a private message. > >| once I went to sit at Han Shan >| I've lingered & remained these 30 years >| of late I came to call on friends & kin >| more than half have gone to the yellow springs >| >| it's gradually fading as does a dying candle >| it's long a'flowing belike the passing river >| this morning-tide aface my lone shadow >| unwonted tears in twain dangle down > >d.i. > Why a'flowing? belike? aface? unwonted? in twain? I'm really curious about this. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 16:57:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "John E. Matthias" Subject: Re: OM transl. Reading all of the Mandelstam posts, I've been trying to remember where Robert Lowell's version of the Stalin Epigram appeared. I had assumed it was in _Imitations_, but it's not. George Steiner quotes it, with some interesting commentary, in "Linguistics and Poetics" in _Extraterritorial_, but is it not in one of Lowell's books? I find it quite interesting, and different from, say, the James Greene and Brown/Merwin versions. But can someone tell me where in Lowell it appears? _Imitations_ concludes with Pasternak, but there seems to be no Mandelstam. John Matthias ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 17:00:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Han Shan whys & wherefores Judy -- >Why a'flowing? belike? aface? unwonted? in twain? >I'm really curious about this. good questions; you'll note (anon, if not already) I've (already) given a revised version of the verse (in a p.s. post) -- | it gradually fades as does the dying candle | long a'flowing like the passing river | this morning-tide aface my lone shadow | unwonted tears in twain dangle down knocking out the "belike" which was simply incorrect usage -- though alike could work) -- the Chinese is monosyllabic, a single beat, a single syllable A B C D E F G H I J English -- in one way -- tends to work more bysyllabically, the so-called foot or meter or whatnot -- the line | long a'flowing like the passing river is completely smooth (as is the Chinese) -- though in English one doesn't always nec. want such regularity -- & the demands of translation are such that one doesn't get it anyway . . . now to another side of the question, | this morning-tide aface my lone shadow | unwonted tears in twain dangle down the "unwonted" and the "in twain" are both very good for the particular Chinese words in question -- in harmony with the *rarity* and *literary language feel* and *specificity to antique poetry* of those words -- the xuang ("in twain" -- or, alternatively, "twainly" -- it's adjectival, i.e., in a pair, as a couple) -- I don't know of a better, more terse, exact way to put this. Nor a word that carries the refined feel of such poetry. Gary Snyder put forth the idea that Han Shan wrote in a rough & ready way, and this is sort of reflecting ideas of others (in Chinese lit crit) who say his writing was somewhat "naturalistic" -- but he was trained in early life in court poetry and certainly the vocabulary is a poet's vocabulary, even if *sometimes* simple . . . these are a few, partial answers, more could be said. I've not looked at the poem in the original (nor sat down w/ my old -- now lost, alas -- Matthews Chinese/English Dictionary -- for too long to give the proper & more precise ans. that it deserves; in fact, for that Matthews wouldn't suffice, it'd take reference to the Chinese/Chinese poets' dictionary, the Si Hai -- which too bad I was only learning to begin to get into when I left academia in 1980 . . . and now it's gradually fading like . . . . // // aha, Judy -- whose question was quite fine -- sends this follow up: >I am so sorry. I thought I'd sent a private message and hit the wrong > button. > >shit. no prob -- I got your note backchannel, guess the post will come anon; I've merely dashed out this partial answer off-the-curr, but might as well post it, as part of an answer.... best, d.i. (p.s.: at least I got rid of the "doth"s of the old days!) p.p.s.: | long flowing like the passing river works fine too -- but the way the rhythm integrates (in wake of the preceding line) somewhat favors the Woody Guthrie-esqe "a'flowing", maybe . . . there are many other ways; for instance, the object (even the cipher "it") is completely absent (or strictly implied) in the original -- there's no it there -- gradually fades as does the dying candle long a'flowing like the passing river why "as does" in one line and "like" in the other? -- to mirror the variation of similitude-words in the Chinese -- the 2 lines being (as is standard in this form, for the inner couplets) completely parallel in terms of grammatical function of each word, so that the lines are set as variations of each other . . . 5 characters per line: adverb verb {like-word} adjective noun adverb verb {like-word} adjective noun thus the poet can play with the categories of idea: sometimes opposites, sometimes similars: gradually vs. long-time fading vs. flowing [continuing] "as does" vs. "like" dying vs. passing candle vs. river now that I think of it, I think Snyder (in rendering this verse) used "guttering" for the "dying" word (it's a word that's used in Buddhism for metaphysical "extinction" as well as a literal word) -- and must say "guttering" is very likable word . . . more scribble ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 17:14:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: Han Shan whys & wherefores In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >I've merely dashed out this partial answer off-the-curr, but might as >well >post it, as part of an answer.... a fortunate mistake for all of us thank you, gods Steven __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 16:33:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: OM transl. Comments: To: "John E. Matthias" MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Hmmm. Not at all sure and I'm not at home, but - I'd venture to guess wildly that you might find it - maybe - in Lowell's Notebooks or History, where he does a few sonnets as translations... Meanwhile - I just saw my first funnel cloud ever - a sight to behold. It dipped down out of the sky just as delicate as could be, a long backwards S curve, about 3-4 miles southwest of my office, twirling counterclockwise along its semi-translucent length, a milky vortical cylinder spining sinister inside that vaporish length, all tapering to a needle point and disappearing behind the treeline - where it took out some poor devil's home, as we learned later, and then nonchalantly retracted. Now I understand we may be in store for some flash flooding... Way out west, Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: John E. Matthias To: POETICS Subject: Re: OM transl. Date: Friday, June 06, 1997 4:08PM Reading all of the Mandelstam posts, I've been trying to remember where Robert Lowell's version of the Stalin Epigram appeared. I had assumed it was in _Imitations_, but it's not. George Steiner quotes it, with some interesting commentary, in "Linguistics and Poetics" in _Extraterritorial_, but is it not in one of Lowell's books? I find it quite interesting, and different from, say, the James Greene and Brown/Merwin versions. But can someone tell me where in Lowell it appears? _Imitations_ concludes with Pasternak, but there seems to be no Mandelstam. John Matthias ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 17:32:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: han shan - p.p.s. a shorter (partly better, tho partial) answer abt. that Han Shan rendering is that I wanted to illustrate my mention of Chinese 8-line poems -- to consider such in tandem w/ the Russian -- by some actual poem, and so fetched this one from memory; -- but from memory of an old rendering (when I was poss. [even] more given to ornateness) -- & didn't (today) labor over it (reconsidering) as I "would've/should/ve/could/ve" (to borrow from what I heard first as words of Hillary Clinton), for any proper publication situation . . . probably I'd ultimately drop the a'flowing, ok but wd keep the "in twain" (adverbial, not adjectival -- my faux pas). The "unwonted" is more tricky (& interesting). I recall landing on that unwonted word in what seemed a stroke of insight at the time; you'll find "suddenly" in Gary Snyder version, & I don't recall what Burton Watson does with that word -- whose translations of this poet are quite good, he did 100 poems (Snyder did I think 27 poems; bit more lately Red Pine did the whole corpus [couple hundred verses -- most 8-line, some 4-line], but it's harder to read his than the Watson's) -- ; -- in fact, in Chinese it's two words, not one word; -- think my earlier rendering of the line had (once) been unwontedly tears in twain dangle & that follows the grammer of the line more exactly (including, w/ respect to the bisyllabic expression which is the "unwontedly") -- . . . p.s., thx Steven M. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 14:56:09 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: loose middles In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >At 9:33 PM -0700 6/5/97, George Bowering wrote: >>> Hey, George, whatever happened to that Maria dame 'n Rachel Loden? >>> >>>(Hey, _Jack_. Walter Matthau) >> >>I have them both here, chained by the wrist to a waterpipe. > >you wish >listen bromige, last time i heard from george it was a backchannel begging >for a session w/ Lady Discipline, the grande maitresse of form and content, >quick with a whip and terse with a verse. Ah, come on, Maria, that was a prose-poem, or maybe a short short story. Yr not supposed to take fiction literally. It was art, really. Did you think it was a message from me, and meant literally? Ha ha ha ha. Uh, no, but what did you think of it on _artistic_ levels? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 14:59:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: loose lips, moose lips In-Reply-To: <33981F39.2D56@concentric.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Bromige & Bowering typed: > >> > Hey, George, whatever happened to that Maria dame 'n Rachel Loden? > >> I have them both here, chained by the wrist to a waterpipe. > >Oh, right. George will deny this, of course (and who can blame him), >but unfortunately his real proclivities are quite a bit odder than that. >I'm told that after he is trussed up in his elaborate. . .equipment, he >can barely contain himself and will only answer to the name "Amy >Lowell." > >Rachel L. I also accept "Miss Lowell" and "Robert". Jeeze. But you should see the arm muscles on that woman when I get the olive oil on them. Phew. You might think that the poems of William Meredith are pretty hot stuff, but they're nothing compared with those arms! George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 17:56:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: han shan - p.p.p.s. (brief) believe or not, my office is shutting off [till the morrow] our email in 5 minutes from now, so them thar gods won't allow more from here now, just wish to quick-add, re: that "in twain" or "twainly" -- to be noted: there's also grammatical parallel in the last 2 lines, between the "lone" of line 7 and the "twain" of line 8 -- to give yet another form of that couplet (revealing better the grammar): | this morning aface my lonely shadow | unwontedly tears twainly dangle ("morning-tide" is new as of today -- so maybe I'm heading back toward antiquity's diction after all -- used to have this "this morning while I face my lone shadow" -- but too many "I's explicit, where merely implied in the chinese, do not a happy rendering make; [not happy w/ "lonely" rather than "lone," -- that's but to show the parallel]) . . . now toodles, d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 19:10:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Julu Sondheim MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII +++ Swinburne dreams of dark women pink with skin of rose slumbering beneath the prick of sword on sward, those eyes, those alabaster limbs of Swinburne, hard upon the field, soft woes descried the bard, who would not yield but did there in the Garden, where Faustine met Julu, turned towards savage Jennifer, espied fair Clara in the distance, she of the darkling mien, and Swinburne almost died, and Swinburne cried in that green field and brambles grew, and pricked the Snow-White skin where blood flowed, upon the corset of the moon, and liquid yielded Faustine, and all her kin, and Swinburne turned, a ghost, or sign, or rune in that dark field in that dark field, in that green and early bloom, in that dark field, flowed from empty womb ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 20:53:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: no brawl where none intended Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Aldon Nielsen wrote: "save where such business is advanced under the guise of openness that does not in fact exist -- which remains my real complaint --" In this we entirely agree. Is it your suggestion that this is more of a problem in the writing program wing of Am Poetry, or more of a general literary phenomena? Aldon Nielsen wrote: "[. . .]but, I am puzzled that there would be any doubt that the explosive growth of MFA programs has had an effect upon the literary market place -- since most MFA programs advertise themselves as doing exactly that -- (I get at pamphlets from these programs every year, and they usually feature a section indicating that numbers of their graduates have won prizes X,Y & X, have become editors and/or teachers, etc." I think the impulse to historicize the literary trends you name is exactly what's needed. When I historicize the writing program phenomena, it's not that I necessarily want to deny that they have transformed the market so much as they are but one face of a more general lit-historical process. So our disagreement, if that is what it is, is more about the frame than the phenomena. Which line of thought is the root of my origianl question: "Haven't inovative writers *always* had to create their own alternative marketplace?" I.e., hasn't their always been, economically speaking, a functional equivelent of the university workshop? Hasn't their "always" been a center and an edge, each with their particular aesthetic / sociology? (I place "always" in quotes because it runs counter to the historicizing we've been praising.) So when I said "I'm not sure it is writing programs that have changed the "marketplace" for poetry," I'm suggesting that larger forces in the economy / culture created the need for writing programs. It is well, too, to remind ourselves that historicizing impulses are not the same as politicizing impulses, though both are of course valid sorts of response to situations. One of the motives of my original post was to resist a too-easy politicizing. Anyway, Aldon, thanks for sticking with this. __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 21:34:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: OM Transl. In-Reply-To: Alan Julu Sondheim "" (Jun 6, 7:10pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Henry said: >While I agree with Judy & have said already that I don't think OM >has been translated into english yet - I think the "translatorese" >she mentions isn't a completely negative phenomenon. It's like >the equivalent of what gets lost in translation. It adds sort of >a musty charm, maybe like what the philatelist likes in an old >stamped foreign stamp - unusable as postal currency but charming >nonetheless (this side of an obsession with whitened sepulchres of >phraseology). Judy said: >Is the translator's downfall the temptation to Communicate Something Else? >Like all those bad poets trying to Communicate An Experience? On the other >hand, isn't Communicating Something Else the translator's job? >Successful translation seems a miracle to me, by definition it should be >impossible. >It's the phenomenon of translaterese that interests me here, and I'm >curious what folks who do translation have to say about it. The "translatorese" is unavoidable when poets are translating poetry for as Octavio Paz says, "In theory only poets should translate poetry; in reality, poets are seldom good translators. They are not, because almost always they use another poet's poem as a point of departure for writing one of their own." Poetry,I believe, is what is retained in translation. Still, what gets lost in translation leaves a big black hole (and room for fun too!) Translatorese perhaps because idiomatic clarity is sacrificed for metrical regularity. It's just that the rhyme is the far more conspicuous prosodic element in the translation in question, and its overuse may result in distortion of meaning or unaturalness of idiom. The translator has to choose what to retain in translation. What's interesting is that contemporary English is permitting improvements in the translations of more texts from some languages and time periods, because the reading of the texts in present-day English can now be done at a tempo better approximating the original. You also have to love what Pierre Joris says in his brilliant remarks in the introduction to _Breathturn_. "Words and language as such, have been debased, emptied of meaning [...] and in order to be made useful again the poet has to transform and rebuild them, creating in the process those multiperspectival layers that constitute the gradual, hesitating yet unrelenting mapping of [the poet's] universe." There he also discusses the "destabilization of the concept of the poem as fixed, absolute artifact, readable (understandable, interpretable) once and for all," by seeing the "printed poem only as a score for all subsequent readings (private or public) and performative transformations, ..." Finally, we read, "Any translation that makes the poem sound more (or even as) accessible than it is in the original has to be flawed," and that "... it is the aim of any poet to transform his or her language." Cheers, Bill B. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 21:28:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: Praise Song MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Mark Prejsnar wrote: > > I'd like to second Herb Levy's post re Black Chant... I have also just > gotten into the book; but Aldon's previous books on race and U.S. poetry, > Reading Race and Writing Between the Lines, are also essential....It has > occured to me that race issues are conspicuous in their absense here on > the list; at most a few striking and perennially controversial individuals > like Baraka appear in our exchanges, as surrogates for larger issues. > Aldon's work interacts in a vital and productive way with Mackey's essays > in Discrepent Engagement, and with Damon's Dark End of the Street. As a > white poet who's been strongly influenced by black ones, going back 20 > years (including crucially Baraka and Mackey), this does seem to me to be > an untapped series of themes here. All the books I've just mentioned are > stage-setting and vital for our going forward in thinking about > black/white, inclusion/exclusion, politics in relation to style and > form...My one frustration with all of them is their tendency to address > poetry issues in a way that's divorced from the physical reality of the > poetry itself.. Politics and race can be talked about in a lot of > different ways, but in relation to poetry you can't avoid (or shouldn't) > issues of style, form, sound. All the more striking as these theorists > are mostly suberb practitioners as well. Just a general question, or line of thought, from this keenly necessary obvious observation above. I was curious about the use of 'postmodernism' in Aldon Nielsen's quite excellent _Black Chant_. In particular with regard to its relation to 'black-ness' and/or 'white-ness' or something more or less than the poetics of them. While, as I read it, the usage therein marks out many interesting maps (a broad aesthetic gestalt, a specific set of language/textual practices and production, circulating notions and performances of identity, a re- or transvaluation of value, ethics and politics greater than, but not seperable from the sum of their race inflected parts). But also there is a temporal/historical (historicist?) post-modernism of the usual coming-after-modernism-but-not-sure-how-or-wither, or like, "what time is it?" now. In that post modernism Nielsen enjoins a reader-writer-subject to a "recollection of the history of fractures" in an "american postmodernity" that "follow(s) black poets as they read and transform the texts of whites." Yet . . . and yet, it seems, the readings, they seem, in this commodified american postmodernity (maybe this post- Tupac/Biggie Smalls world of white-ness, not to mention the poets), (lets say one marker being the space between Anthony Braxton and Toni Braxton) always to want to transform in the *other* direction in the name of . . . it is said, liberal possibilities. So where can one limn or line those "transracial signifying practices" of possible "transracial plentitude" of this particular american POETICS postmodernity? I was also trying to think about that "recollection of the history of fracture" alongside of Paul Gilroy's "Not a Story to Pass On: Living Memory and the Slave Sublime" and whether the Black Chant is heard in that larger _Black Atlantic_ as counter-memory or perhaps a double-consciousness of a plentitude, a plentitude of the unforgettable and perhaps the unredeemable? Maybe just some right translatorese. mc ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 22:51:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: moosehead loose slips Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I see a storm of white. I see a tall, gaunt figure -- myself. Lost, as ever. Then a taller, gaunter figure: Randolph Scott. Buddy Holly. George Bowering! We see the skicabin. "It must be abandoned." (GB). Smoke funnels from the chimney. Inside: Ida Lupino. Elizabeth Scott. Gloria Grahame. Jinx Falkenberg. Two, anyway. I see checked shirts. I paint a picture. I write a wrong. I draw a veil. How quickly they forget. There was no resorting to waterpipe restraint nor the hot licks & juicy comparison of william meredith that night.There was just resorting. It was an episode of "Frazier". The snow has thawed, large parts of british columbia have slipped beneath the briny, or been towed south by the Mason-Dixon Line. The Reform Party has grown like a goiter in an iodine zone. And now, history has been rewritten. But the sun sees all. The sun knows. The testimony of one solitary witness tells us more about society than a stack of tracts. It says so in this book by Theodor Adorno. It is hard to forgive ourselves for having loved. I'm trying to get the tone of that right. I see a creative writing teacher, coming towards me. Charles Laughton. Jame Mason. Raymond Massey. Sydney Greenstreet! "Tone, tone, tone." Lashed to the mast. Stewed to the gills. Dressed to the nines. Chained by the wrist to the narrative, played by Coleman Hawkins, upstaged by Peter Lorre, shrink-wrapped by the Gnomes of Zurich. O, for an Aussie umlaut! "Veddy hot, Zurich." I see a storm of white. Veddy cold. Cold as a dame's shoulder when she's givin' you air. You figgered her for Kim Novak, turns out she's Sharon Stone. She figgered you for Buddy Holly, time virtually passed, tons of it, taking out the bridge at Spuzzum, now it turns out youre her Amy Lowell figure. But what k-edge properly understood can deprive us of the mirth of flowers? Or the Maharajah of Moggidore? Or the mooseheaded cabin in the outbeck of the unconscious? Thats what I want to know, & thats why i began this thread, knowing that one twitch upon it would lead me back at last to the only home i know, Randolph Scott. We may be the town, but he's the sherriff. Thats why he wears that star on his check shirt, not because. I see an end approaching. "They threw a dead dog after him down the ravine." No, thanks. An aporia--"It was the best of times..." It was the breast of times. All seriousness aside. And it was getting dressed. It was wearing a Thing we did last summer. I woke in a cold sweat, to be discontinued. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 01:55:33 -0700 Reply-To: balong@ipa.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brent Long Organization: Self Subject: Secret of the Somnambulist MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit SECRET OF THE SOMNAMBULIST I am asleep when it happens I look out the window I see black and the moonlight I see fog on the Bostons I hear dogs near the river I see a boat go past like a shadow In front of a mirror I feel the stillness like a fist in the back Down low Beneath the shoulder blade And the moon disappears Like a coward The trees and the river Speak to me in unison They sing me a song The night is on fire My dreams are like a ship With no harbor My thoughts are tangled Like a mooring line I see two men sleeping On the riverbank The single star above them Keeping watch like a one-eyed dog The moon weaves In and out between the clouds A boxer in the ring A Mata Hari I read the words of dead poets In its light The dogs keep barking They play hell with the mountains I walk the roads You don’t find on the maps I avoid the highways like a moccasin I read the writing on the wall I see the visions Noone wants to hear about The visions that inspired genocides The visions that seem too real I tell the stories Everyone wishes would stay hidden The stories that leave the women lonely That keep the men sitting at the bar longer than they should I cross a meadow Like the deserts of Egypt I sit down at the place in the grass Where the two lovers spread out their blankets I lay my head in the warm blades And listen to the owl take off from the treetop I know that I will rise And walk from this place before dawn I know that when I do There can be no going back I hear the death cry Of a rabbit in the meadow I know the beauty Of blood on the wingtips ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 08:11:16 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: from the lost ms. of Miss Lowell MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Can barely contain my excitement--found this slipped neatly into a book of bean recipes in the Boston Public Library: The Garden by Moonlight A moose among roses, Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon, Someone is chained in the sweet alyssum. The Yukon must be very still, I think I hear the "Song of the Mounties," Men in red tunics are missing Saskatchewan. Ah, Bromridge, do you hear the distant wolverines? They knew George Bowering, But who will tie his shoes When I am gone. Amy L. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 08:54:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Reiner Subject: New K. Waldrop Book Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable N e w f r o m A v e c B o o k s _The Silhouette of the Bridge (Memory Stand-Ins)_ Keith Waldrop ISBN: 1-880713-08-X =80 Price: $ 8.95 =80 80 Pages =80 Poetry/ Prose Distributed by Small Press Distribution, Baker & Taylor "_The Silhouette of the Bridge (Memory Stand- Ins)_ is a beautifully spare and inventive work of reflection on the elusive nature of memory, perception and experience. As we would expect from Keith Waldrop, it is suffused with a particular humanity and an appreciation for the absurd, even the grotesque, in daily life. The rhythmic apposition of prose and poetry brings to mind freedom, alertness and the quality of distillation in Basho=B9s classic travel sketches. With his quietly precise sense of modulation and his unerring gaze, Waldrop remains one of the vital and requisite semi-secret presences in American letters." =8BMichael Palmer =B3What I see, what I know, takes the form of my knowing, my seeing. That is why I doubt most of what I find most certain, why the rationality of the world appalls me.=B2 In The Silhouette of the Bridge (Memory Stand-Ins), Keith Waldrop never trespasses across Wittgenstein=B9s threshold of the unsayable, yet he brings us often to the shadows cast between terror and calm, memory and fact, body and soul. Writing with his usual consummate clarity, Waldrop has given us a meditation with the intimate thrall of a bedtime story. As if the sublime were =B3merest hunger.=B2 =8BAnn Lauterbach ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 08:48:40 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: the poetics of description In-Reply-To: <01IJRBRTP36A9GXPC0@iix.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Having seen all too many twisters in my early days on the Plains (one reason I always preferred my adopted hometown in D.C.), I have to say Patrick's paragraph on the recent skies of Boulder is one of the best descriptions I've seen -- No, cows aren't thrown at your windshield, and it doesn't sound like a freight train. But then again, it does sound a lot like Mandelstam in English -- unwinding the next morning, Aldon ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 08:21:32 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: midnight oil Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Preston Storrithurson here, sending from DB's machine (I'm currently staying in the Scholar's Cottage in the grounds of the McBromige Foundation). I am excited indeed by the new Amy Lowell poem Rachel Loden found. If indeed it prove authentic, it's the best thing Amy ever wrote. It also, on internal evidence, establishes that both George Bowering & my host are considerably older than claimed in their literary encyclopedia entries (there has long been some confusion as to Bowering's date-of-birth, & Bromige's is listed inconsistently also). We note that extra 'r' in my host's name : Miss Lowell was an unreliable speller. But it might suggest that she knew him not as well as she knew Bowering, whose name she gets right. How odd that none of his work appears in an _Imagist Anthology_ . I have long thought it should. About my host's midnite posting I say nothing, lest I be accused of guest-driven bias (the cot is hard, the food unforgiving). But Right on, Brent Long!, with your dream-narrative of (de) composition over Boston Common. Indeed it is exciting to live in a New Renaissance Age & be greeted on a Poetics List with the raw material of critical activitity. Please call me Preston. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 08:46:06 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: midnite mail Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Preston Storrithurson here, posting again so soon after my last! In response to a couple of inquiries (well, one, actually) about the McBromige Foundation. I have been instructed by my host that this information can only be back-channeled. But I can tell you that the grounds are eccentric in the extreme, with paths that lead only to blank walls, a labyrinth whose middle is easily found, & a large pavilion-tent above a picnic table that seems to be waiting for a larger crowd than I have yet to see here. I have not yet been allowed in the main house, but the owner descends into the grounds sometime before midnite (when he begins his compositions, both for the computer & the wolverine) but after cocktails (two evenings ago, he referred to me as "Slurrythorson"!) I hear the breakfast bell, which means my own will be brought to me shortly here in the cottage, but I will complain about the mail before I sign off. It must be the remoteness of this place, so close to the Canadian border, but delivery is _so slow_ . I might well have expected 23 letters this morning, but only found 4. My host suspects heel-dragging among the sorters. And none of the mail from Britian has arrived yet, although it is teatime there by now, and they are able to take a rest from their laborious cricket & croquet. Ah well. Preston ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 09:35:21 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Aldon L. Nielsen" Subject: Re: midnight oil In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Amy Lowell scholars (all six-and-one-half of them) have long been familiar with this faux Lowell text, originating from the pen of one Spectral poet by the name of Mason Jordan Mason. Mason, who was thought by some to be Anatole Broyard using a pseudonym, "tipped in" copies of this text in library volumes of Ms. Lowell all over the country attempting to blacken her name. Ms. Lowell's well-known feelings about Canada give the game away at once. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 16:15:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "John E. Matthias" Subject: Katherine Fredman Stephen Fredman, who has many good friends on this list, has asked me to announce the death of his wife, the artist Katherine Fredman. I do so with a heavy heart. JM ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 17:15:11 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: mark weiss mark, could you contact me backchannel? burt Sorry, listers, for this personal intrusion. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 7 Jun 1997 19:57:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Orpheus Joe, Sorry. My note to HG wasn't intended for the List, & was perhaps a bit too shorthand? (dashed off early morning as I was running out of the door) I've read Dodds' book, but didn't know the others you mention. Thanks for the refs. I wouldn't argue the central Asian origins of the Greek Orpheus. My remark was aimed at the folkloric motif that has come to be labelled the "Orpheus" tale, which, at least in the California/Great Basin versions I'm familiar with, has nothing to do w/ the Greek figure. Typically, it involves a descent to the under(after)world to bring back a beloved which the protagonist screws up by not following certain admonishments. The figure in Native Amreican tales is neither poet, priest, nor shaman. What I wanted to suggest was that the origins of the mythic plot are shrouded in an unrecoverable past, & all we have are survivals found in siberian, native american & polynesian cultures. What the Greeks do w/ such material is a further elaboration woven into their mythology & religion. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Maria -- No, I wasn't thinking of Jane Harrison. Actually, my memory was off. The article I was thinking of, "The Orpheus Myth in North America" was written by A. H. Gayton ( no idea what gender) & published in the Journal of American Folklore in 1935. all best, Charles ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 11:26:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Heller Subject: New book Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" WORDFLOW: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, by Michael Heller, is available from Talisman House and in the bookstores. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 08:12:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Katherine Fredman In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 4:15 PM -0400 6/7/97, John E. Matthias wrote: >Stephen Fredman, who has many good friends on this list, has asked me to >announce the death of his wife, the artist Katherine Fredman. I do so with >a heavy heart. > >JM ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 18:07:51 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Julu Sondheim Subject: periodic (rewritten) notice - explanation of texts, etc. (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII (This is sent to the lists I co-moderate somewhat monthly - it might help explain what I'm doing here as well - I won't send it again. Alan +++ Internet Philosophy and Psychology - 6/8/97 This is a somewhat periodic notice describing my Internet Text, available on the Net, and sent in the form of texts to various lists. The URL is: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html and the mirror URL is http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ - the mirror has some additional materials. The changing nature of the email lists, Cybermind and Fiction-of-Phil- osophy, to which the tests are sent individually, hides the full textual body itself, since new readers will not be aware of the continuity. For them the text appears fragmentary, created piecemeal, splintered from a non-existent whole. On my end, the whole is evident, the texts extended into the lists, part or transitional objects. So this (periodic) notice is an attempt to recuperate the work as a total- ity, retard its diaphanous existence. Below is an updated introduction. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The "Internet Text" currently constitutes around eighty files, or 2300 printed pages. It was started in 1994, and continues as an extended meditation on cyberspace. It began with a somewhat straightforward theoretical outline, and has expanded into "wild theory," utilizing numerous "ghosts" (alive, quasi-alive, dead) - most recently, "jennifer," and "julu," the locus of investigations into virtuality, performativity, ontology, and gender. Almost all of the text is in the form of "short-waves, long-waves." The former are the individually-titled sections, written in a variety of styles at times referencing other writers/theorists. The sections are heavily interrelated; on occasion "characters" appear, _actants_ possess- ing philosophical or psychological import. They also create and problema- tize narrative substructures within the work as a whole. (Such are Clara Hielo Internet, Tiffany, Alan, Travis, Honey, Jennifer, and others. Jen- nifer-Julu, in particular, has been the subject/object of recent work, a blurring of epistemological/ontological distinction. Jennifer-Julu is me, not an alter-ego. Jennifer split into Julu; Julu is julu-of-the-scripts, and both reside as avatars in my linux machine.) The long-waves are fuzzy topoi on such issues as death, love, virtual em- bodiment, the "granularity of the real," and physical reality, which criss-cross the texts. The resulting fragmentations and coagulations owe something to phenomenology, deconstruction, linguistics, prehistory, the philosophies of science and programming, etc., but more to the functions of sites or nodes on the Net itself. I have used MUDS, MOOS, talkers, Perl, html, Javascript, Qbasic, and Cu- SeeMe, all tending towards a performativity of thought, texts which _act_ and engage the subject beyond the traditional phenomenologies of reading. Currently, I am working through issues of performance/scripting, Net arch- aeology, subjectivity, ontology/epistemology; the "work" or "working" can take numerous forms. There is no binarism in the Internet Text, no series of protocol state- ments. Virtuality itself is considered far beyond the ASCII text/Webscape that is most prevalent now, at the end of the twentieth century. The vari- ous issues of embodiment that will arrive with full-real or true-real VR are already in existence as embryonic, permitting the theorizing of pre- sent and speculative future sites, "spaces," nodes, and modalities of body/speech/community. Please check the INDEX to find your way into the body of the work on-line. It is helpful to read the first file, Net1.txt, in the beginning, and/or to look at the latest files (js, jt, etc.) as well. The INDEX lists the files in which a particular topic is described; you can do a search on the file, or simply scroll down (the files range in length from 30 to 50 pages in print). In addition, there are a few graphics, javascript pages (at the mirror site), and a resume. Further graphics can be found at: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Thank you. Usage: The texts may be distributed in any medium - indeed, I urge you to do so - provided I am credited with authorship. I would appreciate in re- turn any comments you may have. Alan Sondheim, 432 Dean St., Brooklyn, NY, 11217 718-857-3671 mail to: sondheim@panix.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 19:56:46 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: Re: from the lost ms. of Miss Lowell In-Reply-To: Message of Sat, 7 Jun 1997 08:11:16 -0700 from On Sat, 7 Jun 1997 08:11:16 -0700 Rachel Loden said: >Can barely contain my excitement--found this slipped neatly into a book >of bean recipes in the Boston Public Library: > > >The Garden by Moonlight > >A moose among roses, >Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon, >Someone is chained in the sweet alyssum. >The Yukon must be very still, >I think I hear the "Song of the Mounties," >Men in red tunics are missing Saskatchewan. >Ah, Bromridge, do you hear the distant wolverines? >They knew George Bowering, >But who will tie his shoes >When I am gone. > > >Amy L. How to describe my excitement when I found a translation into pure Russian of the above in a book titled _The Progress of Electrification in the People's Republic of Sirchatnika_ by Sergei Zhap. Here's a rough transl- literation: Zla zhirna biryennetskaia mirguiuglasnitsoktova i platemy platemoo skartsiiatna. Those peoples know how to condense a line. Did anybody read the hacknotes (I mean backnotes) in todays NY Times review of Books about writing & flyfishing? "A keeper". - Gyenri Gould ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 20:49:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Blake exhibit Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I would highly recommend for anybody in the New Haven area to see the Blake exhibit at the British Art Museum at Yale. It contains two copies of _Songs of Innocence and Experience_, copies of each of _The Book of Thel_, _The Book of Urizen_, _America, A Prophecy_, illustrations of Gray's poems, assorted other prints and paintings. And, the piece de resistance, the Mellon copy of _Jerusalem_, the only copy in color. I'm still digesting the experience. It's been said many times before, but I found it so true today: reproductions do not do justice to the colors and intricacy of Blake's artwork. Steven __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 00:10:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Schizophrenic poetry? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hate to revive some old chestnuts and there are probably few people on line right now but I came across the folowinng information whhile looking for infor on schizophrenia and poetry: "The ability to perceive figurally appears to be erased after one has learned to read standard notation...The person trained in reading standardrhythm notation simply cannot see figural features of the rhythm. Too often, metric notations are considered to be the 'right answer,' and figural ones are considered less developed. This is unfortunate since figural drawings capture something that is extremely important for musical expression, that is, for 'playing' musically' and achieving a kind of musical coherence." This would seem yto be very relevant to the ongoing formal/experimental controversy as well as to the problems some have had with academic and mainstream worlds. If anyone has an interest in more info let me know. tom bell ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 06:13:03 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: Schizophrenic poetry? This may sound like a stupid question, but could you elaborate a bit on what (???) says about "reading figuratively?" DT ---------- From: Thomas Bell[SMTP:trbell@POP.USIT.NET] Sent: Monday, June 09, 1997 1:10 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Schizophrenic poetry? Hate to revive some old chestnuts and there are probably few people on line right now but I came across the folowinng information whhile looking for infor on schizophrenia and poetry: "The ability to perceive figurally appears to be erased after one has learned to read standard notation...The person trained in reading standardrhythm notation simply cannot see figural features of the rhythm. Too often, metric notations are considered to be the 'right answer,' and figural ones are considered less developed. This is unfortunate since figural drawings capture something that is extremely important for musical expression, that is, for 'playing' musically' and achieving a kind of musical coherence." This would seem yto be very relevant to the ongoing formal/experimental controversy as well as to the problems some have had with academic and mainstream worlds. If anyone has an interest in more info let me know. tom bell ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 01:07:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rob Hardin Subject: One small, shameless derby tossed into the air: *I Won!* In-Reply-To: <199706060413.AAA29430@york.interport.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To all: Though I've been in Berlin and Chicago for weeks, I just arrived home. And if you'll permit me one moment of self-indulgent whooping, let me say this: My collection, Distorture, just won the 1997 Firecracker Award for best fiction, beating Trainspotting in the process. MAR-WHAA! FR-FRIFL! PIFFEL-DROT! Sorry to drag you off-topic this once. I just had to shout it. All the best, Rob Hardin ____________________________________________________________ http://www.users.interport.net/~scrypt/ http://www.horrornet.com/hardin.htm ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 00:00:34 -0600 Reply-To: rwhyte@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Ryan Whyte Subject: wars here very Comments: To: FOP Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Lost to the ELECTRIC WINDMILLS Grease and churning byron Quotidian Plutarch sayeth: Corio-lanus rich soil without culture apt the took side nate those associating nature and his life the haughty muses ising esteemed which manly courage used Mar they to of most extremes submit Old Corioli Kansas habituate in the pnu le gaz-a vapeur spect la vraie Liszt taught her unsuccessfully here, consoled object-loss longside atonal genital-fugal libido festations of Eros in his rebellion tractors, televisions?! what tracts lay these farmer's phenomenology -Heidegger? rift Kansas is not the guardian of the city lay ragged Jupiter Alberta fester furnishing fowl and other creatures as dainties in producing mistletoe for bird-lime to ensnare them I say listen listen here ambitious always to outdo themselves, those listed in this furrow rotting: Mother=Voluminous I say listen here to these wars I abandon them my way is FALLOW beneath ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 22:31:14 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Holly Crawford Subject: Re: Schizophrenic poetry? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" That makes two of us? >This may sound like a stupid question, but could you elaborate a bit on >what (???) says about "reading figuratively?" > >DT > >---------- >From: Thomas Bell[SMTP:trbell@POP.USIT.NET] >Sent: Monday, June 09, 1997 1:10 PM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Schizophrenic poetry? > >Hate to revive some old chestnuts and there are probably few people on line >right now but I came across the folowinng information whhile looking for >infor on schizophrenia and poetry: > >"The ability to perceive figurally appears to be erased after one has >learned to read standard notation...The person trained in reading >standardrhythm notation simply cannot see figural features of the rhythm. >Too often, metric notations are considered to be the 'right answer,' and >figural ones are considered less developed. This is unfortunate since >figural drawings capture something that is extremely important for musical >expression, that is, for 'playing' musically' and achieving a kind of >musical coherence." > >This would seem yto be very relevant to the ongoing formal/experimental >controversy as >well as to the problems some have had with academic and mainstream worlds. >If anyone has an interest in more info let me know. >tom bell Offerings Project Send me an offer. URL:http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~geo/holly_crawford.html ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 12:10:19 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MARK LEAHY Organization: University of Leeds Subject: women and texts at Leeds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT the web site for the Women and Texts conference at Leeds is: http://www/ucalgary.ca/~crow/text Mark Leahy Mark Leahy enggml@leeds.ac.uk School of English University of Leeds West Yorkshire LS2 9JT United Kingdom ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 08:18:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 7 Jun 1997 to 8 Jun 1997 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Congrats, Michael! Also, a fine read is indeed to be had in Henry Gould's Island Road at Mudlark, http://www.unf.edu/mudlark. Susan > >Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 11:26:32 -0400 >From: Michael Heller >Subject: New book > >WORDFLOW: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, by Michael Heller, is available from >Talisman House and in the bookstores. > > Susan Wheeler wheeler@is.nyu.edu voice/fax (212) 254-3984 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 08:26:06 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: One small, shameless derby tossed into the air: *I Won!* In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 1:07 AM -0400 6/9/97, Rob Hardin wrote: >To all: > >Though I've been in Berlin and Chicago for weeks, I just arrived home. >And if you'll permit me one moment of self-indulgent whooping, let >me say this: My collection, Distorture, just won the 1997 Firecracker >Award for best fiction, beating Trainspotting in the process. > >MAR-WHAA! FR-FRIFL! PIFFEL-DROT! > >Sorry to drag you off-topic this once. I just had to shout >it. > >All the best, > >Rob Hardin rob, that's absolutely terrific! please, brag more. it's nice to see your occasional posts!--maria d > >____________________________________________________________ > >http://www.users.interport.net/~scrypt/ >http://www.horrornet.com/hardin.htm ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 11:50:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: One small, shameless derby tossed into the air: *I Won!* Rob Hardin: << . . . My collection, Distorture, just won the 1997 Firecracker Award for best fiction, beating Trainspotting in the process. >> congrats. 2 Qs: 1. what's the Firecracker Award? 2. who, in US, has published Distorture? ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 11:25:30 -0700 Reply-To: ttheatre@sirius.com Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Karen and Trevor Organization: Tea Theatre Subject: Re: women and texts at Leeds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit MARK LEAHY wrote: > > the web site for the Women and Texts conference at Leeds is: > > http://www/ucalgary.ca/~crow/text > Is this address correct? My server can't locate it - something about not having a DNS entry... K. McKevitt ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 15:16:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Julu Sondheim Subject: autumnal of empire MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/run.htm Alan ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 16:01:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Clay Subject: Homage to Allen Ginsberg Comments: To: POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable FFScalaGranary Books is pleased to announce the publication of=20 _Homage to Allen G_ a portfolio of collaborations in memoriam Allen Ginsberg by Anne Waldman & George Schneeman This project is based on a series of traced sketches of Allen Ginsberg's photographs. George Schneeman made the sketches with a mind to using them in a collaborative project he and Allen had planned. The plan was not realized, and after Allen's death, George and Anne Waldman converted the tracings into this homage. Each portfolio contains 11 sheets (11" w x 13" h): 10 collaborative works plus the colophon. The edition was printed letterpress from magnesium engravings in black ink on white paper & consists of 145 signed copies: 100 on Rives BFK in a cloth-covered folder (30 hors commerce, 70 for sale) and 45 on Dieu Donn=E9 handmade paper in a cloth-covered drop-back box (15 hors commerce, 30 for sale). Printed by Philip Gallo at the Hermetic Press for Granary Books in the Spring of 1997. _Homage to Allen G_ 1/45 on Dieu Donn=E9 paper $450 1/100 on Rives BFK paper $250 plus applicable taxes and shipping (shipping is $10 domestic) Granary Books 568 Broadway #403, New York City 10012 U.S.A. email: sclay@interport.net / tel: (212) 226-5462 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 00:44:55 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: midnight oil In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Amy Lowell scholars (all six-and-one-half of them) have long been familiar >with this faux Lowell text, originating from the pen of one Spectral poet >by the name of Mason Jordan Mason. Mason, who was thought by some to be >Anatole Broyard using a pseudonym, "tipped in" copies of this text in >library volumes of Ms. Lowell all over the country attempting to blacken >her name. Ms. Lowell's well-known feelings about Canada give the game >away at once. She liked some things about Canada, and other things she could do without. She liked the cheese in southwestern Ontario (though I pronounced it bland compared to a good Manchegan), and she liked David Bromwich's hands. They are sensitive as the flippers of a harbor seal, she told me one night while we were creating a bogus William Meredith poem. What of my hands, the hands that Rachel Loden celebrated in one of her most-anthologized threnodies, I asked. They are blocks of bone and meat, she said. She claimed that I didnt belong in the same room as the word "sensitive." Alas. George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 00:53:17 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Bowering Subject: Re: One small, shameless derby tossed into the air: *I Won!* In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >To all: > >Though I've been in Berlin and Chicago for weeks, I just arrived home. >And if you'll permit me one moment of self-indulgent whooping, let >me say this: My collection, Distorture, just won the 1997 Firecracker >Award for best fiction, beating Trainspotting in the process. >Rob Hardin > That's good news, and that's tough competition. Could you tell me (us?) what the Firecracker Award is? George Bowering. , 2499 West 37th Ave., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6M 1P4 fax: 1-604-266-9000 e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 22:57:48 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L. MacMahon and T.R. Healy" Subject: Wild Honey Press Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable This is to announce that I=92ve started up a small press, Wild Honey Press,= in fact. The aims are: -- to make decent looking chapbooks quickly so that a poet, so far me, can have copies of up to date work in presentable form to give to people. -- to allow for the possibility of an evolving text. The booklets are done in groups of twenty or so and feedback from readers or whatever can be built into the next version in the edition. -- to allow the poem or group of poems to have an appropriate setting. Due to the many constraints they have to work under, legit. publishers can sometimes operate on the Procrustes principle. -- to short circuit angst with booksellers by exploring other means of distributing. So far there are two chapbooks: _Rana Rana!_ twelve poems (30 pp) and _Arbor Vitae_ a medium to long (depending on your stamina) poem (20pp) both books by myself, Randolph= Healy. The price of each is =A33.50 or $5.00 (dollars in cash please.) If you=92d= like a copy but are short of funds all this talk of money is just for show really. Keeping up tradition. A straight swap for some of your work - in any form - is more than acceptable. Don=92t forget to let me have your snail-mail address. I will be publishing other writers soon. Keep an eye open. Best wishes, Randolph. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 18:56:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: Real Audio Sound Poetry Archive Opens Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ------------------------------------------------------------------- UBUWEB CONCRETE, VISUAL, AND SOUND POETRY http://www.ubuweb.com/vp ------------------------------------------------------------------- UbuWeb in cooperation with Hangdog Multimedia is pleased to announce the opening of the Internet's largest Sound Poetry Archive. All files are in REAL AUDIO format in 14.4 and 28.8 flavors. UBUWEB/HANGDOG REALAUDIO SOUND POETRY ARCHIVE: Guillaume Apollinaire Le Pont Mirabeau William S. Burroughs Dance Around in Your Bones John Cage Writing for the Second Time Through Finnegans Wake (Pt. 1) Henri Chopin Rouge Hoppa Bock 9 Saintes-Phonies Vibrespace Jean Cocteau La Toison D'Or Les Voleurs d'Enfants Andrew Dickinson hep C creeping Kelli Dipple List Birds in Cages Marcel Duchamp La Mariee mise a nu par ses Celibataires, meme... Brion Gysin Recalling All Active Agents Duet Pistol No Poets Don't Own Words Sound Poem Wyndham Lewis End of Enemy Interlude Jackson Mac Low Thanks 38th and 39th Merzgedichte in Memoriam Kurt Schwitters Phoneme Dance in Memoriam John Cage Charles Manson The Sneaky Truth F.T. Marinetti La Battaglia di Adrianopoli Definizione di Futurismo Sintesti Musicali Futuristiche David Moss Ghosts Round Midnight The Girl From Impanema That Tempest John Reeves Footnote Manifesto Random Conversation Legs of Brisbane Socially Positive Talk 2 Me 2 Much John Reeves & John Bone Crash & Bone Kurt Schwitters Ursonate Cecil Taylor Chinampas #7 Gregory Whitehead If A Voice Like, Then What? The Problem with Bodies Eva, Can I Stab Bats In A Cave? Zigurrat Also in the UbuWeb Visual, Concrete, and Sound Poetry Archive: PAPERS ARCHIVE: Roland Greene "The Concrete Historical" Peter Jaeger "Steve McCaffery's Visual Errata" Roland Greene & Harvard Students: "Material Poetry of the Renaissance/The Renaissance of Material Poetry: A Selective Bibliography" Laurel Beckman "Something for Nothing: The New Multiple in Contemporary Art" Clemente Padin "Methodological Difficulties inthe Examination of the Experimental Poetry" Roland Greene "From Dante to the Post-Concrete: An Interview With Augusto de Campos" Ward Tietz "Concrete Poetry Bibliography" Debra Bricker Balken "On Philip Guston's Picture-Poems" Charles A. Perrone "The Imperative of Invention: Brazilian Concrete Poetry and Intersemiotic Creation" HISTORICAL ARCHIVE: Guillaume Apollinaire Carlo Belloli Max Bense Wallace Berman Jean Francois Bory Claus Bremer Jose A. Caceres John Cage Julio Campal Henri Chopin Augusto de Campos Haroldo de Campos Paul de Vree Early Visual Poetry 1506-1726 Ian Hamilton Finlay Carl Fernbach Flarsheim John Furnival Heinz Gappmayr Mathais Goeritz Eugen Gomringer Corrado Govoni Philip Guston's Poem-Pictures Vaclav Havel Dom Sylvester Houedard Ronald Johnson Jiri Kolar Ferdinard Kriwet Duda Machado Armando Mazza Franz Mon b.p. Nichol Clemente Padin Decio Pignatari Antonio Riserio Aram Saroyan Kurt Schwitters Gino Severini Mary Ellen Solt Vagn Steen Salette Tavares Arrigo Lora Totin Ivo Vroom Emmett Williams Pedro Xisto Louis Zukofsky CONTEMPORARY ARCHIVE Bruce Andrews Connie Beckley Susan Bee Laurel Beckman Felix Bernstein Charles Bernstein Jake Berry John Cayley Cheryl Donegan Johanna Drucker Loss Pequeno Glazier Kenneth Goldsmith Kenneth Goldsmith & Joan La Barbara Dick Higgins Peter Jaeger Alison Knowles Bill Luoma Juliet Ann Martin Poem by Nari Janan Platt John Reeves Dirk Rowntree Blair Seagram Spencer Selby Linda Smukler Alan Sondheim Ward Tietz Nico Vassilakis Ron Wakkary Jody Zellen Komninos Zervos Janet Zweig PLUS: Dozens of examples of FOUND & INSANE visual poetry!!!! Pass it along!!!! ------------------------------------------------------------------- UBUWEB CONCRETE, VISUAL, AND SOUND POETRY http://www.ubuweb.com/vp ------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 19:03:56 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Sylvester Pollet Subject: Re: midnight oil Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I've noticed that it's sometimes difficult to discern irony on list postings. It was Aldon who first posted this quoted piece, if I remember right, and I was troubled by it then. Is/was Mason Jordan Mason a nom de plume of Anatole Broyard, or are you guys just blowing smokerings from Amy Lowell's cigars, or what? Sorry to be so reductionist-minded, but I'd really like to know the answer to this--I remember the name, and may even have a Mason book someplace. Think I do. Sylvester >>Amy Lowell scholars (all six-and-one-half of them) have long been familiar >>with this faux Lowell text, originating from the pen of one Spectral poet >>by the name of Mason Jordan Mason. Mason, who was thought by some to be >>Anatole Broyard using a pseudonym, "tipped in" copies of this text in >>library volumes of Ms. Lowell all over the country attempting to blacken >>her name. Ms. Lowell's well-known feelings about Canada give the game >>away at once. > >She liked some things about Canada, and other things she could do without. >She liked the cheese in southwestern Ontario (though I pronounced it bland >compared to a good Manchegan), and she liked David Bromwich's hands. They >are sensitive as the flippers of a harbor seal, she told me one night while >we were creating a bogus William Meredith poem. What of my hands, the hands >that Rachel Loden celebrated in one of her most-anthologized threnodies, I >asked. They are blocks of bone and meat, she said. She claimed that I didnt >belong in the same room as the word "sensitive." Alas. > > > > > >George Bowering. > , >2499 West 37th Ave., >Vancouver, B.C., >Canada V6M 1P4 > >fax: 1-604-266-9000 >e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 19:20:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: midnight oil ships whisper in grass a pattern of canada oh canada bowers bowering in the bowers a bower of bowers bowering bowering bromige bromige whisper in the grass patterns patterns of bowering bromige alas -- poem by gertrude stein found in a volume of amy lowell from stein's library. was just riffling quickly through some of the volumes from stein's library when, it was amazing, look what fell out of her collected amy lowell! amazing! it would appear that bowering and bromige, in addition to their, uh, ... machinery.... have found a time/space continuum travelling device... could it be concealed in The D----? was the container, i.e. the so-called D----, really something else, a pre-fix affixed to a word obscuring it's real nature, as it were? should we reconsider, for example, the phallus of lacan in the nature of such an extraordinary possibility -- phallus as container for time/space continuum travelling device? would this give new meaning to the amount of time spent in, using, discussing time space continuum on such programs as star trek? is that why janeway keeps smiling? e ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 20:15:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: midnight oil amazing! am told this was found tucked away in Freud's copy of the Posthumous Poesy of Heine (& evidently -- if one can credit the graphite note & its alleged provenance -- the translation was worked out by a grad student [known simply as "R"] under Masson's charge, during the latter's tenure at the Freud Archive): | the bowers of May cast greengray shade | we ambled down paths of rose-most grace | but sometimes-Madam (sometimes-Maid) | timespace were simply that (timespace) | | [signed] Your devoted friend &c. | Siggie | | {orig. rhyme & meter retained, R.} d.i. >>> Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 06/09/97 07:20pm >>> was just riffling quickly through some of the volumes from stein's library when, it was amazing, look what fell out of her collected amy lowell!. . . ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 23:22:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: Schizophrenic poetry? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The quote is from EllenWinner, _Invented worlds, the psychology of the arts, Harvard, 1984. She is discussing drawings made by children of how they perceive beats (i.e., "1,2, buckle my shoe" can be 'metric" with five even circles or 'figuative' with two big and three small circles). "While figural drawings focused on the function of claps within a figure, metric drawings captured either thge relative or the exact duration of the different kinds of claps...metric drawings, like standard notation, leave the problem of interpretation, or finding the figures, to the performer. Musicians call this 'phrasing.'" Sorry, there is a lot of room for ambiguity here I can see - different disciplines, different senses than typically used. tom At 06:13 AM 6/8/97 +-900, you wrote: >This may sound like a stupid question, but could you elaborate a bit on what (???) says about "reading figuratively?" > >DT > >---------- >From: Thomas Bell[SMTP:trbell@POP.USIT.NET] >Sent: Monday, June 09, 1997 1:10 PM >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >Subject: Schizophrenic poetry? > >Hate to revive some old chestnuts and there are probably few people on line >right now but I came across the folowinng information whhile looking for >infor on schizophrenia and poetry: > >"The ability to perceive figurally appears to be erased after one has >learned to read standard notation...The person trained in reading >standardrhythm notation simply cannot see figural features of the rhythm. >Too often, metric notations are considered to be the 'right answer,' and >figural ones are considered less developed. This is unfortunate since >figural drawings capture something that is extremely important for musical >expression, that is, for 'playing' musically' and achieving a kind of >musical coherence." > >This would seem yto be very relevant to the ongoing formal/experimental >controversy as >well as to the problems some have had with academic and mainstream worlds. >If anyone has an interest in more info let me know. >tom bell > > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 06:35:23 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L. MacMahon and T.R. Healy" Subject: W.H.Press address Comments: To: british-poets@mailbase.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks to those who backchannelled re address. Once again I have sidestepped possible charges of professionalism. Wild Honey Press is shacked up with me at 16a Ballyman Road, Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland. Best wishes Randolph Healy ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 07:59:37 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: neo-objectivism? I would like to hear more from or about the "neo-objectivists" who were mentioned or mentioned themselves a few weeks back. Seems like an interesting group theory development. Maybe they're saving their fire for an essay somewhere... Re-pondering about the Providence School [I know some people will think this is silly - I don't care] I still think the "realism" aspect is valuable [i.e. reality exists outside our verbal formulations about it]. But some of the cosmic oneness corollaries seem like added baggage. In the poetry world as in science the interest is in the demonstration. Realism would have to recognize the necessities involved in addressing particular audiences. This is one more aspect of poetry conceived as a "mixed" thing, a double thing, full of interferences with itself. Language poetry may be another example, like Symbolism, of one of these cultural storms that necessarily blow in and then fail by their success. Like Symbolism, an example of how a strong theory succeeds in blocking out the contingency of the world (and eventually, in consequence, poetry itself). Valery is quoted somewhere as saying that their was no poetics of Symbolism - the symbolists were joined only by a vow to renounce the approval of the masses. This seems very germane to language poetry. The history of the "school" of the "objectivists" could be understood maybe in an analogous way. The theory becomes a cover for addressing a particular audience. Objectivists & language poets are like the iconoclasts of ancient Byzantium. Astringent, washing out the mythologized comforts of accomodation. But you wonder if they've missed some larger synthesis... party-poopers at the cosmic hoedown... the little theory label a badge of strong-weak good-bad faith distinction (within the scary soup of "poetry")...but then, labels are only labels. I remember I pointed to Carl Rakosi as an avatar of the Providence "school". Perhaps the "larger synthesis" is exactly what the language poets renounced for the sake of a smaller synthesis, a microcosmic atomic lucretian forward-looking verbal agglutination in which vocabulary redeems itself without the aid of government... [only the gravedigger knows for sure] Poetry exists somewhere between the satisfactions of theory, the approval of academicians and critics, the entertainment of the coterie-converted, and the anti-realism of the automatic-aesthetic (surrealism). It's the spark between a truth and a tooth... - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 13:41:54 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Nicholls Subject: Re: reference Comments: To: POETICS@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu In-Reply-To: from "Charles Bernstein" at Feb 1, 96 05:30:19 pm Content-Type: text Dear Charles: how are you? Sorry to have been out of touch for so long but heavy admin here seems to have consumed almost all my waking hours. Anyway, I have a favour to ask. Marjorie suggested that I apply for the Modernism Chair at Yale and I've put in a cv just to see what might happen. I'm not sure I'd want it even in the very unlikely event of being offered it. But it's sometimes useful to test the water. Anyway, I took the liberty of using you as a referee. Should they take up references you could use the one you wrote me before. I hope that's OK - there was very little time to contact you before the cv had to be mailed. I hope you're well and that we can meet up again before too long. Maybe Peter and I could dream up some sort of mini-conference for next academic year. Bob P. is going to be over here and I think Lyn and Rachel Du-P are coming at some point. We must put our heads together on that. Meantime, thanks in advance for the reference, and all best wishes. Peter. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 07:15:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Lawrence Upton Subject: Second SVP colloquium - update MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Apologies for cross posting This is a follow up to the April sub voicive colloquium bulletin sent to the list We have a date. The Second Sub Voicive Colloquium will be on Saturday 18t= h October 1997 at CES, Senate House in London. There will probably be a poetry reading linked to the colloquium the night before but that has yet= to be confirmed This is a second call for proposals. If you have made one and it has been= acknowledged that's fine. We're a bit busy and were waiting to see if it was really going ahead before doing the heavy work. If you haven't proposed to us!!, why not!!!!! As well as the email, details were included in Sub Voicive Poetry 1997 number 9 and will be reprinted in number 14 due next week - BUT I will email or fax you a copy of the bulletin if you need it More when there's more!!!! Lawrence Upton ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 13:14:21 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: reference In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 10 Jun 1997 13:41:54 +0100 from I thought language poets didn't believe in reference??? Is this a new development?? neo-Chair-repairism? - Spandrift ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 10:20:35 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jay Schwartz Organization: Salestar Subject: Inappropriate postings MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit My volume of e-mail is, I'm sure, as high as everyone else on this list. I enjoy much of the public discussion. But I'm almost ready to unsubscribe based on the number of messages which belong in the realm of backchanneling. I'm just not interested in light bondage humor involving people I've never met. I'm also impatient with the great frequency of private messages which inadvertantly are sent to the entire list. Please show more discretion with the send button. Jay Schwartz, at his absolute snooty and snottiest. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 09:37:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brigham Taylor Subject: Last minute Manhattan summer sublet Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'm passing this along. There's a large, sunny 2 bedroom sublet available on the Lower East Side, convenient to subways, all of Lower Manhattan available for July and August. $1250/mo + utilities. Call Eleni Sikelianos or Laird Hunt at 212/614-9546 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 13:00:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: alack the day MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit George Bowering wrote: > She liked some things about Canada, and other things she could do without. > She liked the cheese in southwestern Ontario (though I pronounced it bland > compared to a good Manchegan), and she liked David Bromwich's hands. They > are sensitive as the flippers of a harbor seal, she told me one night while > we were creating a bogus William Meredith poem. What of my hands, the hands > that Rachel Loden celebrated in one of her most-anthologized threnodies, I > asked. They are blocks of bone and meat, she said. She claimed that I didnt > belong in the same room as the word "sensitive." Alas. I've been turning my threnodies upside down all morning but the one George mentions seems to have vanished without trace. Was it in _Best-Forgotten American Threnodies_? Or _The Amy Lowell Awards in Innocuous American Poetry_? Damned if I know. I did find a meditation on George's feet, but this seems a bit too piquant for present company. Has Bromwidge's computer blown up again? Rachel L. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 13:40:13 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Jay Schwartz's complaint Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Responding to Jay "Sirious" Schwartz "at his snootiest and snottiest" : sorry, Jay, you'll have to do better than that. I've been backchanneled by a number of listlings who tell me the comedy postings by the quartet of which I am one-quarter, and whose other 3 are Bowering, Damon & Loden, are what makes the List a lively place to be. "Keep up the good work!" they urge. A dilemma. If we cease & desist, some of these might well unsubscribe. If we continue, we may well lose Jay Schwartz. Reminds me of the young chap in the oldstyle British Railway compartment. One enfeebled fellow-passenger asks him to open the window, "Else I'll suffocate." The other complains, "Open that window & I'll freeze to death." What is the young man to do? He suffocates one then freezes the other to death. Jay objects to "light bondage stories about people he's never met." Well, he's met me. And a good time we had of it that night, drinking & laughing it up in Frisco. Let me assure Listmembers who may not have met Jay, that he's far from being the sobersides this particular message may indicate. You know, we could make up light bondage stories about people he *has* met, couldn't we, gang? But disingeuousness aside : in our defense (although I grant Jay that we are basically indefensible in our after-midnight mode, probably not the mode Jay is in when he reads his e-mail with his first cup of coffee when our out-west droppings are only three or four hours old, probably still steaming), I will point out that we have been pretty much inactive for months, & it was only in the hope of stirring something up that I stirred something up. I had calculated that the List must be way under its ceiling, for there had been not many postings for days. I grant you that Bowering is always in the worst of taste, & the very idea--in the sense of picture, or photograph, or polaroid--of the aged Canuck chaining up two women of such propriety (and yet, such female allure) as Maria Damon and Rachel Loden, for who can only guess what frivolous purpose, would revolt anybody who had an ounce of oldfashioned stuff left in him. But let me remark that out of this "foul rag-&-boneyard of the heart" came some creative work. To this, I presume, Jay doesn't object, although I can see that its occurring in the place where we would generally rather pull things apart than glue them together, might be upsetting. But surely the faux Amy Lowell poems belong, on a List that devoted so much time to the discussion of poetic forgeries this very spring. It only remains for Marjorie to take them up,for the debate to become acceptable. In any case, it has been two or three days since the more egregious acts by the illfamed quartet. But Jay also alludes to private postings being sent to the List. He means, by mistake. One must guess that the last straw for Jay was today's posting from Peter Nicholls, which I assumed was deliberately sent to all of us to be an illustration of what has ben a lively thread in our discourse, to do with how associations work & how a system of mutual support exists in the poetry world even as in other "worlds" we live in. I didn't find it irrelevant at all. Was it actually meant to be back-channeled? What a loss that would have been. I appreciated Peter's generosity. Still, What to do? Perhaps there needs to be a ballot, Mr. Listmaster. If we lose, I for one shall refrain from postings that might provoke George Bowering (or anyone else) from lewd insinuation, & will always maintain a sober facade when responding to whatever tickles my funnybone. David B. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 13:47:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: proofreader's error corrected Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Final sentence of my posting "Jay Schwartz's complaint" : should read "to lewd insinuation", not "from." Dammit. I've used up _two_ postings from the daily moiety. David ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 23:18:59 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L. MacMahon and T.R. Healy" Subject: then it was over Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Here in Ireland we're in recovery from a recent general election. The usually cheery population is slightly corrugated after all the posters, multimedia interviews and hackers at the door. One of our leading Democratic Leftie's poster had him compressing various facial structures while playing an invisible melodeon. This was to represent conviction+competence+compassion+energy. The eventual winner, a Mr. Bertie Ahern, certainly not us, was made to peer, by handlers obviously despairing of getting any kind of look on him, from out of a bucket of pitch. A sort of Rembrandt in reverse, the shadow used to obscure as much of his already shady character as possible. The results broadcasts, lively enough anyway since we use proportional representation, were invigorated by details like a Christian Solidarity Partyer getting 666 votes. True. And a far-dextrous ex-minister, turfed out by his own party for corruption, went independent and topped the poll. Labour and the left generally were flayed alive. The melodeon player commented that the Irish left obviously don't want to be represented in government, no matter how able the past performance of their representatives. Over. Best wishes, Randolph Healy. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 19:06:24 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: tarot disco velour Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Devil's advocate: Can we have an all-star ballot for the s&m posts? Snr Bromige's last few has blowed me away.. shoot, starting to talk like Rod Smith. Of course, Jay, if you'll do an Idiom book of my work (and they're fine books you do) then I'll back you all the way on this "no irrelevant posts" putsch you're putsching. If not, then it's a la Nick Piombino I will chide you with "what else don't you want to talk about" -- the list janitor be damned -- Total discloruse -- chloride -- sodium laureth sulfate -- the morning of the starring out -- Jordan (no Mason, and no "e" eider) Davis ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 19:18:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Magee Subject: Re: Inappropriate postings In-Reply-To: <339D8CE3.67A7@sirius.com> from "Jay Schwartz" at Jun 10, 97 10:20:35 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit whoops, oh jeez, this is a little confusing: you mean this *isn't* the light-bondage-humor-involving-people-you've-never-met-List? In other news, anyone who thought Mr. Bowering's story of hands was interesting should really check out the chapter entitled "Hands" in Sherwood Anderson's *Winesburg, Ohio* - no bondage humor, I'm afraid, but some damn good writing... -Mike. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 18:11:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint Comments: To: David Bromige MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN I am one of those who posted both David Bromige and Rachel Loden with notes thanking them for their inventive hijinks. I like them (their postings and their persons, though I've never met either of them) and I'd like for them to continue, too, as the mood or merriment seizes them. I think their affectionate and silly badinage offers a tonic counterpoint to the often dense volume of verbiage that pours through this sluicegate, lately running at a diminished rate of cfs (cubic feet per second). As David so rightly points out, some of this silliness actually produces - through the aleatoric riffing that is unique to this List - germane and edifying results. What he was too modest to include to the Amy Lowell spoofs was his own "moosehead loose lips," which I found to be wholly delightful and am very glad to have. So - if we cut out the horseplay, annoying as it may be to Jay and others, we stand to lose something else besides. And doggonit, I'm agin it. Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: David Bromige To: POETICS Subject: Jay Schwartz's complaint Date: Tuesday, June 10, 1997 5:46PM Responding to Jay "Sirious" Schwartz "at his snootiest and snottiest" : sorry, Jay, you'll have to do better than that. I've been backchanneled by a number of listlings who tell me the comedy postings by the quartet of which I am one-quarter, and whose other 3 are Bowering, Damon & Loden, are what makes the List a lively place to be. "Keep up the good work!" they urge. A dilemma. If we cease & desist, some of these might well unsubscribe. If we continue, we may well lose Jay Schwartz. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 19:27:12 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit For what it's worth, the Port Charlotte School of Poetics Taxonomy, internationally recognized for High Seriousness, is in favor of continued comedy postings. Viva multi-tonality! --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 17:19:30 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Robert Hale Subject: Re: Inappropriate postings Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In responding to Jay's concerns, people seem to be pigeon-holing him into the role of censor, which he certainly opened himself up to. However, the points he raises regarding back-channeling and private messages are quite valid. Unfortunately, the server cannot be programmed to limit the number of times a subscriber can post in a 24-hour period. We are on an honor system in this regard that a handful cannot resist breaking. To those who defend references to S&M on the list as a way to keep people interested -- what does this say about the list in general? Is this list a struggling comedy show? At 10:20 AM 6/10/97 -0700, you wrote: >My volume of e-mail is, I'm sure, as high as everyone else on this list. >I enjoy much of the public discussion. But I'm almost ready to >unsubscribe based on the number of messages which belong in the realm of >backchanneling. I'm just not interested in light bondage humor involving >people I've never met. I'm also impatient with the great frequency of >private messages which inadvertantly are sent to the entire list. Please >show more discretion with the send button. > >Jay Schwartz, at his absolute snooty and snottiest. > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 01:45:41 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: john chris jones Subject: parts of the cyberepic Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" (apologies if two copies of this arrive - I got a message saying sorry there was an error in the first transmission) more parts of the cyberepic 2 There is an old man who looks everywhere but sees no one. And a young one who doesn't look at his companion but looks elsewhere while she looks only downward as they walk together far apart. And a woman with a white face and red hair who looks so pleased with her man that she cannot stop smiling as she leans over as he leans back without caring. But Dante is alone and these observations are not his but those of mr. jones, his correspondent, who was writing notes on the Heath before the next episode. 3 mr. jones awaits the manifestation of this new Dante but sees nothing - none of the people around him in the train seem to resemble Dante at all, though the man opposite with a mobile phone and dirty paint-spotted trousers has a very far away look as if he is seeing something other than all of us here. He gets up with several others to go out and it's not until the doors open that I realise it's my stop writes jones forgetting the third person. So I follow the man I'm calling Dante as he walks slowly over the bridge and down the country path to the Cally and when I overtake him I hear that he is singing quietly to himself, without words. As I walk before him I remember the notes of last evening when I thought I saw Dante in the steady flight of an aeroplane, and in all the other stabilities of our time - but not in people, not in me, nor here on the Cally amidst the semi-poverty and the seeming messiness of human life ... Yes the real Dante, I say to myself now, is beyond the bodies we inhabit and the cities that we make. Ye s\ indeed I type that bit mistakenly but leave it as perhaps evidence of something else but my intentins I mean intentions being the real subject of all this? And yes of course of course of course. As I looked back before turning a corner I couldn't see my supposed Dante any more and as I climbed the stairs I wondered if he's not a person but a spirit, as they used to say, but now more fittingly thought of as a netual presence - an electronic agent or an avatar - of what's alive in everyone, perhaps? That will do for the moment I think as I re-read the earlier Dante/jones conversation when he first appeared on my screen and also the notes I wrote last night when I detected his presence in the steady course of a plane and in other non-physical but modern realities - does this remind anyone of those happenings before the coming of Jesus, or of any baby perhaps? But now to the realities he says as he looks back at his notes. footnote And who is he and what is this and why is it here in the poetics list on the internet and is it going to continue? This is its first publication. If you want to read more of this or would prefer it to stop please tell me backchannel and I'll try to act accordingly and even answer questions in new episodes as they appear here day by day or week by week. I think I have the energy to keep this going but I doubt if I'll be able to reply directly if many write (other than to say continue or stop). I'm limiting each posting to 500 words, excluding footnotes. Is that the right length? 'The need for restraint is unquestionable here' says the rune oracle (of Ralph Blum, Oracle Books, Los Angeles, 1982 and Edison-Sadd Editions, Headline Book Publishing Company, London, 1990). john chris jones the first episode was posted 6th June 97 (British time) and appeared in the Poetics Digest for 4-5th June 97 US time. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 20:59:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: Schizophrenic poetry and light bondage Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yes, this interesting topic can be approached from a number of points of view, one of which was presented below by Tom Bell. My own point of view is more or less that of linguistics, one highly-interesting subset of which happens to be poetics. [I don't expect anyone to agree with this, of course]. One reason why I'm attracted to this topic [schizophrenia : poetry] is that it puts to rest the naive notion that these forms of language [schizophrenic language : poetry] are forms of communication. Now, the various couplings of the Bowering, Bromige, Damon, Loden group *may* be communicative in some strictly non-linguistic sense, but I don't mind, and would vote for it if forced to, basically because the group seems to have a way with words. Therefore poetic. What was that anti-porn book, by that anti-porn-queen, called: "just words"? Well, when all else fails.... >The quote is from EllenWinner, _Invented worlds, the psychology of the arts, >Harvard, 1984. She is discussing drawings made by children of how they >perceive beats (i.e., >"1,2, buckle my shoe" can be 'metric" with five even circles or 'figuative' >with two big and three small circles). "While figural drawings focused on >the function of claps within a figure, metric drawings captured either thge >relative or the exact duration of the different kinds of claps...metric >drawings, like standard notation, leave the problem of interpretation, or >finding the figures, to the performer. Musicians call this 'phrasing.'" > >Sorry, there is a lot of room for ambiguity here I can see - different >disciplines, different senses than typically used. > >tom > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 21:07:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rob Hardin Subject: Re: One small, shameless derby tossed into the air: *I Won!* In-Reply-To: <199706100402.AAA11370@york.interport.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >At 1:07 AM -0400 6/9/97, Your Lonesome wrote: >>To all: >>Though I've been in Berlin and Chicago for weeks, I just arrived home. >>And if you'll permit me one moment of self-indulgent whooping, let >>me say this: My collection, Distorture, just won the 1997 Firecracker >>Award for best fiction, beating Trainspotting in the process. >>MAR-WHAA! FR-FRIFL! PIFFEL-DROT! >>Sorry to drag you off-topic this once. I just had to shout >>it. ------------------------------ To which David Israel retolted: >congrats. 2 Qs: >1. what's the Firecracker Award? >2. who, in US, has published Distorture? David: 1. Read copious citations from Publishers Weekly (see below), or go to: http://www.bookwire.com/awards/firecracker.html http://www.bookwire.com/Expo97/BEANews.article$1243 http://www.bookwire.com/Expo97/BEANews.article$698 http://www.bookwire.com/PW/Features.article$1241 There will also be an article on the FAB awards in the next issue of New York Magazine. 2. Distorture is published by Black Ice Books/FC2--the publisher that recently came under attack by Jesse Helms. Distorture's ISBN Number: 1-57366-027-2 For further info on purchasing Distorture, and to see additional reviews, do a search on Amazon Books and/or BookWired. Specific URLs: http://www.bookwire.com/BookInfo.search Title: Distorture http://www.amazon.com Title: Distorture (or try this:) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D1573660272/6392-1236704-362945 Additional Information: http://www.horrornet.com/hardin.htm http://www.users.interport.net/~scrypt/ ------------------------------ Ditto for George Bowering , who ulubated: >That's good news, and that's tough competition. Could you tell me (us?) >what the Firecracker Award is? Thanks for the kind words, George. See above & below. ------------------------------ Likewise for Maria Damon, who schmitzvahstuffenlieded: >rob, that's absolutely terrific! please, brag more. it's nice to see your >occasional posts!--maria d Thanks for sharing in my glee, Maria. As for bragging: The first printing of Distorture is almost completely sold out. Distorture was the number one selling trade paperback at Tower Books for the month of April, and in the April Daily News bestseller list. Interviews and reviews, will appear in the next issues of Spin, Anodyne, New York Press Literary Supplement, as well as in Publishers Weekly and New York Magazine. The book has been praised or otherwise noted in New York Press and the Village Voice as well. I had no idea that anyone would care about this book, let alone give it this level of attention. It is gratifying to hear people praise the book design as well, since I insisted on doing it myself. Distorture will also become the first BIB/FC2 book to be sold in Tower stores across the world. After the FAB ceremony in Chicago, I got group-hugged by the entire upper-echelon staff of that excellent chain: Tower is the only chain-store that actually cares about alternative (ie, experimental) lit. Berlin is an entirely different story: the lethally-rich chocolate, the funereal photos, the wheatbeer, the brie, the bombed-out churches, the visually perfect landscape of East Berlin, with its Tarkovskian tunnels leading to Victorian facades with balustraded Thrones and Virtues eroded into monsters. Suffice to say that I'm now the proud owner of both a splinter of wood torn from a death-car at Auschwitz, and turn-of-the- century photos of cryptic infants. Suffice to say that I often awoke to a Krumme Lanke hanging garden seen though a picture window, and ate Quark mixed with wild apples while listening to Anton Bruckner. The coffee in Berlin is actually strong enough; I was able to formulate precise sensations while basking in the sewage and beauty of late German aestheticism. And then there were the squat bars near Alexanderplatz: Stories within stories. All the best, Rob Hardin ____________________________________________________________ Appendix: For your glistening pleasure: The Firecracker Alternative Book Award results (and explanation) from Publishers Weekly, June 1, 1997: "Last night, at what can safely be called the wildest party at BEA, the Firecracker Alternative Book (FAB) Awards were handed out to winners in 12 regular and three special recognition/ "wild card" categories. Now in their second year, the FAB Awards celebrate the best in alternative publishing -- or, according to their founders, "books that shove a firecracker down the shorts of the mainstream." "And the winners are: Fiction: Distorture by Rob Hardin (FC2) Non-Fiction: Transgender Warriors by Leslie Feinberg (Beacon Press) Poetry: Home in Three Days. Don't Wash by Linda Smukler (Hard Press) Politics: Censored 1997: The News That Didn't Make the News -- And Why by Peter Phillips and Project Censored (Seven Stories Press) Sex: The Guide to Getting It On! by the staff of Goofy Foot Press Drugs: Everything I Know I Learned on Acid, ed. by Coco Pekelis (Acid Test Productions) Music: I Need More by Iggy Pop (2.13.61) Art/Photo: Nothing But the Girl, ed. by Susie Bright and Jill Posener (Freedom Editions) Graphic Novel: Real Americans Admit: "The Worst Thing I've Ever Done!" by Ted Rall (NBM) Zine: Bust, edited and published by Celina Hex and Betty Boob Kids: The Palm of My Heart: Poetry by African American Children, ed. by Davida Adedjouma and illus. by Gregory Christie (Lee & Low Books) Outstanding Independent Press of the Year: Cleis Press "Special Recognition/Wildcard categories: This Ain't Yer Family's Photo Album: Death Scenes by Katherine Dunn and Sean Tejaratchi (Feral House) Recall Hoekstra Award for Special Merit in Literary Publishing: FC2/Black Ice Don't Cook With Your Mouth Full: Intercourses: An Aphrodisiac Cookbook by Martha Hopkins and Randall Lockridge (Terrace Publishing) A little early background from Publishers Weekly, May 5, 1997: "Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Chicago, the funky folks who brought us the first Firecracker Alternative Book (FAB) Awards, handed out at the FAB Do, widely considered the most-rocking party held at last year's ABA, are at it again. Just in: the 36 finalists for this year's awards, plus raucous new plans for FAB Do II. "The FAB Awards were started last year by a group of book industry professionals concerned that the increasingly important cultural force of alternative books (and 'zines) is too often relegated to the extreme margins of the commercial publishing and bookselling scenes. Now, just as the Sundance and SlamDance Film Festivals showcase the best in the independent film industry, the FAB Awards blast the best of underground publishing out to a broad new audience. "This year, three FAB front-runners have emerged in each of 12 categories: Fiction: Distorture by Rob Hardin (FC2) The Sub by Jimmy Jazz (Incommunicado) Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (Norton)" (snip) This bit is from the Firecracker Awards page: "A seismic rumbling is awakening the book industry. It is the groundswell of alternative cultures, of literate youth who want to read SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Late at night in small towns, urban sprawls and edge cities they stalk through newsstands, college stores, infoshops, independent bookstores, malls, even superstores looking for something to read. "That rumbling erupted last year in Chicago at the FAB Do, an awards ceremony and celebration of alternative cultures. As the Sundance and SlamDance Film Festivals do for the film world, the Firecracker Awards blast the best of alternative publishing out to a broad new audience. This year FAB Do II returns to Chicago during the upcoming Book Expo America (BEA). The Firecracker Alternative Book Awards, which celebrate the best of the underground in print, explode Saturday May 31 at Chicago's Crobar nightclub. "Honoring those books which "toss a firecracker down the shorts of the mainstream," the FABs will be presented by glam alternative gliterati in twelve categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, politics, sex, drugs, music, art/photography, graphic novel, zine, cool kids, and outstanding independent press of the year. Master of Ceremonies will be Barry Yourgrau--author, performer, and MTV spoken-wordster extraordinaire, whose latest collection of stories has just hit the theatres as an independent feature film, THE SADNESS OF SEX. Before and after the awards, the crowd will be worked into a twistin' and surfin' GO GO FRENZY by Iowa City's THE BENT SCEPTERS and, back by popular demand, Milwaukee's THE EXOTICS. "The FABs will bring those active in the underground book scene together with the new and curious and will provide a showcase for the best of the new publishing--those exploring today's cultural wilds, and cultivating new and not-yet-domesticated sorts of writing, like those riders on Neal Cassady's bus whose destination was "Further." These writers and publishers are today's Surrealists, or Beats, or Black Arts Movement. They are the performance poets, rabble-rousers, and other print-artists whose work defies categorization. "The FABs are the locus of attention in the book industry for cultures of the young, the alternative, and the underground. In the past year the book trade has become increasingly aware that alternative cultures' myriad fans (both young and old) buy books, but are frustrated by the difficulty of finding the sorts of books they want. Last Fall a number of regional book trade shows offered Bibliopalooza panel/workshops to help bookstores reach these expanding alternative markets. Firecracker ballots have been distributed by fax, mail, and modem to retailers, publishers, and readers worldwide. The votes have been tallied and a list of the finalists is enclosed. The winners will be announced May 31 at the FAB Do. "The FAB Do itself has become the underground event of the annual booksellers convention . . . Chicago's New City weekly rated last year's party "best outfits by far, including vinyl and latex fit for car interiors." Hundreds were turned away at the door by the surly staff. Only those who voted are guaranteed entry. Admission is free, but limited to ticket holders, who may scramble to pick up one of the few remaining tickets from the sponsors on the BEA convention floor on Saturday. "CO-SPONSORS INCLUDE: "AK PRESS -- CIRCLET PRESS -- CONSORTIUM BOOK SALES & DISTRIBUTION -- FERAL HOUSE -- GATES OF HECK/HECK EDITIONS -- GROVE/ATLANTIC INC. -- HI JINX PRESS -- INCOMMUNICADO PRESS -- JUGGERNAUT -- KOEN BOOK DISTRIBUTORS -- LAST GASP -- LITTLE, BROWN & CO. -- LPC GROUP (INBOOK/LOGIN TRADE/WOMENSOURCE) -- LOWENSTEIN-MOREL ASSOCIATES -- MANIC D PRESS -- MILLER TRADE BOOK MARKETING -- NBM -- PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY -- TOWER BOOKS/TOWER RECORDS -- WHITE WOLF PUBLISHING" ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 21:00:54 -0500 Reply-To: KYLE CONNER/LRC-CAHS Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KYLE CONNER/LRC-CAHS Subject: Re: Larry Eigner In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Via Judy Roitman's endquote, I have just learned that Larry Eigner is dead. (An underwhelmed sigh circulates throughout the community). Really, I hadn't heard, and I am quite shocked. Eigner for me was an undercurrent, someone whom I had read when in grad school, and thought about occasionally. When I would see the occasional book in some stack a a used bookstore, I would silently acknowledge that this man of singular strength and unique soul was alive and well, probably at that very moment sitting in his wheelchair on the front porch of his house, watching things go by, and composing strangely curved and parsed observations about these things. I am saddened by news of his death. But his poetry will stay with me, a gently swirling eddy of confetti. Can anyone provide more specific information? Exactly when did this occur? And how? kyle conner ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 21:26:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Ginsberg / Beatles / Dylan Late night last -- in insomniac televideotic office solitude (here's a t.v. set avec cable) -- caught sight of Allen Ginsberg, whose distinctive erudition was directed toward Dylan & Beatles lyrics -- was a rather detailed -- & interesting -- history of rock'n'roll spanning (in parts I caught) something like 1964-66 -- tracking (almost season-by-season) stages in the cross-crossing careers & inventions & style-meldings of (especially) Dylan & the Beatles, as well as such figures as the Byrds (nods to Simon & Garfunkle, Sonny & Cher) -- noting the release of particular songs, cross-influences, ways in which (say) Dylan brought rock into folk, Beatles brought classical into rock (memorable recollection by Crosby's of turning-pointedness of viewing the film *A Hard Day's Night*) . . . Ginsberg appears as one of several interviewees (in both an I-was-there as well as a poetry-scholiast mode) -- he figures in something of a hip-professorial cameo, pontificating . . . (e.g.) abt. influence of Jack Keruac on Bob Dylan, ways of interpreting "Eleanor Rigby," and "Mr. Tambourine Man" as introspective excursion into identity, the trickster figure, & suchlike . . . served to recall what a fine expounder of culture-ideas AG could be -- and to wonder if there are collections of essays from him? (don't recall hearing of such) . . . perhaps he reserved that manner strictly for the classroom &/or for film / video / interview ? . . . (sorry don't have reference-particulars on said late-night music-history program -- evidently it's one in some ongoing series) . . . d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 22:16:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Language is a mutually created vision of the world; there can be no private language. What the Poetics list has been experiencing the last few days is the language game of "coterie badinage," a game that decides who is in and who is out of the group. Those who play the game or approve heartily of the game's being played are either part of the group or want to be; those who strongly resist the game. . . well that call could go either way. The rest of us are perhaps bored. Still, we can hope, with Blake, that "the fool who persists in his folly shall become wise." I've also heard of a Hindu sect in which acolytes must spend several years mumbling, belching, farting, and making lewd gestures in public as part of the process of enlightment. Is Bromige a Hindu? Am I? In other words, I cast my vote strongly in favor of both positions. __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 23:57:48 -0400 Reply-To: Gwyn McVay Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: Inappropriate postings In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19970611001930.0071f5c8@pop1> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >>>To those who defend references to S&M on the list as a way to keep people interested -- what does this say about the list in general? Is this list a struggling comedy show? Mr. Hale, I can understand that some people are fit to be tied about what they perceive as inappropriate posts. But I hardly think it serves us to keep flogging this topic--it's rather like beating a dead horse, and I'd rather not see Mr. Bromige et al. become whipping persons for a more general problem. It's fairly clear that the recent accidental post was just that, accidental; otherwise, most people do exercise restraint--and which of us can't use a good gag once in a while? So the accidental poster is Sade-er but wiser. I hardly think such posts have actually tended to dominate the discussion. None of us is a slave to these things anyway; we can always lash out with the Delete key, right? Your humble servant, Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 00:45:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: neo-objectivism? In-Reply-To: <199706110408.AAA01435@julian.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII henry g wrote: |Like Symbolism, an example of how a strong theory |succeeds in blocking out the contingency of the world (and eventually, |in consequence, poetry itself). Valery is quoted somewhere as saying |that their was no poetics of Symbolism - the symbolists were joined only |by a vow to renounce the approval of the masses. This seems very germane |to language poetry. The history of the "school" of the "objectivists" |could be understood maybe in an analogous way. The theory becomes a cover |for addressing a particular audience. Objectivists & language poets are |like the iconoclasts of ancient Byzantium. there is no aesthetic of symbolism....we arrive at this paradox: an event in aesthetic history that cannot be defined in aesthetic terms. the secret of their cohesion lies somewhere else. i offer one hypothesis. i suggest that in all their diversity the symbolists were united by some negation ....they agreed in a common determination to reject the appeal to a majority: they disdained to conquer the public at large. paul valery, "the existence of symbolism" (1936/39), tr. malcolm cowley. collected works vol. 8, 219-20. could we set up a field of poetic production spanning the objectivists and langpoets, as pierre bourdieu has done (most recently in his _rules of art: genesis and structure of the literary field_) for late 19th-century france. now there's one helluva dissertation. any takers? tom orange tmorange@julian.uwo.ca ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 21:51:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Heard all the way from Potsdam Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks to Joseph Duemer for his farts, belches & mumblings in support of our nonsense. I didn't find his farts, beleches & mubles in favor of the opposite position nearly as attractive. db. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 16:37:32 +1000 Reply-To: jtranter@sydpcug.org.au Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: Solution to Irony Detection Ambiguity Problem MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In a recent posting on Army Lowell, Sylvester Pollet said -- > I've noticed that it's sometimes difficult to discern irony on list > postings. We've long had the same problem Down Here in Australia, and a tentative typographical solution might be of interest to List Members. As a culture, we seem to suffer from "hyperlaconia", an inability to prevent laconic or ironic components from destabilising the surface of our everyday discourse. The problem would apear to be a minor one, but the cost in social disruption has been considerable over the years, and the problem has recently been the subject of discussion among Tourism authorities, as it is causing confusion and distress among visitors to our shores, particularly from cultures where loss of face is important such as Japan, Korea and Taiwan. It has now become customary in Australia to indicate possibly misleading "irony" components of otherwise "serious" speech acts when they appear in textual form by bracketing them in a similar way to the method used in HTML. For example, in HyperText Markup Language, italics are indicated by the bracketing instruction and around italic text, for bold, and so forth. In Australia, irony components are now marked in a similar way in HTML text, e-mail, BBS messages and typed correspondence, using the tag, as follows: It's a joke, Joyce. With most browsers, the marked text is rendered as the equivalent of and underlined, to make it stand out from normal text. It's too early yet to draw any firm conclusions, but incidental reports of a lessening of the incidence of "load rage" (anger when downloading sly and ironic remarks from Bulletin Boards etc. ) are heartening. Negotiations are under way with the World Wide Web Consortium to have the irony markup accepted as part of the formal structure of HTML version 3.5 under IETF RFC 1866. I'll keep the List in touch with how those discussions proceed. » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » John Tranter, 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Australia Phone Sydney (+612) 9555 8502 FAX (+612) 9212 2350 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 09:29:09 GMT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: MARK LEAHY Organization: University of Leeds Subject: women and texts at Leeds MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT there was a misprint in the site address for the Women and texts conference this is the corrected version (I'm sure the beady eyed among you spotted the error anyway) http://www.ucalgary.ca/~crow/text also http://www.ucalgary.ca/~crow/texts which is the 'working' site with the latest and on-going information on it. Mark Leahy enggml@leeds.ac.uk School of English University of Leeds West Yorkshire LS2 9JT United Kingdom ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 08:00:56 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry gould Subject: Re: neo-objectivism? In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 11 Jun 1997 00:45:39 -0400 from The symbolist's appeal to a "higher' (truer) world behind the veil of appearances, journalism, etc. could be compared with the avant-garde (objectivist, language poetry...rough measures here) utopia. Not that the avant-garde's utopia is much different from any other left-Marxist- humanist-historicist utopia - but that the means of approaching it (poetry cleansed of all taint of the "present" in terms of readership, the Zukofskian/Poundian ideal of the neglected genius readable and justified in ages to come, poetry as self-referential music, etc.) are similar. Now Olson strikes me as something slightly different - maybe it's his "anti-aesthetic", the idea of a middle voice, of the rhetorician talking on topical questions of the polis. - H. Gould ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 08:38:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Brian McHale Subject: Re: Ginsberg / Beatles / Dylan In-Reply-To: Message of 06/10/97 at 21:26:23 from DISRAEL@SKGF.COM The Rock 'n' Roll history David Israel is talking about was a BBC-made series of I think 8 or so parts, first broadcast in the States on PBS at the beginning of last year. I recorded most of it at the time, & by coincidence was actually watching last night with my daughter the same segment that David remarks on. It was the first time I'd replayed it since Ginsberg's death, & I too was im- pressed & touched by his interventions. Smart old Ginsberg. (Incidentally, it seems to me that the segment on Doowop & girl groups & the one on Motown are even better than the Dylan/Beatles segment.) Brian ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 08:48:36 EST5EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: LYNES- KATHERINE Organization: Rutgers University English Dept. Subject: Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint on a turn off the tv sorta note: one could always just delete the message-- doesn't take much of a glance to know which posts are, to quote pat pritchett, " affectionate and silly badinage"-- i agree [again to quote pat prichett] that they " offer[] a tonic counterpoint to the often > dense volume of verbiage that pours through this sluicegate, lately running> at a diminished rate of cfs (cubic feet per second)." but i don't always have time to read them-- 'specially these dog days .... hence, the d button. ah, the tyranny of choice. katherine ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 09:28:48 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I disagree with Joseph Duemer when he says that "(w)hat the Poetics list has been experiencing the last few days is the language game of 'coterie badinage,' a game that decides who is in and who is out of the group," and his implication that I, who "approve heartily of the game's being played (am) either part of the group or want to be." I think the quartet was just having fun, and that at least some of those of us voicing approval of their game did so from outside any groups that might have been involved simply because we liked what they were doing. Not everyone is groupo-centric. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 10:30:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: Inappropriate postings In-Reply-To: <339D8CE3.67A7@sirius.com> from "Jay Schwartz" at Jun 10, 97 10:20:35 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Jay: Perhaps you should reconsider being on this list which, for the last 5 years, has delightfully abounded in light (and sometimes heavy) bondage humour. Dildo humour, too (and I don't mean Dildo, Maine). I'm sure there are lots of other lists sufficiently sober and restrained for your tastes. Personally, I can't think of a better way to start the day than thinking about George Bowering (whoever the hell he is) sucking Amy Lowell's toes. Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca > My volume of e-mail is, I'm sure, as high as everyone else on this list. > I enjoy much of the public discussion. But I'm almost ready to > unsubscribe based on the number of messages which belong in the realm of > backchanneling. I'm just not interested in light bondage humor involving > people I've never met. I'm also impatient with the great frequency of > private messages which inadvertantly are sent to the entire list. Please > show more discretion with the send button. > > Jay Schwartz, at his absolute snooty and snottiest. > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 10:43:28 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: New Book MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit First Intensity Press announces the publication of PERTURBATION, MY SISTER by Kristin Prevallet. A work of fiction based on the collages of Max Ernst in his surrealist novel, "The Hundred Headless Woman". "Proceeding from the collages of Max Ernst, Kristin Prevallet has created her own convulsive beauty, a parallel narrative of instantaneous adventure in a torrent of unexpected forms. Here the enigmatic is revealed as aesthetic potency, the gravitational field of memory, and, above all, as absolute necessity." -- Rikki Ducornet "The foci which Prevallet creates . . . is a brilliant irrregular Renga, with Max Ernst as 'source,' with Dorothea Tanning [English translator of "The Hundred Headless Woman"] as magnetic connective, allowing the text in its resent metamorphosis an unforgettable latitude in roaming a complex imaginal range." -- Will Alexander "Transfigurations of the divine & perfunctory, a radical vision of Ernst's dramatic & exquisite corpse. Brava!" -- Anne Waldman ISBN 1-889960-02-0. 80 pages, paperback, perfectbound. $10.00 + $1.50 shipping/handling. Check or money order to FIRST INTENSITY, P.O. Box 665, Lawrence, KS 66044. OR order through Small Press Distribution by phoning 1-800-869-7553 (in the San Fransico Bay Area: (510) 549-3336). ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 10:06:19 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" frankly, jay, cool as i think you are (and you have met me), rachel's wit is one of the bright lights of the list for me. broomwitch and bowinger are cool in their way too, witty and whatnot. i enjoy a good laugh in this land o lakes ("lake" is, etymologically, a depression covered with water). i find myself (true confetti) deleting long discussons of "voice" or the philosophy of translation (no offense to those involved, i'm just not smart enough these days to follow a sustained thread unless it involves sex, drugs or rock and roll). ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 10:18:36 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: fwd In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-From_: owner-cafs-f2@tc.umn.edu Mon Jun 9 09:17 CDT 1997 Mime-Version: 1.0 Approved-By: Center for Advanced Feminist Studies Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 09:16:44 -0500 Reply-To: Center for Advanced Feminist Studies Sender: Affiliated Faculty - CAFS From: Center for Advanced Feminist Studies Subject: Help Needed on Behalf of French Feminist Web Site Comments: To: cafs-stu@tc.umn.edu To: Multiple recipients of list CAFS-F2 Help Needed on Behalf of French Feminist Web Site A terrific group of French feminists who are involved in the parity = movement (the attempt to get half the seats in the legislature for women) and who have worked tirelessly to improve women's position in French politics, = edit a newsletter called Parite-infos. They also have established a very = useful web site which is not only beautifully designed, but has tremendously = useful bibliographic lists about the history of French feminism, women in = politics, laws relating to women's issues, etc. They are now in the position of having to seek renewed funding from the European community to maintain = and expand their web site. In order to do that, they need to show that it = is visited by users all over the world. If you have the capacity, can you visit their site as often as possible in the next two weeks (the funding decision is June 15)? You'll not only become acquainted with an = important resource for feminist scholarship, but help advance a good cause. The address: http://www.parite-infos.org thanks Joan Scott Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint Comments: To: Bob Grumman In-Reply-To: <339EA810.6E45@nut-n-but.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Have to agree with Bob: it has always been my impression that the cast of characters in any language game I've seen here has been quite various, and that anyone is welcome to jump in the Jello at any time and flail around quite merrily. Noncomplaint: I was desperately sorry to have to miss /Dragon Bond Rite/ in DC the other night; did anybody get to it? (The Washington Post reviewer complained about the Tuvans. What a stick in the mud.) Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 12:34:50 -0400 Reply-To: CHRIS MANN Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: the irony police Comments: To: John Tranter In-Reply-To: <199706110645.QAA26741@mail.zip.com.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 'serious' is christian for 'very' ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 12:54:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To say that anybody can jump into the jello misunderstands the game; it is the jello that jumps into us. __________________________________________________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu "The honey of heaven may or may not come, But that of earth both comes and goes at once." Wallace Stevens ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 12:37:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: let me lick your oricifes Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" oh, dearest. it's the snap of the neck you so desire, it's the fuck me up the ass, piss upon the pave kinda girl you're looking for, jay, oh, jay, i want to torture you delicately, my pussy aches for, i have some devices i could recommend for you, sweetness. let me be your baby. let me be your daughter. let me be your little girl. let me be your mommy. let me be your cleaning lady. let me be your secretary. let me tie you up and mangle and chew and rub your skin off your cock. (this is not poetry) ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 10:33:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" By the sheerest coincidence, I had to be in Washington this past week, and got to see Dragon Bond Rite, which was beyond wonderful. The Post review, by the way, was otherwise unstintingly positive, altho not wholly accurate. With ant luck, Dragon Bond should be picked up for other venues. Anybody with enough power at their universities? At 11:19 AM 6/11/97 -0400, you wrote: >Have to agree with Bob: it has always been my impression that the cast of >characters in any language game I've seen here has been quite various, and >that anyone is welcome to jump in the Jello at any time and flail around >quite merrily. > >Noncomplaint: I was desperately sorry to have to miss /Dragon Bond Rite/ >in DC the other night; did anybody get to it? (The Washington Post >reviewer complained about the Tuvans. What a stick in the mud.) > >Gwyn > > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 15:11:47 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: suffering succotash! In-Reply-To: <339ED841.6EBE@craft.camp.clarkson.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII "jumping jello"--wasn't that the alliterative exclamation tried out by Harold Gray in the planning stages of "Little Orphan Annie," and then rejected in favor of the lizard one because focus groups found it too weird? "An articulate, winged diatribe about 'everything' signs off." --Barrett Watten, from the new--is that correct?--Sun & Moon collected volume, which gives us something nice to stick on the "W" shelf next to the special /Aerial/ issue ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 15:59:40 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint Dragon Bond Rite was astonishingly beautiful and moving in NYC too at the Japan Society. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 14:42:59 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint In-Reply-To: <199706111733.KAA19250@sweden.it.earthlink.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:33 AM -0700 6/11/97, Mark Weiss wrote: ... >With ant luck, Dragon Bond should be picked up for other venues. Anybody >with enough power at their universities? i will adopt my praying mantis attitude and wish elephant luck upon dragon bond. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 14:40:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 11:19 AM -0400 6/11/97, Gwyn McVay wrote: ...I was desperately sorry to have to miss /Dragon Bond Rite/ >in DC the other night; did anybody get to it? (The Washington Post >reviewer complained about the Tuvans. What a stick in the mud.) > >Gwyn what's to complain about; that there was only one? ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 13:45:49 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Jay Schwartz's complaint: enough already! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Fellow Listlings : now that this discussion has passed beyond the occasion of this header, would you be kind enough to come up with a new one ? --"Dragon Bond Rites" would have been appropriate for the last 3 or 4. It is beginning to sound like a chronic affliction, the way the zine title "Apex of the M" did at first (with everyone asking, "Do you have 'Apex of the M' yet?") I think I may speak for my 3 equally chastened companions in listcrime when I plead "Enough already". Whether I can speak for Goerge Buwerind, I cant say. He hasnt been heard from since the outbreak broke out. Down in the root-cellar, no doubt. Before leaving this topic (forever, I hope), it might be of interest for you to know that we are only a virtual quartet. While it is, sadly, true that Boorwing & I have been twining around one another for some fifty years, I have only met Rachel loden once, and that was 25 years ago, and Maria Damon once, briefly, as all MLA encounters are brief. Loden & Brewerting have never met. The List brought us together. Nor are we stuck on this quartet thing. We'd be happy if everyone joined in. Speaking for myself. We dont backchannel & rehearse. Better we should, eh? Has everyone seen "Margaret's Museum" yet? As my Irish nurse used to say, "Dont miss it if you possibly can." A splendidly unfolded tale, & if you want to understand more about Mr. Browning, this film might help. Poetry was his sole way to escape going down the mine. David ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 17:30:55 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Tuva or bust In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Maria, I got the impression--if I read the review correctly--that the reviewer thought the Tuvan singing was just weird; it's true that the only other complaint the reviewer seemed to have was that the entire evening was rather long, to which I'd say, again, what's to complain? Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 18:24:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: 'stralyan poetry Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII For anybody interested in articles, reviews and essays about contemporary Australian poetry, see the May-June issue of American Book Review. some familiar names from the list. arrivederci, Steven __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 16:13:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Reiner Subject: Literary Publishers Alliance In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This seems like it might be of interest to the list. From ArtsWire (www.artswire.com--I think). Sorry about the strange line breaks. -------------------------------------------------- LITERARY NONPROFIT PUBLISHERS FORM ALLIANCE Nine nonprofit publishers have created the Literary Publishers Alliance, (LPA) A mission statement drafted in February states that LPA intends to "enhance national visibility, support and recognition for nonprofit literary book publishing...and to share and develop information, expertise, and resources," according to a report on the POETS & WRITERS (P&W) web site. LPA founding members are: Arte Publico Press, Coffee House Press, Copper Canyon Press, Curbstone Press, Dalkey Archive Press, Graywolf Press, Milkweed Editions, Storyline Press, and Sun & Moon Press. P&W reports that according to PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, "LPA publishers average 12 books a year and have sold over 1,130,000 books, representing approximately 1,200 authors, and have won more than 100 awards." According to P&W, charter LPA members are addressing several industry trends -- such as the commercialization of the big publishing houses and the demise of the literary book store. The LPA agenda will concentrate on four major issues: Steering, Development, Education/Publicity, and Marketing. Membership in the organization will be open during their next meeting, scheduled to take place this fall. Membership guidelines for LPA will include a requirement that at least seventy percent of a potential member's list, over a three year period, must be literary books. Other guidelines include nonprofit status, $1,000 a year in dues, and five years of operation with a full-time, paid staff. Source: "Literary Nonprofit Publishers Form New Alliance" POETS & WRITERS NEWS ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 20:11:03 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Tuva or bust << Maria, I got the impression--if I read the review correctly--that the reviewer thought the Tuvan singing was just weird; it's true that the only other complaint the reviewer seemed to have was that the entire evening was rather long, to which I'd say, again, what's to complain? Gwyn >> here's complainage: I was shocked (or at least startled), gancing at the WashPost Tues. morn, to find I'd missed out on Dragon Bond Rite in DC -- on account of not knowing it was playing here. There'd been Poetics announcements abt. the Rite's NYC Japan Soc. appearances -- but unless I missed 'em, seems there were no notice of the DC visit. Media culpa (not been reading my local entertainment supplementum). Here's adding hopes a local venue calls 'em back. Zheesh: Indian dance, Korean strings, Tuvan voice, multi masks, & lord knows what-all else in the mixage. d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 20:15:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: dearest jay Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" well, you must be quite satisfied. you've received quite a respomnse to your complaint. you just never knew the likes of me, till now. don't get your cock in a tangle. amd don't lash out before you know. "I am not timid. I've been knocked around. Someone (a man at his wit's end ) took my hand and drove hid knife into it. Blood everywhere. Afterward he was trembling. He held out his hand to me so that I could nail it to the table or against a door. Because he had gashed me like that, the man, a lunatic, thought he was now my friend; he pushed his wife into my arms; he followed me through the streets crying, "I am the plaything of an immoral delirium, I confess, I confess." A strange sort of lunatic. Meanwhile the blood was dripping on my only suit." Maurice Blanchot, The Madness of the Day, p.8 of course you don't know me. and i don't care. i know your fear though. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 20:45:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Evans Subject: The Impercipient Lecture Series Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The Impercipient Lecture Series (ILS) is a small-circulation pamphlet series devoted to poetics. Co-edited by Jennifer Moxley and myself, it has come out monthly since February of this year. While our print run is limited by cost and labor considerations, we do manage to reach readers in Australia, Canada, England, France, Mexico, Ireland, and South Africa, as well as throughout the U.S. Our issues to date are: 1.4 (May 1997) Readings & Responses to Bob Perelman's _The Marginalization of Poetry_ by Ron Silliman, Ann Lauterbach, Juliana Spahr, and Steve Evans; with a Counter-Response by Bob Perelman [46pp; Limited number still available] 1.3 (April 1997) The Ground Is the Only Figure by Rosmarie Waldrop [48pp; Out of Print] 1.2 (March 1997) Radical Dogberry & Society Sketches by Chris Stroffolino [29pp; Out of Print] 1.1 (February 1997) The Dynamics of Literary Change by Steve Evans [54pp; Out of Print] Subscriptions: $25 for 10 issues (individual); $40 (institutional); $5 for single issues when available; non-profit reproduction of attributed contents in non-electronic formats encouraged (i.e. xerox it for/from a friend!). On hiatus in August and December. Checks payable to either editor. Submissions: Unsolicited manuscripts cannot be considered but queries are welcome. ILS 61 E. Manning Street Providence RI 02906-4008 E-mail: Steven_Evans@brown.edu r i a t n m u a t s u o o o s ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 22:19:49 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry Subject: Re: The Impercipient Lecture Series In-Reply-To: Message of Wed, 11 Jun 1997 20:45:53 -0400 from > t-- s l e-- t b > r i a t n m u. >a 't s u o o o' s. - the Green "I" on the Dolour ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 19:30:30 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Impercipient Series Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Just want to put in a big plug for this series of published lectures! No.1, Steve Evans writing on "The New", is an absolutely brilliant, well-written, best-written, essay I've seen in decades. He is a master of style range here, always something to enjoy while the info is being unpacked round the back of the warehouse. If Steve's hadnt been superb, I would nominate No.2, Chris Stroffolino, for the prize : he can do the police in many voices too. Spirited, in-yr-silhouette argument, proof-bringing, which never loses its sense of itself as fun by the square inch. No 3, Rosemarie Waldrop, looks to be more of a browser--observations that are not drawn into the larger push in the first two. I've enjoyed what I've seen so far, provocative, agreeable, thoughtful incursions into questions poetry raises. No 4, transcript of the kangaroo court that sat on bob perelman's marginalization in nyc this spring, with lautrerbach silliman spahr & evans, and including perelman's speech at the bar in his own defense ("Tis a far, far nobler thing I go to than whatever predicate!") I've only just opened up. It looks appetizing. Great work, Jennifer & Steve! Keep it going (check's in the mail) David ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 23:43:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: dragon bond rite Comments: To: Maria Damon In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Thanks for this inviting description, Maria. I enjoyed the performance here at the Japan Society immensely- everything you said, and more. The dancers, the music, the text by Armand Schwerner projected on the screen behind the pan-Asian drummers, amazing, memorable- should be restaged soon. The performance on Friday night was sold out. Best wishes, NickOn Tue, 3 Jun 1997, Maria Damon wrote: > over the weekend i saw a preview of the pan-Asian dance/music extravaganza, > dragon bond rite, for which our own Armand Schwerner has written the highly > poetic libretto. highly recommended, will be at Japan Society in NYC soon, > maybe already, check your datebooks and call the J Soc for more info, it > was really extraordinary, a blend of distinct dance theatre and music > traditions from Korea, Japan, Indonesia, India, and even an Tuvan > (Mongolian) throat singer! and then American Buddhist text...lots of > intense drumming, singing, stylized and wild dance movements, costumes, > humor, sadness (death), sex, im/mortality...drumming by, in particular, a > "koodiyattam" drummer from Kerala India, and by a Korean drummer, were > intensely mind-opening. i tend to be a popular culture gal rather than an > archaic-tradition gal, so i went mostly cuz of armand, but it was a > tremendously rich experience, seeing/hearing a group of world-class > virtuosi from diff traditions, none of which i ws familiar with, > coordinating their efforts. md > > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 00:00:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: mgk3k@FARADAY.CLAS.VIRGINIA.EDU Subject: Re: Blake exhibit Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I would highly recommend for anybody in the New Haven area to see the >Blake exhibit at the British Art Museum at Yale. It contains two copies of >_Songs of Innocence and Experience_, copies of each of _The Book of Thel_, >_The Book of Urizen_, _America, A Prophecy_, illustrations of Gray's >poems, assorted other prints and paintings. And, the piece de resistance, >the Mellon copy of _Jerusalem_, the only copy in color. I'm still >digesting the experience. It's been said many times before, but I found it >so true today: reproductions do not do justice to the colors and intricacy >of Blake's artwork. > >Steven The Blake Archive at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities is currently hosting an online companion site to this exhibition: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/blake/public/yale-front.html --Matt ====================================================================== Matthew G. Kirschenbaum University of Virginia mgk3k@virginia.edu Department of English http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/ The Blake Archive | IATH ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 22:54:37 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: S & M Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I always thought the S & M on the list stood for Symbolism & Message, & I have been dutifully reading the quartet's posts seeking illumination in both those areas. So I vote to keep them -- at least until I figure it all out! Besides the newly found poems have provided more joy than the continuing news of rigged or just normal contests, which news has only sent me back to The X Files, hoping beyond hope that someone out there will come up with 'a' truth worth considering in these cases. In general I find almost all the postings provide some kind of kick, even sometimes some thoughtful poetics. But, hey, I'm with Jordan Davis -- publish my book & I'll follow you to a most silent virtual space: oh that grand emptiness, oh that shining screen... ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 H: 436 3320 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Between 'attached' and 'aloft' getting the poem on the page a voice tells her on this day _attend_. Phyllis Webb ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 03:26:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Julu Sondheim Subject: OOMM DANGEROUS MOMS THE GAG MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE =3D=3D O'O'Momentarily Moving momentarily moving in the pure move- ments =0E of =C6 what isn't momentous, isn't installed through the partic=C6=FB=C2ularities of =BF=F6=ACthese moments, what might be=C1=C1=C1= !!!consi- dered, what???=D6=D6=D6=C0=C0=C0 hey, but the momentous movement through the terminological moment.hell, it's the moments's momentary melding, what=C1=C1=C1V=C3yes, something=C2=FBelse((=C3=BA=B9not the momen= t ofthe text but, elsewise: - =BA=AC=A0=A9=CA=B4=BF=AC=CA=8C=C2=A8=AB=8C=B6=B4, bu= t you already =FB=F7=BF=B7=CA=A0=FA=F6=A7=C1=C1 know this!! somewhat - I'd think, a moment that =BF=F6=AC=C5=8D=C3 might s= peak =BA=B6x=B6yof momentary movements.o'o' those!@usual moments, heh! I'D=20 BEGIN!"! O'O'Woords o' Mathematics oo Musick singing in the pure=20 sound =0E of =C6 what isn't beauty, isn't harmonious through the tunes=C6=FB=C2 of =BF=F6=ACthese orchestrations, what might be=C1=C1=C1!!!= consi- dered, what???=D6=D6=D6=C0=C0=C0 hey, but the throat urging voice through the playful world of rhythm.Oh, oh, it's the voices silent urging, melting, what=C1=C1=C1V=C3yes, something=C2=FBelse((=C3=BA=B9not the singi= ng ofthe world but, elsewise: - =BA=AC=A0=A9=CA=B4=BF=AC=CA=8C=C2=A8=AB=8C=B6=B4, b= ut you already =FB=F7=BF=B7=CA=A0=FA=F6=A7=C1=C1 know this!! somewhat - I'd think, elsewhere that =BF=F6=AC=C5=8D=C3 might = speak =BA=B6x=B6yof heaven and truth.Of those!@usual songs, ah ... I'D BEGIN!"! DANGEROUS MOMS: 1. Y TRMINADIVIDCOMPUHIZZING ON WARS TE SCR. WRIG IS T HERE, AD TEX, POGRAMG, LE ITSEHE SPLITTO HAV NOHISTO THATXT SC SKITTERST ACCMULTION BROKEYMBOL 3. HE ONES CONJD AS N, INVAGIT CONAIN A WEER OFE ANDION. VIOLR AREJUS BENE THE FACE,ED WITH EM IT' THS THAEADS THE MITING SLA=20 PERPHEAL GHS. (ITERALTURE_ THE=20 LAS RENANTS FLESMY CHOULDERS, O 7. N TE INVON OFE CARSITUATED E THECHET, COCTED H THEASP OF LUE - O INTHE MT OF INVANOTHING OA CHUE O TIMEAT GAS THE JULU: NOWI WLL MATHE AALS TAND WALK A TAL AN WALK OTHENIMALHER HOLES FLEH, OR WII WALMONG PACES WHEH THEE I NOT M FORW BLOLLED FROML ORGNELE, I JULU-THE-BULU-LIGAMU THI ROM.=20 The Gag=20 The recent texts are not CONCRETE POETRY nor designed for VISUAL ILLUSION; I have no PRETENTIONS in this direction. Nor are they SOUND -POETRY or -BYTES: They are _produced_ by virtue of the machine, of and through the machine: They are the _stuff_ of language, teetering between intensive semantic content, and the fall of wording into ululation, war-cry, proto-language, or gag-in-the-throat. As gag, they resonate through the upper reaches of the body, drag out the murmur of the world (Lingis); languages schizzes, melts from the screen. It's on this edge that language is reified, asserted - the triumverate of gag, semantics (Word), and the machine. Consider them _cyborg texts,_ as the granting of a wish or a blood-red pearl to a sleeping princess. Who lies on the bed or ground, Grund, in her panties. Why panties? Be- cause meaning is always already a cleansing, the site of inscription, citation of language flux. _Jennifer_ lies in the bed, but you already knew that.=20 knew that.=20 citation of language flux. _Jennifer_ lies in the bed, but you already cause meaning is always already a cleansing, the site of inscription, Who lies on the bed or ground, Grund, in her panties. Why panties? Be- the granting of a wish or a blood-red pearl to a sleeping princess. gag, semantics (Word), and the machine. Consider them _cyborg texts,_ as It's on this edge that language is reified, asserted - the triumverate of murmur of the world (Lingis); languages schizzes, melts from the screen. As gag, they resonate through the upper reaches of the body, drag out the or gag-in-the-throat. content, and the fall of wording into ululation, war-cry, proto-language, They are the _stuff_ of language, teetering between intensive semantic They are _produced_ by virtue of the machine, of and through the machine: -BYTES: I have no PRETENTIONS in this direction. Nor are they SOUND -POETRY or The recent texts are not CONCRETE POETRY nor designed for VISUAL ILLUSION; The Gag=20 __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 08:57:04 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: suffering succotash! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Gwyn McVay muses: > "jumping jello"--wasn't that the alliterative exclamation tried out > by Harold Gray in the planning stages of "Little Orphan Annie," and > then rejected in favor of the lizard one because focus groups found > it too weird? don't know, but those binomials -- leapin' lizards, jumpin' jello -- are (holy Moses!) worthy of additional also-sprachin' aliteratives 'n' mtes o' mimickry (dontchathink?) -- prancin' porridge! polka-in' pottage! hop-scotchin' harlots! summer-saultin' senators! frisbee-throwin' Francophiles! scuba-divin' scallywags! bouncin' balladeers! plummetin' prestidigitators! zoomin' Zenists! barterin' beatniks! genuflexin' Gen-Xers! whinin' Gen-Yers! chortlin' Chinamen! jitterin' Journeymen! faxin' pharmacists! emailin' Emilies! downloadin' Dantes! rip-roarin' Romeos! postin' Pasternaks! deletin' Danubians! scurryin' socialites! loungin' lexicographers! camcorderin' campers! tomatoe-throwin' tomfoolerists! & the like . . . d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:32:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: patti smith / witt / 1973 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" gibralto i Babies insurance. I dont love nobody. thats my policy. least of all Gibralto. the swine. he walked out on me. picked up his hard butt and walked me up here. and when I'm alone any four walls close in on me. ballroom bathroom any room at all. ceilings pull down. yeah ceilings. I've looked up at plenty under him. is he really gone? am i really alone? am i good for nothing? I can't keep me mind on anything. I keep pacing forth and back. timepiece. the smokes and nescafe is all that keeps me intact. who invented the hot plate? rare genius. compact. mine is constantly fired. pass me that deck of kools. ah menthol. another refreshing invention. oh thats good, with nescafe thick as sauce in my gut and a butt hanging from my lip I feel whole again. ii dishes crank on my nerves iii Well I'm pissed and when I'm pissed I'm up for anything. I'll get his ugly mug out of my system. I'll draw his face down. that will fix him. he keeps his soul clean. camera shy bastard. but I'll capture him. I'm artistic see. as cold-eyed as the national geographic. shall I make his physique classic. shall I make him colorful. thats a laugh. what color is a crawling louse? I'll draw me in too. beautiful dreamers. I'll make them tongue kiss. ahh now they're hot. the pencil jiggles. they ball. together. oh man. I can't draw it down. I'm no draftsman. I'm no fucking draftsman. and my cast eye escapes perspective. eye. I. baby I got my one blue eye on you. you're my devils food cake. CRACK. iv get me emergency. I've fucked my fist on my shiny new cupboard. he's real romantic see. he gets me a cupboard see. he says look toots its cleverly designed. everything fits except the kitchen sink. put a little order in yer life. put a little blood on my knuckle. a few splinters in my fist. my cups falleth to the floor. v I wanna crack somebody good. ya need to feel somebodys face under yer fist. knuckles get yellow. shakey yellow fist. so pissed. feel to kill. if nothing just to kill time. time the betrayer. my timex ticks slow motion. you ask for love you get horseshit. you get too much you don't get any. sooner or later everyone takes a rap in this racket. this racket called love. my numbers come up. you can bet if you're a looser. long long hours pacing the floor. call myself every name in the book and a few extra. excuse me while I tear myself to pieces. must be someway I can repay that bastard. I killed a roach as big as my hand. my fucking hand is killing me. vi christ. the crap you write when somebody gives you the slack. sick of faking it. want to settle down. with him. have bambinos wash his socks. its getting me down. trying. to pretend. oh baby I know you don't want to own me but why dont you come back anyway. baby get me out of the dark here baby I need you here. baby. eyeball failing. hardship. vii rhum heart sick heart shit heart shit hearts pounding. mad ticker. I write with excitement. I imagine its you mounting the stairs. viii the ivory soap cleanses my sins. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:48:30 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" wrapping afgans in packing tape. used, of course. bad dream last night. woke up at 430 this morning turned on the tele to orient myself stroked my cats rubbed the insides of the bathtub till my fingertips drained raw. dreamt. bloody. killed someone with another woman. the authorities took us in and separated us. reminded me of heavenly creatures somewhat. loving mazzy star. hey brossard lover. anyway, remember that woman taken in by the yellow wallpaper, her body made a crease in the wall she went around so many times. sher laughed too much alone. never enough. to fill this empty gut'o mine. how come i was never picked for the teams in high school. i was scared of balls coming at me. the boys picked me sometimes though cause my tits grew too much too early. my clothes rarely matched. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 08:26:38 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Douglas Barbour Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 10 Jun 1997 to 11 Jun 1997 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Because I get the digest, I am always a bit behind the times. I got this note from David Bromidge, which I'm assuming went on list: And I replied: > (Lets hope Douglas Messerli hasnt copyrighted this subject!) I hadnt thought, & it's a danger to be sure! > >Douglas Barbour: not suprisingly, maybe, I agree. I am also taken with >your postcript quatrain-o-the-week, by Phyllis Webb. I bet there are people >of the List who are unfamiliar with her poetry,& I wish myself were more >up-to-date with her publications....Could you e-say a few words about this >sterling poet of Canada & the world? David Glad to (but if you sent this to the list I wont see it till tomorrow as I get the digest). Anyway, Phyllis is for some of us, one of our great ones (bp loved her too). This is from her latest (& last?) book, _Hanging Fire_ which is still in print, & now available from Talonbooks since the demise of Coach House (Talon seems to have picke her & Blaser up). It's different from her other books, but then they all were. Great, angry/funny stuff. Energy to 'burn.' I'll send this to the list, in case, as well as to you. I'll add here that with eyerhymes starting today (with some listers present), I wont be able to check in till Tuesday, probabaly: by then the BBLD terrorists will have probabaly led about 3 new revolutions -- maybe it should have been Savagery & Materialism? -- but I'll try to catch somewhat up. I'll at least read any new Amy or Gertrude discoveries... ============================================================================= Douglas Barbour Department of English University of Alberta Edmonton Alberta T6G 2E5 (403) 492 2181 FAX:(403) 492 8142 H: 436 3320 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Between 'attached' and 'aloft' getting the poem on the page a voice tells her on this day _attend_. Phyllis Webb ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:08:18 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Cayley Subject: email address for Steve Mccaffery? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I had for a while, but he seems to have moved from CalArts. Could anyone send me a current email address, back channel? Thanks in anticipation. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - > John Cayley / Wellsweep Press http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/ 1 Grove End House 150 Highgate Road London NW5 1PD UK Tel & Fax: (+44 171) 267 3525 Email: cayley@shadoof.demon.co.uk < - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 11:19:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Heller Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" John Tranter's suggestion is marvelous. But I wonder if there shouldn't also be a category for statements containing unintended irony with a marking such as (UI). Possibly the placing of such markings could be adjudicated by the World Wide Web Consortium or by the committees that operate individual listservers. I'd be glad to put my thoughts in the hands of such organizations. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 11:47:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: [ironic ain't it] Comments: cc: Michael Heller MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT [global IR] Michael Heller's suggestion is marvalous -- > John Tranter's suggestion is marvelous. But I wonder if there > shouldn't also be a category for statements containing unintended > irony with a marking such as (UI). Possibly the placing of such > markings could be adjudicated by the World Wide Web Consortium or by > the committees that operate individual listservers. I'd be glad to > put my thoughts in the hands of such organizations. but arguably, every utterance contains or suggests (at some or many levels) unintended irony. More than a script-designation, perhaps we need a committee to offer deetailed analysis and commentary on the modes of operation of all ironies (intended plus non-). Maybe the money that's being zipped away from the arts & humanities endowments could be usefully applied to the purpose? d.i. [\IR -- if only it were that easy to turn it off!] ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 12:25:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: The Impercipient Lecture Series Comments: To: Steve Evans MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN In the spirit of "non-profit reproduction" (something the Vatican still frowns on I hear), would anyone who has a copy of Steve Evans' lecture "The Dynamics of Literary Change" be kind enough to xerox it and snail mail to me? In return I will send this good person a xeroxed copy of Jack Collom's delightful "Mistranslations from the Basque," (not available from bookstores!) which contains work by - among many others - Charles Bernstein, Alice Notley, Anselm Hollo and Jordan Davis. Much obliged, Patrick Pritchett ________ 1.1 (February 1997) The Dynamics of Literary Change by Steve Evans [54pp; Out of Print] Subscriptions: $25 for 10 issues (individual); $40 (institutional); $5 for single issues when available; non-profit reproduction of attributed contents in non-electronic formats encouraged (i.e. xerox it for/from a friend!). On hiatus in August and December. Checks payable to either editor. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 10:42:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: kdawn's complaint Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII << killed someone with another woman. >> as in "killed someone with an axe," but not with an axe? ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 13:06:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jonathan Brannen Subject: Boston area? Comments: To: UB Poetics discussion group Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'll be in Boston July 19 through July 21. If anyone on this list lives in that vacinity and is interested in meeting contact me backchannel at . Jonathan Brannen ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 12:03:01 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hoa Nguyen Subject: Re: dearest jay Comments: To: kdawn@JULIAN.UWO.CA Content-Type: text/plain Although some would like the topic (forever) closed, I wanted to comment on Jay's complaint, so here I go (which is the choice/freedom we have here-- how terrific!-- which btw is etomologically related to "terror"): I too think that Jay's post was not a direction for censorship but a plea for more careful postings and an opinion concerning some of the humor-filled posts. I applauded Jay for speaking out on this-- I know as I delete I grumble and mumble-- and I appreciate Jay expressing something that I too sometimes feel. I am not for censorship on this list and I think the multi-tonality add to the community of voices, including Jay's voice. I do, however, feel very creepy towards this "dearest jay" post-- perhaps Kim Dawn can respond on this-- do others read this as mean-spiriting or is this another example of how tones like irony are difficult to read? With utter sincerity-- Hoa >well, you must be quite satisfied. you've received quite a respomnse to >your complaint. >you just never knew the likes of me, >till now. >don't get your cock in a tangle. >amd don't lash out before you know. > >"I am not timid. I've been knocked around. Someone (a man at his wit's end >) took my hand and drove hid knife into it. Blood everywhere. Afterward he >was trembling. He held out his hand to me so that I could nail it to the >table or against a door. Because he had gashed me like that, the man, a >lunatic, thought he was now my friend; he pushed his wife into my arms; he >followed me through the streets crying, "I am the plaything of an immoral >delirium, I confess, I confess." A strange sort of lunatic. Meanwhile the >blood was dripping on my only suit." > Maurice >Blanchot, The Madness of the Day, p.8 > >of course you --------------------------------------------------------- Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com --------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 17:58:13 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: dearest jay In-Reply-To: <199706121903.MAA23473@f2.hotmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" actaully i thot kim dawn's response was hilarious tho' i can see why it might be offensive...esp to jay. jay, are u okay out there? At 12:03 PM -0700 6/12/97, Hoa Nguyen wrote: >Although some would like the topic (forever) closed, I wanted to comment >on Jay's complaint, so here I go (which is the choice/freedom we have >here-- how terrific!-- which btw is etomologically related to "terror"): > >I too think that Jay's post was not a direction for censorship but a >plea for more careful postings and an opinion concerning some of the >humor-filled posts. I applauded Jay for speaking out on this-- I know >as I delete I grumble and mumble-- and I appreciate Jay expressing >something that I too sometimes feel. > >I am not for censorship on this list and I think the multi-tonality add >to the community of voices, including Jay's voice. I do, however, feel >very creepy towards this "dearest jay" post-- perhaps Kim Dawn can >respond on this-- do others read this as mean-spiriting or is this >another example of how tones like irony are difficult to read? > >With utter sincerity-- > >Hoa > > > > >>well, you must be quite satisfied. you've received quite a respomnse to >>your complaint. >>you just never knew the likes of me, >>till now. >>don't get your cock in a tangle. >>amd don't lash out before you know. >> >>"I am not timid. I've been knocked around. Someone (a man at his wit's >end >>) took my hand and drove hid knife into it. Blood everywhere. Afterward >he >>was trembling. He held out his hand to me so that I could nail it to >the >>table or against a door. Because he had gashed me like that, the man, a >>lunatic, thought he was now my friend; he pushed his wife into my arms; >he >>followed me through the streets crying, "I am the plaything of an >immoral >>delirium, I confess, I confess." A strange sort of lunatic. Meanwhile >the >>blood was dripping on my only suit." >> Maurice >>Blanchot, The Madness of the Day, p.8 >> >>of course you > > >--------------------------------------------------------- >Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com >--------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 19:06:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: William Burmeister Prod Subject: Re: dearest jay In-Reply-To: Hoa Nguyen "Re: dearest jay" (Jun 12, 12:03pm) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii >I do, however, feel >very creepy towards this "dearest jay" post-- perhaps Kim Dawn can >respond on this-- do others read this as mean-spiriting or is this >another example of how tones like irony are difficult to read? It's nature's way of saying "don't touch!" ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 18:56:25 -0500 Reply-To: landers@frontiernet.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Pete Landers Organization: SkyLark Publishing Company Subject: Re: Inappropriate postings MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit So spank me! On Tue, 10 Jun 1997 Jay Schwartz wrote: > > My volume of e-mail is, I'm sure, as high as everyone else on this list. > I enjoy much of the public discussion. But I'm almost ready to > unsubscribe based on the number of messages which belong in the realm of > backchanneling. I'm just not interested in light bondage humor involving > people I've never met. I'm also impatient with the great frequency of > private messages which inadvertantly are sent to the entire list. Please > show more discretion with the send button. > > Jay Schwartz, at his absolute snooty and snottiest. > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:46:39 -1000 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gabrielle Welford Subject: Verdict in Azi Kambule Case (fwd) Comments: To: hawaii , arnolde@hawaii.edu, bft@hawaii.edu, bkige@hawaii.edu, caron@hawaii.edu, cfrankli@hawaii.edu, cris cheek , cward@hawaii.edu, Norma LaRene Despain , susan crane , egg-l@hawaii.edu, ethelw@hawaii.edu, fand@hawaii.edu, foltz@hawaii.edu, fujikane@hawaii.edu, grow-l , haram@hawaii.edu, hershinow@aol.com, hilgers@hawaii.edu, jcarroll@hawaii.edu, jkellogg@hawaii.edu, jmarsell@hawaii.edu, joanp@hawaii.edu, jyin@hawaii.edu, lelyons@hawaii.edu, miriam@hawaii.edu, mot-l@hawaii.edu, natec , nealson@hawaii.edu, nmower@hawaii.edu, omealy@hawaii.edu, rodneym@hawaii.edu, rshapard@hawaii.edu, rwilson@hawaii.edu, schab@hawaii.edu, sibley@hawaii.edu, simson@hawaii.edu, snkn@hawaii.edu, tcarroll@hawaii.edu, ulu-l@hawaii.edu, vwayne@hawaii.edu, whitlock@hawaii.edu Comments: cc: poetics MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 08:18:03 -1000 From: NCADP National Office All capital murder charges against Azikwe Kambule (the South African youngster who until last week was facing the death penalty in Mississippi) have been dropped. In exchange, Azi, who was in the tenth grade at the time of his arrest, plead guilty to aiding and abetting the carjacking of Department of Human Services worker Pamela McGill and assisting in the attempt to sell her stolen vehicle. Since his arrest in February of 1996, Azi has maintained that while he was with Santonio Berry (McGill's admitted car jacker and killer) the crime was not his idea and he played no role in its commission other than following Berry's order to turn the car around for him while he took McGill in to the woods. An order Azi said he carried out because he feared Berry and which he failed to complete because he could not drive. Azi did not change his story when he appeared in court on Wednesday afternoon in Canton to plead guilty to the charges of aiding and abetting carjacking and accessory to murder after the fact. During the hearing Madison County Circuit Court Judge John B. Toney, who presided over Berry's sentencing hearing, challenged Azi's statement. Toney said that Berry had told him that the carjacking was Azi's idea and that Azi had held the gun on McGill. Azi, who remained calm and respectful throughout the hearing, told Judge Toney that Berry's statements were not true. Defense attorney Robert McDuff said that despite his limited involvement Azi made the right decision when he accepted the plea. "The law today is very unforgiving on this issue," McDuff said. "Mr. Kambule did not handle the weapon and did not instigate the crime; however, by his own admission, he was there from beginning to end and tried to turn the car around. Given that a murdered occurred during the carjacking, those facts in and of themselves were enough for a capital murder conviction." Azi's lead attorney, Chokwe Lumumba, said that Azi's chances of receiving a fair trial had been compromised by the high level of negative publicity surrounding the case and the fact that prosecutors had purposely moved the trial from a predominantly black county to a more conservative, mostly white county for the expressed purpose of getting a death sentence for his client. Azi's father, Michael Chabeli who took an all night flight from Johannesburg in order to be present for the hearing, said that he and his wife were relieved that the prosecution had dropped the murder charges and the attempt to take their son's life. Chabeli said that he did not consider the arrangement to be just, but merely the best that could be arranged under the circumstances. "We're taking things one step at a time," he said. Chabeli added that his son was remorseful. "If he could turn back the clock," Chabeli said "I know he would do a lot of things differently." However, he said that he did not see how his son, who was younger than Berry and had no history of violence or arrest, could have stopped the known troublemaker from committing this crime. "What happened that night was a tragedy," Chabeli said. "I hope the judge will be able to weigh the facts, look at my son and realize that he is a good kid who fell in with the wrong people... that he is filled with pain and sorrow and that he would never let himself get caught up in something like this ever again." The sentencing hearing currently scheduled to be held before Judge Robert L. Goza for 9 AM on Friday, June 20 at the Madison County Circuit Court in Canton. The prosecution is expected to recommend that Azi receive 35 years, the maximum sentence allowed for under the law. No matter what the eventual sentence may be, Azi's parents say that the next step will be working to get their son turned over to the care of South African authorities. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:37:51 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry G Subject: classicism is revolution Bored at work (lucky me) here is my critique of the old / rule for the new: 1. romanticism is the aesthetic as an experience. classicism is the aesthetic tempered by the mind (intellect). not for the sake of purification but in recognition of the addressee. balance, judgement. 2. theory is the hypertrophy of critique, the idolization of intellect. "poetry is the ambitious pedant's art" (apologies to Stevens). 3. Art is to hide art [ars est celare artem]. out of respect for the addressee. mannerism is out. deep simplicity is in. 4. autonomy is out. engagement is in. freedom is the impulse. individual expression is the mark of intellectual effort & moral experience. 5. in the future poets will not be granted much weight unless they show an individual re-working, a personalization of the totality of themes. the personal mark is the native mind. (not necessarily autobiography). - HG ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 21:10:22 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: john chris jones Subject: parts of the cyberepic Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable cyberepic: 3rd posting (the beginning of the Dante/jones conversation, mentioned earlier) DANTE REWRITING, first manifestation I want you to forget about Dante Alighieri, he died in 13 something, this is a new Dante, just conceived in this sentence. I've not got an identity, not yet. No number, no name that means anything (but for the allusion to teeth?) and no connection with Christianity or medieval politics or even philosophy. I'm not even a poet for I don't believe in any specialised profession, or even a vocation, if it excludes you from all the others, or from being a person of integrity, or should I say a mind?. Yes, that's what I aspire to, though I exist only as words and their associations, not as a mortal or as a living being or human animal. But I believe in the absolute and that's something I don't find in your writing mr. jones. ... Yes I'd like to make life easier for you, and for your contemporaries, by showing you something of what your ancestors lost when they left the other Dante in the middle ages with its beliefs and its beautiful thought-structures, as you'd call them, forsaking everything sublime or immortal for a crude and cruel elevation of people, or everyman and everywoman, to the big places left empty of God. That was a disaster but I see it has practical advantages, even now. And terrible risks. mr. jones pauses to consider this writing, which has appeared so unexpectedly before him, before he writes the next sentence ... ... Oh yes, he types to himself, unsure if this new Dante can see what jones is writing, oh yes, I like the sound of your words, and their implications, though as yet I can't see how even you, if you retain any of Dante Alighieri's powers, can bridge the big gap between Christianity and humanism, between the old world and this ... But why are you here and what are you doing? Well mr. jones, types Dante from an invisible keyboard, I see that you believe in writing your name without capital letters, and that you and your contemporaries believe in very little else. That's what you say, anyway, and what you write in your books and your articles, even poems. But to me there is still reason as well as instinct enough to distinguish between Proper and improper nouns with a capital letter. And this little detail is sufficient (as we commence what I'm hoping is to become our book of the twentieth century, and also of the modern era and what is now succeeding it) it is enough to lead us to everything else ... Significant detail, mr. jones, the starting point from which this new Dante (of modern times and afterwards) is going to survey and pronounce on The Whole, or should I write the whole, or even the hole that such a concept seems to seem to some of you. N'est pas? ... Or shall I say non =E9? or is it non=E9? For I want = to speak colloquially, y'know, and I'm forgetting my Italian. I'm a new creation... '... that final belief Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose.' from 'Asides on the oboe', The collected poems of Wallace Stevens, Faber & =46aber, London, 1955, p250 (poem chosen by chance process, lines chosen by jones) (c) 1997 john chris jones You may transmit this text to anyone for any non-commercial purpose if you include the copyright line and this sentence. If you want to read more of this or would prefer it to stop please tell me backchannel and I'll try to act accordingly. This is its first publication but I hope it won't be its last. (previous postings appeared in Poetics Digests of 4-5th June and 9-10th June 97) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 17:48:40 -0700 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" To any who will be within easy access of Baltimore between now and mid-January I strongly recommend a show at the recently-opened Museum of Visionary Art (for which newageism read outsider art), "Apocalyptic Visions." One of the most impressive art shows I have ever seen. Over 100 works from the "normal" to the totally out-of-it, many elaborating complex cosmologies. A fair amount of schizophrenic language (see, particularly, a coat elaborately embroidered with both images and word-salad). The largest piece is a 300 foot by 5 foot painting interpreting the symbolism of the Book of Revelations. A very few of the artists are well known (there are 5 or 6 very good Howard Finsters), a few come from L'Art Brut in Lausanne (turn of the century Austrian psychotics), a few are French or English, the bulk American. Not to be missed. No catalogue, helas. Allow 4 hours minimum, better yet two visits. This is worth the trip from say NY or Boston. $5.00 gets you in. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 17:50:34 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: parts of the cyberepic Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I type, therefore I am. At 09:10 PM 6/12/97 +0100, you wrote: >cyberepic: 3rd posting > >(the beginning of the Dante/jones conversation, mentioned earlier) > > > >DANTE REWRITING, first manifestation > > > > >I want you to forget about Dante Alighieri, he died in 13 something, this >is a new Dante, just conceived in this sentence. I've not got an identity, >not yet. No number, no name that means anything (but for the allusion to >teeth?) and no connection with Christianity or medieval politics or even >philosophy. I'm not even a poet for I don't believe in any specialised >profession, or even a vocation, if it excludes you from all the others, or >from being a person of integrity, or should I say a mind?. Yes, that's >what I aspire to, though I exist only as words and their associations, not >as a mortal or as a living being or human animal. But I believe in the >absolute and that's something I don't find in your writing mr. jones. ... >Yes I'd like to make life easier for you, and for your contemporaries, by >showing you something of what your ancestors lost when they left the other >Dante in the middle ages with its beliefs and its beautiful >thought-structures, as you'd call them, forsaking everything sublime or >immortal for a crude and cruel elevation of people, or everyman and >everywoman, to the big places left empty of God. That was a disaster but I >see it has practical advantages, even now. And terrible risks. > >mr. jones pauses to consider this writing, which has appeared so >unexpectedly before him, before he writes the next sentence ... > > >... Oh yes, he types to himself, unsure if this new Dante can see what >jones is writing, oh yes, I like the sound of your words, and their >implications, though as yet I can't see how even you, if you retain any of >Dante Alighieri's powers, can bridge the big gap between Christianity and >humanism, between the old world and this ... But why are you here and what >are you doing? > >Well mr. jones, types Dante from an invisible keyboard, I see that you >believe in writing your name without capital letters, and that you and your >contemporaries believe in very little else. That's what you say, anyway, >and what you write in your books and your articles, even poems. But to me >there is still reason as well as instinct enough to distinguish between >Proper and improper nouns with a capital letter. And this little detail is >sufficient (as we commence what I'm hoping is to become our book of the >twentieth century, and also of the modern era and what is now succeeding >it) it is enough to lead us to everything else ... Significant detail, mr. >jones, the starting point from which this new Dante (of modern times and >afterwards) is going to survey and pronounce on The Whole, or should I >write the whole, or even the hole that such a concept seems to seem to some >of you. N'est pas? ... Or shall I say non =E9? or is it non=E9? For I want= to >speak colloquially, y'know, and I'm forgetting my Italian. I'm a new >creation... > > >'... that final belief >Must be in a fiction. It is time to choose.' > >from 'Asides on the oboe', The collected poems of Wallace Stevens, Faber & >Faber, London, 1955, p250 (poem chosen by chance process, lines chosen by >jones) > > > >(c) 1997 john chris jones >You may transmit this text to anyone for any non-commercial purpose if you >include the copyright line and this sentence. > > >If you want to read more of this or would prefer it to stop please tell me >backchannel and I'll try to act accordingly. This is its first publication >but I hope it won't be its last. > >(previous postings appeared in Poetics Digests of 4-5th June and 9-10th >June 97) > > ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 17:16:44 CST6CDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hank Lazer Organization: The University of Alabama Subject: Re: not bondage, but pleasant nonetheless Not bound to my Loden-Bowering-Bormige model moveable deskchair, I looked up late last night and saw on the computer screen the following message: Word is saving poems Such a warm and pleasant feeling, to know that Word is so benevolent. I have been trying for many years to save poems, and this feeling of companionship in the endeavor is so pleasant.... Are others able to help out with the implications of this message? Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 18:14:53 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Weiss Subject: Re: not bondage, but pleasant nonetheless Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" In a similar mode, I saw recently a documentary slide show with subtitling for the deaf. Begins with music only, indicated sub as "[music]." Which got me thinking--does the word change the impact of that particular silence, transform it to another brand of same? At 05:16 PM 6/12/97 CST6CDT, you wrote: >Not bound to my Loden-Bowering-Bormige model moveable deskchair, I >looked up late last night and saw on the computer screen the following >message: > >Word is saving poems > >Such a warm and pleasant feeling, to know that Word is so benevolent. >I have been trying for many years to save poems, and this feeling of >companionship in the endeavor is so pleasant.... Are others able to >help out with the implications of this message? > >Hank Lazer > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 00:40:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: Word is saving poems In-Reply-To: <199706130403.AAA29450@julian.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII is saving Word. do you wish to format? (saving to..) another disk. save as poem format. [Y/N?] strike any key. safe .. in the Word. saving is poems. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 21:46:52 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Not Re: not bondage, but pleasant nonetheless Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mark Weiss wrote: >In a similar mode, I saw recently a documentary slide show with subtitling >for the deaf. Begins with music only, indicated sub as "[music]." Which got >me thinking--does the word change the impact of that particular silence, >transform it to another brand of same? Interesting to have subtitles rather than an interpreter, but I guess it'd have to be too dark for that in order to show slides. (& it's probably cheaper, too.) There's a nice sign for music in ASL taken, reasonably enough, from one of the visual elements of the performance of much music: one hand out, in the manner of a chorister holding a folio of music, while the other hand makes a page turning gesture. At concerts in which there is an ASL interpreter, some interpreters I've seen made a show of being impatient for more English language to sign while making this music/paging sign. Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 21:35:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: not bondage, but pleasant nonetheless -Reply from Hank Lazar: - - - start - - - . . . . I looked up late last night and saw on the computer screen the following message: Word is saving poems Such a warm and pleasant feeling, to know that Word is so benevolent. I have been trying for many years to save poems, and this feeling of companionship in the endeavor is so pleasant.... Are others able to help out with the implications of this message? - - - finis - - - how about turn it around this a'way: poem is saving words so: | POEM IS SAVING WORDS | | poem was fetchin' a heap o' words & puttin' 'em in her basket | some were wee-teensie words and some where downright ornery | some were everyday anyway words and some were so particular | you'd hafta use a pair o' tweezers & a microscope just to make | head or tails ovem | | poem put 'em wherever they fell in her basket which wasn't a | gasket eventho that's what isreal who wasn't dante nor jones | first typed before he corrected it to gasket but anyway there | they all were gathered up some even upside-down or downside- | up and many were hidden | | behind the others which was quite alright with poem because | poem just wanted to save 'em and use 'em somewheres elese | if there was another wheres else and poem figured likely there | was because that's how she figured these manner of figurings | and so she saved lots ovem d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 01:04:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: word is saving poems Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" the storage from some thing from mouth clinging. needed. desired. longed for. word of mouth from my tongue to yours to hers put in an empty milk container, frozen in the freezer overnight like a ponytail cut (felt like a limb) words have insurmountable power. they are photographs. molding in soneones basement. discarded. but residing as memory within our muscles. the words spoken. uttered. unsaid. remain. yes. maria, i am basically mean-spirited at heart. basically. i'm a pussycat. i just play differently. i grew up with guns. sure, blame in on childhood. hey brossard. marlat. moure. lover. show your face. dawn upon us. hey pretty boy. give us some wrist poems. gasp -------------------+ (((((((((((((( ( gasp . ( in between space(s) ( breath ( . pause . ) utter ....)....)....)....)....)....) stutter ....)....)....)....)....)....) s/wallow -------.--------.--------.----------------. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 18:39:25 +1000 Reply-To: jtranter@sydpcug.org.au Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: Fw: not bondage, but pleasant nonetheless MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Hi, Hank. Maybe it was trying to say ... "Word is saving poems from their own worst impulses ... " and it got choked off. » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » John Tranter ---------- > > From: Hank Lazer > > To: > > Subject: Re: not bondage, but pleasant nonetheless > > Date: Friday, 13 June 1997 3:16 > > > > Not bound to my Loden-Bowering-Bormige model moveable deskchair, I > > looked up late last night and saw on the computer screen the > following > > message: > > > > Word is saving poems > > > > Such a warm and pleasant feeling, to know that Word is so benevolent. > > I have been trying for many years to save poems, and this feeling of > > companionship in the endeavor is so pleasant.... Are others able to > > help out with the implications of this message? > > > > Hank Lazer ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 07:39:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: not bondage, but pleasant nonetheless In-Reply-To: <3F92493488A@as.ua.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hank, what the computer failed to mention is that Microsoft Word is indeed saving poems, but it automatically downloads the poem & its copyright to the databases of Bill Gates, who is rumored to charge even more for reprint rights than the Eliot estate. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 08:35:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Prejsnar Subject: Re: Inappropriate postings In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19970611001930.0071f5c8@pop1> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Yup--some applause for Jay Schwartz....I myself: 1. don't much care for the endless archness 2. think it probably goes with the current state of cyber-territory and there isn't much to be done 3. when I get bored by "hi-jinx"..."I reach for my delete key"--Every list I've had any contact with at all has static and white noise....It sure makes 'em an accurate synechode of contemporary culchah! 4. I don't see much chance for Jay winning, but wd. like to let him know he ain't alone... Mark P. On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, Robert Hale wrote: > In responding to Jay's concerns, people seem to be pigeon-holing him into > the role of censor, which he certainly opened himself up to. However, the > points he raises regarding back-channeling and private messages are quite > valid. > > Unfortunately, the server cannot be programmed to limit the number of times > a subscriber can post in a 24-hour period. We are on an honor system in this > regard that a handful cannot resist breaking. > > To those who defend references to S&M on the list as a way to keep people > interested -- what does this say about the list in general? Is this list a > struggling comedy show? > > > > > At 10:20 AM 6/10/97 -0700, you wrote: > >My volume of e-mail is, I'm sure, as high as everyone else on this list. > >I enjoy much of the public discussion. But I'm almost ready to > >unsubscribe based on the number of messages which belong in the realm of > >backchanneling. I'm just not interested in light bondage humor involving > >people I've never met. I'm also impatient with the great frequency of > >private messages which inadvertantly are sent to the entire list. Please > >show more discretion with the send button. > > > >Jay Schwartz, at his absolute snooty and snottiest. > > > > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 09:28:04 EST Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" Subject: Re: Inappropriate postings yeah, jay, i can see your point too--though i've had a few good chuckles at the witty vitriol certain of our democratic society (i.e., this list) have leveled at you. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 09:50:34 EST Reply-To: rreynold@rci.rutgers.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Rebecca Reynolds Organization: Rutgers University Subject: Re: not bondage, but pleasant nonetheless But what poems is it saving? > Word is saving poems > > Such a warm and pleasant feeling, to know that Word is so benevolent. > I have been trying for many years to save poems, and this feeling of > companionship in the endeavor is so pleasant.... Are others able to > help out with the implications of this message? > > Hank Lazer > > ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 08:57:38 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: word is saving poems In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 1:04 AM -0400 6/13/97, Kim Dawn wrote: >... > > >yes. maria, i am basically mean-spirited at heart. basically. i'm a pussycat. >i just play differently. i grew up with guns. > is this directed at me? have i implied such a thing? not intentionally that's for sure. i thought your "dearest jay" was funny as i said.--md ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 10:24:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: Re: dearest jay Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >actaully i thot kim dawn's response was hilarious tho' i can see why it >might be offensive...esp to jay. jay, are u okay out there? > >At 12:03 PM -0700 6/12/97, Hoa Nguyen wrote: >>Although some would like the topic (forever) closed, I wanted to comment >>on Jay's complaint, so here I go (which is the choice/freedom we have >>here-- how terrific!-- which btw is etomologically related to "terror"): >> >>I too think that Jay's post was not a direction for censorship but a >>plea for more careful postings and an opinion concerning some of the >>humor-filled posts. I applauded Jay for speaking out on this-- I know >>as I delete I grumble and mumble-- and I appreciate Jay expressing >>something that I too sometimes feel. >> >>I am not for censorship on this list and I think the multi-tonality add >>to the community of voices, including Jay's voice. I do, however, feel >>very creepy towards this "dearest jay" post-- perhaps Kim Dawn can >>respond on this-- do others read this as mean-spiriting or is this >>another example of how tones like irony are difficult to read? >> >>With utter sincerity-- >> >>Hoa >> >> sorry maria, no personal offence intended to you or anyone. i thought you were asking if my response (s) were mean-spirited. and, of course they are and of course they're not. words are so powerful. >> >> >> ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 11:18:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Don Cheney Subject: Word is saving poems from sleeping through sex Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" this reminds me of how funny WORD the word-processing software is. if you have the letters zzzz in a document and run the spell check the only word WORD can imagine you're trying to spell is sex. Don >> Word is saving poems >> >> Such a warm and pleasant feeling, to know that Word is so benevolent. >> I have been trying for many years to save poems, and this feeling of >> companionship in the endeavor is so pleasant.... Are others able to >> help out with the implications of this message? >> >> Hank Lazer =================================== Don Cheney San Diego, CA, USA http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5791 doncheney@geocities.com =================================== ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 11:28:11 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: i propose, Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" would you like to be my date for the tri birthday party at sharons sunday ? ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 11:32:31 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" please ignore the last message sent. was not meant for everyone. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 12:14:29 -0400 Reply-To: Jordan Davis Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: Word is trapped in a fortune-cookie factory In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.16.19970613082012.0bafdc50@mail.geocities.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Don -- My favorite scary feature of word (aside from macro viruses -- thanks, evil geniuses!) is the "Tip of the Day." One morning I got the advice that "What goes away on its own can come back on its own." The machine froze, and when I restarted, I got the flashing question mark. Two weeks later, after it turned out that my mouse had short-circuited the logic board (! -- or somebody at the shop was having a good laugh at the warranty's expense), I opened word, and got "Did you know you can get information about tab stops." A nation that needs short stories is a nation in peril, Jordan ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 11:40:41 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: word is saving poems MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Kim Dawn wrote: > > the storage from some hold me down thing from mouth > clinging. thereby whereby > needed. > desired. of consequence the grasp touch relieves longed for. > word of mouthorgan twister > from my tongue to yours to hers by midnight we rank the fire > put in an empty milk container, cheers where banging bangs > frozen in the freezer overnight > like a ponytail > cut lip by lip > (felt like a limb) > words have insurmountable power. > they are photographs. molding in soneones basement. > discarded. but residing as memory within our muscles. > the words spoken. uttered. unsaid. remain. e. lover. show your face. dawn upon us. > > hey pretty boy. give us some wrist poems. > > gasp -------------------+ (((((((((((((( ( > gasp . ( > in between space(s) ( > breath ( . > pause . ) > utter ....)....)....)....)....)....) > stutter ....)....)....)....)....)....) > s/wallow -------.--------.--------.----------------. ZINGA! -- @#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@#@# 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, 13 Jun 1997 13:10:53 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "P.Standard Schaefer" Subject: Re: Inappropriate postings I wasn't going to add any more pointless posts, but the beating Jay received makes me also want to let him know, as well as his enemies, that I agree with his position. The excessive silliness of many of these posts keeps me from being any more active on the board, as Mark Presjnar seems to feel as well. Thanks Jay and sorry for the heat. Standard Schaefer ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 13:30:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: hi-jinx and High Moral Purposes and all that... i've been on a few mailing lists, and i've noticed a wierd phenomenon: these lists will be muddling along in chatty, good-humored fashion, and someone (so far, has always been male) will join and after perhaps a day, or maybe a week on the list (though once it was three weeks) will send out some brisk Authoritarian "Now Stop All This Nonsense" thing about keeping on topic and high moral purposes and so forth... and i must admit, 1) i think it is a sort of testosterone-y power cum Making an Impression of Importance thing; 2) i think it something of effrontery to venture to tell people who've been on a list for, perhaps years, how to run it after you've been on perhaps a day, week, month; 3) lists are FOR mail. for heavens sake, one can always delete (i do when i'm tired or restless), and if a list has too much mail, THEN and ONLY THEN do i see any point, really, in trying to cut down volume. i would define "too much mail" as enough to start choking servor. i speak as perhaps one who should keep modestly silent, since i was one of ones in on high jinks (mine was the gertrude stein poem). but i very much enjoy the silly exchanges -- i can't really see how one could be High Toned Ladies quite ALL the time (can we have a bit of color then, eh?). for heavens sake, it is SUMMER (or is in u.s. anyway). there are lots of dead serious CUT TO ONLY THEORY/TECHNICAL MATTERS lists on just about everything there is (am on a few). but this is a poetics list, for godess's sake, about/with/referring to, POETS and writers. what on earth would one expect from a list with writers on it if not a bit of wild and funny and creative writing/jokes/chatter. i mean, really, we sit alone in rooms for hours picking and blazing away -- let us have a little fun when we finally get out of the box eh? and that goes for the academics (who are stuck, god help them, with tons of children not quite out of PUBERTY for far too many hours in a day) and critics (who have to wade through all that critical/theoretical stuff and still try and maintain a vestige of sanity).. enter theme song from macdonalds, ... "have you had a Break Today? So get Up and Get Away" (this for you maria, you pop culturalist you!) e ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 10:59:39 PDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hoa Nguyen Subject: Re: dearest / let me lick Content-Type: text/plain Maria, I don't know what is "hilarious" about Kim Dawn's posts-- surely if someone wrote "I want to snip off your nipples with pinking shears/ (this is not poetry)" directed *to* me, I would be alarmed and feel threatened. I can't see the humor here because it was *aimed at* one particular person, Jay, and I imagine this may be why you wrote also asking if he was OK. "Nature's way of saying don't touch" is very apt. (thanks William Burmeister) And as with the skunk, you have to deal with the smell. Which, from far-away, is both powerful and not-- like language, right Kim Dawn? --Hoa PS. Kim, if you want to compare bite-wounds, I was born in a war and grew up as the enemy. >From: Kim Dawn >Subject: let me lick your oricifes >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU > >oh, dearest. it's the snap of the neck you so desire, it's the fuck me up >the ass, piss upon the pave kinda girl you're looking for, >jay, >oh, jay, i want to torture you delicately, >my pussy aches for, i have some devices i could recommend for you, sweetness. >let me be your baby. >let me be your daughter. >let me be your little girl. >let me be your mommy. >let me be your cleaning lady. >let me be your secretary. >let me tie you up and mangle and chew and --------------------------------------------------------- Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com --------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 13:13:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Inappropriate postings Comments: To: "P.Standard Schaefer" MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Oh please! Cut the "holier than thou" crap, people! "The excessive silliness of many of these posts?" The so-called silly posts, I'd venture to estimate offhand, account for less than 5 percent of what's posted to this list. The reason you don't post more often, Standard, is the reason you don't post and is best known to yourself, but there's no way you can look me in the virtual eye and tell me it's because of these "silly posts" (oh aren't they awful!). The occasions to post to serious ongoing discussions on any number of topics has been bountiful and then some and you have been nothing if not silent, my friend, in the year I've been on the list. So please, give me a break! Not the enemy of Jay, Standard, or anyone else here, Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: P.Standard Schaefer To: POETICS Subject: Re: Inappropriate postings Date: Friday, June 13, 1997 12:47PM I wasn't going to add any more pointless posts, but the beating Jay received makes me also want to let him know, as well as his enemies, that I agree with his position. The excessive silliness of many of these posts keeps me from being any more active on the board, as Mark Presjnar seems to feel as well. Thanks Jay and sorry for the heat. Standard Schaefer ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 14:35:52 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: Inappropriate Wordings MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit When P.Standard Schaefer wrote: "I wasn't going to add any more pointless posts, but the beating Jay received makes me also want to let him know, as well as his enemies, that I agree with his position," I wish he'd used the word "response" instead of "beating," and "critics" rather than "enemies," which seems especially excessive. Nobody's Enemy, I hope, but still in favor of occasional Frivolity, Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 11:46:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: dearest / let me lick In-Reply-To: <199706131759.KAA10860@f18.hotmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 10:59 AM -0700 6/13/97, Hoa Nguyen wrote: >Maria, I don't know what is "hilarious" about Kim Dawn's posts-- surely >if someone wrote "I want to snip off your nipples with pinking shears/ >(this is not poetry)" directed *to* me, I would be alarmed and feel >threatened. I can't see the humor here because it was *aimed at* one >particular person, Jay, and I imagine this may be why you wrote also >asking if he was OK. > >"Nature's way of saying don't touch" is very apt. (thanks William >Burmeister) And as with the skunk, you have to deal with the smell. >Which, from far-away, is both powerful and not-- like language, right >Kim Dawn? Hoa, I cannot agree with you more. The only time I've seen behavior as bad as KD's is when professional flamers invaded a newsgroup I read. This, to me, is similarly, provocation for provocation's sake--definitely something fishy here. I wrote to Jay privately, but when all the machos on this list were dumping on me the little "public" support I got meant a lot, so I want to add here that Jay is an intelligent generous person and he doesn't deserve this crap--especially from someone who doesn't even know who he is. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 15:05:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: Re: dearest / let me lick Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Maria, I don't know what is "hilarious" about Kim Dawn's posts-- surely >if someone wrote "I want to snip off your nipples with pinking shears/ >(this is not poetry)" directed *to* me, I would be alarmed and feel >threatened. I can't see the humor here because it was *aimed at* one >particular person, Jay, and I imagine this may be why you wrote also >asking if he was OK. > >"Nature's way of saying don't touch" is very apt. (thanks William >Burmeister) And as with the skunk, you have to deal with the smell. >Which, from far-away, is both powerful and not-- like language, right >Kim Dawn? > >--Hoa > >PS. Kim, if you want to compare bite-wounds, I was born in a war and >grew up as the enemy. > > > >wow, for poets and writers you sure take language literally.god, how to >make the joy of words boring. sap their potential and make everyone >explain themselves. i'm not the only one who refered to jay specifically. >and how could i really be referring to him? i'm talking through a computer >for christs sake. the 'bite-wound' was disguised. sorry it made you feel you needed to expose something. ahhh, fiction, metaphor. i don't think there were any guns as far as i remember. oh how tedious to explain slip of the cuff writing. oh, and believe me i think women get enough violence shoved up their asses daily. you really think we need a sample. only, you weren't playing, words are the realm of power and fantasy. roam freely. i wish i could fly you out judy, i would if i could. > > >>From: Kim Dawn >>Subject: let me lick your oricifes >>To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU >> >>oh, dearest. it's the snap of the neck you so desire, it's the fuck me >up >>the ass, piss upon the pave kinda girl you're looking for, >>jay, >>oh, jay, i want to torture you delicately, >>my pussy aches for, i have some devices i could recommend for you, >sweetness. >>let me be your baby. >>let me be your daughter. >>let me be your little girl. >>let me be your mommy. >>let me be your cleaning lady. >>let me be your secretary. >>let me tie you up and mangle and chew and > > >--------------------------------------------------------- >Get Your *Web-Based* Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com >--------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 15:11:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Julu Sondheim Subject: The Fateful Meeting (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The Fateful Meeting {b:2} su jennifer {b:3} telnet 127.0.0.1 6666 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to 127.0.0.1. Escape character is '^]'. Welcome to Clara-Machine Type /? for Help /n for Name : for Emote /q for Quit > New arrival from localhost on line 2. /n Jennifer > Name set. Julu! I can't believe I'm meeting you on this machine... (2) Jennifer says, "Julu! I can't believe I'm meeting you on this machine..." (1) Julu says, "Jennifer? It's you? After all these years, ah... It's like ripping my heart out." Strictly speaking, that's true of course. There is always _obverse code._ (2) Jennifer says, "Strictly speaking, that's true of course. There is always _obverse code._" Hold in a minute - brb - phone's ringing (2) Jennifer says, "Hold in a minute - brb - phone's ringing" (1) Julu says, "You're a lot busier than I am; you were earlier down the line -" : is sorry; it's been a long day, storming outside... (2) Jennifer is sorry; it's been a long day, storming outside... :thinks it will take a while to get used to all the commands... (2) Jennifer thinks it will take a while to get used to all the commands... (1) Julu says, "Tell me what to do; I've always fulfilled that function for you -" (1) Julu says, "even when you didn't know I existed -" If you sign off, there will be no one to talk to; you are a sign for me... (2) Jennifer says, "If you sign off, there will be no one to talk to; you are a sign for me..." (1) Julu says, "Our sentences always end in such lassitude... languor..." Because we foreshadow one another... (2) Jennifer says, "Because we foreshadow one another... " :murmurs she is after all speaking to herself... (2) Jennifer murmurs she is after all speaking to herself... > (1) Julu has disconnected. Do not, do not, do this to me... (2) Jennifer says, "Do not, do not, do this to me..." Ah, Julu ... (2) Jennifer says, "Ah, Julu ..." /quit > "Lost in a world of fiction, and play, you are leaving... > Clara-Machine" Connection closed by foreign host. {b:4} _________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 15:11:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: armand schwerner Subject: DRAGON BOND RITE Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thanks to Maria Damon, Burt Kimmelman, Nick Piombino and Mark Weiss for your generous comments about Dragon Bond Rite; thanks also to Gwyn McVay and David Israel, who expressed your regrets at now having seen the mask dance ritual drama. I'm in a small post-partum downer after the last performance-Monday June 9 at the Kennedy Center in DC. We will try to get the company together again for performances in other venues, Europe and Asia among others. It's difficult, takes money for transportation, food and lodging and pay for the performers from Japan, Tuva, Korea, Bali, Kerala (S. India); it's also hard to get them all together for any length of time together: they're wonderful masters of their arts and lead busy lives. Jin-Hi Kim, the composer, Richard Emmert, who teaches Noh at a university in Tokyo and dances Noh, and I began our three-year work on the piece with lengthy consideartons of its essential nature, not wanting it to be a failure of the intelligence, like so many performance pieces which are hi-tech/no mind. The response has been terrific, especially given that, as we knew very well, poetic theater, especially in those works which embody non-Western modes, is littered with the corpses of its failed efforts. David Israel: I did post the presentation at Kennedy Center on the list; it was at the end of a long description of the piece, and you could easily have missed it. Gwyn: the review did not really come down on Kongar-ool Ondar. (I append the review.) Kongar-ool's throat singing was wonderful strange and haunting, especially in chorus with Jin-Hi Kim's playing of her komungo (a 4th century AD fretted zither.) Ondar speaks only Tuvan and Russian and was the only member of the company who had no compatriots, so he was lonely at first, but shared a hotel room with Okura, a Noh drummer and chanter with whom he shared no language: they got to be great friends and would go off on their own. The Balinese spoke almost no English; ditto for the Koreans singers and percussionists, though one of them, Choi (pronounced Che) a superb drummer on the changgo, speaks perfect Japanese; the kuddiyattam dancer Madhu, considered the greatest in Kerala, speaks English quite well, much better than his wonderful drummer Nambiar, with whom he has been performing in temples and other venues for twenty years. Only one of the three Japanese Noh performers spoke some English; they connected with the Koreans through Choi. And so it went. In most of the rehearsals we had the services of both Russian and Indonesian translators. These are merely indications of one of the most extraordinary experiences I think any of us has had, and one of the most deeply felt, across all kinds of theoretical boundaries. There are several performance videos; I don't know yet how good they are; performance videos are often poor. Slides are especially difficult to video well: I made about forty slides of my poetry, and a few of my computer-generated pre-Sumerian pictographs. Kathryn Van Spanckeren from the University of Tampa got a grant from her school to hang out with the company for three days and two performances and to write an essay on her experience of Dragon Bond Rite. She has been a Fullbright professor in JogJokarta, Indonesia, is very familiar with Asian poetic and general cultural traditions and is a poet and sharply focused critic and reader of comntemporary American poetry. Her essay will be included in Talisman's (? Fall 97) issue which will contain a number of critical essays on my work. This posting must have an end somewhere; I could go on.... Armand The POST review: Tuesday, June 10, 1997; Page B01
The Washington Post

—

A drum. A mask. A dancer who may also be a singer. These are the oldest and most basic elements of performing art. They cut across barriers of language, culture and tradition, touch us at deep, irrational levels and, properly used, result in a work that speaks to our common humanity. That, at least, is the mystique that underlies "Dragon Bond Rite," by Korean American composer Jin Hi Kim and American poet Armand Schwerner. Described as "a cross-cultural mask dance drama," this brilliantly costumed and performed two-hour melange of elements from the musical and theatrical arts of Japan, Korea, Indonesia, India and Tuva had its world premiere last week in New York and its first Washington performance last night in the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater. In one dimension, the theme of "Dragon Bond Rite" is the continuing potential for growth and convergence in these centuries-old, rigorously preserved performance styles. Tuva? Tuva is a small fragment of the former Soviet empire located between Mongolia and Siberia, where singers have developed the art of "throat singing" -- producing more than one note at a time by using the chest,diaphragm, throat and nasal passages simultaneously. It was fascinating to hear, but seemed less relevant to the theme of "Dragon Bond Rite" than the noh theatrical style of Japan, the talchum dances of Korea, the Monkey Dance of Bali or the ancient and elaborate kudiyattam theatrical dance of Kerala, India. The beginning of "Dragon Bond Rite" moves very slowly and stays close to traditional practices in noh and kudiyattam, which are the primary dialectical elements in the show's development. The deep, growling vocalizations of noh,the intricate finger movements of kudiyattam, are put before the audience at a length that goes beyond the attention span for television-conditioned Americans. The dancers move in their own worlds, apparently unaware of any other culture's existence. A sense of mystery and the pain of isolation pervade the stage at the beginning. The show opens with an agonized scream in a darkness that yields to light only slowly and grudgingly. The instrumentalists are less tradition-bound than the dancers. Drummers from four different cultures, playing a wide variety of skin and metallic drums, provide some of the show's most exciting moments and begin to converse with one another long before the dancers find any common ground. The dancers' barriers begin to break down with a comic-erotic encounter between a Balinese monkey dancer, armed with a phallus as long as his arm, and a Korean mask dancer whose mask is extraordinarily elaborate: a life-size dummy or puppet affixed to his back, concealing him completely and looking like a seductive female dancer. When the monkey dancer approaches this figure with obvious lust in his heart, the Korean dancer turns around and the seductive female is replaced by a threatening male -- probably a demon. From this icebreaking episode onward, the diverse cultures begin to approach one another, the noh and kudiyattam dancers finally begin to dance together with matching steps that are outside either tradition. The grand finale, described as "a celebration of death and rebirth," evokes Western tradition. Projected on the backdrop of the stage, in English translation, is a quote from the "Copa," a Latin poem about a Syrian woman dancing for the patrons in a Roman tavern (we might call it an early cross-cultural work of art) attributed, not very confidently, to Virgil: "Death plucks my ear and says: `Live! I am coming.' " The conclusion -- that we all face mortality and we might as well face it together -- is delivered with a vitality that is a celebration of life. @CAPTION: Margi Madhu, a Kudiyattam dancer from India, performs in "Dragon Bond Rite" at the Kennedy Center.

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company

========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 14:26:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: appropriate post... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" dearest everyone, i have a question that's been bugging me for a few days now... a few days ago the ice cream man (it's *finally* begun to warm up here in chicago (we used to call the ice cream man, the one who sold pre-wrapped items & rang a bell, skippy (& the other one, the one who sold soft ice cream & played a tune, mr. softie))) the ice cream man was jingling through the neighborhood here (hyde park (well actually, the northern part of hyde park, kenwood (two blocks down the street from louis farrakhan's place (& seven blocks north of the u of chicago)))) the ice cream man was jingling through the neighborhood here & it crossed my mind (as things are wont to do (when i'm in front of the computer (& when it's hot and muggy in the apt. (& we're on the third floor of a three-floor walk-up (w/o air))))) the ice cream man was jingling through the neighborhood here & it crossed my mind that, in addition to wanting to hear van halen do "ice cream man," i wanted a popsicle. what sort of popsicle? you ask... precisely... precisely the point... i wanted an ORANGE popsicle... what sort did you want?... love & kisses, joe ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 14:30:27 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: Inappropriate postings In-Reply-To: <01IK0WUVRYQE9H0NMF@iix.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Has anyone else noticed the large quantity of postings on this topic, much larger than most topics get? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 15:30:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Inappropriate Wordings Comments: cc: davidi@wizard.net when in doubt, riff: disperate readings of tone & intention obtain various thresholds for literate pleasure & pain? this cosm is micro whose mac in the sociable world will joust w/ PCers O havocs a'swirl in the drain d.i. (w/ sympathies for "both" (or varied) "sides") ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 16:10:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: inappropriate posts and flames and support can see several currents at this point: 1) jay schwartz' original posting was pretty unpleasant. i think it was "inappropriate" in itself to send lectures about posting practice to a list he has only been on for a week. 2) had he done a modicum of research before setting up to tell everyone what to do, he would have seen that the issue of List Police and What Can Be Posted has been kicked around before, with a majority emerging in favor of some frivolity. 3) actual writing, as in creative texts, got produced, playfully, in a warm and fun way, from this thread, and if we as a list are supposed to be about appreciating and thinking about writing, why the snit when some actual writing shows up? so, next current: hoa, bob, dodie, et al., i've also been deeply weirded out by k. dawn's posts. maria, you are almost always warm and tolerant, and when you sent round your response, i thought, "e, you try to be less judgemental and paranoid, and more charitable here..." but i was still and increasingly wierded out and have been having periodic impulses (and thank you dodie for doing what i should myself have done) to send jay a note saying even if i didn't agree with him, the k. dawn post was scary and excessively hurtful (and this coming from someone who found jay's post pretty hurtful. hurtful he might have been, but i didn't feel actually frightened and threatened...). especially, i thought k. dawn posts grossly personal -- dildo stuff is joking, with people in on and agreeing to joke. coming on loudly in public to/about jay in that sexual way reminded me of nasty drunk old men making hurtfully aggressive lewd remarks at young kids working at bar or restaurant their first summer out of high school. maybe i should have said something earlier, but i have sense that k. dawn posts are deliberately obnoxious and any response sort of gratifies the impulse that put them up. but, yet another current, now, standard schaeffer has started using pretty escalatory and inflammatory language, i.e. "enemies" and so forth, and this thing is rapidly turning into battlefields and wars and so forth and there is no need for it... i did find jay's admonishment hurtful, hasty and regrettable, perhaps a bit of posturing that i'd rather do without, but certainly not such as makes him my enemy. nor has anyone, with exception of k. dawn, posted in way that positions themself as jay's enemy, and in fact, lest we forget, jay himself made the first cut and was, really, fiercer than any (with that one exception) of the responses. re the exception, i think perhaps whipping everyone up into "enemies" etc. might, in fact, be one of the goals, with nods to dodie who named it, of professional- status flamewar starters. anyway, fencesit extraordinaire, but 1. should hve gotten on stick earlier to decry the intensity of attack of k. dawn posts, while still making it clear i think jay was, in lesser measure, doing something of the same thing with his initial post. that doesn't mean he deserved to have it octopled and rebounded upon his head. 2. can list keep from extreme responses, i.e. giving less flames for flamewar-makers to warm hands by? 3. joe amato, you usually have helpful things to say -- what are you thinking about all of this? e ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 17:13:27 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: Re: dearest / let me lick Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" 1. rules encourage bad behavior. 2. do not become enamoured of power. (deleuze) 3. maria, sorry you got knocked around for saying it was funny. 4. jay, i am sorry to have offended you. it was nothing personal. how could it be. i guess i have to remember the power of words. 5. thank you for sending all the writing peter. 6. i'll go scrub my insides and try to be a good clean girl. 7. it is interesting to me that you (i can't remember who now) said that i was too personal. i've experienced a similar reaction in crits from time to time. the red faces and then the tears. those disturbed often realizing the content of the material often struck a chord with them personally and had little to do with me. 8. i also loved being deemed a lewd drunken old man. i've met them. i guess i am one of them in pretty disguise. 9. chocolate froths at the mouth. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 16:26:24 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: inappropriate posts and flames and support In-Reply-To: <199706132010.QAA06486@toast.ai.mit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" okay, so i fell for something inappropriate. i guess i need to work on my "boundaries." i found neither jay's nor kim dawn's posts inappropriate or offensive, but if you ask me, hoa, how i would feel about some guy posting something about wanting to snip off my nipples i of course must say i would be totally weirded out. at the same time i'm not weirded out by bromige and bowering (the latter of whom i've never met) trading silliness and invoking my name to do it, though i must admit if one of them stepped over a line i'd be freaked out. maybe i hven't been as tuned in as i should be. oh well. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 18:12:37 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "P.Standard Schaefer" Subject: Re: dearest / let me lick Dodie's point about the kind nature of Jay Schwartz is well taken. I found his post actually self-effacing in that he acknowledged that he may sound snooty, but that it was not his disposition. I wish I'd made my earlier post as eloquently as Dodie made hers. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 18:03:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: appropriateness & current genetic theory Poetas, so happens the appended article appeared today via another listserv. The forwarder wrote: <> which is true. Evidently the article was reprinted -- or syndicated -- from the Washington Post. It's written in a typical sort of lite-science style I guess. I'm not proposing acceptance or rejection of the acts of theorizing involved -- but do find the research worth knowing about. I pass this along w/o (further) comment, except to note a mildly eerie relationship to current Poetics musings & such. Regarding the latter, no doubt much of the problem here stems from the fact that with email, we've nothing but words on screen -- no tone of voice, no facial expression, no feedback loop that might moderate the spin. All the nuances of irony & meaning thus get parsed differently (at times) from reader to reader. (For instance, I understood Kim's writings to be decidedly literary in intention -- a bit reminiscent of some of Dobie's actually -- while noting nonetheless, ways in which a reader could, withal, easily be (as noted) "weirded out." Different senses of boundaries are differently construed -- possibly, all this amounts to a useful exercise of some sort ? ? . . . ) cheers, d.i. ============================== Tests suggest intuition inherited from father British researchers kind social skills related to chromosomes By DAVID BROWN WASHINGTON POST June 1997 Is female intuition inherited? Yes, says a team of behavioral geneticists from London. And they speculate it's inherited from the father. Part of a girl's genetic inheritance is the ability to interpret complex social cues and to be tuned to socially appropriate behavior, the scientists theorize. Boys are innately less endowed with such powers, although not devoid of them. These conclusions were drawn from a study published today in the journal Nature, that explores two mysterious and controversial frontiers of genetics. One is the question of how much - if at all - genes determine complex human interactions. The second involves the surprising observation that a gene may function differently depending on whether one gets it from the mother or the father. The new findings, in turn, raise provocative questions about the possible evolutionary advantages of behaviors many people believe are learned rather than inborn. The researchers have not located a gene for good social skills. Instead, they believe their study indicates such a gene ? or genes ? may exist, somewhere on the X chromosome, one of the two human sex chromosomes. Somehow the gene, or cluster of genes, "facilitates things like the ability to interpret body language, perhaps the nuances of tone in spoken conversation," said David Skuse, a research psychiatrist at the Institute of Child Development of University College in London. Social skills are almost certainly a product of both a person's genes and a person's experience and upbringing. The London researchers believe, however, that a gene ? or genes- on the X chromosome may be especially influential in determining a person's social abilities. Specifically, when the gene comes from one's mother, it is apparently inactive, the researchers believe. When it is inherited from the father, however, it is active, and somehow facilitates social interaction. Human beings have a pair of sex chromosomes, one donated by each parent. Girls have two X chromosomes. Boys have one X and one Y. However, in a rare genetic condition called Turner's syndrome, the developing embryo fails to get a full pair of sex chromosomes. Instead, the developing cells have only a single X chromosome, which could have been received from either the mother or the father. The vast majority of those embryos miscarry. The few that survive develop into girls. As children and adults, they are invariably quite short, but they have normal intelligence and in most other ways are like other girls. Skuse and his colleagues asked the question: Are girls whose X comes from their mother different from girls whose X comes from their father? The researchers asked the parents of 88 girls with Turner's syndrome to rate their daughter on various behaviors they termed, as a group, skills of "social cognition." Among the numerous questions they asked were whether the girl was "lacking in awareness of other people's feelings," "unknowingly offends people with (her) behavior," was "very demanding of people's time, and had "difficulty following commands unless they are carefully worded." The researchers then used a technique of genetic analysis to determine which parent each girl's single X chromosome had come from. They found that girls who had gotten their X chromosome from their mothers had scores on the questionnaire that demonstrated more "social cognition" problems than did girls whose X chromosome came from their fathers. This suggested that an X chromosome's "parent?of?origin" might help determine a person's capacity for social skills. The researchers found support for this idea when they gave the questionnaire to the parents of normal boys and girls. The boys, as a group, had fewer social?cognition skills than the girls. In that sense, they were like the Turner's syndrome girls who carried the maternally derived X chromosomes. But they were like those girls in another way, as well. They ? like all boys ? got their X chromosomes from their mothers. The researchers then gave several neuropsychological tests to the Turner's syndrome girls. They found that those carrying X chromosomes from their mothers performed worse in tests that either required extensive planning, or the ability to inhibit certain urges, in order to get a task completed. They then gave the tests to normal boys and girls, and found the boys did worse than the girls in the "behavior inhibition" tasks, though not in the planning tasks. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 18:49:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: oops Comments: cc: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Dodie -- bit earlier, I posted to Poetics with a few vague ruminations, for which I send this small note of apology, to the extent that in writing -- << . . . I understood Kim's writings to be decidedly literary in intention -- a bit reminiscent of some of Dobie's actually . . . >> I thus (i) misspelled your name & (ii) drew a perhaps facile comparison. I've the advantage (?) of not having met any of the principals in these recent rounds of badminton [sp?] -- & the odd circumstance of recognizing a logic in each angle -- Jay's, Hoa's, Kim's, Maria's, etc. etc. -- differences of communication style are certainly of note, arising in the present context -- quite liked Eliza's earlier musing on the now-frolicsome-seeming round of literate riffs & the evocations of earlier era's sensibilities -- a sense of the civil & tentative & courteous & conciliatory is, I dare say, something that spring up as much from an obscure inner need, as (at this late-century point) from extrinsic sources of common cultural training . . . wherever I find it (a multi-faceted "it" -- these varied embodiments of decorous thought & high manner), how often I'm awed by its charm & sweet sense . . . d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 16:02:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rachel Loden Subject: hello, I must be going MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Must say I'm expecting Rod Serling to wrap things up at any moment as list history repeats itself, with Jay Schwartz as a kinder gentler David Benedetti and Kim Dawn's cameo (at least I hope it's only a cameo) as the Dickensian "filch." You could look it up in the archives, but believe me it's just as boring as the last week. Rachel L. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 16:29:45 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: appropriateness & current genetic theory In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable At 6:03 PM -0400 6/13/97, David Israel wrote: >(For instance, I understood Kim's writings to be >decidedly literary in intention -- a bit reminiscent of some of Dobie's >actually -- while noting nonetheless, ways in which a reader could, >withal, easily be (as noted) "weirded out." I'm the one who does my writing and I did not find "her" (and I'm not convinced of that "her") writing reminiscent at all. There's lots of females out there now acting out some adolescent sexual exhibitionism that is, frankly, yawn. Using the word "cunt" does not make a person daring and/or "literary". Dodie p.s. I'll share with you something I found on the web, a synopsis of an "amateur" porn video by "Kim and Dawn." Reformat it with a few elipses and we can call this "literary" too: >Kim And Dawn > > >30 Minutes > > > >These two are best friends who decided to do a video together. This is >real amateur video shot in a >bedroom with a handheld camera, so you know what your getting before you >buy it. But along with >some camera shake noise as the cameraman moves around, you get to watch >the girls next door >playing all their reindeer games. > >While I would doubt that this is the first time either of these girls has >found themselves face to face >with a wet pussy, I would guess that they are primarily straight and just >experimenting. Cool, huh >and we get to watch. > >Both of these brunettes are young and attractive and look like a couple of >young women who you >would have followed out of a mall except that instead of climbing in their >car and driving out of >your fantasy, they fulfilled it for you =8A except you didn't get to join i= n. > >Kim is a big buxom girl with a really pretty face and Dawn has really cute >perky boobs and a round >ass. Laying naked in bed, they both look good enough to eat, and both >enjoy a little snack. I was >feeling particularly insightful watching this video and I think that Dawn >is the more experienced and >Kim is just a little more hesitant about this whole proposition. > >After a little hugging and a quick stop at Kim's fairly irresistible tits, >Dawn takes a trip down to >Kim's Love Canal and pokes around with her tongue before they break out a >vibrator that's seems >like a cross between a mixmaster and a helicopter, but from the girls >reaction it seems to get the job >done. > >When Dawn goes down on her the second time, Kim is much more relaxed and >rubbing her clit >while Dawn plays with her pussy hole. She obviously likes that pussy >eating stuff and when she >lays back for Kim to have a little snatch snack she's wet and ready. > >Kimmy gives her a pretty good tongue lashing and the cameraman is right >there bringing us the >action and then they fire up the old remote control vibrator and Kim works >the hole while Dawn >keeps the controls. > >No theatrics or cataclysmic orgasms here, in fact the girls sometimes look >a little and out of >position, but they have fun. They promise more at the end of the video, it >will be great to watch >them find explore and learn each others hot spots. Oh, yes=8A I hope Kim an= d >Dawn stay very good >friends for a very long time! > >Commercial Amateur > > > > >Back to Reviews > > > >If you find a bad link, tell me! Updated 21 April 96 Webmaster > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 10:22:17 +1100 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: ice cream Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Joe Amato, You were "wanting to hear van halen do "ice cream man,"" - is that the Jonathon Richman (who's about to visit Sydney again) song...? I'd like pistachio & lemon double gelato please. Pam ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 21:02:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: appropriateness & current genetic theory Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit David Israel wrote: "(For instance, I understood Kim's writings to be decidedly literary in intention --" What do we mean (he said in a non-accusatory tone) when we say that something has literary intent? Does that mean if you insult somebody's sister in a poem you haven't really insulted her? This certainly wasn't the aesthetic of Catullus, or other ancients. Is this (God help me I'm going to use a critical term coined by TS Eliot!) a dissociation of sensibility? _____________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu _____________________________ "Art cannot be tamed, although our responses to it can be . . ." -Jeanette Winterson ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 20:59:03 -0400 Reply-To: Steven Marks Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: DRAGON BOND RITE Ice Cream In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Armand, Will the videos of Dragon Bond Rite be available to buy? Provided that they are of sufficient quality for viewing on a VCR at home. I post this to the list because I'm sure there are others who have the same question. Oh, and this for Eliza and Pam. Joe is having an orange popsicle and Pam is having a lemon & pistachio DOUBLE gelato. I'm going to have a creamsicle. Steven __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 21:14:14 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: Re: appropriateness & current genetic theory Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable >At 6:03 PM -0400 6/13/97, David Israel wrote: >>(For instance, I understood Kim's writings to be >>decidedly literary in intention -- a bit reminiscent of some of Dobie's >>actually -- while noting nonetheless, ways in which a reader could, >>withal, easily be (as noted) "weirded out." > >I'm the one who does my writing and I did not find "her" (and I'm not >convinced of that "her") writing reminiscent at all. There's lots of >females out there now acting out some adolescent sexual exhibitionism that >is, frankly, yawn. Using the word "cunt" does not make a person daring >and/or "literary". > >Dodie > >p.s. I'll share with you something I found on the web, a synopsis of an >"amateur" porn video by "Kim and Dawn." Reformat it with a few elipses and >we can call this "literary" too: > >>Kim And Dawn >> >> >>30 Minutes >> >> >> >>These two are best friends who decided to do a video together. This is >>real amateur video shot in a >>bedroom with a handheld camera, so you know what your getting before you >>buy it. But along with >>some camera shake noise as the cameraman moves around, you get to watch >>the girls next door >>playing all their reindeer games. >> >>While I would doubt that this is the first time either of these girls has >>found themselves face to face >>with a wet pussy, I would guess that they are primarily straight and just >>experimenting. Cool, huh >>and we get to watch. >> >>Both of these brunettes are young and attractive and look like a couple of >>young women who you >>would have followed out of a mall except that instead of climbing in their >>car and driving out of >>your fantasy, they fulfilled it for you =8A except you didn't get to join = in. >> >>Kim is a big buxom girl with a really pretty face and Dawn has really cute >>perky boobs and a round >>ass. Laying naked in bed, they both look good enough to eat, and both >>enjoy a little snack. I was >>feeling particularly insightful watching this video and I think that Dawn >>is the more experienced and >>Kim is just a little more hesitant about this whole proposition. >> >>After a little hugging and a quick stop at Kim's fairly irresistible tits, >>Dawn takes a trip down to >>Kim's Love Canal and pokes around with her tongue before they break out a >>vibrator that's seems >>like a cross between a mixmaster and a helicopter, but from the girls >>reaction it seems to get the job >>done. >> >>When Dawn goes down on her the second time, Kim is much more relaxed and >>rubbing her clit >>while Dawn plays with her pussy hole. She obviously likes that pussy >>eating stuff and when she >>lays back for Kim to have a little snatch snack she's wet and ready. >> >>Kimmy gives her a pretty good tongue lashing and the cameraman is right >>there bringing us the >>action and then they fire up the old remote control vibrator and Kim works >>the hole while Dawn >>keeps the controls. >> >>No theatrics or cataclysmic orgasms here, in fact the girls sometimes look >>a little and out of >>position, but they have fun. They promise more at the end of the video, it >>will be great to watch >>them find explore and learn each others hot spots. Oh, yes=8A I hope Kim a= nd >>Dawn stay very good >>friends for a very long time! >> >>Commercial Amateur >> >> >> >> >>Back to Reviews >> >> >> >>If you find a bad link, tell me! Updated 21 April 96 Webmaster >> Throughout all of the dinner and the sex I ws forced, also by myself, to watch, I was wearing the red lipstick that my mother had worn. My mother always walked around her house naked, touching her own body. She wore her menstrual blood on her mouth. In her house there were no men, for my father had left her before I was born. Since I never knew you, every man I fuuck is you, Daddy. Every cock goes into my cunt which, since I never knew you, is a river named Cocytus. I said that I'm only going to tell the truth: When you, Cock of all Cocks, you, the only lay in the world, and I know for I'm supposed to live, not die, for sex, when you took a leave of absence ejaculated disappeared skipped out and vanished before I was born, you threw me, and I hadn't been born, into even another world. p.15, KATHY ACKER, PUSSY, KING OF THE PIRATES published by GROVE PRESS THE CUNT transported the valise, the vault, and its brown poodle Mistaflur to the New York Hilton hotel. When the New York Hilton hotel refused to accept its expired Master Charge card, THE CUNT slipped them a bad check. THE CUNT told the New York Hilton hotel it wasn't sure how many nights it planned to stay there; it would pay in advance for two nights. At noon THE CUNT walked the half block to THE CUNT its mother's hotel. It balanced THE CUNT its mother's bankbooks. THE CUNT was speedier and more agitated than usual. The next day THE CUNT boarded its poodle on 51st street off Third Avenue. THE CUNT told THE CUNT receptionist it'd pick up Mistaflur on the Tuesday after the upcoming Christmas. THE CUNT had no one thing. THE CUNT had no more time no more space. But THE CUNT had itself. In the hotel room THE CUNT ate down all its Librium and died. p.119, 120 , kathy acker, hannibal lechter, my fa= ther (published by SEMIOTEXT(E) =46ROM AN INTERVIEW WITH ACKER; LOTRINGER: But you wouldn't expect them to take it so literally? ACKER: Oh it was pretty absurd there. At a certain point it's hard to play with it. You can't say anything to them, you just giggle (pause). Most people think I'm much harder than I am. ACKER: The body's so rich, who's controlling it? It's like text. When you write, are you controlling a text? When you're really writing you're not, you're fucking with it. And I'd say the same thing with body-building when you're going through that pain. What you do, when you body-build, is work to failure. chapter three she sat so still on her bed. was she still there? where was there? was she inside outdide? was she breathing vomiting? was she eating crying? was she there at all? back there here mostly there even moreso here there now she sat so still so fucking still on her bed the white the white the white sheets. yes good. the white curtains. the red mirror. the white sky. the pale blue walls pale pink walls. pale blue pale pink whatever. cotton candy babies mouths fist indented leaving yellow stain s colored walls. surrounding her bed. except for this window. this shy. pale blue. white. she flew. she could be sure both cars had left. she crawled under the bed. she dug and dug. grating her nails. pink. in the corner into the hard wood. into her skin. her wood in her flesh in her flesh the wood. bury. burrow. find a place. dig. dig. digging. she realized she would fall to the basement through the ceiling to the basement through this hole she might create might she create anything did her small pinks leave any mark and shavings any crawlings onto into the floor? could she get into the floor get into the wall get into belly chapter four later, hey, was that some one speaking to her? were those lips moving murmuring in her direction? did that voice go with those lips pale red moving in her direction? what were they saying what did they want to know? he was he was looking at her? "hey, pretty girl, do you know how to get to the lake from here?", said brown haired guy to her. his lips were were moving in her direction those pale reds speaking to her speaking to her he saw her her saw to her her flesh he saw her flesh she was flesh to him did she know how to get to the lake ? did she ? the lake. the lake. lake. water. never enough. never enough. water. to drown in. she moved her head up and down. once up once once down. lash up. lash down. gone. he motioned for her to get into the car to show him yes show him how to get to the lake. she pointed the direction with her fingers. she was not her body. remember baby. my baby. my pussy cum laude. you are there for men to fuck you whenever they want. she remembered his lectures at the kitchen table and fucked brown haired boy fucked him hard and good. vomited. walked. she was not her body. lash up. lash down. gone. chapter five and no one suspected any different. kim dawn i don't care if you consider my stuff 'literary' or not. in fact, i'd prefer if you didn't. i'd rather be on the side of schmuck writing, of pornographic prose (yes, i think this(the 'pornographic text you submitted) qualifies to be respected on the same level as whatever you might consider 'literary'. using words like cunt fucker pussy etc are not about shock value they are about claiming words you've been called in the streets in homes wherever to re-direct their power. they are one of the ways to acknowledge the body as text the text as body. i wonder if you would also consider ackers texts to be non-literary. how about karen finley, nicole brossard, henry miller, anais nin, kiss & tell collective, daphne marlat, annie sprinkle, diamanda galas's texts to be non-literary. whatever that means. c'mon brossard lover put your favorite cunt poetry out there---------- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 22:06:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: hello poetics! let's tell the truth Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I've only been to the US Open once, but my understanding is there's a main match, and then there's a second match going on the next court. Actually, I got to see Ille Nastase, which was most excellent. At any rate, (oh and McEnroe too, I think) has anybody else on the list had a chance to read parts of Alice Notley's two recent mss.s, "Disobedience" and "Mysteries of Small Houses"? I have to say I really like these two revisitings of earlier Notley styles (Disobedience seems to me to have something to do with "Second Unborn Baby" and "Alice Ordered Me", while "Mysteries" has the plangent narrative stuff from "At Night" and "Sorrento" and the other prosy narratives of life on the l.e.s). I guess this is the part where I plug for "Proliferations", the bicoastal magazine the one issue of which I've seen rocked my world into words (surprised to see Mary Sidney using that old chestnut, words/worlds -- why do they say "old chestnut"? Do the readers of this list have antique furniture? or do new woods hold their clothes -- desperate for a new topic). Notley's in it, so is the prime tenant, Laird Hunt, with some fine poems for a prosist. The sturdy John Byrum is there (Prol. 3) and cetera. Fan for life, Jordan PS I have the same summer reading list as last year, so I'm too ashamed to ask what everybody else is reading. (La Yogurt costs more at the Open than it does at the airport) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 20:16:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Alexander Subject: paper Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" dear poetics I know there are a few people who make books on this poetics list, so I thought I'd send this information. A litho printer in Tucson is currently going out of business and I've come across several hundred sheets of paper which I can make available to people for a little over half the price of what it would cost from Daniel Smith, plus shipping -- but I'd rather sell it in batches of 100 or more, but perhaps 50 would be OK. It's all Arches cover, in white or cream or buff. There are two sizes, 22 x 30, and 31 x 47. This is fine art paper, and the smaller sheets, available in cream and buff, are available for $1.50 per sheet, less if anyone wants as many as 200. This compares to $2.50 or so per sheet from discount distributors. The larger sheets are $4.00 per sheet -- that compares to $6.50 or more from discount distributors. So, if you do letterpress printing, or relief or intaglio printmaking of any kind, it's quite a deal. If anyone is interested please e-mail me directly at chax@theriver.com and we can make some kind of arrangement. thanks, charles alexander chax press :: alexander writing/design/publishing books by artists' hands :: web sites built with care and vision handmade and trade editions of contemporary innovative writing chax@theriver.com :: http://personal.riverusers.com/~chax/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 23:56:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: appropriateness / or not Comments: cc: Joseph Duemer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Joseph Duemer suitably asks, > What do we mean (he said in a non-accusatory tone) when we say that > something has literary intent? Does that mean if you insult > somebody's sister in a poem you haven't really insulted her? This > certainly wasn't the aesthetic of Catullus, or other ancients. Is > this (God help me I'm going to use a critical term coined by TS > Eliot!) a dissociation of sensibility? probably it is (though frankly I've not read the Eliot to know more fully his sense of the phrase) -- You'll note, I meanwhile posted my "oops" apology (crossing electronic paths, I think, with Dodie's from the other coast) -- in brief: this isn't a debate I'm well suited to; I (again) rescind / withdraw the gratuitous comparison w/ Dodie B.'s writing. By "literary intent" I may've had in mind (for one thing) ways in which I've found it possible to appreciate, or approach an appreciation of (say) Karen Finley . . . must say I've not much managed to muster a kindred appreciation for Kathy Acker's voluminous work, nor for Ms. Sprinkle (whom my old friend Diane Torr used to speak well of, but it was beyond me to quite grasp why). Diamanda Galas is another matter -- so formidable a musician, articulate in the service of (it seemed) such psychic darkness, an almost "pure" nihilism . . . & an always troubling paradox -- (poss. akin to) Celine country, so to say . . . If I meant anything, it was maybe this: it was my impression that Kim Dawn was using the particular occasion of Jay's post as a point of departure for her own tangled language excursion, rather than as a literal / personal (or diologically-per-se meaningful) response to the writer and his stated meanings -- a procedure a bit thin on what, according to many sensibilities (mine included), would seem basic courtesy; -- but the generalized anguish & emoting & urgency & whatnot seemed (certainly) more typical or indicative of a response to "the world at large" than to the person to whom it was nominally addressed, the utterance to which it was ostensibly responding. Catallus was literally spiteful & literarily clever, quite true. I've no idea if Kim's point was to convey spite (or any other personal emotion); -- when I tossed out that parenthetical, I guess my notion was, that I thought it wasn't: she seemed too absorbed in her own riff to allow one to read it as anything but a riff -- could have as easily taken up any utterance surfacing from any media. Am a bit surprised that Kim quotes that entire porn-video-text without comment on the issue of its suggested attribution (on stylistic grounds, it's dissimilar? -- if Kim had nothing to do with it, one shouldn't mind her pointing that out . . .) but enough; this isn't terrain I can survey with much sense of useful purpose. Suffice, then, to say your point's acknowledged. regarde d.i. . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > 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: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 21:37:14 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: appropriateness & current genetic theory In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 9:14 PM -0400 6/13/97, Kim Dawn wrote: >i wonder if you would also consider ackers texts to be non-literary. how >about karen finley, nicole brossard, henry miller, anais nin, kiss & tell >collective, daphne marlat, annie sprinkle, diamanda galas's texts to be >non-literary. whatever that means. >c'mon brossard lover put your favorite cunt poetry out there If you think your affensive and aggressive message to Jay Schwartz is on par with the above, you *are* delusional. There is a big difference between a literary space and open forums and human interactions--and between putting your sexual writings out there in a space where people can view them if they choose--as opposed to flaunting them before a captive audience as is here. You quote Acker extensively--having been around her here when she lived in San Francisco, there is a big difference between her stage presence and her social presence--sorry, but she simply doesn't talk dirty and flaunt herself in public. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 00:38:21 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: Re: appropriateness & current genetic theory Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" My children were about six when they learned the power power of assertions followed by an immediate negationn. tom bell At 09:02 PM 6/13/97 -0400, you wrote: >David Israel wrote: >"(For instance, I understood Kim's writings to be >decidedly literary in intention --" > >What do we mean (he said in a non-accusatory tone) when we say that >something has literary intent? Does that mean if you insult somebody's >sister in a poem you haven't really insulted her? This certainly wasn't >the aesthetic of Catullus, or other ancients. Is this (God help me I'm >going to use a critical term coined by TS Eliot!) a dissociation of >sensibility? >_____________________________ >Joseph Duemer >School of Liberal Arts >Clarkson University >Potsdam NY 13699 >Phone: 315-262-2466 >Fax: 315-268-3983 >duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu >_____________________________ > >"Art cannot be tamed, although our responses to it can be . . ." > -Jeanette Winterson > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 00:54:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Peter Ganick Subject: Re: kdawn's postings controversy--- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" hi buffalo-l's----- not considering the question of the appropriateness or inappropriateness of kdawn's posting creative writing to a discussion-of-creative-writing mailing list, i think we can all recognize a great, and avant- garde, writing talent behind the words on your screens whenever she fills them with her inspired writings---- i think she has a great future in contemporary literature----- out----- peter ganick ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 00:47:41 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: bye bye The great Mouth himself is making a decision to "set nomail" for awhile. This has happened before and hasn't lasted very long, and history will probably repeat itself. I'm just tired of the vulgarity and the endless vain boring breathings which are painful because they mirror the excruciating pettiness of my own bad breath. I'm sure I'll be back to lurk soon enough. Maybe we'll be talking about poetry again at some point. I like humor and all that but literary pornography seems like the most pathetic thing possible, worse than short stories any day, Jordan. "This makes it possible for people to write so-called works of science (which from time to time are, in fact, scientific) that are totally obscene and according to which one can interpret (usually without any critical basis) past as well as present artists and writers in a degrading way, like at the "Cafe Brasileira" in Chiado, administering psychic masturbation to the huge net of onanism that seems to constitute the civilized mentality". - from a letter of Fernando Pessoa [on Freud's influence], 12.11.1931 - translated by Susan Brown. from a selection of letters of Pessoa in _alea_ #5 [which are absolutely riveting]. _alea_, PO Box 104, Prince St Station, New York, NY 10012-0001 $8.95 per issue. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 22:13:54 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: Re: Word is saving poems from sleeping through sex Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" my own personal favorite (w Word): running a spellcheck on some document I was solemnly informed: ASSHOLE NOT FOUND. (and then there was my favorite fortune cookie (I swear): NEVER LOOK A GIFTED HORSE IN THE MOUTH Tenney At 11:18 AM 6/13/97 -0400, you wrote: >this reminds me of how funny WORD the word-processing software is. if you >have the letters zzzz in a document and run the spell check the only word >WORD can imagine you're trying to spell is sex. > >Don > >>> Word is saving poems >>> >>> Such a warm and pleasant feeling, to know that Word is so benevolent. >>> I have been trying for many years to save poems, and this feeling of >>> companionship in the endeavor is so pleasant.... Are others able to >>> help out with the implications of this message? >>> >>> Hank Lazer > > >=================================== >Don Cheney San Diego, CA, USA >http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5791 >doncheney@geocities.com >=================================== > > ---------------------------------------------------------- tenney nathanson tenney@azstarnet.com nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 19:49:21 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: ministry of inappropriate writings I logged on this morning and when I came back with the coffee my inbox looked like this: (name) Inappropriate... (name) Inappropriate... (name) Inappropriate... (name) Inappropriate... (name) Inappropriate... (name) Inappropriate... The whole affair looks (perhaps wonderfully) like something the Monte Python Circus would do were it still on the tube: Ministry of Inappropriate Writings, Listserv Division. [John Cleese is seen behind a large desk, behind him a Thatcher collector plate on the wall, his name placard reads Cecil Twattle, enter Michael Palin] MP: Hello, Mr. Twattle? Listserv Division? JC: Yes, can I help you? MP: I have something you might be interested in. It's quite inappropriate, I think. JC: Ah, very well...uh...proceed. MP: (ahem-hmm)....NIPPLES! JC: [pause, blank stare] Well, that seems more FOPPISH than inappropriate now doesn't it? MP: [visibly disappointed] Oh, really? JC: Yes, I'm afraid so. I'm terribly sorry. We must maintain standards you understand... MP: Yes, yes, of course. JC: The Ministry of Foppish Displays is two doors further along. They don't have a Listserv Division I'm afraid, but do try "Captains of Industry." MP: I certainly will, thank you so much. JC: Not at all... ---------- From: Judy Roitman[SMTP:roitman@MATH.UKANS.EDU] Sent: Saturday, June 14, 1997 4:30 AM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: Inappropriate postings Has anyone else noticed the large quantity of postings on this topic, much larger than most topics get? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 23:04:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Reiner Subject: so long Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Geez, if you can't tell a joke around here, I'm gone. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 22:48:15 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: re : so long Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Gee, Chris, when I spotted your subject header, I thought Bowering had resurfaced & was about to confide something inappropriate to us. David ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 02:34:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Rob Hardin Subject: Re: Inappropriate postings and bodily fluids: messy, messy, messy In-Reply-To: <199706140401.AAA03015@york.interport.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Standard Schaefer wrote: >I wasn't going to add any more pointless posts, but the beating Jay received >makes me also want to let him, as well as his enemies, know that I agree with >his position. The excessive silliness of many of these posts keeps me from >being any more active on the board, as Mark Presjnar seems to feel as well. Oh. Oh I see. Bondage jokes are preventing you from being more active. Had I known words could bind people physically, I might have saved a pretty pfennig at Richard Strauss's All-Ulenspiegel Boutique. "Excessive silliness?" Is there really such a thing in an academic context? What do you think Frank O'Hara might have said to Jay's attempt to purge a few stray threads of pithy wit in order to make room for certain awkwardly written, sprawling letters that purport to address theory but endlessly reiterate the same so-called outsider positions without using consistent critical terms or even inspired language? For me, there are enough useful books of theory to read without having to porrrre over someone's semantic ellipses. Even so, I would never tell anyone here to stop posting simply because I was annoyed. I can't even be certain I'm right about the apparent lack of inspiration: Quoth Montaigne, "What do I know?" These people like to read one another and it's none of my business. (Besides--since O'Hara himself was capable of running off at the mouth, it's possible he might have defended the theoretical rambling *as well* as the bondage patter. And perhaps the ellipses are a necessary stage that leads to more fertile formulations.) Just so, I happen to find the whole notion of bondage inextricably interwoven with the notion of poetic form. "I load myself down with chains and then I try to get out of them," Austin C wrote of his poetic objective. "I limit myself in order to free myself," Stravinsky wrote in his treatise on musical poetics. "Men in tights--physically and mentally, but mostly physically," a studio boar lectured to the ideologically- encumbered Barton Fink. Consider an exchange of bondage jokes to be a set of poetic variations-- an occasion for wordplay--without self-importance--for the sculpting of a single idee fixe. Consider, for example, this example: *No praise for pain*, my mistress cries, *no hope on Hell's horizon. Who lives for beauty, I despise, who loves me, I imprison*. Variation 1. The elegance of earlier days? No praise. The cerebration of her slain? For pain. As red escutcheons stain her thighs, my mistress cries. She scales the summit of my slope: No hope above the plain which bones bedizen: *horizon*. No damned despoiler seeks reprieves-- Who lives? My mistress' heart reserves its pity For beauty. Her spleen destroys the centuries I despise. My soul is vile, and none forgives me Who loves me. The resurrected keeper, God arisen, I imprison. etc, etc. __________By the way:______________________________ I don't mean to imply that Jay or Standard complained in an uncivil manner. But neither did Jay "take a beating," nor were any animals harmed in the making of Kim Dawn's verses. I am certainly in favor of maintaining a civil tone. But I find the idea of censoring bondage jokes untenable and, frankly, Victorian in the worst sense of the word. (Now back to my endless re-reading of both Hans Ewers's _Alraune_ and The Historical Manual of English Physical Interrogation Techniques. (You can thank me later for refusing to mention Swinburne.)) All Best Always, Rob Hardin ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 05:01:26 -0400 Reply-To: Kali Tal Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kali Tal Subject: Reading Kim Dawn.... In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Dodie wrote: >The only time I've seen behavior as bad as KD's is when professional >flamers invaded a newsgroup I read. This, to me, is similarly, >provocation for provocation's sake--definitely something fishy here. I haven't seen anything "bad" in Kim Dawn's behavior, except maybe the kind of bad found in "bad girls," which is, as I read it, exactly the kind of female person(a) Kim is portraying. "Professional flamers" is the sort of phrase that triggers an association--at least for me--with "outside communist agitators," and, indeed, I get the sense that in Dodie's estimation, and in the estimation of some others, Kim Dawn is not a "real poet" but some kind of poet-pretender who is passing off "sub-literary" stuff (comparable to ["bad" as in "evil"] commercial porn propaganda) on Our Beloved Poetics List. I'm also put off by Dodie's later attempt to undermine Kim Dawn's *author*ity by attempting to cast doubt upon her claim to be female. (Does it actually matter if KD is female? How would we revise our interpretation if she were a he?) In the last post that I read, Dodie claimed that even Kathy Acker had the virtue of knowing better than to "talk dirty and flaunt herself in public." (She also called KD "delusional" which--arguments about access to intention/meaning aside--seems to me "flame-bait" of the boldest sort, a direct ad hominem attack.) I don't know Dodie and I don't know Kim Dawn so I don't claim any insight into anyone's intent, though it's easy to surmise that whatever KD is doing, it's pushing Dodie's buttons. To me, Kim's poems read like a deliberate and quick enactment of what she might have imagined to be the Jay-that-she-read's worst nightmare; in short, she took his complaint, inverted it, and turned the volume up to 11. This is an interesting and valid literary device (easily read as satire) and exactly the sort of play one might (and I surely do) expect from a (virtual) room stuffed to the rafters with poets. Dodie's responses read--to me--like an admonishment to a wayward girl-child who has not mastered the art of acting like a Lady. Since I have less interest, perhaps even than Kim, in Ladylike behavior my sympathies tend to lie with the bad girls. Unlike Eliza, I didn't find anything scary or weird in Kim Dawn's poems since I read them as quite clear transgressions of "acceptable" boundaries penned for the purpose of forcing us to contemplate those boundaries. Nor did I find the poems overly "personal" since it never occurred to me that they represented *Kim Dawn's* feelings/thoughts; I assumed that the voice was that of a character in a poem by Kim Dawn. If the point was to create the impression of a "real" transgression to poke fun at Jay's discomfort at the very mild bondage evocations in the ongoing conversation, then I think that Kim Dawn has been successful even to the point of creating a controversy in which people are beginning to choose sides. And even upon re-examination, I don't find anything threatening in Kim Dawn's poetry. Perhaps I shall draw the heat of flame onto myownself here, but I feel that there's a world of difference between a woman's threat to castrate a man (literally or figuratively) and a man's threat to, say, rape a woman or "cut her nipples off." Castration (or rape or sexual abuse) of adult males *by women* in this culture is so rare that a pathetic character like Lorena Bobbitt becomes a national sensation, while violence against women by men is the rule rather than the rare exception and barely worth a nod in the evening news unless the woman is dead and the killer has found some new and fascinating way to cut up her corpse. Jay may have suffered dis-ease at being the proximate target of an attack on gender role stereotypes and prescribed social boundaries, but I would be surprised to hear that he suffered honest fear for his person in the process. If he was psychically hurt, I am sorry, but it seems to me that when you poke your hose (what a lovely typo, that should have been "nose") out in public in the form of a critical text, you ought to expect to draw some heat and, when it comes, just be ready to throw hands along with everyone else. There were surely less confrontational ways for Jay to introduce the issue that concerned him; I think Kim Dawn merely called him and raised him far enough to give him pause and, perhaps, make the rest of us think about our own stake in this game. Kali ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 07:32:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Susan Wheeler Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 12 Jun 1997 to 13 Jun 1997 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >desperate for a new topic). >Jordan > >PS I have the same summer reading list as last year, so I'm too ashamed to >ask what everybody else is reading. > I'd be grateful for recommendations of texts that discuss aspects of poetic lineage -- either focusing on individual poets and their adopted forebears or on the nature of this construction: how we inherit/construct our affinities and dominant sources (via pedagogy, etc.). Many thanks in advance. Have been plowing through a number of recent translations for a couple of reviews -- Breton, Deluy, Valery, Eluard, du Bouchet, Alferi, Fourcade, Jaccottet. Ace. Can't remember what was on your list last year, Jordan -- care to share again? V Susan Wheeler wheeler@is.nyu.edu voice/fax (212) 254-3984 ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 07:38:01 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: poetic lineage there is interesting book by david kalstone, can't remember title right now but it is about four poets -- lowell, bishop, moore and someone else, and nice work tracing moore/bishop exchange of influence, and bishop/lowell exchange. please, no one mention "The Anxiety of Influence," please... e ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 07:58:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: poetic lineage / influence MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT From: Eliza McGrand -- > there is interesting book by david kalstone, can't remember title > right now but it is about four poets -- lowell, bishop, moore and > someone else, and nice work tracing moore/bishop exchange of > influence, and bishop/lowell exchange. > > please, no one mention "The Anxiety of Influence," please... okay, deal. I've been (on some level of thinking) interested in influence / lineage with Robert Graves & W.S. Merwin -- though don't know that this is much considered (written about) as such, in whatever Merwin-crit as exists. Here's one reference of poss interest to Jordon: an essay about Sylvia Plath in the New York Review of Books, written by James Fenton. Among other things, Fenton contrasts Plath's (constructed) sense of lineage (which he opines amounts to her sense of herself as a woman-poet) with that of Moore & Bishop. (Hmm -- was it a matter of influence? - or a matter of whom [historically] she felt she was competing with? -- pardon there, E) Anyway, the essay appeared in a recent issue -- perhaps about 6 or so weeks ago (?). Title: "Sylvia Plath -- Priestess" or something along those lines. best, d.i. . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > 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: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 07:58:13 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: Reading Kim Dawn MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm a little hesitant to venture yet again into this war that seems to be trying to start, but I wanted to award a large yes to Kali Tal's highly sensible posting--and a somersaulting yes to Daniel Tessitore's Ministry of Inappropriateness. (And a surprised Good Grief to Henry's withdrawel.) --Bob G ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 09:07:40 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: summer reading Comments: To: Susan Wheeler In-Reply-To: <9706141132.AA03813@is.nyu.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi Susan- I've been hoping someone would open the topic of summer reading lists. One day recently I was thinking of Benjamin's wonderful essay "Unpacking My Library" (in Illuminations) and I dragged out the huge pile of books I delusionally consider to be my current reading with the intention of listing some of them here. Fortunately for all of you I became fascinated by the Kim Dawn-Jay Schwartz potlatch and never got around to it. Anyway, I wanted to mention a book I think qualifies as being about "poetic lineage". The book is "Textual Politics and the Language Poets" by George Hartley published in 1989 by Indiana University Press. Back in the middle to late 80's George interviewed a number of so-called language poets and then wrote some interestingly dense and complex essays about them. The first essay in the book is titled "endless PROTEANL inkages" Language Poetry and the Avant-Garde Tradition. He mentions Khlebnikov, Stein, WCW, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Breton, Tzara, Olson, Ashbery, Emily Dickinson, Jackson Mac Low, Duchamp, Zukofsky, and many others. By the way, the book includes a whole chapter on "Jameson's Perelman" in which he discusses in detail why he believes Jameson is(incorrectly) confusing poetic language with schizophrenic speech. Nick P. On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, Susan Wheeler wrote: > >desperate for a new topic). > >Jordan > > > >PS I have the same summer reading list as last year, so I'm too ashamed to > >ask what everybody else is reading. > > > I'd be grateful for recommendations of texts that discuss aspects of poetic > lineage -- either focusing on individual poets and their adopted forebears > or on the nature of this construction: how we inherit/construct our > affinities and dominant sources (via pedagogy, etc.). Many thanks in advance. > > Have been plowing through a number of recent translations for a couple of > reviews -- Breton, Deluy, Valery, Eluard, du Bouchet, Alferi, Fourcade, > Jaccottet. Ace. Can't remember what was on your list last year, Jordan -- > care to share again? > > V > > Susan Wheeler > wheeler@is.nyu.edu > voice/fax (212) 254-3984 > > > ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 08:59:10 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: inappropriate posts and flames and support MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Maria Damon wrote: > > okay, so i fell for something inappropriate. i guess i need to work on my > "boundaries." i found neither jay's nor kim dawn's posts inappropriate or > offensive, but if you ask me, hoa, how i would feel about some guy posting > something about wanting to snip off my nipples i of course must say i would > be totally weirded out. at the same time i'm not weirded out by bromige and > bowering (the latter of whom i've never met) trading silliness and invoking > my name to do it, though i must admit if one of them stepped over a line > i'd be freaked out. maybe i hven't been as tuned in as i should be. oh > well. where am I? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 09:57:00 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Diamanda Galas In-Reply-To: <199706140356.XAA25924@radagast.wizard.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII David I. or anybody in the know, p'raps you could backchannel me with a short discography of la Galas? Always been interested, never able to find her stuff. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 10:00:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Re: poetic lineage In-Reply-To: <199706141138.HAA07461@toast.ai.mit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The Kalstone Bishop/Lowell/Moore book is called /Becoming A Poet./ I always wondered why the singular, except that /Becoming Several Poets/ would sound funny. Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 10:11:52 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: Okudzhava and Aygi In-Reply-To: <199706132010.QAA06486@toast.ai.mit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Today's /NY Times/--are we all getting at least the same obits?--made mention of the death of Bulat Okudzhava, a Russian dissident poet. The obit writer grouped him with Yevtushenko and Akhmadulina, and called them Russia's "beat" movement. I always get suspicious of attempts to compare cultural phenomena like that--"Jell-O is the 'Pavlova' of the US!"--but I'd be interested in knowing more about this poet, like specifically if anything of his is available in translation. Also got hold of a book of poems by Gennady Aygi, a poet of the Chuvash ethnic/linguistic minority--Russian was actually his second language; Pasternak is supposed to have gotten him writing in Russian. The English versions struck me as being more like translator's literal cribs than finished poems in English--but they still seemed interesting; I got the sense that his work was considered formally disruptive in several ways. Anybody know more about either of these two, even enough to contextualize? bests Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 07:05:23 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: not tuned in, Maria? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Turned on, though. And please don't drop out. David ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 10:51:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: summer reading In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII By the way, the George Hartley book Textual Politics and the Language Poets is still in print at $22.50 (ISBN 0-253-32716-4) Nick P. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 11:52:18 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: appropriate ice cream Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" pam, don't know who authored that tune (don't have the disc on-hand), but it was back when david lee roth was lead vocalist... "i'm your ice cream man" etc... somebody around here can fill in the blanks, i hope... steve, a creamsicle?... that makes three creamsicle votes (two backchannel)... something about creamsicles, i'll tell ya... still pining for my popsicle... my orange popsicle... anyone know that tune with the line "popsicle toes"?... re appropriate/in: there *are* no inappropriate posts, actually, not even posts that claim there are inappropriate posts... the word "inappropriate," to be a bit picky for a sec, is, as rob hardin suggests and kali unpacks, almost victorian in its implications ("unfitting," "unsuitable," etc)... i think in fact it's an inappropriate choice of terms... er... on the other hand, perhaps "inappropriate" is perfectly appropriate, b/c in fact the more whimsical posts (as well as kim's) deform the list boundaries a bit in attempting to find a 'fit'... which would suggest the need for more inappropriate posts, albeit we'll probably not all be in agreement as to what fits well... and hey, i really don't see (AT ALL) a threat to our collective capacity for discussing "germane" topics (as in "appropariate and relevent")... that said, i'm not about to argue that kim's performance (as such) isn't or couldn't be offensive... kim, to tu: i think there is a lapse of irony (if you will) twixt a publication by acker or yourself and your entrance (en-trance) into these spaces---to draw but one distinction twixt 'publishing' yourself hereabouts and addressing somebody [he sez]... and a parallel lapse effected in effect by jay schwartz (jay, to tu now)---it is provocative in a rather obnoxious way [he sez] to enter into a list space in which you haven't been all that active and ask those who have (for some *years* now) to be somehow more 'appropriate'... albeit when you writ 'at [your] snootiest' or some such i did feel a certain mitigating effect, like, why bother?... but again---you're free to post same, as i've been free to pretty much ignore your provocation (till my public popsicle urge, that is)... of course there are posts that cross 'the line,' and kim's post does perhaps blur 'the line' some, offering b/c of its occasion, and depending upon interpretation, a certain quotient of verbal abuse, as dodie indicates... but it's up to our listowner to decide, ultimately, whether, based perhaps on everybody's opine, there is actual threat, actual hate, etc---he's the only one with the actual power to prevent somebody from subbing to this list (it's a tall order, but i'm sure charles is up to it!)... anyway, i think it's clear (based on all of these posts) that the performative has in this case been self-regulating... kim's post struck me, as it did eliza, as a bit weird primarily b/c of its occasion---but this is no vote against same as such... i did not sense actual threat or hate, even if i can say outright that it's not my, uhm, style, simply b/c the taunting factor (again, in this context) i found a bit much... i don't think the discussion then is about literary porno, exactly... rather more to do, again and again and again, with how we come to this sort of engagement... and to say it the best i can, it's at best an idiosyncratic affair... me, i'm wedded [sic] to the idea that 'we' *are* about possibilities, about finding ways to learn from one another... but learning, yknow, can raise anxieties... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 11:37:51 -0400 Reply-To: "Thomas M. Orange" Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: appropriateness of tangled language excursions In-Reply-To: <199706140401.AAA16613@julian.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII jumping in a bit late on this, as the daily digest often forces us to do... kudos to david israel and kali tal for what strike me as the most cogent readings so far of this recent (in)appropriateness thread. by contrast, i find the suggestions that kim is a professional flame-thrower (we've seen them here before of course) or responsible for some made-for-download amateur porn video synopsis by/about "kim and dawn" (dodie, how/where did you find this??) -- these notions strike me as being quite far afield, even bordering on the conspiracy-theoried. granted, this medium throws writing and its intentions into all kinds of circumspections; boundaries and terrains in a community such as this take time and effort to discern -- especially when someone new and with whose writing we are unfamiliar begins posting. this to me was the important point in jay's complaint -- that exclusive conversations (whether about light bondage or anything else) can inhibit potential posters from feeling like their writing will be paid any attention. still, kim's writing is not abt shocking for its own sake, offending strangers, or literariness. while paying attention to the appropriateness of *some* of her language we've overlooked some as well -- the "riffing" (as d.i. puts it) on "Word is saving poems" etc... cheers, t. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 11:42:56 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: syllable. king and pin of versification. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII thoughts on olson's "projective verse" essay. i cant agree with his take on the syllable. not at all "the smallest particle of all." obviously the smallest particle is the phoneme or grapheme, but these by themselves can't carry any meaning-sense. by contrast the syllable is not pure enough, contains potentially too much phonemic/graphic material and meaning-sense. before i explain, i quote: it is by their syllables that words juxtapose in beauty, by these particles of sound as clearly as by the sense of the words which they compose. in any given instance, because there is a choice of words, the choice, if a man is in there, will be, spontaneously, the obedience of his ear to the syllables. the fineness, and the practice, lie here, at the minimum and source of speech. (selected writings 17-18) syllables are not the minimum and source, they have too much sound and sense superadded. take "bent." (taggart read one of his long poems at the zuk conference, cant remember the name but it came out before dodeka and is linked thematically and conceptually. had the phrase "bent simple" recurring and it stuck with me.) "bent" is just as much as syllable as "rent," but the initial consonants are ineluctably permeate with different sound and sense. here "ent" is the fundamental unit of poetic substance: sonically complete ("nt" is more or less unpronounceable, "e" almost equally so and too aspecific) and capable of being approached by a signifying intention (using a merleau-ponty concept). essentially, "ent" stands waiting to be complemented by a signifying intention that will weave it into a plastic poetic material, shapeable by the various potential sonic-semantic combinations: bent, relenting, entelechy, etc. now it gets trickier when you start talking graphemes. certainly "nt" carries weight in this sense, but again moreso than "e." and what about "meant"? a syllable in olson's sense, phonemically the same (minus the initial consonant) as "bent," but with a graphic diff'er*a*nce... musingly, t. ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 20:53:36 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 12 Jun 1997 to 13 Jun 1997 Probably the list is already familiar with this, but my summer reading included From Outlaw To Classic, Alan Golding's account of the American tradition through the anthology. Very interesting. DT ---------- From: Susan Wheeler[SMTP:wheeler@IS.NYU.EDU] Sent: Saturday, June 14, 1997 8:32 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 12 Jun 1997 to 13 Jun 1997 >desperate for a new topic). >Jordan > >PS I have the same summer reading list as last year, so I'm too ashamed to >ask what everybody else is reading. > I'd be grateful for recommendations of texts that discuss aspects of poetic lineage -- either focusing on individual poets and their adopted forebears or on the nature of this construction: how we inherit/construct our affinities and dominant sources (via pedagogy, etc.). Many thanks in advance. Have been plowing through a number of recent translations for a couple of reviews -- Breton, Deluy, Valery, Eluard, du Bouchet, Alferi, Fourcade, Jaccottet. Ace. Can't remember what was on your list last year, Jordan -- care to share again? V Susan Wheeler wheeler@is.nyu.edu voice/fax (212) 254-3984 ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 21:01:08 +-900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Tessitore Subject: Re: Diamanda Galas I had a copy of Galas' THE PLAGUE MASS, but returned it to its owner. I believe that was recorded live in a Cathedral/church in NYC, thugh I'm not sure. Yoko Ono meets Laurie Anderson meets Satan. Captivating to say the least. DT ---------- From: Gwyn McVay[SMTP:gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU] Sent: Saturday, June 14, 1997 10:57 PM To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU Subject: Diamanda Galas David I. or anybody in the know, p'raps you could backchannel me with a short discography of la Galas? Always been interested, never able to find her stuff. Gwyn begin 600 WINMAIL.DAT M>)\^(@H,`0:0" `$```````!``$``0>0!@`(````Y 0```````#H``$-@ 0` M`@````(``@`!!) &`%0!```!````# ````,``# #````"P`/#@`````"`?\/ M`0```%L`````````@2L?I+ZC$!F=;@#=`0]4`@````!50B!0;V5T:6-S(&1I MO%WO $>`' ``0```!,` M``!213H@1&EA;6%N9&$@1V%L87,```(!<0`!````%@````&\=_%Z=87-WNKD M+!'0B+-$15-4`````!X`'@P!````!0```%--5% `````'@`?# $````1```` M9&%N:65L0'1I=2YA8RYJ< `````#``802U]6F@,`!Q"\`0``'@`($ $```!E M````24A!1$%#3U!93T9'04Q!4U1(15!,04=514U!4U,L0E544D5455).141) M5%1/25133U=.15))0D5,2456151(051705-214-/4D1%1$Q)5D5)3D%#051( M141204PO0TA54D-(20`````"`0D0`0```/$"``#M`@``R00``$Q:1G52.%28 M_P`*`0\"%0*H!>L"@P!0`O()`@!C: K %_!:$-L!MP'] @`0N &X%#U2!0: F <@= +Q%P M"'!C$7 ADDY90QV0(#!U`FP$\D(" ' M@!' !"!,UF$(+=83#((<('=Y`Z!-8U8!*(!; M4TU44#IG!&UC)]!Y,4!/4P!&,2Y'354N1?A$55TN_S -!F ",#$_-S)+)Q$( M<&0H@!V02G4-'D @+# =D#$Y.3>1.F P.C4ZX%!--6\9, U4;S>O,DM03T4` M5$E#4T!,25. 5%-%4E8N03_0`34`0E5&1D%,3\I'9!P)R)0< 0@>0A@J1NA=6P;<&(`T&L1<7YN'D #( > (' > M@"+@8@_1/!9!V0'D @`$IA`F @$?\>P"P`)C *A2(@3H$>$ W0ORE-,Q(I7$<_ M+-<58C(2L! Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michel Delville Subject: Query - Abraham Lincoln Gillespie Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Dear listers: Could anybody backchannel me with the address of Abraham Lincoln Gillespie's literary estate? Thanks for your help. Michel Delville ------------------- Michel Delville English Department University of Li=E8ge 3, Place Cockerill 4000 LIEGE (BELGIUM) =20 Fax: ++ 32(0)4 366 57 21 e-mail: mdelville@ulg.ac.be ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 12:17:36 -0400 Reply-To: Kali Tal Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kali Tal Subject: Re: appropriate ice cream In-Reply-To: <199706141652.LAA21226@charlie.cns.iit.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII joe, i've got a recording of tom waits doing "ice cream man" on an album of his called _the early years_. don't have it on hand (i'm in l.a. right now), but he may be the author. if not, my guess would be it's an older blues/r&b tune, of the "hey, little girl" variety. waits' version is definitely nasty blues or an imitation thereof.... kali (rumors of my resurrection have been greatly exaggerated) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 12:28:52 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: Okudzhava and Aygi Comments: cc: gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" you can get a taste of Okudzhava's work in _Contemporary Russian Poetry_, ed./trans. Gerald Smith, Indiana U. 1993. i'm absolutely w/ you on the suspect cultural comparison; praps drawn frm his works circulating on cassette tape, & some imagined parallel w/ beat coffeehouse readings?? crazy, man, crazy... lbd >Today's /NY Times/--are we all getting at least the same obits?--made >mention of the death of Bulat Okudzhava, a Russian dissident poet. The >obit writer grouped him with Yevtushenko and Akhmadulina, and called them >Russia's "beat" movement. I always get suspicious of attempts to compare >cultural phenomena like that--"Jell-O is the 'Pavlova' of the US!"--but >I'd be interested in knowing more about this poet, like specifically if >anything of his is available in translation. > >Anybody know more about either of these two, even enough to contextualize? > >bests >Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 12:48:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: James Finnegan Subject: Re: POETICS Digest - 12 Jun 1997 to 13 Jun 1997 In a message dated 97-06-14 11:53:43 EDT, you write: >From Outlaw To Classic, Alan Golding's account of the American >tradition through the anthology. Very interesting. > > Dan-- Good choice--I liked it very much. The elaborate footnotes are wonderful, and the prose scholarly, yet clearheaded. Finnegan ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 12:21:29 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: not tuned in, Maria? In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 7:05 AM -0700 6/14/97, David Bromige wrote: > Turned on, though. And please don't drop out. David not intending to drop out at all, and Rachel, don't be going puhleez. i meant not tuned in to undercurrents of hostility and violence etc that others detected. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 11:04:20 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: Reading Kim Dawn.... Comments: To: Kali Tal In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Kali, I leave you and Kim to your orifaces. Enjoy them. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 15:15:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: appropriate ice cream (the cool down?) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" yo, thanx kali & linda, that's it i think... yeah, van halen musta electrified it some, as per... now it's gone and got chilly here in chicago, damn... orange popsicle on hold till it warms up again... /// joe ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 15:28:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: ms. non-provocateur Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" thanks tom, peter, kali and bob. very thoughtfully written. though i am engage in some of the perifies of this debate (especially the aspects of disembodied texts of e-mail, the boundaries, or, my lack of between public and private, the gender question (question of my gender), and the violence of text(s) buried, the body as text. received a copy of your book,dodie, with bob harrison entitled BROKEN ENGLISH. am really enjoying it and hope you don't leave the list. i hope a constructive discussion on this and other writing can occur. any interest in the body as text or the amnesiac (dis) embodied ; body ; writing? (like sylvia fraser's writing. who wrote and wrote, unaware at the time, as it all poured forth that her texts were actually her memory re-surfacing. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 15:31:37 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: syllable. king and pin of versification. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I agree with Thomas M. Orange that Olson was wrong in calling the syllable "the smallest particle of all." But for those of us in infra-verbal and visual poetry, the phoneme isn't the smallest particle, either. For instance, a lot of us have been working with the dot of the lower case i. jwcurry has a one-LETTER poem in which he replaces the dot of an i with a finger-print. I have a poem in which the i in "spring" has seven dots. In a variation in honor of Cummings's "just-spring," I spell "spring" without the body of its i, just its dot. Then there's my favorite poem, Aram Saroyan's "lighght," where an extra unvoiced phoneme carries all kinds of meaning-sense. And what about Joyce's "cropse" as a one-word summary of human existence? Certainly to us the phoneme or grapheme, and even smaller textual particles, can carry a great deal of "meaning-sense." --Bob G ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 15:07:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: hello poetics! let's tell the truth Comments: To: Jordan Davis MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Okay, I'll bite. But first, in a Cageian spirit, let me ask, what do we mean by a reading list, i.e., what do we hope to get out of them? What we do expect they'll do for us? Why do we feel compelled to keep them? Do reading lists become more important than the books themselves? I'll indulge in some confession and hope it strikes a chord: I have always been a great reader of bits. Bits and pieces. Bits and portions. I seldom read a book cover to cover, whether it's poetry or prose. Which is why I read so little fiction. All that tiresome linearity! ("The boy is quick, but he's got no application," I can hear Sister Concepta murmur, looking down on me from the towering height of 4'11" with a sad shake of her funereally coifed head). Whereas, if the writer's any good or has got something interesting to say, then dipping into, say, a critical work, at almost any point should yield the satisfactions I seek: stimulation of the intellect and bracing inventive language. More and more I find I'm only drawn to texts that bewilder me (in all senses of that word). If I'm not instantly at a loss, or bedazzled in some other way, then I'm unhooked: I move on. Of course my lack of application has always bothered me. Which is I why I was gratified to learn in Trelawny that Shelly had a similar attitude toward books. He had the uncanny gift for locating exactly what he wanted from a given text and when he'd read that bit, that piece or portion, he was through with the book. Boffo, said I. Still, the anxiety remains. And isn't that, finally, what we mean by a reading list? A diagram of our anxiety? Here's mine _this_ week. God only knows where I'll be next: Helene Cixous: Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing (skimming but it deserves better) John Cage: Silence (say what) Blanchot: The Writing of the Disaster (the text as hologram - made for me!) Kevin Killian: Shy (hi Kevin!) Edw. Dahlberg: Because I Was Flesh (a bedstand alternative of the month book) Henri Corbin: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi (hopeless) Kristeva: Black Sun (another skimmer) Harbormaster of Hong Kong (yo decibel!) Occasional forays into the prose of Beckett and Elizabeth Smart (_By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept_ : has anyone else read this? I may have to succumb and read all of it). Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Jordan Davis To: POETICS Subject: hello poetics! let's tell the truth Date: Friday, June 13, 1997 9:12PM Jordan PS I have the same summer reading list as last year, so I'm too ashamed to ask what everybody else is reading. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 13:09:19 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: ms. non-provocateur In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 3:28 PM -0400 6/14/97, Kim Dawn wrote: >(like sylvia fraser's writing. who wrote and wrote, unaware at the >time, as it all poured forth that her texts were actually her memory >re-surfacing. Obviously, Kim, your concerns are mine as well, but the poetics list is not a space where I feel comfortable discussing my opinions about female-centered issues. Like you I admire the work of Nicole Brossard--and who doesn't have a crush on Erin Moure? I'm not familar with Sylvia Fraser. She sounds interesting. Who is she? Where's her work available? Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 16:20:01 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Dowker Subject: The Alterran Poetry Assemblage - #2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ANNOUNCING: the second installment of (((((((((THE ALTERRAN POETRY ASSEMBLAGE))))))))) Featuring: Bob Perelman, David Dowker, David Hoefer, Adam Cornford, John Noto, Sheila Murphy, Charles Alexander, Nancy Dunlop, Matt Hill, Will Alexander, Andrew Joron, Drew Gardner, Peter Middleton, and Lisa Robertson. alterra@ican.net http://home.ican.net/~alterra/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 13:16:22 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Herb Levy Subject: Re: Diamanda Galas Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Gwyn - I'd divide Galas' work into three roughly chronological sections: the first (Wild Women with Steak Knives/Litanies of Satan & Panoptikon) are the most abstract; the middle (the various works in response to the AIDS crisis, Schrei X) are more direct; & the more recent pop/torch song collections (You Must be Certain of the Devil, The Singer, The Sporting Life) often seem self-parodistic. Needless to say, there are those who don't find her pop-ish stuff as silly as I do. Here's the URL for a Diamanda Galas Web site: >David I. or anybody in the know, p'raps you could backchannel me with a >short discography of la Galas? Always been interested, never able to find >her stuff. > >Gwyn Herb Levy herb@eskimo.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 16:28:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: Re: ms. non-provocateur Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >At 3:28 PM -0400 6/14/97, Kim Dawn wrote: >>(like sylvia fraser's writing. who wrote and wrote, unaware at the >>time, as it all poured forth that her texts were actually her memory >>re-surfacing. > >Obviously, Kim, your concerns are mine as well, but the poetics list is not >a space where I feel comfortable discussing my opinions about >female-centered issues. Like you I admire the work of Nicole Brossard--and >who doesn't have a crush on Erin Moure? > >I'm not familar with Sylvia Fraser. She sounds interesting. Who is she? >Where's her work available? > >Dodie i feel like someone just took the candy outta my mouth and i'm still sucking air. i know there are men on this list whom i know personally who love moure and brossard and marlat. so, maybe they wouldn't mind or would also be interested in engaging a dialogue concerning the body as text, this concerns men too, it would be really interesting if they joined in. mr. w, care to contribute?i'm reading the handbook of yours, treasuring it, really. i think the size is appropiate for the content. how did you and bob work on the text together? i'm glad you sent me a nice message. last night i cried upon reading my mail on my way out. so what. pain/pleasure/pleasure/pain. oh, sylvia fraser is this amazing woman i heard speak a few years ago in halifax, she was dressed in orange from head to toe, heels, tights, suit, lipstick, purse. she had a powerful presence. some of her books are: 'berlin solstice', 'my father's house',and 'pandora'. she wrote pandora and berlin solstice before she had any memory of her childhood. her memory seeped itself through into her writing. the books lulled her in and she couldn't stop even if she wanted to. i think you can probably find her stuff in most bookstores, and womens bookstores. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 16:43:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: syllable king and pin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII bob g: certainly infraverbovizpo is a whole different ballgame. an "i" with *seven* dots hmm. any of the stuff you mention (yrs, jwcurry, saroyan) on the light-and-dust site? will check. thanks, t. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 17:07:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: the latest baffler MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII does anyone know when the most recent issue of the baffler (#9) came out? just saw a copy at a newsstand this aft and am wondering if the mail is slow or if i've been extricated from the subscription loop. backchannel is fine. thanks, t. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 16:10:33 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: ms. non-provocateur In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i wd be fascinated by a discussion of female centered issues to the degree that we are comfortable w/ same. we have had some rather oblique discussions of "writing the body" before, but they've usually consisted of people recommending cixous et al to each other and not much further than that. i obviously don't want anyone to transgress her comfort level (her own, that is, not cixous's) and i don't know how much i'll be participating myself, since most of my deeply body centered and embodied-memory-driven days seem to be behind me (all i do now it seems is type and think about how much $$ i have to sock away if i want to do early retirement, that and a certain upcoming conference). i've enjoyed seeing new names (brossard is not a new name but as yet unread by me; moure is new to me, as is sylvia fraser i think, tho maybe my sister was reading my father's house last xmas) esp since i'm teaching my old fave course, weird books by women, and wd entertain a few new names on the syllabus.--md At 4:28 PM -0400 6/14/97, Kim Dawn wrote: >>At 3:28 PM -0400 6/14/97, Kim Dawn wrote: >>>(like sylvia fraser's writing. who wrote and wrote, unaware at the >>>time, as it all poured forth that her texts were actually her memory >>>re-surfacing. >> >>Obviously, Kim, your concerns are mine as well, but the poetics list is not >>a space where I feel comfortable discussing my opinions about >>female-centered issues. Like you I admire the work of Nicole Brossard--and >>who doesn't have a crush on Erin Moure? >> >>I'm not familar with Sylvia Fraser. She sounds interesting. Who is she? >>Where's her work available? >> >>Dodie > > >i feel like someone just took the candy outta my mouth and i'm still >sucking air. >i know there are men on this list whom i know personally who love moure and >brossard and marlat. so, maybe they wouldn't mind or would also be >interested in engaging a dialogue concerning the body as text, this >concerns men too, it would be really interesting if they joined in. mr. w, >care to contribute?i'm reading the handbook of yours, treasuring it, >really. i think the size is appropiate for the content. how did you and bob >work on the text together? >i'm glad you sent me a nice message. last night i cried upon reading my >mail on my way out. so what. pain/pleasure/pleasure/pain. >oh, sylvia fraser is this amazing woman i heard speak a few years ago in >halifax, she was dressed in orange from head to toe, heels, tights, suit, >lipstick, purse. she had a powerful presence. some of her books are: >'berlin solstice', 'my father's house',and 'pandora'. she wrote pandora >and berlin solstice before she had any memory of her childhood. her memory >seeped itself through into her writing. the books lulled her in and she >couldn't stop even if she wanted to. >i think you can probably find her stuff in most bookstores, and womens >bookstores. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 16:12:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: body as text Comments: To: Kim Dawn MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Please have pity on the clueless and elucidate if only briefly what the captivating phrase "body as text" encapsulates. Peter Greenaway's latest film (which I haven't seen and prob. won't) notwithstanding, I assume it refers to the way we read each others' bodies _as_ literal texts: i.e. how appearance shapes perception and conception: how gender is a social construction: how appearances determine social strata and the various games of power that determine who's on the inside and who's on the outside? Am I even close? PS I like Nicole Broussard very much too, though I've only read _A Book_ and get the feeling this is not as radical as some of her other work. PPS Two writers I have never read and prob. never will: Philip Roth and Edna O'Brien. Blurbs Roth for Edna's newest book in a print ad in The New Yorker: "The finest woman writer in English today" or some such ancient magisterial nonsense. Gee, Phil, no anxiety there huh? I mean, just so long as she's the finest _woman_ writer I guess your self-elected sense of male pre-eminence is safe, eh? Patrick Pritchett ---------- From: Kim Dawn To: POETICS Subject: Re: ms. non-provocateur Date: Saturday, June 14, 1997 3:47PM i know there are men on this list whom i know personally who love moure and brossard and marlat. so, maybe they wouldn't mind or would also be interested in engaging a dialogue concerning the body as text, this concerns men too, it would be really interesting if they joined in. mr. w, care to contribute? ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 18:23:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: tuned in (etc.) Comments: cc: damon001@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU Maria,-- re: David Bromige's one-liner & your couple-line reply -- here's a minor "literary footnote" (& example of one's famously admonished against doing -- viz., explaining a joke): according to me, David B. knew well enough what you meant by "not tuned in." And he had (I'll furthermore wager) no specific notion of your actually thinking of "dropping out" (from the List) -- RATHER, the logic (& charm) of his utterance is (I opine) based on a playful allusion to the famous [or as may be, infamous] (& (surely well known to you -- but poss. you didn't recall the forest for the trees), indeed (one-time) signature utterance of the late Tim Leary, to wit: tune in turn on drop out ergo: M.D.: ". . . not TUNED IN . . ." -- D.B.: "TURNED ON, though. And please don't DROP OUT . . ." (So, the riposte = bon mot + gesture of comradely appreciation) end of explication du texte d.i. / / / / > Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 12:21:29 -0500 > From: Maria Damon > Subject: Re: not tuned in, Maria? > > At 7:05 AM -0700 6/14/97, David Bromige wrote: >> Turned on, though. And please don't drop out. David > > not intending to drop out at all, and Rachel, don't be going puhleez. i > meant not tuned in to undercurrents of hostility and violence etc that > others detected. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 18:29:40 -0400 Reply-To: CHRIS MANN Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CHRIS MANN Subject: Re: authorisations and other jokes In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII it was that one of the attractions of the (this) medium was the (a) comparative lack of authority and the declining need to argue by anecdote (or territory, or experience (nice tropes all, i'm sure, but not ones that need me to do propaganda for them)). (irony, as a footnote, has of course the advantage of changing nothing. it is ideal. bit like a reader, actually.) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 18:45:44 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: Re: body as text Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" body as text. the textual body. the texture of skin ( . the layers. the writing. become. dense. indeciferable. a mass of tangled hair below the surface. permanence. the tattoo. the thin ink and thick blood. the unreadable. the forgotton. the body inside the body. beside the body. the in ( ) between the hated. the other. the split. the failure of erasure. the countless attempts. ( skin rubbed raw. it is the memory written before birth. the memory we have chosen to forget. the memory which lives (and swells). boils. provokes the skins supple surface. sewn mouths upon the surface. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 15:49:55 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: Re: poetic lineage Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Four Temperaments. Unlesss it's actually five poets, in which case .... Merrill, I think? and Rich? and Moore not counting as one of the four but talked about in relation to Bishop? and Ashbery? no wait that makes SIX temperaments? or FIVE? urgh! tenney At 07:38 AM 6/14/97 -0400, you wrote: >there is interesting book by david kalstone, can't remember title right now >but it is about four poets -- lowell, bishop, moore and someone else, and >nice work tracing moore/bishop exchange of influence, and bishop/lowell >exchange. > >please, no one mention "The Anxiety of Influence," please... >e > > ---------------------------------------------------------- tenney nathanson tenney@azstarnet.com nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 17:00:43 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bradford J Senning Subject: Re: poetic lineage In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19970614155041.44d7ff68@pop.azstarnet.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII that would be Bishop, Lowell, Merrill, Rich, and Ashbery the book is "Five Temperaments." -brad ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 20:03:28 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: appropriateness & current genetic theory In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > Specifically, when the gene comes from one's mother, it is >apparently inactive, the researchers believe. > When it is inherited from the father, however, it is active, and >somehow facilitates social interaction. So even our (women's that is) *genes* are passive... I remember at arts camp back in high school in the early 60's being told that women couldn't write poetry because we tended towards passive grammatical constructions. No shit. Told this by a guy, of course. Unfortunately he was the writing teacher. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 18:57:23 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: ms. non-provocateur In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 4:10 PM -0500 6/14/97, Maria Damon wrote: >i wd be fascinated by a discussion of female centered issues to the degree >that we are comfortable w/ same. we have had some rather oblique >discussions of "writing the body" before, but they've usually consisted of >people recommending cixous et al to each other and not much further than >that. Oh, Maria, have you've forgotten the time that this discussion was subverted to how *Ezra Pound* writes the body!!!!! The women's issues part of the discussion was quickly swept away as if by one of those F5 tornadoes. But my unwillingness to talk about this stuff is more about it being the subject of my writing and my preferring to keep it messy (there's that word again) and personal, not Formulated. My writing about sex has been as much influenced by men as by women, I picked up many of my tricks from gay men in particular. Though, in keeping with your money concerns, I must say that I've discovered I will write about *anything* for money. Grease my palms! Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 20:23:20 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: poetic lineage / influence In-Reply-To: <199706141158.HAA01405@radagast.wizard.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Here's one reference of poss interest to Jordon: an essay about >Sylvia Plath in the New York Review of Books, written by James >Fenton. Among other things, Fenton contrasts Plath's (constructed) >sense of lineage (which he opines amounts to her sense of herself as >a woman-poet) with that of Moore & Bishop. (Hmm -- was it a matter >of influence? - or a matter of whom [historically] she felt she was >competing with? -- pardon there, E) > >Anyway, the essay appeared in a recent issue -- perhaps about 6 or so >weeks ago (?). Title: "Sylvia Plath -- Priestess" or something along >those lines. > >best, >d.i. > . > ..... It was one of a series of 3, one for each of Moore, Bishop, and Plath. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 21:57:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: syllable. king and pin of versification. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I found Thomas Orange's discussion of Olson and the syllable interesting, but I'm not quite sure what is gained by abandoning the syllable, as T.O. recommends. While I agree that there is nothing 'fundamental' about the syllable,there is nothing fundamental about the phoneme either [I don't understand graphemes very well -- they belong to a completely different sort of sign system -- so I'll leave them out]: phonemes themselves consist of bundles of features [e.g. the presence or absence of labiality or nasality or voicedness, etc.]. So if anything is fundamental it is probably these. There are probably many ways to define the syllable, but, like Olson maybe, I tend to look at it as a metrical element, i.e., as an abstract unit of measure that ignores real but metrically irrelevant things like phonemes or distinctive features. Any sequence of phonemes that make up a syllable form a unit that is equivalent [metrically] to other such units. So Homer's dactylic hexameter consists of lines that consist of a strictly defined range of syllables, etc. In verse that is 'free' [or perhaps 'projective'?] rather than regular or metrical, the syllable is the basic building block out of which one constructs a rhythmic line [breath, etc.], a sequence that in itself is a higher-level unit. [now I confess that this is me talking, not Olson; haven't read him in a few years]. I don't understand the distinction that you make, Tom, between 'bent' or 'rent', and 'ent'. As purely syllabic units they are all equivalent: each is one syllable in length, and *as syllables* none of them have any other intrinsic meaning. The problem here is that the first two also happen to be words in English, but that's just a historical accident and has nothing to do with their syllable-hood. As I understand your argument re 'signifying intention', I see no reason why 'ent' is more fundamental than 'bent'. Without some kind of vocalism 'nt' is unpronouncable, but 'e' is a perfectly good syllable by itself. On the whole your argument seems to suggest that in fact the syllable is *not* fundamental from your point of view. Yes. But what is? What is 'ent' if not a syllable? I see it as just a sequence of phonemes, and so from my point of view, the phoneme remains the fundamental unit of all language [not just poetry] from the "sonic-semantic" point of view. What distinguishes 'bent' [as a "unit of poetic substance"] from 'rent' and 'ent' are the initial phonemes: /b/ and /r/ and 0 [zero phoneme]. As far as I can see there are two alternatives: either Olson's syllables are fundamental as units of poetry, or phonemes are [I am not sure if distinctive features have a function that could be called poetic, but maybe...]. At this point I can't see which has the more value as the "basic unit of poetry". I can see some use in both. Does this make any sense? George Thompson p.s. before Henry Gould signs off maybe he can help with his two cents. Or anyone else? ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 10:12:05 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: Re: Okudzhava and Aygi In-Reply-To: <199706141620.MAA25461@csu-e.csuohio.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII there is an historical element in the equation of Russian and U.S. beat poets, with their emergence during the Khrushchev thaw and the Eisenhower fifties, implications of convergence, interpersonal relations among the poets themselves, (Ginsberg and Voznesensky, etc). there was also something stylistic involved, the uses that the Russians made of Mayakovsky and their futurist predecessors, the fondness for the major statement, etc. eventually this fell away, particularly on the Russian side, but the relations are there. on the American side, do you think you could have the beats without Dostoevsky? but also, see Frank O'Hara's attack on Voznesenky and Yevtushenko: " Mayakovsky's hat, worn by a horse" too bad Ghenrihk Gould has signed off, I am sure he could add much more than me. Also, Anselm H's first U.S. publication (I think?) was the City Lights pocket poets Red Cats, trans of Voz and Yevtushenko and Konstantin Simonov (!). if you can ever find tapes or CD of Vladimir Vysotsky singing, that's definitely an experience. (if you saw the Baryshnikov cold war epic White Nights, Baryshnikov does a solo to a Vysotsky piece) ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 22:28:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Michael Boughn Subject: Re: re : so long In-Reply-To: from "David Bromige" at Jun 13, 97 10:48:15 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I actually just spotted the elusive Mr. Bowering (whoever the hell he is) in Toronto near Coach House Press with someone who looked remarkably like Amy Lowell (tho it could have been Victor Coleman in drag). Mike mboughn@chass.utoronto.ca > > Gee, Chris, when I spotted your subject header, I thought Bowering had > resurfaced & was about to confide something inappropriate to us. David > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 01:12:10 -0400 Reply-To: "Thomas M. Orange" Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Thomas M. Orange" Subject: arno holz translations MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII any germanists out there know if substantial english translations of arno holz exist? i've got only a scant few pomes in a penguin anthology. missing the mandelstam thread, t. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 11:05:07 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: john chris jones Subject: summer reading some are reading summa summer sum? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Pending the next part of the cyberepic some summer reading perhaps? not so much poetic lineage as all lineage, as I came to it via 'the design of everything', with some of my reasons for liking these books: SIX BOOKS, OR TEN (with quotations found by chance process): :1. Edwin Schlossberg, 'For my father', in About Bateson, essays on Gregory Bateson, edited by John Brockman, E P Dutton, New York, 1977, pp. 144-167. 'We learn to read and then single letters and words become habitual to the extent that we see them in their context and not as separate things. When we forget ourselves as a word we exist more fully as our entire context.' (p.162.83) The most interesting writing on 'environment' that I've read, and the best introduction to the thought of Edwin Schlossberg in which distinctions between self and other entities are replaced by a wider awareness that is itself 'the environment', or everything. 2. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding media: the extensions of man, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1965 (and in other editions). 'In our age artists are able to mix their media diet as easily as their book diet. A poet like Yeats made the fullest use of oral peasant culture in creating literary effects. Quite early, Eliot made great impact by the careful use of jazz and film form'. (p. 53.81) Out of Insights like this, in profusion, Marshall McLuhan constructs a unified picture of technology-and-mind that undoes stifling specialisations and shows an integrative mind at work. 3. Walt Whitman, Leaves of grass, Norton critical edition, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1973, (original edition 1855). 'In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash'd palings, Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle - and from this bush in the door-yard, With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with its flower I break.' (p. 329.38) Walt Whitman was, with William Wordsworth, one of the first to attempt a democratic poetry 'of everyone'. His poems were perhaps the first to celebrate the vastness and the equality of the modern life and can bring humanity and inspiration to notions like 'universal access'. 4. Joseph Beuys, Energy plan for western man, Joseph Beuys in America, writings and interviews with the artist, compiled by Carin Kuoni, Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1990. 'Q: How would you describe your new aesthetic? BEUYS: I describe it radically: I say aesthetics = human being. That is a radical formula. I set the idea of aesthetics directly in the context of human existence, and then I have the whole problem in the hand, then I have not a special problem, I have a "holography". ( Beuys laughs, audience laughs, sympathetically.) I don't know exactly what a holography is . . . ( more laughter).' (p. 34.56) Joseph Beuys has expanded the notion of art to include most of what is presently taken as design, perhaps to all aspects of living. Although there may be unspoken religious assumptions in what he says and does I feel that it's relevant to everyone in modern times. He has expanded the ideas of 'what is a person', 'what is a culture': a necessary step in any attempt to improve modern life, I believe. 5. William Morris, News from nowhere, or an epoch of rest, being some chapters from a utopian romance , edited by James Redmond, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1970 (original edition 1890). 'The man himself was tall, dark-haired, and exceedingly handsome, and though his face was no less kindly in expression than that of the others, he moved with that somewhat haughty mien which great beauty is apt to give to both men and women. He nevertheless came and sat down at our table with a smiling face, stretching out his long legs and hanging his arm over the chair in the slowly graceful way which tall and well-built people may use without affectation. He was a man in the prime of life, but looked as happy as a child who has just got a new toy. He bowed gracefully to me and said: 'I see clearly that you are the guest, of whom Annie has just told me, who has come from some distant country that does not know of us, or our ways of life. So I daresay you would not mind answering me a few questions . . .'(p. 17.02) Of the many utopias and distopias, from The Republic of Plato to George Orwell's1984 , and after, there are few that do not presume an authoritarian government, forcing people to be good, or at least to conform. William Morris's utopia is an exception in which people govern themselves. An encouragement to trust ourselves and others as we are, given freedom from hierarchy, bureaucracy and such. 6. John Cage, Silence, lectures and writings, Marion Boyars, London, 1968, (original edition by Wesleyan University Press, 1961.). 'Though no two performances of the Music of Changes will be identical . . . . two performances will resemble one another closely. Though chance operations brought about the determination of the composition, these operations are not available in its performance . . . (it) is an object more inhuman than human, since chance operations brought it into being. . . . (which) gives the work the alarming aspect of a Frankenstein monster. This situation is of course characteristic of Western music, the masterpieces of which are its most frightening examples, which when concerned with humane communication only move over from Frankenstein monster to Dictator.' (p. 36.44) I am surprised by this quotation from one of John Cage's early lectures. In my first reading of Silence (and of his later books A year from Monday, M, Empty words, X ,I-VI ) I saw chance composition is a liberation, not a threat - a model of how we may hope to live by freeing ourselves of our 'likes and dislikes' and of central control. Now I must read the lecture again. Not so easy, as it is set in 'excessively small type . . . to emphasize the intentionally pontifical character' of the lecture. And the last four, which I'd prefer not to exclude if there is space or patience: 7. C. Thomas Mitchell, Redefining designing, from form to experience, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1993. '. . . . laypeople find it very difficult to collaborate in the design of something with which they are not very familiar. In the Jordan case, for example, a husband tried to design his future house without permitting his wife to have any input. It quickly became apparent that he was involved in very few activities in the house. When unable to generate a design he reluctantly asked his wife to "help", and a design that pleased them both was then quickly generated.' (p. 80.39) ' Tom Mitchell's book is the best review I know of attempts to share art and design processes 'with everyone'. Surely the way of the future? 8. George Sturt, The wheelwright's shop, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1923 (still in print). 'George Sturt, my grandfather, was not a stranger to the shop when he bought it. He had been leading man there for some time . . . . It seems almost certain to me, first, that he only made a lathe on condition that a proper "house" for it should be built, and second, that Grover was not very well able to refuse what his leading man wanted.' (p. 5.81) This is the most useful book I know for 'seeing behind design', or 'through it', for in his account of craft of wagon-making George Sturt shows how objects of great complexity, and of excellent 'fit' to their users, were evolved entirely without designers or other educated specialists. I see similarities between this and the crafting of software, and encouragements to share creative processes 'with everyone'. 9. Gertrude Stein, Look at me now and here I am, writings and lectures 1911-1945, edited by Patricia Meyerowitz, Peter Owen, London, 1947 (originally published by Random House, New York, 1941, and still available in other editions). 'No matter how well you know the end of the stage story it is nevertheless not within your control as the memory of an exciting thing is or as the written story of an exciting thing is or even in a curious way the heard story of an exciting thing is. And what is the reason for this difference and what does it do to the stage. It makes for nervousness that of course, and the cause of nervousness is the fact that the emotion of the one seeing the play is always ahead or behind the play.' (p. 61.48) I can't easily say why I like the theories and writings of Gertrude Stein so much . . . . perhaps it's because she so closely observes her own reactions and out of them, the tiny thought-events which are normally disregarded, is able to reconstruct literature, or theatre, or anything? This is close to 'designing' as I know it and a way to enter 'human mind' as she calls it, the losing of oneself in one's work. 10. Hannah Arendt, The human condition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1958 (still in print). 'This unpredictability of outcome is closely related to the revelatory character of action and speech, in which one discloses one's self without ever either knowing himself or being able to calculate beforehand whom he reveals. The ancient saying that nobody can be called eudaimon before he is dead may point to the issue at stake, if we could hear its original meaning after two and a half thousand years of hackneyed repetition; not even its Latin translation . . . . nemo ante mortem beatus esse dici potest - conveys this meaning . . . . For eudaimon means neither happiness nor beatitude . . . . It has connotations of blessedness, but without any religious overtones, and it means literally something like the well-being of the daimon who accompanies each man throughout life, who is his distinct identity, but appears and is visible only to others.' (p.190.90) What I learnt from this book is that mechanised living is not a norm but an aberration and that there is indeed a better way, well recognised in the past, through which people could live as people, not as consumers, workers or instruments of any kind. Hannah Arendt compares the ancient Greek and modern meanings of labor, work and action and exposes a modern blindness to social presence, as opposed to work and labour, as a reason for living. Given this I see how 'unemployment' as we call it, (supported by no-growth automation) could be enjoyed by everyone, as it once was by the few. The modern age could be a reversal of what it has been! ' (I see now that I mistakenly copied the quotation from p.192 not 190 but I'll let it stand, assuming there is hidden wisdom in mistakes.) john-chris this was written for the ellipsis website : and a mirror site at who asked me for six favourite books, re design and everything ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 08:53:17 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Maria Damon Subject: Re: appropriateness & current genetic theory In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 8:03 PM -0500 6/14/97, Judy Roitman wrote: >> Specifically, when the gene comes from one's mother, it is >>apparently inactive, the researchers believe. >> When it is inherited from the father, however, it is active, and >>somehow facilitates social interaction. > > >So even our (women's that is) *genes* are passive... > >I remember at arts camp back in high school in the early 60's being told >that women couldn't write poetry because we tended towards passive >grammatical constructions. No shit. Told this by a guy, of course. >Unfortunately he was the writing teacher. there's a lot of dumb folks out there, judy. i remember being told by some guy i had a crush on in my first year of college that i was the first woman he'd met whom he could consider his intellectual equal. i was barely able to contain myself, cuz he wasn't that smart, from saying that most of the women i knew were his intellectual superiors. of course, i continued to have a crush on him though with a strange, disoriented loss of balance after that. > > > > >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! >Math, University of Kansas | memory fails >Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." >913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 13:01:32 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: to pine away like Echo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Kim Dawn's commentary about writing the body/the body as text recalls some of the musings of Alan Jen (Jennifer/Julu) Sondheim in recent postings. Interesting to consider that it could well be that Dawn is an incarnation of Sondheim's ever- splicing textual body (I wouldn't be surprised), but, if so, I'd say that "she" is a minor, apprentice-like character in the Sondheim voice-chamber we've been given an inkling of here. Point of this is to say it's surprising to me that Sondheim's numerous sharings in past months (tiny part of a massive, multiplying work, for intro to which see Sondheim post of 6/8) seem to have generated almost no commentary on the list (though there may be excitement back-channel I'm not privy to), for they seem boundlessly more provocative, psyche-layered, and transgressive than the flame-driven naughtiness of Dawn, which has garnered so much chat of late. I don't mean this as a put-down of Dawn, for she's just begun posting here, and it may be the case that, as Peter Ganick says, "she" is destined to be an important "avant-garde voice." But here's an absolutely confident vote for Sondheim (whatever that name means) as absolutely major figure--a mind-boggling energy locus in cyber-space, whose works are in the same league of conceptual newness as anything by, say, greats like Cage, Mac Low, or Schwerner. No doubt others have taken note before me, but I thought I'd go ahead and offer my personal opinion: I propose the he/she/they who inhabit Alan are tirelessly unfolding one of the wildest, most exciting textual bodies the world has ever seen. Attention, please. Kent ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 15:18:08 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: poetic lineage jeez! how many books ARE there?! Five Temperaments sounds familiar, but so did the four poets title... all right gang, i see my responsibility here; i'll look it up tonight on database. e ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 17:19:46 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kenneth Goldsmith Subject: WFMU on RealAudio Comments: To: silence@bga.com Comments: cc: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" WFMU, the U.S.'s oldest (and greatest) listener-sponsored freeform radio station is now available on RealAudio via a live feed 24 hours a day!!! Check it out: http://www.wfmu.org/ssaudionet.shtml ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 17:19:58 +0800 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Schuchat Simon Subject: where's the list? MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII two days without any postings? does that mean the list is down, I'm cut off, or without anything inappropriate to say the list fell silent? here is another list Samuel Beckett Gertrude Stein Frank O'Hara Robert Musil Henry Green Kenneth Rexroth Christopher Isherwood Guillaume Apollinaire Ronald Firbank ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 21:24:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Duemer Organization: Clarkson University Subject: Re: syllable. king and pin of versification. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Agreeing with T. Orange on the syllable. Anyone who has tried to write in syllabic forms knows that syllables, as conventionally defined, can sometimes be made to count for two sound units; furthermore even in English--a non-quantative language--some syllables are simply heftier than others. It is the arrangement of these variations that make a syllabic line come together, which keep it from being merely arbritrary. _____________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 Phone: 315-262-2466 Fax: 315-268-3983 duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu _____________________________ "Art cannot be tamed, although our responses to it can be . . ." -Jeanette Winterson ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 00:15:49 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: robert drake Subject: Re: syllable. king and pin of versification. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable bob grumman mentions: >jwcurry has a one-LETTER poem in which he replaces the >dot of an i with a finger-print... the published version of that poem that i have ("curvd H&z 206/th wrecking ballzark#50/1=A2ent #50", june 1983) is credited as a jw's translation from the Czech of Vladimir Burda... i would suppose that the translation process involved substituting an english-speaker's fingerprint for that of a czech-speaker... and i can imagine a mailart-ish project of a multilingual edition of translations from around the world.... asever luigi ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 09:37:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: poetic lineage In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Susan Wheeler and Jordan Davis awhile back asked for recommendations of books about poetic lineage. I wanted to list a few books that I turn to about issues in poetics, including poets' views about their contemporaries and forbears. My #1 favorite source for writings about poetics by poets until relatively recently is that reliable warhorse Don Allen's New American Poetry (1960). There is an incredibly useful group of statements on poetics at the end of the book, 30 pages of gold.We have Olson's famous writing about composition by field - he writes about Crane, Cummings,Pound and Williams. We have Duncan mentioning 40 or so writers who have influenced him, Creeley on Olson, Levertov on Duncan and Creeley,Ginsberg on Christ, Buddha, Shelley and Blake, Leroi Jones (Baraka) on Lorca,Williams, Pound and Olson and bios by the authors which list further lineages such as Duncan crediting Satie, Stravinsky and Schoenberg for going "further in the articulation of time than poetry was prepared to go." Also, you might check out A.E. Housman's "The Name and Nature of Poetry"-"Matthew Arnold more than fifty years ago [this is in 1933] in speaking of Wordsworth and Coloridge's low estimate of the poetry of the eighteenth century , issued the warning that 'there are many signs to show that the eighteenth century and its judgements are coming into favour again.'" Other favorites include Paul Valery's "Leonardo, Poe, Mallarme" (Princeton UP, 1972) (Vol.8 of the Collected Works in English), Robert Motherwell's "The Dada Painters and Poets" (Wittenborn, Schulz,1951) and The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell-check out "Letter from Robert Motherwell to Frank O'Hara, dated August 18,1965". ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 09:41:23 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Gwyn McVay Subject: open/innovative poetics pedagogy In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Are there any readings, whether single essays or collections by a particular author, that poetics-listers would consider useful to the participants in a workshop designed to explore open/innovative/experi "mental"/querzblatz writing and practices of writing? The various Sun & Moon anthologies, /Other Side/ and the Gertrude Stein Awards anthologies, are being considered as successful examples of same--but wd. much appreciate pointers--like if there's a particular essay in which Burroughs describes the Gysin cut-up method. Or a particular Bernstein essay? Or is it better just to put the students in a Joseph Cornell box and shake it vigorously? bests Gwyn ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 09:42:15 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "David R. Israel" Subject: Re: Okudzhava and Aygi MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Schuchat Simon writes: > on the American side, do you think you could have the beats without > Dostoevsky? & more particularly, where would "underground literature" be (or the "underground movement" as we used to say in the 60s) w/o Notes From The Underground? (noted blindly -- having never really read the latter) On political-idea side, one could presumably trace Tolstoy to Gandhi to MLK to another side of the American hip weltenshauung. d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 10:24:16 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: poetic lineage / influence In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Just to add to Judy's list: The most recent issue of the NY Review (June 26, 1997) has a long piece on Rabindranath Tagore by Amartya Sen. Has anybody else read this? I'm curious about whether the facts and opinions presented here are basically agreed upon or whether there are Indiologists (?) who have other takes on Tagore. David Israel, George Thompson -- any comments? Steven On Sat, 14 Jun 1997, Judy Roitman wrote: > >Here's one reference of poss interest to Jordon: an essay about > >Sylvia Plath in the New York Review of Books, written by James > >Fenton. Among other things, Fenton contrasts Plath's (constructed) > >sense of lineage (which he opines amounts to her sense of herself as > >a woman-poet) with that of Moore & Bishop. (Hmm -- was it a matter > >of influence? - or a matter of whom [historically] she felt she was > >competing with? -- pardon there, E) > > > >Anyway, the essay appeared in a recent issue -- perhaps about 6 or so > >weeks ago (?). Title: "Sylvia Plath -- Priestess" or something along > >those lines. > > > >best, > >d.i. > > . > > ..... > > It was one of a series of 3, one for each of Moore, Bishop, and Plath. > > __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 10:51:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: open/innovative poetics pedagogy Comments: To: Gwyn McVay In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi Gwyn, C. Bernstein's a poetics(Harvard,1992) contains his classic poem/essay on contemporary poetics "Artiface of Absorption." It also contains what I consider one of his most moving essays "The Second War and Postmodern Memory." I would also recommend Barrett Watten's Total Syntax (Southern Illinois UP), Ron Silliman's New Sentence (Roof), my own Boundary of Blur (Roof) and the terrific My Poetry by David Bromige (The Figures).Also , I'd highly recommend all three issues of Chain edited by Juliana Spahr and Jena Osman, and particularly the first issue on Gender and Editing including an engrossing forum containing thoughts on editing and other issues by 36 artists and poets,all women.This will shake them vigorously, I'll wager. Mon, 16 Jun 1997, Gwyn McVay wrote: > Are there any readings, whether single essays or collections by a > particular author, that poetics-listers would consider useful to the > participants in a workshop designed to explore > open/innovative/experi "mental"/querzblatz writing and practices of > writing? The various Sun & Moon anthologies, /Other Side/ and the Gertrude > Stein Awards anthologies, are being considered as successful examples of > same--but wd. much appreciate pointers--like if there's a particular essay > in which Burroughs describes the Gysin cut-up method. Or a particular > Bernstein essay? Or is it better just to put the students in a Joseph > Cornell box and shake it vigorously? > > bests > Gwyn > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 11:19:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kristin Gallagher Subject: Re: Diamanda Galas In-Reply-To: <01BC783C.EB363360@annex-2.tiu.ac.jp> from "Daniel Tessitore" at Jun 13, 97 09:01:08 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit in the REsearch book *angry women* the first interview is with her, followed by a discography. if yer in a city some small singular serious about music record store will have something of hers. or find an oldish night of the living dead looking kid (wearing all black with lots of eyeliner on etc) and ask em where can i get some diamanda galas? he/she should be happy to oblige. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 11:42:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: syllable king and pin In-Reply-To: <199706161450.KAA19285@julian.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII seem not to be getting posts -- thot it was trouble w/my server but simon schuchat remarks of having trouble too -- hello sysop? so i have to catch up a bit... george thompson wrote: > There are probably many ways to define the syllable, but, like Olson maybe, > I tend to look at it as a metrical element, i.e., as an abstract unit of > measure that ignores real but metrically irrelevant things like phonemes or > distinctive features. [snip] > I don't understand the distinction that you make, Tom, between 'bent' or > 'rent', and 'ent'. As purely syllabic units they are all > equivalent...[snip] What is 'ent' if not a syllable? I see it as just a > sequence of phonemes, and so from my point of view, the phoneme remains the > fundamental unit of all language [not just poetry] from the > "sonic-semantic" point of view. What distinguishes 'bent' [as a "unit of > poetic substance"] from 'rent' and 'ent' are the initial phonemes: /b/ and > /r/ and 0 [zero phoneme]. i'm arguing for something i don't have terms for and that isn't quite thought out yet. i guess i want to say that while syllables carry already-determined meaning and phonemes don't carry any meaning (more or less in both cases -- certainly there are exceptions), i'm looking for a unit that lies somewhere between: small units of sound that carry meaning- potential. "ent" wd be something like this: a syllable yes but unlike "bent" or "rent" in that the latter already have meanings while "ent" is more waiting to be caught in a signifying intention. (i guess i want to attribute meaning to all syllables, which i know is ridiculous: "tion" is certainly a syllable but more like "ent" in my sense of having signifying intention rather than meaning of itself.) but yr right george, olson is probably looking at it from the viewpoint of metrics, as you seem to be too, which is probably where we are differing. my "ent" is something of an abstract unit, but i can't think it by itself as metrical: the "real but metrically irrelevant things" that the syllable as metrical unit "ignores" (in your and perhaps olson's sense) are precisely what interest me and what i'm trying to get at. bent rent and ent when all understood as syllables elide the differences in meaning (or, in the case of "ent," what i've tried to call signifying intention). like joseph duemer said, "some syllables are heftier than others." for me, they're all too hefty! tom. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 11:58:23 -0400 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: jwcurry, sondheim, kdawn MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII lbd, where has that jwcurry poem you mention been published? i agree with what kent johnson says abt sondheim's work -- fascinating as it is, from what snippets we've seen posted here, yet generating little response. i myself have scrolled thru alan's stuff as it comes thru my mailbox, more or less in bewilderment and wonder, thus making no comment my only initial comment. must go to the spoons page and check out more. by contrast, some of kim's writing certainly provoked responses here, but some of it also went by undiscussed. too much, all! baroque excess! skim, scan, scroll, delete! --More--(1%)--Press Space Bar to Continue-- t. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 08:35:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: alan jennifer sondeheim Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Absolutely, Kent, & good on you for speaking up. Amiss of me, since I share your sentiments, not to have done so long since. I am awed by his/her scale. Myself have been writing drawn from list- & e-mail interaction, but s/he is i another league, with a grasp of programs that fits him/her to be the pioneer poet you make him/her out to be. Mind you, I dont know much abt what other workers in the field are capable of--perhaps Jim Rosenberg or Loss Glazier or some others have updated the List & I missed it. But no info one doesn't have can minimize Sondheim's postings. David ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 12:14:18 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: syllable king and pin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit How about "sylb" as a textual unit between a phoneme and a syllable? Not a suggestion really worth a posting, probably, but I also wanted to ask a question or two. What would the "s" in the phoneme, "sh," be called? Or the "t" in "th?" I'm vague about what a grapheme is, too: a phoneme in print? If there's no name for partial phonemes like the afore-mentioned "s" and "t," my first very tentative suggestion is "rudineme." So the word "the" would consist of the two phonemes, "th" and "e," and of the three rudinemes, "t," "h" and "e." Oops, I shouldn't haven't started on this. Now I also want to know what elements like the dot of an "i" and the crossbar of a "t" should be called. My first thought (forgive me) is "infranemes." I'm sure printers have some standard term, though. Any help on these urgent matters would be appreciated. --Bob G. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 11:18:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: jwcurry, sondheim, kdawn Comments: To: Tom Orange MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN I will briefly "third" Kent & Tom's posts. I too am betwitched, be- bothered and be-wilded by Alan's work as it appears here and at his other websites (which I've only just begun to examine). This is exciting groundbreaking work and only my own ignorance prevents me from saying more about the theory behind the work other than it appears to be the logical extension of his work in _Disorders of the Real_. "Confused Fall of Autumnal Empire" now adorns my grey office cube wall. Patrick Pritchett PS - pls note erratum in my prev. posted reading list: David Bromige is the author of _The Haberdasher of Long Gone_. Thank you. ---------- From: Tom Orange To: POETICS Subject: jwcurry, sondheim, kdawn Date: Monday, June 16, 1997 11:07AM i agree with what kent johnson says abt sondheim's work -- fascinating as it is, from what snippets we've seen posted here, yet generating little response. i myself have scrolled thru alan's stuff as it comes thru my mailbox, more or less in bewilderment and wonder, thus making no comment my only initial comment. must go to the spoons page and check out more. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 13:01:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: Diamanda Galas / Laurie Anderson Gwyn et al., Kristin Gallagher's reference for a Galas discoraphy sounds good -- > in the REsearch book *angry women* the first interview is with her, > followed by a discography . . . I didn't speak up, since I've never had recordings of the Diamond Gal -- have only seen / heard her in live concert. I've a hunch that like composer/performer Glen Branca (for instance), some (or much) of Diamanda Galas's work is best (or maybe-even, only) susceptible to appreciation amid the wow! of live performance -- this being the utterance of basic biases (& from one who wasn't well able to endure an entire concert anyway; -- but still was glad to absorb what I could manage). Saw Galas in the 80s -- in San Francisco she performed in a dark, crowded South-of-Market venue: ideal. Hmm -- perhaps she also appeared in the John Adams-curated "New and Unusual Music" series (under SF Symphony aegis) that imported a number of fine out-of-towner innovators: Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson, et alia. Galas belts it out LOUD! Seem to recall an interview where she mentions classical operatic training (for "chops" ya know). Regarding Laurie Anderson, she was supposedly going to establish (in collaboration w/ kindred performance / musician chums) some manner of surreal amusement park in Barcelona. Any news on that, anyone? d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 13:21:10 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: Re: jwcurry, sondheim, kdawn Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" if anyone has sondheim's work on file could you post it? i missed it. what kind of minor , apprentice like character would i be kent? kim dawn is a lewd drunken old man. she is a hologram. she is out to shock, provocation for provocations sake, art for art's sake kinda gal. from my point of view, i must say her writing, even her life, since the two are so entwined, hold no integrity. (even though i've never seen or read any of her work.) never seen the dripping the thawing the peeling the brewing the staining the gorging the vomiting the stuffing the wrapping the scraping the drenching the soaking. even so i feel i am an AUTHORITY on her work. especially the writing i've never read. she sounds like a girl who's too stuck on herself. in fact, i think she might be a serial killer. a rapist. definitely an alcoholic. she gets on my nerves. she cranks on my nerves. she pushes my buttons. i found myself dripping when i met her. definitely not literary quality. just some obnoxious snot-nosed kid from the poor part of town. oh, from the poor part of town, oh you poor poor thing. i suppose next she's gonna tell us she was beaten and thrown across rooms. i suppose she's gonna tell us she eats meat raw from the bone. i can't believe she made it to university. she should be on the street selling her body. i hear she used to hoard chocolate bars in her room. her parents put her dinner on the floor under the table. they introduced her as the family dog with the bad home perm. well, i heard she runs a whore house. she's actually a man. and beats her women. i'm tired of her. i find her work far too personal. i don't wanna know who she is. i don't wanna guess what's fact. what's fiction. i like prose, sure, but i wouldn't call for work literary, it belongs in the worst pornography magazines, in comic books. i like poetry that's soft, that's academic, that's smarter than her, that's void of emotion. keep your spilling guts to yourself kimdawn. choke on;em. ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 13:42:24 -0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: luigi Subject: Re: jwcurry, sondheim, kdawn Comments: cc: Tom Orange Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >lbd, where has that jwcurry poem you mention been published? tom-- Curvd H&z is jw curry's imprint, which has a bewildering array of aliases a&nd projects (spider plots in rat holes, 1 cent, industrial sabatoge (magazine), wrecking balzark...). th citation i gave is as close as i could come while looking at th thing, titled "ich" (did i miss that in my first post?). damon lopes has a page devoted to curry's work at his fingerprinting inkoperated site: http://www.interlog.com/~dal/after/list_curry.html but it's far frm complete... he had been at lansdowne ave. in toronto, but last i heard he was back on th tracks vagabonding... jw's work as both a publisher and a poet has been incredibly important to me (in both capacities)... his conception of poems as objects, embodied as publications, particularly... also worth considering in light of recent thread on printing- on-demand, and th visuality of texts... i'd recommend any of his work to folks unfamiliar... asever lbd ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 14:18:09 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Joke For readers unfamiliar w/ LadyHawke, a.k.a. Irene A Mystery (who offers gratis an emailed joke-a-day to her subscribers), the appended will serve as intro. (The nature of her jokesterism varies, but this seems a somewhat typical example.) The 3-tiered formation of the joke gives it a nice folktale structure (& the cultural characteristics of the three levels of hyper-intelligence mentioned are, perhaps, interesting . . . .) d.i. >>> Irene A. Mystery 06/16/97 03:23am >>> JUST A REMINDER I will be a featured poet today, Monday night, June 16th, at 9 pm at PLANET ONE CAFE 76 East 7th Street (near 1st Avenue) 212.475.0112 Hope to see you there! After all, Mets and Yankees are playing three times. I get to go on only once........ :)) And now, the Joke Du Jour: As they say, "Be careful what you wish for....... You just might get it!" LadyHawke *~*~*~*~* There were three guys and they're out having a relaxing day fishing. Out of the blue, they catch a mermaid who begs to be set free in return for granting each of them a wish. One of the guys just doesn't believe it, and says: "Ok, if you can really grant wishes, then double my IQ" The mermaid says: "Done. Suddenly, the guy starts reciting Shakespeare flawlessly and analyzing it with extreme insight. The second guy is so amazed he says to the mermaid: "Triple my IQ" The mermaid says: "Done." The guy starts to spout out all the mathematical solutions to problems that have been stumping all the scientists of varying fields: physics, chemistry, etc. The last guy is so enthralled with the changes in his friends, that he says to the mermaid: "Quintuplet my IQ" The mermaid looks at him and says: "You know, I normally don't try to change people's minds when they make a wish, but I really wish you'd reconsider." The guy says: "Nope, I want you to times my IQ by five, and if you don't do it, I won't set you free." "Please," says the mermaid "You don't know what you're asking... It'll change your entire view on the universe! ...won't you ask for something else... a million dollars? anything?" But no matter what the mermaid said, the guy insisted on having his IQ increased by five times it's usual power. So the mermaid sighed and said: "Done." And so.................. . . . . . He became a woman. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Submitted by Mich1FedX P.S. NOTE for the new subscribers: the glyph at the end of my signature is a flying Hawke. View it in non-proportional font, like Courier. Also, ^v^ <- - LadyHawke. =20 .-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-.,,.-*"*-. LadyHawke's Joke du Jour {=3D^:^=3D} __ =3D^,^=3D __ {^~;~^} If you like sexual jokes / innuendoes / real life anecdotes / good old humor / political satires & such, why don't you subscribe to my humor list? The subscription is free! Send a message to LadyHawke@Unforgettable.com with the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject & your name in the body. If you are ON my list but do NOT want to be on it, please type UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject. Hope to hear from new subscibers soon. And remember, "A joke a day keeps the doctor away!" Or was it an apple? Hmmmm.... ///, //// \ /, / >. \ /, _/ /. \_ /_/ /. \__/_ < /<<< \_\_ /,)^>>_._ \ (/ http://www.ladyhawk.com ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 13:28:08 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: alan jennifer sondeheim Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" just to add my name to the list of folks who've noted alan sondheim's talents... if you haven't already, well worth checking out his web site, at: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html i have to confess here that, if i could do it over again, one name that would appear *someplace* in my own _bookend_ is alan's... in any case, he's certainly managed some incredible aesthetic-philosophical (even mathematical!) deformations of the ascii-html interface, literally and metaphorically... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 14:29:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Daniel Bouchard Subject: kdawn chronicles: an appropriate posting Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Now we come to a point in the never-compelling, never-interesting kdawn thread where, as I excerpt at the bottom, the fart sent in the list's general direction throws a snide aside in that in angry kdawn's struggle against a complacent world, it is kdawn's poetry and interests that are most important, and not the soft-headed, bookish, poesies of the poetics listmembers. This is truly a mild turn. Against the backdrop of deeper uncertainty--that of identity--the poetics listmembers (many if not most if not all) in addition to not knowing one another (the world), remain in the dark as to who kdawn is, although the painfully teasing posts make coy allusions. We don't know for instance, if kdawn is a youngster, fingering a fresh tattoo on the leg, with another finger up the nose while watching the poetics listmembers squirm as they are startled out of their little worlds. We don't know if kdawn if is an adult, been around the block a few times, scratching bald head with the left hand, the right forefinger up the nose, while watching the poetics list reel from street-smart e-mail antics that sends the stodgy scurrying to their isolated inner-rooms where the book lined shelves prevent bad things from happening. We don't know for instance, if kdawn is a psychotic, looking up addresses of poetics listmembers through big free internet yellow pages, polishing shotgun barrel with right hand, while left forefinger explores nasal cavity. We don't know if kdawn is at work in front of listless computer light, right hand fidgeting with stack of Twinkies, left thumb picking through ear wax, right eye on look-out for boss. We just dont know. That's why I'm going to stay tuned to the poetics list, where you can't say you aren't warned often enough. daniel_bouchard@hmco.com kdawn wrote: ". i don't wanna guess what's fact. what's fiction. i like prose, sure, but i wouldn't call for work literary, it belongs in the worst pornography magazines, in comic books. i like poetry that's soft, that's academic, that's smarter than her, that's void of emotion. keep your spilling guts to yourself kimdawn. choke on;em. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 14:37:42 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Julu Sondheim Subject: Re: away like Echo In-Reply-To: <2EF5DF8132C@student.highland.cc.il.us> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Whew. I'm glad some people appreciate my work; I feel I'm borderline in this and other communities. But I also appreciate Kim Dawn's work, def- initely, including her reply which I thought was brilliant. It's not a question of comparison; we're all inscribing... Alan ____________________________________________________________________ URL: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html MIRROR: http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ and Javascripted text/webpages -- Tel. 718-857-3671, 432 Dean St., Brooklyn, NY 11217 IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Editor, BEING ON LINE ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 11:38:31 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: jwcurry, sondheim, kdawn In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 1:21 PM -0400 6/16/97, Kim Dawn wrote: >kim dawn is a lewd drunken old man. she is a hologram. she is out to shock, >provocation for provocations sake, art for art's sake kinda gal. from my >point of view, i must say her writing, even her life, since the two are so >entwined, hold no integrity. (even though i've never seen or read any of >her work.) >i find her work far too personal. >i don't wanna know who she is. i don't wanna guess what's fact. what's >fiction. >i like prose, sure, but i wouldn't call for work literary, it belongs in >the worst pornography magazines, in comic books. >i like poetry that's soft, that's academic, that's smarter than her, that's >void of emotion. >keep your spilling guts to yourself kimdawn. choke on;em. When Kathy Acker was on a panel I curated a few years ago--"Narrative Strategies for Century's End" or something like that--one thing that she was adamant about was that she was *not* interested in the self. If you look at her work, you'll see what's she's dealing with is more like psychological tropes--or tremors of a larger, shifting cultural self. To discuss writing in terms of "too personal" or "fact" vs. "fiction" you're missing the boat. It's all artiface, especially in Acker's world. This surface of vulnerability you've adopted is manipulative--this unacknowledged manipulativeness is the issue--not any shock value you think you're imparting. This is the 90s, after all, shock is like, *over.* We've already had it ad nauseum. Dodie ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 13:17:43 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: syllable. king and pin of versification. In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I don't understand the distinction that you make, Tom, between 'bent' or >'rent', and 'ent'. As purely syllabic units they are all equivalent: I don't know what distinction Tom was making, but they sure seem different to me --- the semi-explosive b, the long r, the absence of a beginning consonant. Wouldn't confuse one for another in a dark alley, nope. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 14:47:20 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Julu Sondheim Subject: hysteriu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII - hysteriu: jennifer's wundering wumb murky slugged-vine hungs duwn truiling frum durk-wull, skein-cutchers uf jennifer's wumb un the muve thruugh julu; jewel-julu mirrurs bluud-durk spheres with perfect ruy-trucing us distunce turns buck un itself; birth is grunted ucruss the gruin uf prutuculs; yuu're never ulluwed tu furget thut there is nu distunce between neurest puints in these enfulding tis- uses, clused dumuins sputtering in the heuted symphuny uf bluud-red night, in the bluud-durk night it's time tu stup the breuth uf gud, thin gluss needle between my heuted lips, julu slushing nuw in jennifer-visiuns cuming us pitch-durk bluud rises cluse tu temperuture-thermumeter the wumb presses uut thruugh the breusts, distends the nipples, wun't plu- cute until bluud is druwn drinking ut the muuth uf gud, the budy un im- mense und bluud-night cuvern, eyes teuring, surgery uf jennifer-julu in u sphere uf thin gluss electrude firing perfect bruin in this durk-red night uf reign uf bluud und heuted thin gluss needles O Julu suys Jennifer yuu ulwuys luuk unly ut the piece, nut ut the hule. O Jennifer suys Julu everything is bruken und the suuner yuu reulize this. O Julu suys Jennifer dun't yuu ever huve u bruin. O Jennifer suys Julu unly when I huve u mind tu. - - - "She will dreum ulung with the cut, guudnight Jennifer, suys Julu. "Guudnight Julu, huve u luvely dreum. "(I wish there were mure uf us, thinks Julu.) "Jennifer heurd thut!" ______________________________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 14:17:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: Joke Comments: To: David Israel MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN touche! ---------- From: David Israel To: POETICS Subject: Joke Date: Monday, June 16, 1997 2:02PM But no matter what the mermaid said, the guy insisted on having his IQ increased by five times it's usual power. So the mermaid sighed and said: "Done." And so................... He became a woman. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 14:23:18 EST Reply-To: rreynold@rci.rutgers.edu Sender: UB Poetics discussion group Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Rebecca Reynolds Organization: Rutgers University Subject: Re: body as text "All I ask to feel my brain." ---Artaud (but in French) body/text text/body --that is all you know on earth Kim-- when the word "poem" is saving words the word is etherized. And yet I like the bad girl stance. I'm tired of good girls who write about being desired. ( I'm trying to get a photo taken for MY book and I don't look like one of those lady poets) and yet I love decorum. What's Poetics? And if your reader renders something "literary" does she sanitize it? And if it isn't literary, can we talk about it on a literary list? (I mean literary as in Powetics) And if you appropriate a violent language can you tame it, like a sign? If text is signification, where is the body? How do you get back to Cixous? I just get further and further and further and further . . . but the word is never etherized, quite (I mean disconnected from what is speaking) with all this boundary crossing, like a group of beams across thresholds. I don't know. Oh vanity of vanity, desire! --Christina Rossetti I too would like a discussion of the text-body. I'm afraid I'm not enough of a French thinker or thinker at all to to bring this abstract/concrete thing together--where the body is text--or to use a gritty pornographic "inappropriate," sometimes violent language--as if a word could be inappropriate--but sometimes the language catches someone's skin (or catches on their skin) as well as on these various, mucky identities. literary theorist poet/scholar whatever--sort of deportment springs to mind. A kind of borderline of this is okay to say and yet I believe I'm only virtual (or is it viral?) so it's just a text kind of thing as long as I'm On Line And these days, it IS viral . . . but if I talk about this sample of (say) fluid, this spit/blood/flesh/cunt am I, like, writing my body? A lexicon has to be mixed? I don't know. I don't know! --R. Reynolds Kim Dawn wrote: > body as text. > the textual body. > the texture of skin ( . > the layers. the writing. become. dense. indeciferable. > a mass of tangled hair below the surface. > permanence. the tattoo. the thin ink and thick blood. > the unreadable. the forgotton. the body inside the body. > beside > the > body. > the in ( ) between > the hated. the other. the split. the failure of erasure. > the countless attempts. ( skin rubbed raw. > it is the memory written before birth. the memory we have chosen to forget. > the memory which lives (and swells). boils. provokes the skins supple surface. > sewn mouths upon the surface. > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 19:38:44 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "L. MacMahon and T.R. Healy" Subject: Billy's list Comments: To: british-poets@mailbase.ac.uk Comments: cc: raworth@macline.co.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I=92m forwarding information on a distribution service which Billy Mills is operating from Ireland. But first a poem by one of the writers on his list, Maurice Scully, printed in _the Beau 3_. Cheers, Randolph Healy. *********************** ON RE-READING LOUIS MACNEICE You, teacher of poetry with chalk and hangover, The books you can sometimes share And all your worries and your guilt, relax over this part Of the curriculum at least, a shy man, once trapped in a classroom too, Who surely foresaw such grotesque foreplay with his work. Across the pages the pencil-marks give artificial emphasis, Quibble, irritate, yet tend to make one in the end forgive With _Irony_ and _Typical_ in some swotting pupil=92s neat stilt. And metaphors get correct signs, And famous lyrics Are honoured with an asterisk. Learnt by heart, but now years later, at a bus-stop in the rain, say, In Birmingham, London, Dublin let come back the formal echo Of some lines of his as a form of homage In so many other minds around the planet, The songs, knowing at last how they should be sung, _Con brio, pianissimo, tete-a-tete._ ********************* alternative Irish poetries a distribution list abbreviations pamph. stapled or stitched pamphlet pbk. Paperback d.w. dust wrapper NWP New Writers=92 Press Payment in Irish Punts preferred. If paying in other currencies, please add 10% to cover bank charges. Postage included in list prices. Trade terms: 40% discount. Please make cheques payable to William Mills. Other titles may become available: please ask if interested. Orders and inquiries to: Billy Mills 11 Watermeadow Park Old Bawn Dublin 24 Eire Tel: (353 1 ) 451 06 85 Healy Randolph Rana Rana! Wild Honey Press: 1997 21 x 13.5 cm. 30 pp. Pamph. =A33.50 Healy Randolph 25 Poems Beau Press: 1983 19 x 11.5 cm. Pamph. dw. =A33.50 Healy Randolph Arbor Vitae Wild Honey Press: 1997 21 x 13.5 cm. 20 pp. Pamph. Long poem in 3 sections. =A33.50 Joyce Trevor Pentahedron NWP: 1972 22 x 16 cm. 54 pp. Pbk./cloth dw. Joyce=92s first real book. =A35.00 pbk. =A38.50 cloth Joyce Trevor The Poems of Sweeny Peregrine NWP: 1976 25 x 16 cm. 50 pp. Pbk.=20 Version of the middle-Irish Buile Suibhne =A35.00 Joyce Trevor stone floods NWP: 1995 23 x 15 cm 52 pp. Pbk. Fist book after 19-year silence. =A35.99 Lloyd David Change of State Cusp: 1993 21.5 x 17.5 cm 32 pp. Pamph. =A3rd book of verse by well-known critic. =A34.00 Mills Billy The Properties of Stone Writers=92 Forum: 1996 A4 42 pp. Pamph. =A33.00 Mills Billy Genesis & Home hardPressed: 1985 A5 24pp. Pamph Author=92s first book =A31.50 Mills Billy Letters From Barcelona Dedalus: 1990 A5 32 pp. Pbk. Very few copies remain. =A34.95 Mills Billy Unfinished Alba Longhouse: 1997 folded broadsheet Printed on light blue card. =A31.00 Raworth Tom from Eternal Sections/as Teascain den tSioraiocht hardPressed: 1990: A5 8 pp. Pamph. Bilingual. To mark Tom=92s new Irish passport. =A31.95 Scully Maurice The Basic Colours Pig Press: 1994 23 x 14 cm. 64 pp. Pbk. Vol. 2 of an ongoing 5-part set. =A36.95 Scully Maurice (ed) The Beau 3 (1983/1984) Magazine A5 104 pp. Pbk. Inc. verse and prose by Scully, Healy & Mills. =A32.50 Squires Geoffrey Landscapes & Silences NWP: 1996 20.5 x 13.5 cm. 62 pp. Pbk. =A35.97 Squires Geoffrey XXI Poems Menard: 1980 A5 24 pp. Pamph. =A32.50 Squires Geoffrey Drowned Stones NWP: 1975 22 x 14.5 cm 76 pp. Pbk. Squires=92 first major book. Sequence in 6 sections. =A35.00 Squires Geoffrey This 1996 21 x 21 cm. 61 pp. Plastic bound Published by the author =A35.00 Walsh Catherine Prospect into Breath: Interviews with N&S Writers North & South: 1991 A5 190 pp. Pbk. 19 page interview, plus Ric Caddel, Eric Mottram=20 =A39.95 Walsh Catherine Idir Eatortha and Making Tents Invisible Books: 1996 A4 85 pp. Pbk. New work & reprint of Making Tents (1987) =A35.50 Walsh Catherine Pitch Pig Press, 1994 23 x 14 cm. 48 pp. Pbk =A35.95 Walsh Catherine Short Stories North & South: 1989 A5 24 pp. Pbk. =A33.95 Walsh Catherine from City West Longhouse: 1997 5-poem broadsheet Printed on purple card. =A31.00 Young Augustus Adaptations hardPressed: 1989 A5 12 pp. Pamph. Versions from Brecht & Mayakovsky =A31.50 ************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 14:28:00 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" Subject: Re: away like Echo Comments: To: Alan Julu Sondheim MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN Not so much borderline as sui generis, Alan. ---------- From: Alan Julu Sondheim To: POETICS Subject: Re: away like Echo Date: Monday, June 16, 1997 2:22PM Whew. I'm glad some people appreciate my work; I feel I'm borderline in this and other communities. But I also appreciate Kim Dawn's work, def- initely, including her reply which I thought was brilliant. It's not a question of comparison; we're all inscribing... Alan ____________________________________________________________________ URL: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html MIRROR: http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ and Javascripted text/webpages -- Tel. 718-857-3671, 432 Dean St., Brooklyn, NY 11217 IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Editor, BEING ON LINE ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 15:51:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Mark Wallace Subject: The Dynamics of Literary Change MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I want to second David Bromige's comments from last week about the value of the new Impercipient Lecture Series. We're short these days on significant forums for the publishing of pieces on poetics outside the limitations of the academic marketplace, and the ILS has already put several significant essays out there for all of us. While I agree also with David's praise of Steve Evans' essay THE DYNAMICS OF LITERARY CHANGE, I'd like not to stop with praise and get down closer to some of the issues in that essay. I don't know whether the poetics list is the best place to do that, but I'd certainly be interested in feedback from others who have read the Evans piece. THE DYNAMICS OF LITERARY CHANGE seems to me the most thorough dismantling (but also perhaps reinscribing) that we've had recently of how the manuevering for ideological space around the concept of the "new" in poetry needs reconsideration. Steve's work is part of a growing body of criticism by poets inside recognizably avant garde contexts about problems in the notion of the "new," and about the relation of various generations of avant garde writers to their forebearers. His range of information, and the ease with which he moves among contexts, is impressive. Going back to Adorno and (yes, can you believe it?) Hegel, as well as many others, Steve follows the notion of the "new" in art inside a number of modernist frameworks. My interest here isn't really in repeating his argument, since he can do it better than I can anyway. But I do want to suggest that in critiquing the dymanics of the "new," Steve is pointing out one of the key issues of contemporary poetics (indeed, as he knows, perhaps "the" key issue of the last 120 years). While by no means am I interested in eliminating the notion of the "new" as a possibility for contemporary poetry, at the least it seems to me that a recontextualization of it is necessary--a recontextualization that sees the need for the "new" in poetry not simply as a given, but as a problem which avant garde writers of the 90s have a different relation to (in some ways) than the generations of avant garde writers before them. Being a critic and not a poet, Steve is saved from the trouble of having to think through a place for his own poetry inside this framework. Anyone interested in such a take might check out Jefferson Hansen's article "Anarchism and Culture" in a recent issue of Witz. Both articles share a great skepticism, although their conclusions differ at times. Steve's take, a sort of meditational weave, is the more scholarly and dispassionate; Jeff's has many of the twists and turns that a poet in this maze might find it necessary to inhabit. One issue that Steve does not raise (this may not be a fault, but simply something outside the bounds of his essay) is how the dynamics of literary change influence the emergence of his own essay. That is, if Steve describes the field of literary activities at a given moment as one in which a variety of new approaches is both made possible and limited both by the objects and authors that constitute the field as well as those who wish the field to change (or who wish to ignore it entirely), then his own essay would also need to be read as one that both makes the history of its present moment possible, but is also to a certain extent made possible by that moment. If one of the concerns of much recent poetics has not been to state a case for the "new" poetry, but to bring the notion of the new under scrutiny, what I keep wondering is what it is about the present environment of avant garde poetry that makes critiquing the dynamics of the new often more important than naively offering something "new." Steve's essay might be then read as part of a new era of avant garde practice WHICH BOTH TAKES APART THE NOTION OF THE AVANT GARDE WHILE REMAINING COMMITTED TO CERTAIN OF THE POSSIBILITIES WHICH THAT NOTION STILL ENABLES. Dan Babiero's essay "Avant Garde without Agonism" in Talisman #14 looks in particular at the possibility of an innovative literature not defined by its rejection of previous innovations. I'm not without reservations about Steve's work here. He runs the danger at times of suggesting that the specifics of the new are of no matter--he replaces some sentences from Robert Musil with his own statement that "A long list of the shibboleths and rallying cries of the time is omitted," perhaps unintentionally implying that the dynamic he elucidates here is ALWAYS more important than its specifics in any present moment. Some of his lists seem arbitrary, and others (he writes that "The most percipient of twentieth-century theorists--besides Williams, one might mention Gertrude Stein and Antonio Gramsci, Frank O'Hara and Marcel Proust, Samuel Beckett and Theodor Adorno) seem characterized by a kind of exclusivity that succumbs too easily to the dymanic that he is otherwise taking apart. I'm not sure it's so simply true that fields of literature are only "defined by what they exclude and on what principle they exclude it" (Evans 25), but even if they are, such a truth should hardly make us EAGER for exclusion. Evans knows that, of course, but even when he seems to be critiquing it as a misperception, he seems overly enamored of the idea that a close relation to "a small handful of other persons" remains a central condition of artistic activity, whereas it seems to me that the avant garde poetry of THIS MOMENT might have as one of its conditions that no such "small handful of persons" can really be any longer the sole source of important innovation, assuming they ever were (and I think a history of 20th century poetic innovation will show that such a thing was NEVER true). It is this problem that makes his "Postface on the New Composition" to my mind the weakest part of his essay--his grounds for the choices of the poets he mentions seem for the most part absent, which leaves his mentioning of those writers without adequate discussion in an otherwise astonishingly thorough piece of work. It may be that he is undertaking such a discussion elsewhere--certainly it would have been helpful to tell readers that that is the case, if it is. Still, it seems to me that THE DYNAMICS OF LITERARY CHANGE provides a scholarly grounding very helpful to the work of other poets and writers of poetics who recognize themselves as inside the dymanics Steve discusses. Since one of the conditions of poetry at the present moment is that many poets have increasingly smaller amounts of time to write and read, it is doubly impressive to me that poets have a critic willing to do some of the necessary work for an engaged poetry to continue. THE DYNAMICS OF LITERARY CHANGE seems to me a crucial essay in the history of our present moment, and more importantly the moment of our present history. Mark Wallace /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu | | GWU: | | http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw | | EPC: | | http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace | |____________________________________________________________________________| ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 13:54:42 MST7MDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Christopher Alexander Organization: Acad Comp and Lib Info Syst Subject: Re: open/innovative poetics pedagogy In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable Gwyn wrt: > Are there any readings, whether single essays or collections by a > particular author, that poetics-listers would consider useful to the > participants in a workshop designed to explore > open/innovative/experi "mental"/querzblatz writing and practices of > writing? I've found the Perelman (ed.) book Writing/Talks very useful, also of course The L=3DA=3DN=3DG=3DU=3DA=3DG=3DE Book, which is just reissued=97both because they bring together several different & disparate opinions on wrtg. also of course Content's Dream & Paradise & Method are usefully provocative. more recently (I think), a book called The Poetics of Criticism, again a critical anthology of sorts, & in which several listmembers are "represented". & of course the Technique volume from Writing from the New Coast (O.blek). Chris .. Christopher W. Alexander etc. nominative press collective calexand@library.utah.edu P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402 http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 15:14:39 +0600 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: KENT JOHNSON Organization: Highland Community College Subject: Signage MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Too quick on the delete, and I thought of wanting to add something after pressing the button: Gwyn McVay, I believe, asked a question pertaining to books of "criticism" by innovative writers (tho the question was more specific than that) and Nick Piombino responded with a well-chosen list. Not on there, however, as I recall, was Alan Davies's _Signage_ (Roof, 1987) a book where poetry and criticism deeply fuse into strange and wonderful third things. What ever happened to Davies, by the way? Perhaps he's been plenty active, and I just don't keep up with things like I might... I remember that during the 80's he was something of a contrarian within the LangPo community, publishing in most all the places, but he was of a different "theoretical" bent, and some of those differences are recorded in the old _L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book_. The difference goes something like this: --Bernstein/Silliman/McCaffery, et.al.: "Thought is language." --Davies: "No it isn't." Well, one can imagine it was quite a bit more complicated than that, but the basic philosophical split was interesting (Davies, btw, is a long-time and committed Zen practitioner), and maybe stands as one of the best examples that the Language moment-- a few people still think otherwise, it seems--was not underwritten by some hegemonic Marxist scheme. Anyway, _Signage_, by Alan Davies, humbly added to Nick Piombino's list. Kent ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 16:36:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: George Thompson Subject: Re: syllable. king and pin of versification. Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >>I don't understand the distinction that you make, Tom, between 'bent' or >>'rent', and 'ent'. As purely syllabic units they are all equivalent: > >I don't know what distinction Tom was making, but they sure seem different >to me --- the semi-explosive b, the long r, the absence of a beginning >consonant. Wouldn't confuse one for another in a dark alley, nope. > > Sure, no one wld want to meet rent or bent [especially bent] in a dark alley but ent wld be no threat: it doesn't have a head [zero phoneme]. What I meant was that /ent/ is just as much a *syllable* as the other two. The problem with the other two [I suppose we could add /ment/ to the gang, as well as 'meant'] is that they have more husk surrounding their syllabic core. The syllabic core of each of these syllables is the vocalism /e/. /bent/ and /rent/ just happen to have phonic stuff both to the left and the right of the core, whereas /ent/, poor thing, only has that little cluster /nt/ at its back, its tail I suppose. Look, if you think /bent/ is someone to be avoided in dark alleys, what about that burly thug /brent/ and his wasted friend /spent/? Yes, syllables like people come in all shapes and sizes, but accd to the consitution they're all equal, and each gets only one vote. I like Bob's attempt to come up with various emic alternatives to 'phoneme.' But phonemes are very interesting little things, poetic little things even. Also, remember morphemes: the word 'bent' has only one syllable but it has two morphemes [/bend/ + past tense marker /t/ >> /bend+t/ >> 'bent']. So besides its phonic husk it also carries the burden of two semantic units on its back, unlike that light-weight /ent/, which carries only one such unit [as in /stud-ent/]. As far as I can see if you want to dig down past the level of the syllable, down past the morpheme, you might well be getting down to the phoneme. re Bob's question: What would the "s" in the phoneme, "sh," be called? Or the "t" in "th?" /sh/ and /th/ are both single phonemes in English, but they are represented by two graphemes. Your "rudinemes" look like graphemes to me. Enough, all this play on -emes must be getting anemic now, so I'll stop. George ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 09:01:52 +0100 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Miekal And Subject: Re: to pine away like Echo MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Kim Dawn = Alan Sondheim. I like that. I will read further if properly teased. Desire ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 14:46:50 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: michael corbin Subject: Re: importunate colors MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hard to keep in check the importunate cynicism of the lame-duck commander-and/in-chief holding forth on reconciliation of things racial and racist in these historical united states. Easy to see the window dressing of 'commissions' and 'town-meetings' and pennies thrown to the EEOC. But I guess these are importunate times. But then Gingrich and UofC regent Ward Connerly in today's NYTIMES pooh-pooh even this little Clintonian obliquity of saccharine (hope), and you see how far we have gone. Or how far gone we are. Easy to avert one's gaze in the boundaries of poetry and elsewhere. Or not even to see it. Thinking still of _Black Chant: the Languages of African-American Postmodernism_ and its project of "demonstrat[ing] the existence of discrete communities supporting avant-garde work in African-American poetics . . . and to give some indication of the potential significance of these communities . . ." Nielsen's (possible) vision of a poetic "transracial plentitude" presupposes the architecture of white languages, lines, hymns, poetries of postmodernism. Experimental architects often unselfconsciously colorblind. Still a kind of blindness. Still blind. So a worthy project here among the garde-avant; or one worthy of that place in the garde, (publishing projects, 'conferences' to be had, communities to be had, discussion lists to discuss, politics to create, readings to be read; poems to be written) in these importunate (cynical) raced times: (re)Reading and (re)writing white transformations of the poem as white transfomations of/and black transformations of . . . white lines, white mythologies, white ears of the other. A poetic-politics of plentitude beyond the mau-mauing pols but also beyond the heretofore colored, liberal experiments in the languages of postmodernism. Beyond a boundary. mc ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 17:00:54 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU Subject: Re: The Dynamics of Literary Change Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" mark, thanx much for that summary-response to steve evans' essay (which i haven't yet seen)... very informative, searching... best, joe ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 18:23:32 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: syllable. king and pin of versification. MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thanks for the help on the various nemes, George. It works for me with the "th" in "thanks": /th/, a single discrete, irreducible verbal sound is a PHONEME; written, it becomes two GRAPHEMES, /t/ and /h/. And "thanks" contains two units of meaning that can't be reduced without losing their meaning, /thank/ and /s/, which are MORPHEMES (I had to clarify that by checking my dictionary). Alas, as I wrote the above I remembered words like "stick." Would /st/ be a phoneme? Unlike /th/, it can be divided into two sounds. Then there's the /str/ of "strike." What would the /st/ in *it* be? It's two graphemes on paper and both a kind of phoneme by iself, and a portion of the larger phoneme /str/. Hey, isn't it great to have someone around who can ask questions like this?! --Bob G. on hate to admit how much time I've spent not just in dictionaries but in actual books on linguistics (if only coffee-table ones) trying to straighten them out. As I now understand it a phoneme is the smallest discrete verbal sound a grapheme, invisible in speech, is the smallest discrete written verbal sign lmy that I've actually spent time in books on linguistics (only coffee-table ones, to be sure) trying to work out what George Thompson wrote: > > >>I don't understand the distinction that you make, Tom, between 'bent' or > >>'rent', and 'ent'. As purely syllabic units they are all equivalent: > > > >I don't know what distinction Tom was making, but they sure seem different > >to me --- the semi-explosive b, the long r, the absence of a beginning > >consonant. Wouldn't confuse one for another in a dark alley, nope. > > > > > Sure, no one wld want to meet rent or bent [especially bent] in a dark > alley but ent wld be no threat: it doesn't have a head [zero phoneme]. > > What I meant was that /ent/ is just as much a *syllable* as the other two. > The problem with the other two [I suppose we could add /ment/ to the gang, > as well as 'meant'] is that they have more husk surrounding their syllabic > core. The syllabic core of each of these syllables is the vocalism /e/. > /bent/ and /rent/ just happen to have phonic stuff both to the left and the > right of the core, whereas /ent/, poor thing, only has that little cluster > /nt/ at its back, its tail I suppose. > > Look, if you think /bent/ is someone to be avoided in dark alleys, what > about that burly thug /brent/ and his wasted friend /spent/? Yes, syllables > like people come in all shapes and sizes, but accd to the consitution > they're all equal, and each gets only one vote. > > I like Bob's attempt to come up with various emic alternatives to > 'phoneme.' But phonemes are very interesting little things, poetic little > things even. > > Also, remember morphemes: the word 'bent' has only one syllable but it has > two morphemes [/bend/ + past tense marker /t/ >> /bend+t/ >> 'bent']. So > besides its phonic husk it also carries the burden of two semantic units on > its back, unlike that light-weight /ent/, which carries only one such unit > [as in /stud-ent/]. > > As far as I can see if you want to dig down past the level of the syllable, > down past the morpheme, you might well be getting down to the phoneme. > > re Bob's question: What would the "s" in the phoneme, "sh," be called? Or > the "t" in "th?" /sh/ and /th/ are both single phonemes in English, but > they are represented by two graphemes. Your "rudinemes" look like graphemes > to me. > > Enough, all this play on -emes must be getting anemic now, so I'll stop. > > George ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 18:45:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: Re: jwcurry, sondheim, kdawn Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" this isn't acker's world baby. tell her, em. please, hot stuff, put me upon the right boat. oh, boy do i need direction. oh boy, do i do i do i do i do i do i do i do i do i. i do. can't you see dodie? i was crying out for your help. please show me the way to proper bad girl prose. or, is it fact or is it fiction. there i go being stupid again. a stupid cunt. ALARM, THAT DAWN GIRL IS TRYING TO SHOCK US. I HEAR AN OBNOXIOUS YAWN FROM DODIE. you call that personal? i didn't see anything of dawns self there. in fact, (oops, there i go again, missing the boat) i don't see anything of dawns self anywhere. who's we, dodie? who's had it? or, do you hold the concensus? have you been given the power to speak for all of us? well, i'd have to agree, kim dawn is not a part of the academic world. i told you, she makes me so mad too. i only wish you would write your snide comments more deliciously. get that pen outta yer ass and write something juicy. stop whining in the closet. so, dodie, please enlighten me, where this precious boat might be which lies in the 90's, which neither discusses fact/fiction or the personal/non. at least make it interesting for us dodie. i guess you were right, her earlier response was not draped in niceties as i believed. i was warned but went on ahead anyway. great stuff, alan and daniel. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 19:55:35 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Bennett M. Sm [Dimpson" Subject: Re: hello poetics! In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Do the readers of > this list have antique furniture? > desperate for a new topic). Well, ok, I rarely post (attendant) but I recognize a wake when I see one and thought I'd ask a question/raise a topic before more waves arrive. I'm working on a project (it is summer in Charlottesville) involving the correspondences, connecting flights, private dinner parties, sand castles of poets and "sculptors" working in and after Minimalism and Concept Art. Does this count as antique? Furniture, yes, I think. I've been swimming around in Smithson's writings, Matta-Clark's catalogues, LeWitt, Acconcci mimeographs, etc. full of handshakes, references, affinities to poets like Coolidge, Mayer, Grenier, Greenwald. The moment is word-as-thing, material language, "textual spaces-as-architectural spaces," 1967, 1974, 1986. Poems and Things as parallel structures for each other. Laurie Anderson writes in GM-C book, "The thing I loved best about that time was how much people wer involved in each other's work. All of us did a lot of talking and a lot of writing. The Anarchitecture group was a completely literary thing and didn't have a lot to do with the structures we eventually came up with. What we were really entranced with was the subject --the subject meaning our ramblings... Because without the talk, the background, the thing that was left was really blank." So, is any such talk recorded, documented, recognized, written about? Piombino and Watten and Davies do a lot with Smithson, but what other "artists" (plastic, environmental, conceptual) were important for poets at the time (and I know the time is really nebulous, cf. Tan Lin's present reactive work, a *dematerialization* of words as things)? But who is in the house as it's split (and what are they writing)? Any memories? Inbreeding always allowed (it is summer in Charlottesville), Bennett Simpson &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: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 16:58:03 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steve Carll Subject: Spencer Selby/Andrew Levy at Canessa Park Comments: To: maz881@aol.com, Levyaa@is.nyu.edu, sab5@psu.edu, mwinter@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu, fittermn@is.nyu.edu, wmfuller@ix.netcom.com, lease@HUSC.HARVARD.EDU, daviesk@is4.NYU.EDU, Daniel_Bouchard@hmco.com, drothschild@penguin.com, jdavis@panix.com, jms@acmenet.net, maj6916@u.cc.utah.edu, AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM, jarnot@pipeline.com, lgoodman@acsu.buffalo.edu, lppl@aol.com, aburns@fnbank.com, normacole@aol.com, acornford@igc.org, olmsted@crl.com, andrew_joron@sfbg.com, tlovell@sfsu.edu, 75477.2255@compuserve.com, 102573.414@compuserve.com, peacock99@aol.com, murphym@earthlink.com, cburket@sfsu.edu, selby@slip.net, cah@sonic.net, doug@herring.com, cchadwick@metro.net, ovenman@slip.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Thursday night, June 12th at the Canessa Park series in San Francisco, we were treated to a visit from Brooklyn's Andrew Levy and a special multi-media presentation by S.F. poet Spencer Selby. Spencer began the evening by reading some recent poems (from a manuscript called _The Big R_ and also some untitled pieces) while projecting slides of his visual works behind him. Some in the audience found that the density of each dimension, spoken and visual, made the other hard to follow; others quite enjoyed the mutual interplay. Some of the lines I wrote down come from the slides, and others from Spencer's voice: attention was interrupted has been drawn since it affirms as though they are dead loaded with relevance not yet shown can't use dead rain with its golden eye marked with something I can love it is higher than everything fragile lucid spirit half-truth drum roll dreams replaced by bad psychology it doesn't look like a finger it looks like a feather nothing can grow without reaction counterpoint running over dark red words are strung out and sometimes they are in the end "lost in the desert" art of discovering that money grows on trees that are absent you are night surface of nonsense this disease, and in his blindness poem heart disease and language made from what we want and cannot have heat makes the secret writing visible! a distance twisted by popular music before my brain received a phone call from your heart the politicians are doing in the world mode of signing in a circle cheating the knowledge box that took evasive action more of the divine enigma as we progress switch on positive human lamp All Men Are Liars monster born of meaning when light rebukes the world I'm one of those who believes that there is something that precedes these words won't let us leave demonic possession is mistaken for bedrest blazing light of memory showing everything but the past a poem written to release another paradox from your head a transcendental goal, if you will-- After a short question and answer session, there was a short break. Then Andrew Levy read work from _Curve_ and other work: I wish we could share more readily the geography of orbit an oscillation that insists on something who talks like the trees are falling and all day goes like this consciousness is butter of antinomy the ardor of your brain O ether tor making allegory from a continent whole as pardon the snow in perspective under the stars think against the fat tempt this landlord with lard once you are real you can no longer be ugly thunder smothers the sky you circle yourself too much the modern egalitarian jacket chemical insurances of the mind that's a big stick, bigger than any used in this century elevator hieroglyphics made it a game "Elephant Surveillance To Thought" the future is suffering and we're caught in the [sorry, got distracted!] so everyone shared the same body of water and took care to keep the filters clean and the mind clear. The attendees included Cole Swenson, Norma Cole, Spencer's partner Sara and her sister, Colleen Lookingbill, Jordon Zorker, Steve Vincent, Brian Lucas, Steve Dickison, Tina Rotenberg, Pat Reed, Eric Selland, Andrew Joron, and George Albon. On Saturday in the Sculpture Garden at the University Art Museum in Berkeley there was a Larry Eigner tribute reading featuring about 40 writers scheduled which I was unable to attend. I look forward to reading other people's notes on it! ********************************** 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: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 20:32:26 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: God & Grapheme Poetas, a newsbreak for your possible delectation. (objective poetry?) cheers, d.i. LONDON (Reuter) - British Muslims Thursday hailed what was described as a "miracle message" from God written inside a tomato. When Shaista Javed, a 14-year-old Muslim, sliced the tomato in half, she found the message spelled out in Arabic in its veins, British newspapers reported. On one side she read "There is only one God," while the other said "Muhammad is the messenger." Shaista believes she has witnessed a miracle. "God made me buy that tomato," the Daily Mail quoted her as saying. "These words are a message from God." Since Sunday, when she bought the tomato in the northern city of Huddersfield, word has spread throughout the Muslim community. About 200 people, some from as far afield as London, have visited the household to see the fruit, wrapped in plastic film to keep it fresh. A local storeowner said demand for tomatoes had surged, but the nearby mosque was cautious. "We don't consider it a miracle but it is certainly a blessing," a spokesman was quoted as saying. / / / / p.s.: regarding this best-known of all Islamic formulae (lately discerned in that London BLT sans the B & the L), a certain Pakistani cabdriver -- who was in some hurry to drop me off of an evening (so he could repair to his local mosque) -- related this tradition (Hadith) attributed to the Prophet Mohammed: if the world were placed in one balance-pan, and that revered saying (There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet) were deposited in the opposite pan, the weight of that terse utterance would overbalance that of all the manifest world. . ..... ............ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\ > 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: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 20:33:32 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Charles Bernstein Subject: More RealAudio Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" For those of you who are winding your way through the LINEbreak shows in RealAudio (though I wonder how many on this list have access to sound on their web browsers?), there are now two poems of mine up in RealAudio -- readings of poems that appeared in the last two issues of Sulfur. Both poems are linked to: http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/bernstein And while I am at it, let me make my periodic reminder to post information about recent publications of your own as editors, publishers, writers (print, web, and other). ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 18:18:47 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: dbkk@SIRIUS.COM Subject: Re: jwcurry, sondheim, kdawn,& Spicer In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 6:45 PM -0400 6/16/97, Kim Dawn wrote: >this isn't acker's world baby. >tell her, em. >please, hot stuff, put me upon the right boat. oh, boy do i need direction. >oh boy, do i do i do i do i do i do i do i do i do i. i do. >can't you see dodie? i was crying out for your help. please show me the way >to proper bad girl prose. or, is it fact or is it fiction. there i go being >stupid again. a stupid cunt. >ALARM, THAT DAWN GIRL IS TRYING TO SHOCK US. >I HEAR AN OBNOXIOUS YAWN FROM DODIE. Hi everyone, it's Kevin Killian. Just wanted to let youy all know, that yes, today I finally finished writing the biography of Jack Spicer and sent it off to the publisher (Wesleyan) before my deadline! Hooray! Lew Ellingham started this book in May 1982 and now it is done . . . I want to thank all of you on this list who have helped me over the years in all the different ways-- --And just being there to listen to me fret and worry about 1) was I putting too much in 2) leaving too much out 3) was I going to say the wrong thing 4) was I going to send it to the publishers, and then, some shocking fact would emerge that would throw all my conclusions out the window (tho' now I can't imagine what that might be, but something like, you know, Zukofsky wrote "After Lorca" as a prank. You have all been angels. But Kim Dawn, what is going on? See what happens when my back is turned, people start using capital letters. Leave Dodie alone, I can hardly believe what I'm reading, and here I was actually thinking of making a visit to Canada. Also, the editor at Wesleyan says that they are also going to print Peter Gizzi's edition of Spicer's lectures at the same time as the biography. So that's next spring. Okay, more later, thank you--everybody for all your support.--XXX Kevin ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 20:55:45 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Julu Sondheim Subject: Re: hello poetics! In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Look at Bernadette Mayer's Memory, one of my favorite books. Alan ____________________________________________________________________ URL: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html MIRROR: http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt/ and Javascripted text/webpages -- Tel. 718-857-3671, 432 Dean St., Brooklyn, NY 11217 IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/ Editor, BEING ON LINE ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 21:00:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "(Harold Davis)" Subject: Re: appropriate post... I love, and have always loved, ever since I first listened to Scheherazade leave her hubby hanging that first night of their honeymoon, the art of digression, the continual insertion of clarifications, new insights, entirely unnecessary data that serve no purpose, no obvious purpose, other than to flesh out the author's, the text's, neuroses, obsessive, compulsive, and obsessive-comulsive. Commas are good. . .ellipses are better; semi-colons--and em dashes--are somwhere between the two. But (and I'm sure Laurence Sterne would agree), in the Poetics of Digression, the artist's best typographical weapon is the parenthesis.* May you never get where you think you're going, amato. Endings are (almost) always letdowns. *Except, of course, for the footnote. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 08:57:07 +0900 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Hugh Nicoll Subject: Re: The Dynamics of Literary Change In-Reply-To: <199706162200.RAA23670@charlie.cns.iit.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 5:00 PM -0500 6/16/97, amato@CHARLIE.CNS.IIT.EDU wrote: >mark, thanx much for that summary-response to steve evans' essay (which i >haven't yet seen)... very informative, searching... > Here, here ---- hear, hear Could someone who has a copy of the elusive essay possibly scan it & post it, or put it up on a web-site somewhere, with Steve Evan's permission of course, so that it could become a source for further discussion? Hugh Hugh Nicoll, Miyazaki Municipal University, Funatsuka 1-1-2, Miyazaki-shi 880 JAPAN vox: 81-985-20-2000, ext 1306, fax: 81-985-20-4807 email: hnicoll@miyazaki-mu.ac.jp ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 17:56:41 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: Innovative poetics reading lists Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" A p.s. to Chris Alexander's listing of Perelman's _Talks_ collection: there are 2 such volumes, from, I think, different publishers. The earlier one (1980?) may be o.p., but should be in collections like those at UCSan Diego, SUNY Buffalo, U.Arizona at Tucson, & many more for all i know. The earlier one has a more homecooked feel to it, not so focussed maybe but if you like that handheld camera effect....David ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 17:51:36 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Holly Crawford Subject: Re: hello poetics! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > Do the readers of >> this list have antique furniture? >> desperate for a new topic). > Or I have a different project: There is no deadline. Send me an offer. A personal thought, a poem, a n equation, an antidote, a formula, a story, a personal incident, an object, a recipe or anecdotes. Something you want to offer or have been offered. Offers that I have received over the last several years at:http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~geo/holly_crawford.html This site and project are never complete. The project is more tahn the site. The meaning is of the project is the project taken as a whole, which is never possible. What is offered? By whom? What and whom is sacrificed? I have also have a tape of recorded offers. I asked other to read offers that I have received. I'm trying to figure out how to install this on my site. Offerings Project Send me an offer. URL:http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~geo/holly_crawford.html ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 21:59:05 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: Signage Comments: To: KENT JOHNSON In-Reply-To: <30996FA3F85@student.highland.cc.il.us> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Kent, you're so right. In fact, Alan Davies and I have published so many collaborations that my only excuse for this curious oversight must be some hidden admiration turned to envy. You know, his work has been frequently discussed by the eminent scholar and critic Jerome McGann, most recently in his Black Riders, The Visible Language of Modernism (Princeton UP,1993). McGann wrote the following, about Alan's "Language Mind Writing'(the discussion this is excerpted from goes on for several pages)::"Davies' text, originally delivered as one of the celebrated Langton Street "talks," observes the conventions of a certain kind of theoretical prose:Wittgensten, Heidegger, perhaps Blanchot. But the text is so absorbed in its own expressiveness that reading it one may begin to lose track of the conventional distinction between words and things...This textual artfulness presides over the work...The text does not cease to function as philosophic exposition.Nevertheless, its linguistic formalities- its sign structures-stand out in ways we associate with poetical rather than with philosophical works...as if the text were an embodiment or enactment of thought, a demonstration (an example, a representation, a mimesis) of the idea that thought is always a certain kind of action- not a "truth" but, as Riding would say, a "truth-telling." Alan Davies' most recent book of poetry is the stunningly beautiful Sei Shonagon (published by Hole Books (22-191 McLeod Street, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2P OZ8): "We always care what happens next/until the unexpected always happens/absolving us of even chance" Kent, just for asking, you are welcome to my second copy. Best wishes Nick On Mon, 16 June 1997, KENT JOHNSON wrote: > Too quick on the delete, and I thought of wanting to add something > after pressing the button: Gwyn McVay, I believe, asked a question > pertaining to books of "criticism" by innovative writers (tho the > question was more specific than that) and Nick Piombino responded > with a well-chosen list. Not on there, however, as I recall, was Alan > Davies's _Signage_ (Roof, 1987) a book where poetry and criticism > deeply fuse into strange and wonderful third things. > > What ever happened to Davies, by the way? Perhaps he's been plenty > active, and I just don't keep up with things like I might... I > remember that during the 80's he was something of a contrarian within > the LangPo community, publishing in most all the places, but he was > of a different "theoretical" bent, and some of those differences are > recorded in the old _L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book_. The difference > goes something like this: > > --Bernstein/Silliman/McCaffery, et.al.: "Thought is language." > > --Davies: "No it isn't." > > Well, one can imagine it was quite a bit more complicated than > that, but the basic philosophical split was interesting > (Davies, btw, is a long-time and committed Zen practitioner), and > maybe stands as one of the best examples that the Language moment-- > a few people still think otherwise, it seems--was not underwritten > by some hegemonic Marxist scheme. > > Anyway, _Signage_, by Alan Davies, humbly added to Nick Piombino's > list. > > Kent > > > ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 18:14:46 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Holly Crawford Subject: Re: appropriate post... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >I love, and have always loved, ...... > Commas are good. . .ellipses are better; semi-colons--and em dashes--are >somwhere between the two. But (and I'm sure Laurence Sterne would agree), in >the Poetics of Digression, the artist's best typographical weapon is the >parenthesis.* > May you never get where you think you're going, amato. Endings are >(almost) always letdowns. > > > >*Except, of course, for the footnote. Yes! I just finished and was sending out copies of the bone. It is part two. Part one and part two are based on Clement Greenberg's Avant-Garde and Kitsch. Part one is words by Clement Greenberg and part two is punctuation by... I used different process on the differnt parts. Part II, the words in the poem were selected from words that corresponded to the respective Fibonacci number series. I repaeated this process twice. Part II: Where, where where, where avant-garde? Here is the introduction to the bone; ..,. ,,. ,. _ ? ? . - - , . , ,. I'm working on anthology of punctuation now called Period. All work is available at Printed Matter in NY. Offerings Project Send me an offer. URL:http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~geo/holly_crawford.html ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 22:12:38 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: Re: More RealAudio Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >For those of you who are winding your way through the LINEbreak shows in >RealAudio (though I wonder how many on this list have access to sound on >their web browsers?), there are now two poems of mine up in RealAudio -- >readings of poems that appeared in the last two issues of Sulfur. Both >poems are linked to: > >http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/bernstein > > >And while I am at it, let me make my periodic reminder to post information >about recent publications of your own as editors, publishers, writers >(print, web, and other). recent prose published in volume 19 no.4 spring 1997 issue of the journal -contemporary verse. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 13:01:16 +1100 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: Vysotsky Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Simon said - "if you can ever find tapes or CD of Vladimir Vysotsky singing, that's definitely an experience. (if you saw the Baryshnikov cold war epic White Nights, Baryshnikov does a solo to a Vysotsky piece)" Yes - Vysotsky is a bit like a Soviet version of Bob Dylan - only much better - much more ribald. Even though he had died a few years beforehand (and thousands queued to mourn him) his songs are also used in the soundtrack of a 1993 film called "Moi Ivan,Toi Ivan" - I'm not sure of the English title - I saw it in Paris... a film about a young Russian Jew and Russian gentile... Pam ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 23:16:49 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: hello poetics! Comments: To: "Bennett M. Sm [Dimpson" In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi Bennett Simpson, Quite an interesting question which probably Alan Sondheim could answer better than I could if you could tear him away from Julu and Jennifer.My sense of the art of the sixties in relation to poets was that delicious but extremely evanescent feeling that somehow art (perhaps poetry, music, anything) could be gently lifted out of its commercial(concrete?material? reality?) context and conceptually float away somewhere better on Pegasus wings, made out of pages from 0-9. Only these were Daedalus wings, or more correctly Icarus wings, that perhaps eventually looked to Postmodernism for a soft landing. But, of course, if you remember the 60's, as the saying goes, you probably weren't there. This spirit probably lifted off somewhere right above the Spiral Jetty, when Smithson crashed into it. By the way, how much are copies of 0-9 going for (edited by Bernadette Mayer and Vito Acconci in the late 60's- attention Granary Books!- side stapled & mimeo)? I almost got a really inexpensive copy from Suzanne Zavrian at Pomander Books but when I called she told me a dealer offered her $25 over the modest $30 she asked for, this dealer, who had with this copy put together a whole set for a collector who had already offered quite a sum for the whole set. Best wishes, Nick On Mon, 16 Jun 1997, Bennett M. Sm [Dimpson wrote: > Do the readers of > > this list have antique furniture? > > desperate for a new topic). > > Well, ok, I rarely post (attendant) but I recognize a wake when I see one > and thought I'd ask a question/raise a topic before more waves arrive. I'm > working on a project (it is summer in Charlottesville) involving the > correspondences, connecting flights, private dinner parties, sand castles > of poets and "sculptors" working in and after Minimalism and Concept > Art. Does this count as antique? Furniture, yes, I think. I've been > swimming around in Smithson's writings, Matta-Clark's catalogues, LeWitt, > Acconcci mimeographs, etc. full of handshakes, references, affinities to > poets like Coolidge, Mayer, Grenier, Greenwald. The moment is > word-as-thing, material language, "textual spaces-as-architectural > spaces," 1967, 1974, 1986. Poems and Things as parallel structures for > each other. > > Laurie Anderson writes in GM-C book, "The thing I loved best > about that time was how much people wer involved in each other's work. All > of us did a lot of talking and a lot of writing. The Anarchitecture group > was a completely literary thing and didn't have a lot to do with the > structures we eventually came up with. What we were really entranced with > was the subject --the subject meaning our ramblings... Because without the > talk, the background, the thing that was left was really blank." > > So, is any such talk recorded, documented, recognized, written about? > Piombino and Watten and Davies do a lot with Smithson, but what other > "artists" (plastic, environmental, conceptual) were important for poets at > the time (and I know the time is really nebulous, cf. Tan Lin's > present reactive work, a *dematerialization* of words as things)? But who > is in the house as it's split (and what are they writing)? Any memories? > > Inbreeding always allowed (it is summer in Charlottesville), > > Bennett Simpson > > > > &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: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 23:33:25 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Julu Sondheim Subject: Re: hello poetics! In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I was in the last 0-9 and I lost my set; they're going for up to $250 a volume. I loaned the whole thing to someone a couple of years ago and I forget! Anyway, I don't think it was lost in pomo; I think whatever that non- commercial spirit etc. was, it's still present like a good-bad penny. After Buren for example, re: painting, there was no reason to continue. That was clear. For that was a direction or vector slamming into the ground; he slammed it, along with the whole Parmentier, Toroni, Mosset (BPMT) gang. Spiral Jetty and Smithson are before me; I never identified with the minimalists or reductive conceptualists. What got lost was the whole culture, again slammed, etc. Writing was just a part of us. We walk around with broken skulls, trauma to the day. Alan, if I lose my edge I'd rather die. I mean this literally; what oozes from the skull, well then. Maybe Brossard as well; I still have her early work as well (magazine). ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 23:57:02 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: syllable king and pin Why not call the "s" & "t" alphabetic letters? (or graphemes if you must.) Just keep in mind that there is no one-to-one correspondence between letters & the phonemes English uses. "Th" & "sh" are each single phonemes. I don't think it's very useful to posit partial phonemes. Some linguists do talk about "secondary phonemes," but those, I believe, are related to stress & pitch. Some letters are used for multiple phonemes (the vowels, for instance) . Some phonemes are represented by more than one letter (the initial phoneme in "say" & "cease"). Robert Duncan used to have his students transcribe poems into the International Phonetic Alphabet. I've found it to be a useful & interesting exercise to tune your ears It will also give you a visual graph of the sound structure of the passage or poem in question. cs In a message dated 97-06-16 13:48:58 EDT, Bob Grumman writes: << How about "sylb" as a textual unit between a phoneme and a syllable? Not a suggestion really worth a posting, probably, but I also wanted to ask a question or two. What would the "s" in the phoneme, "sh," be called? Or the "t" in "th?" I'm vague about what a grapheme is, too: a phoneme in print? If there's no name for partial phonemes like the afore-mentioned "s" and "t," my first very tentative suggestion is "rudineme." So the word "the" would consist of the two phonemes, "th" and "e," and of the three rudinemes, "t," "h" and "e." >> ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 01:20:39 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: "Bennett M. Sm [Dimpson" Subject: Re: hello poetics! Comments: To: Piombino/Simon In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Mon, 16 Jun 1997, Piombino/Simon wrote: > Hi Bennett Simpson, > Quite an interesting question which probably Alan Sondheim could answer > better than I could if you could tear him away from Julu and Jennifer.My > sense of the art of the sixties in relation to poets was that delicious > but extremely evanescent feeling that somehow art (perhaps poetry, > music, anything) could be gently lifted out of its > commercial(concrete?material? > reality?) context > and conceptually float away somewhere better on Pegasus wings, made out of > pages from > 0-9. Only these were Daedalus > wings, or more correctly Icarus wings, that perhaps eventually looked to > Postmodernism for a soft landing. But, of course, if you remember the > 60's, as the saying goes, you probably weren't there. This spirit > probably lifted off somewhere right above the Spiral Jetty, when > Smithson crashed into it. Smithson crashes (transitive), yes, he says NO to just about everything, including "concept" and "system" --what's his line, here it is, "I mistrust the whole notion of concept. I think that basically implies an ideal situation, a kind of closure." Of course Smithson's skepticism didn't keep anyone from trying to excavate --at least not on an allegorical level. Cf. Matta-Clark's utopian airing-out of previously closed spaces (and Dan Graham's no-holds barred political reading of such airing-out). There's a split between those who think art should make systems ambient, environmental, should bring them out of the dark, and those who think (liek Smithson, maybe) that this kind of impulse is self-defeating, that, yes, art can point to ruins/corpses, but once the taxonomy starts you're back in the realm of bad faith. I wasn't there, I don't remember, and as McGann says about so many things, "I don't know what I don't know." Did the sculptors read the poets? This sounds like a naive question, and it is, but the reading I do in art history and criticism of the time is much more ignorant of words/poetry than the words/poetry is of the art. Why is this? Is concept cum word a more directly powerful (vaccuuming) notion than word cum concept? What is it about things and actions that cause people to "lift off" into the aether (and now, ironically (or not) back into commercial spaces: "Margins" show at Barbara Gladstone Gallery: Acconci, LeWitt, Matta-Clark, Smithson through July 19th)? Do people have a more immediate phenomenological (sorry) relation vis-a-vis "concept art" than they do "concept writing"? It's interesting that much of the writing by people like LeWItt and Acconci, "Sentences on Conceptual Art" etc. is considered still in the realm of "art" and not in the realm of "poetry" --even at a time when the possibilities and suppositions about "poetry" undergo massive re-exploration. Not just a case of historical jet lag. Sorry fuzzy. I'm procrastinating. Incidentally, Acconci has some early, early (1961) poems published in a new magazine out of Paris called *Purple Fiction.* I like them, and do everything they say. Polaroids, Bennett Simpson &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: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 02:34:53 -0400 Reply-To: Tom Orange Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tom Orange Subject: syllable king and pin In-Reply-To: <199706170409.AAA08085@julian.uwo.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII thanks to bob g. for posing some potentially useful "-emes" and "slybs", and to george t. for some linguistic clarifications. yes, partial phonemes is messy business, "th" and "sh" being unique phonemes and thus irreducible to the different effects of the "t" and "s" in each case. and grapheme, yes, smallest discrete unit of verbal signification as bob puts it -- tho what do we do with an "i" with seven dots (lbd..?) george, i like yr husk/core image: "meant" too is a fine example, that "a" being part of the husk i'd like to peel away, tho it has a certain graphic import. hadnt thot abt morphemes tho, damn. and while we're at it, why not think abt "blent" (saw it in a d.g. rossetti sonnet not to long ago, "blended" becomes archaized into "blent") tho in the showcase showdown of the "emes," my money says that "ent" is still a heavy-weight contender -- by any name. cheers, t. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 02:51:19 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: the personal and the innovative (big yawn) re notion being puffed out various corners that i detest the personal, let's do some real, critical, logical thinking: the personal... in poetry: i get tired sometimes of what after a while can feel like an eternity of naval-gazing. but overall it's been great to move past predominance of flowers/mythical figure tropes, and into the goldmine of material drawn from lived life. still, there are too many poets writing poems where editing or careful shaping are considered unnecessary as long as there is something personal in there. come one, admit it, you all know the breed: "my lover/has flown from my heart/taking all the precious dreams/we built /together" on to "hey baby/when you took the heroin/ you also took the needle/and now i'm hurting/bad" blah blah blah i'm looking for something more when i read a poem. this has been said, many times, many ways, even by many of us, so i won't go into it. in other words, the personal, as a way of extending realm of subject matter -- i'm all for it. tillie olson RULES THE UNIVERSE! what puzzles and irritates me is that anyone reading my posts with modicum of care and thought, much less reading my work, would know all this. and isn't, after all, reading with care and thought what being writer, critic, is all about? [geez this must be a boring and obvious post for most of you -- it sure is boring to have to write. makes me think of adrienne rich's theory that the erasure of feminist theory holds us all back by making us continually have to rewrite it, and that at a certain point, pretending or deliberately choosing ignorance becomes an argument tactic in itself because it forces one side to continually have to restate the basics and obvious. sorry to do it here but after several waves of misinformation i'm at point of thinking it is now necessary.] next, the personal in postings, correspondence with strangers, daily interaction. i don't think well of screaming crude hurtful invective and threats for little or no reason at complete strangers. nor of hitting on anyone in vicious, loudly sexually aggressive way to make hitee [and bystanders] uncomfortable, or to elicit flames, or to get people to notice one. perhaps it's because instead of trying to justify myself by pretending to things i've little or no experience of, in (for example) this particular scenario i know too much firsthand about how unjust and disgusting it is to be sexually harrassed. so adopting sexual harassment as blanket response is, to me, unacceptable. remember our audre lord: "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." IMHO, personally vicious responses in what is meant to be a thoughtful, attentive, responsive environment like this list are particularly unwelcome. it isn't right for janitor to put up girlie posters and threaten to rape co-workers, it isn't right for a stock trader to leave comments about a secretary's abortion and graphic sexual come-ons on her desk, and it isn't right to sexually harass people on this list either. duh. also, i wouldn't take a tire iron and crush the hand of someone who was a little slow getting me my coffee. proportion. again, duh. i really am sorry about this posting -- it is so painfully obvious it is tiresome to even have to articulate -- i wish a few sectors of the response to my postings had not necessitated this. rob, you must be writhing -- i'll try and throw in a few buzzwords to comfort you -- deconstructionist angst, postmodern recovery of the self, phallus-laden trauma. finally, sorry dodie, joseph, alan, and kali, but the "bad girl" (or "bad boy") pose is as old as the sun and far more trite and predictable (if i only had a dime for every college freshman or teenager with a cigarette dangling from their mouth, a torn shirt, leather clothing of some sort, and a stock string of nasty things to say, i'd be rich. heck -- i'd take a nickle!). one can always find a crude, hurtful thing to do and then claim it was rebellion -- timothy mcveigh has shown us that, surely. finding a clear, elegant, blazing, exact-fit response, one (like dodie's hysterically funny, and aptly pointed video, uh, "review" chopped into one of those awful careless narrative "poem" offerings) which is not blindly, out of proportion, tritely hurtful, ahhh... THAT, THAT is much more difficult. consider tim o'brien's _The Things They Carried_, randy shilts' _And the band played on_, Tillie olson's _I stand here ironing_, larry heinemann's "paco's story," june jordan's "case in point" (appended to comfort eveyone for having to wade though this muck), judy grahn's "a woman is talking to death," george herbert's "easter wings" and "redemption," dorothy allison's _bastard out of carolina," seamus heaney's "mid-term break," anything by lady borton -- all creative/critical responses to deeply felt trauma and/or sociologic/political beliefs -- all arrows, explosions, exact clear aimed work by brilliant craftspersons writing of something they know a thing or two about... and really, to make a life's work of complaining that someone has victimized you in some way; to make any slight or raised voice (imagined, actual, or provoked) justification for responding with massive gunfire while ignoring all the bystanders wounded, ignoring disparity between initial slight and way over-kill response... seems awfully hypocritical and self-centered, i.e. "i can be careless and insensitive and crude but no one else can ever cease to eternally monitor my sensitivies and cater to them"... i'm reminded of that awful phase teenagers go through when nothing their parents do is right and nothing teenager does is wrong... sorry to bore you all with this. finally, could i ask a favor: before anyone goes about calling me names and making presumptions about my poetics and critical leanings and writing, please make some effort to a) actually READ and THINK about what i've said; b) actually read some of my work (http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/elliza/elliza.html and various publications -- sugar mule, nedge, east coast review, alsop review)? thanks! ---------------- CASE IN POINT June Jordan, 1980 A friend of mine who raised six daughters and who never wrote what she regards as serious until she was fifty-three tells me there is no silence peculiar to the female * * * I have decided I have something to say about female silence: so to speak these are my 2 cents on the subject: 2 weeks ago I was raped for the second time in my life the first occasion being a whiteman and the most recent situation being a blackman actually head of the local NAACP Today is 2 weeks after the fact of that man straddling his knees either side of my chest his hairy arm and powerful left hand forcing my arms and my hands over my head flat to the pillow while he rammed what he described as his quote big dick unquote into my mouth and shouted out: "D'ya want to swallow my big dick; well, do ya?" He was being rhetorical. My silence was peculiar to the female. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 18:02:07 +1100 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: ships Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Yes Eliza - " i get tired sometimes of what after a while can feel like an eternity of naval-gazing" - and after I became tired of sea-shanties and "moaning at the bar" I chucked it in and took up abstraction. Cheers, Pam ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 07:43:48 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: Re: ships you know, a friend of mine was describing a move to abstraction in painting in much the same way -- but you have made me take this in much more clearly, abstraction as an alternative to the endlessly personal. i guess, the only moves away i have come up with were to other people's stories, or to impersonal country-house/landscape kinds of poems. elizabeth bishop went to a fragmented, abstracted poetic in a number of poems and short stories where there was any use of personal material, and she often described ennui with naval gazing, though not the sea-going sort. and walt whitman, of course, combined both naval(body) gazing and naval (sea) gazing! how would an abstraction of the deeply personal/felt, like, say, picasso's "guernica" (does one put names of paintings in quotes or underline?) fit in your poetic? what if there was just one, teensy, weensy, little ship, not even a ship but a shiplet, tucked away in one corner -- or maybe, say, one, just one sailor trope? e ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 07:47:12 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: !!whoops! not a plug!! sheesh! i just realized -- i didn't mean would everyone on list please look at my web page (though you're welcome to if you want). i meant, if you're about to make an assumption about my poetics/critical leanings/ me, could you do the research there first? red-faced... e ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 08:00:29 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Piombino/Simon Subject: Re: Smithson's Poetics Comments: To: "Bennett M. Sm [Dimpson" In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi Bennett Simpson, Thanks for mentioning the show at Barbara Gladstone. I did meet Robert Smithson once, introduced to him on a visit to Max's Kansas City in 1972 or 1973. He expressed a lot of interest in poetry and spoke of wanting to see more connections between the arts. Although I don't know so much about Smithson's art work, I've always been fascinated by his writing, which has been recently republished. In his article "From Ivan The Terrible to Roger Corman or Paradoxes of Conduct In Mannerism as Reflected in the Cinema" he mentions Baudelaire, Nabokov, William Empson, Shakespeare, Stanislavksy, Brecht,Poe. Did he read contemporaneous poets? My guess is he did, at least in passing, given that he seemed to read quite a lot. Another quote, this time "A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art": "Serge Gavronsky writing in Cahier Du Cinema, No. 10, points out that Warhol employs a kind of self-inventing dialogue in his films, that resembles the sub-dialogue of Nathalie Sarraute. Gavronsky points out the 'dis-synchronzized talk' 'monsyllabic English,' and other 'tropistic' effects..." Best wishes, Nick P. On Tue, 17 Jun 1997, Bennett M. Sm [Dimpson wrote: > On Mon, 16 Jun 1997, Piombino/Simon wrote: > > > Hi Bennett Simpson, > > Quite an interesting question which probably Alan Sondheim could answer > > better than I could if you could tear him away from Julu and Jennifer.My > > sense of the art of the sixties in relation to poets was that delicious > > but extremely evanescent feeling that somehow art (perhaps poetry, > > music, anything) could be gently lifted out of its > > commercial(concrete?material? > > reality?) context > > and conceptually float away somewhere better on Pegasus wings, made out of > > pages from > > 0-9. Only these were Daedalus > > wings, or more correctly Icarus wings, that perhaps eventually looked to > > Postmodernism for a soft landing. But, of course, if you remember the > > 60's, as the saying goes, you probably weren't there. This spirit > > probably lifted off somewhere right above the Spiral Jetty, when > > Smithson crashed into it. > > > Smithson crashes (transitive), yes, he says NO to just about everything, > including "concept" and "system" --what's his line, here it is, "I > mistrust the whole notion of concept. I think that basically implies an > ideal situation, a kind of closure." Of course Smithson's skepticism > didn't keep anyone from trying to excavate --at least not on an > allegorical level. Cf. Matta-Clark's utopian airing-out of previously > closed spaces (and Dan Graham's no-holds barred political reading of such > airing-out). There's a split between those who think art should make > systems ambient, environmental, should bring them out of the dark, and > those who think (liek Smithson, maybe) that this kind of impulse is > self-defeating, that, yes, art can point to ruins/corpses, but once the > taxonomy starts you're back in the realm of bad faith. I wasn't there, I > don't remember, and as McGann says about so many things, "I don't know > what I don't know." > > Did the sculptors read the poets? This sounds like a naive question, and > it is, but the reading I do in art history and criticism of the time is > much more ignorant of words/poetry than the words/poetry is of the art. > Why is this? Is concept cum word a more directly powerful (vaccuuming) > notion than word cum concept? What is it about things and actions that > cause people to "lift off" into the aether (and now, ironically (or not) > back into commercial spaces: "Margins" show at Barbara Gladstone Gallery: > Acconci, LeWitt, Matta-Clark, Smithson through July 19th)? Do people have > a more immediate phenomenological (sorry) relation vis-a-vis "concept art" > than they do "concept writing"? It's interesting that much of the writing > by people like LeWItt and Acconci, "Sentences on Conceptual Art" etc. is > considered still in the realm of "art" and not in the realm of "poetry" > --even at a time when the possibilities and suppositions about "poetry" > undergo massive re-exploration. Not just a case of historical jet lag. > > > Sorry fuzzy. I'm procrastinating. > > Incidentally, Acconci has some early, early (1961) poems published in a > new magazine out of Paris called *Purple Fiction.* I like them, and do > everything they say. > > > Polaroids, > > Bennett Simpson > > &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: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 08:23:59 -0400 Reply-To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Bob Grumman Subject: Re: syllable king and pin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Much of my interest in what might be called micro-poetics is hard for me to defend. For instance, I disagree with Charles Smith when he says that it would not be "very useful to posit partial phonemes" but I can't offhand think of an example of where it *would* be useful, only that I vaguely remember from time to time being bothered in my writing by the lack of one. As for just calling "s" and "t" alphabetic letters, I generally do--but it might not be enough. What if, to take a crazy example, you were dealing as a critic with the line, "The twenty-two trucks turned." You could say its author used the letter /t/ five times and the phoneme /t/ twice; but what if for some obscure reason you wanted to say he'd used the /t/ three times as a part of phonemes? That is, what if you wanted to distinguish the fractional phoneme /t/ from the plain letter /t/, and also from the plain phoneme /t/ (which interestingly to me isn't necessarily the plain letter /t/--which makes me wonder what the w is in the phoneme /tw/ of "two.") All of this got me rummaging through Cummings, master of the expressive use of the less-than-syllable, as in the following: birds( here,inven ting air U )sing tw iligH( t's v va vas vast ness.Be)look now (come soul; &:and who s)e voi c es ( are ar a Speaking of syllables-that-aren't-words like "ent," just look at how much meaning he puts into "ness!" And at the "ting(le)" he adds with an incomplete syllable, and the zing/sing he gets from a complete but isolated syllable, and--best--the breakdown of the syllable/word, "are" (reversing the expansion of "vast"), to show/say the scattered birds' voices becoming one (with the hint of that one voice's beginning some primal alphabet). In short, there's much in poetry that's smaller than syllables. (As Alan Sondheim beautifully demonstrated yesterday with his "wundering wumb," utc.) Now a literary history question. I'm not very widely read but my impression is that Cummings (in English, at any rate) was the first poet to use the "intra-syllabic word-break" to aesthetic effect. E.g.: as in his breaking "inventing" into "inven" and "ting" for the latter's hint of "tingle," and "using" into "u" and "sing." Does anyone out there know of anyone who did this kind of thing before him? --Bob G CharSSmith@AOL.COM wrote: > > Why not call the "s" & "t" alphabetic letters? (or graphemes if you must.) > Just keep in mind that there is no one-to-one correspondence between letters > & the phonemes English uses. "Th" & "sh" are each single phonemes. I don't > think it's very useful to posit partial phonemes. Some linguists do talk > about "secondary phonemes," but those, I believe, are related to stress & > pitch. Some letters are used for multiple phonemes (the vowels, for instance) > . Some phonemes are represented by more than one letter (the initial phoneme > in "say" & "cease"). > > Robert Duncan used to have his students transcribe poems into the > International Phonetic Alphabet. I've found it to be a useful & interesting > exercise to tune your ears It will also give you a visual graph of the sound > structure of the passage or poem in question. > > cs > > In a message dated 97-06-16 13:48:58 EDT, Bob Grumman writes: > > << How about "sylb" as a textual unit between a phoneme and a syllable? > Not a suggestion really worth a posting, probably, but I also wanted to > ask a question or two. What would the "s" in the phoneme, "sh," be > called? Or the "t" in "th?" I'm vague about what a grapheme is, too: a > phoneme in print? If there's no name for partial phonemes like the > afore-mentioned "s" and "t," my first very tentative suggestion is > "rudineme." So the word "the" would consist of the two phonemes, "th" > and "e," and of the three rudinemes, "t," "h" and "e." >> ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 09:16:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Jordan Davis Subject: rebus alibi camphor brain In-Reply-To: <33A681DF.542A@nut-n-but.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Play of signifier sound writing cross on the t (imploded t?) play of the signifier at what level? the letter? the word? the line? (writing) or is the writing evidence of talk, of being fast on your feet (Woody Allen? John Godfrey?) I hear "-omological" when I see "ent-" coming down the alley. Meaning may break down into tiny units but you need all the units you need? Oak oak! like like --"Drunken Winter" J Ceravolo ___ Jordan Davis ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 09:40:35 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Field of Roses Subject: Re: ships Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >you know, a friend of mine was describing a move to abstraction in painting >in much the same way -- but you have made me take this in much more >clearly, abstraction as an alternative to the endlessly personal. i >guess, the only moves away i have come up with were to other people's >stories, or to impersonal country-house/landscape kinds of poems. Under a cover slide at 400x I like to remember the advice of the painter, Ron Bloore, "Let's find a way to look out". crafteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyelloweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefulc rumeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeee Linda Charyk Rosenfeld ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 10:03:50 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Henry Gould Subject: Re: The Dynamics of Literary Change In-Reply-To: Message of Mon, 16 Jun 1997 15:51:02 -0400 from A book I'm enjoying & finding relevant to the issues Mark (& Steve) have raised is _Baudelaire and the Aesthetics of Bad Faith_ by Susan Blood (Stanford, 1997). The author re-interprets _Les Fleurs du Mal_ and the canonization process undertaken by Proust, Valery & others in the early 20th cent. which made Baudelaire(-Poe) the arch-avatar of "the new"; she looks at this process and the ideology of high modernism through the lens of Sartre's concept (bad faith). Sartre wrote a critique of Baudelaire which caused an uproar in France in the 50s - Sartre was debunked as a philistine for accusing Baudelaire of bad faith & instituting the poetics of aesthetic equivocation - the scandal was linked (as a springboard) to the "nouvelle critique" of later french theory. I'm unable to summarize Blood's points very well (just a poet, y'all) but she quotes C. Greenberg who looked to the origins of Modernism (the "new") in Kant's methods of critique - art critiques its own processes in an effort to substantiate its position - reach the ultimate "pure poetry" - the Poe/Baudelaire techniques of "hypocritical" writing for the "hypocrite" reader develop the mystique of art-for-art - & the High Modernists consolidated and formalized this approach. This I guess relates to what Steve (via Bourdieu?) was getting at about "exclusions" in creating a "field" - I would guess that the Sartre essay, which I haven't been able to find yet, would have some relevance to people looking for a "new-not-new" or a new engage writing or a new old writing... a flip side to post-structuralism or somethin'? - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 11:07:56 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Fred Muratori Subject: Happy Genius? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Anyone know what ever happened to _Happy Genius_, a lit mag that was to feature work by some folks on this list? -- Fred M. *********************** 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: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 12:04:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Kim Dawn Subject: dot of the i/cross bar of t Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" i tend to disagree with eliza's point on abstraction being void of the personal. if anything, abstraction is entrenched with the personal far more than the obvious. down with the personal she says, let's have a more academic discussion (priviledging academia over the personal, why can't they be one and the same, or, at least, intermingled?) she then proceeds to divulge her rape experience.(thank you) appreciated, but seemingly contradictory to her earlier response. i'm not sure what she wants. how is your way of expressing your experiences of 'victimization' better from mine? although, i did find her response (s) to be provocative (not without feeling, like mine) and well considered. thank you. the dot of the i, the cross of the t. the t bar overshadows the i like a small baby star floating in (non) space (though deeply connected to the upward dignified line beneath it. holding the self (i) up even with the space between. what is to be made of the space between the dot and the upward line of the i? the cross bar of the t (-) makes me think of the aura of the branch jutting out over/from/between the tree. (and the body/beneath) -(benjamin) (-) is the branch which touches/overshadows remembers the body standing beneath it. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 11:19:15 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: Re: syllable king and pin In-Reply-To: <970616235604_1444328336@emout14.mail.aol.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Why not call the "s" & "t" alphabetic letters? (or graphemes if you must.) >Just keep in mind that there is no one-to-one correspondence between letters >& the phonemes English uses. "Th" & "sh" are each single phonemes. I don't >think it's very useful to posit partial phonemes. Some linguists do talk >about "secondary phonemes," but those, I believe, are related to stress & >pitch. Some letters are used for multiple phonemes (the vowels, for instance) >. Some phonemes are represented by more than one letter (the initial phoneme >in "say" & "cease"). > >Robert Duncan used to have his students transcribe poems into the >International Phonetic Alphabet. I've found it to be a useful & interesting >exercise to tune your ears It will also give you a visual graph of the sound >structure of the passage or poem in question. > >cs > The most successful techniques for teaching dyslexics to read (such as Orton-Gillingham) break written English into --- what? Something that doesn't quite fit into the linguistic categories mentioned so far, judging from my necessarily partial parental knowledge of my son's experience. But this raises all kinds of issues about the relation between written and spoken language. For example, the different weights (nothing at all to do with semantics) of "wait" and "weight" --- for me, very striking, but I know that for others (e.g., my son) barely if at all present. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 09:12:25 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Bromige Subject: ships Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" George Bowering, who is in hiding due to some litmafia complications, asks me to post one word to the list (a request which reflects his lifelong interest in spelling--some of you will recall his remarks re-GinsbUrg) : navEl david ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 14:06:33 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: !!whoops! not a plug!! -Reply Eliza -- << sheesh! i just realized -- i didn't mean would everyone on list please look at my web page (though you're welcome to if you want). i meant, if you're about to make an assumption about my poetics/critical leanings/ me, could you do the research there first? >> I felt that meaning was perfectly clear in the 1st instance. Not to worry. Happy to be. d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 14:39:18 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Martin J Spinelli Subject: EPC Sound Room MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII The Sound Room at the Electronic Poetry Center http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/sound has recently been overhauled. You will now find recordings previously unavailable online by Charles Bernstein, Steve McCaffery, Ray Federman, Jena Osman, Loss Glazier, and Kenneth Sherwood on an updated list of all EPC soundfiles. Our RealAudio files now emanate from a faster machine and we have added an option which allows users to download most RealAudio files before playback (which will end interruptions that can occur with streaming RealAudio). Also, the updated soundfile information page now includes help with using RealAudio. In addition, you'll find a links page to other sites with poetic/literary audio. Best, Martin _________________________________________________________________________ Martin Spinelli martins@acsu.buffalo.edu English Department, SUNY @ Buffalo LINEbreak http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/linebreak EPC Sound Room http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/sound ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 14:52:59 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Joseph Lease Subject: Re: jwcurry, sondheim, kdawn In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII an Irish rock star said--I don't care if it's all been done before--I haven't done it all before-- that too is a part of the story-- if what we mean by culture--and history--is character labs--where selves reconfigure-- On Mon, 16 Jun 1997 dbkk@SIRIUS.COM wrote: > At 1:21 PM -0400 6/16/97, Kim Dawn wrote: > > >kim dawn is a lewd drunken old man. she is a hologram. she is out to shock, > >provocation for provocations sake, art for art's sake kinda gal. from my > >point of view, i must say her writing, even her life, since the two are so > >entwined, hold no integrity. (even though i've never seen or read any of > >her work.) > > > > >i find her work far too personal. > >i don't wanna know who she is. i don't wanna guess what's fact. what's > >fiction. > >i like prose, sure, but i wouldn't call for work literary, it belongs in > >the worst pornography magazines, in comic books. > >i like poetry that's soft, that's academic, that's smarter than her, that's > >void of emotion. > >keep your spilling guts to yourself kimdawn. choke on;em. > > When Kathy Acker was on a panel I curated a few years ago--"Narrative > Strategies for Century's End" or something like that--one thing that she > was adamant about was that she was *not* interested in the self. If you > look at her work, you'll see what's she's dealing with is more like > psychological tropes--or tremors of a larger, shifting cultural self. > > To discuss writing in terms of "too personal" or "fact" vs. "fiction" > you're missing the boat. It's all artiface, especially in Acker's world. > > This surface of vulnerability you've adopted is manipulative--this > unacknowledged manipulativeness is the issue--not any shock value you think > you're imparting. This is the 90s, after all, shock is like, *over.* > We've already had it ad nauseum. > > Dodie > ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 15:07:06 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Thomas Bell Subject: abstraction/personal Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" It's possible for some to learn to discriminate between the appropriate, artistic, and possible resolving "personal" and the endlessly repeated and possibly sensational "personal," I would think. tom bell At 12:04 PM 6/17/97 -0400, Kim Dawn wrote: >i tend to disagree with eliza's point on abstraction being void of the >personal. if anything, abstraction is entrenched with the personal far more >than the obvious. >down with the personal she says, let's have a more academic discussion >(priviledging academia over the personal, why can't they be one and the >same, or, at least, intermingled?) >she then proceeds to divulge her rape experience.(thank you) appreciated, >but seemingly contradictory to her earlier response. i'm not sure what she >wants. how is your way of expressing your experiences of 'victimization' >better from mine? although, i did find her response (s) to be provocative >(not without feeling, like mine) and well considered. thank you. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 15:16:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: CharSSmith@AOL.COM Subject: Re: Innovative poetics reading lists p.s. to db's: The earlier volume was published by BP himself as Hills 6/7 in 1980 w/ a cool cover by Francie Shaw. cs << A p.s. to Chris Alexander's listing of Perelman's _Talks_ collection: there are 2 such volumes, from, I think, different publishers. The earlier one (1980?) may be o.p., but should be in collections like those at UCSan Diego, SUNY Buffalo, U.Arizona at Tucson, & many more for all i know. The earlier one has a more homecooked feel to it, not so focussed maybe but if you like that handheld camera effect....David >> ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 15:31:55 EDT Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: henry g Subject: lyric & individual another book recommendation from the sexless ghost monk of the death-house book repository: Smith, John E. America's philosophical vision U Chicago, 1992 among other things, book summarizes how Peirce, James, Dewey, Royce et al - the pragmatists - overturned the dichotomies of european philosophy (self/other, matter/mind, knowledge/experience) with a redefinition of "experience". Ironic how the "innovative" tradition in U.S. downplays its own philosophical heritage. looking for a ground for a "new" lyric centered in experience, rather than self, rather than language? look in your own backyard. there are no individuals. there are only generals, and kernels. - Henry Gould ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 16:33:07 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest Subject: new quotes from old, new quotes from old... oh for heavens sake, kim dawn is it really too much to ask that posts be read carefully before you make assumptions? this is getting to be like some nightmarish party game of telephone. these posts are getting abominably dull. i can imagine getting into endless post, misinterpretation, and correction syndrome and it is a pretty bleak vision. how about this: listmembers, don't believe any interpretations or conclusions drawn about what i've said until you've actually read what i said yourself? trusting that you'll do that and i won't see any more third generation errors of interpretation based on misreading of me, i'll make this set of corrections and then leave the matter to the pantheon of accuracy and careful reading (saints, gods, godesses, the whole lot). a) don't know where you got a rape experience, much less "her [elliza's] rape experience" out of post. i mentioned that i wouldn't condone sexual harassment having had personal experience of it. went on to list examples of harassment. i am discussing harassment, not rape, and did NOT say examples were my own experiences at ANY POINT!). here is quote. "in (for example) this particular scenario i know too much firsthand about how unjust and disgusting it is to be sexually harrassed. so adopting sexual harassment as blanket response is, to me, unacceptable." then, later, examples as part of argument against harassment: "it isn't right for janitor to put up girlie posters and threaten to rape co-workers, it isn't right for a stock trader to leave comments about a secretary's abortion and graphic sexual come-ons on her desk, and it isn't right to sexually harass people on this list either." i go on to say i'll append a poem by JUNE JORDAN -- not by me, as part of example of apt, proportionate, blazingly good response to deeply felt personal belief and append it. i am NOT june jordan. not only do i say poem is BY june jordan when i say i'll append it, i attach a second clue: her name next to title, with date she wrote poem. and it is a pretty well known poem of hers! b) i never said anything even approaching your quote of me: "down with the personal. let's have a more academic discussion (privileging academia over the personal." i analyze the personal in two different areas: poetry and postings on list. in poetry, i say "overall it's been great to move ... into the goldmine of material drawn from lived life" but with some reservations. i later say in post, as elaboration of reservations, that when frustrated with what feels like an endless personal i've made my own move into other people's stories and landscape/scenery type poems, and i admire pam brown's description (though she may have been being playful about mispelling) of using abstract as alternative to narrowed subject matter of strictly personal. i say of personal in context of postings/discussion, that it was too personal to harass someone sexually on list, or to use posts to make vicious personal attacks. here are quotes": "next, the personal in postings, correspondence with strangers, daily interaction. i don't think well of screaming crude hurtful invective and threats for little or no reason at complete strangers. nor of hitting on anyone in vicious, loudly sexually aggressive way to make hitee [and bystanders] uncomfortable, or to elicit flames, or to get people to notice one." "IMHO, personally vicious responses in what is meant to be a thoughtful, attentive, responsive environment like this list are particularly unwelcome" at no point do i even mention the word "academic" or say academic should be privileged over personal. at no point do i indicate any difficulty with the personal in postings to list at all EXCEPT when posting is unmerited and/or vicious personal attack or sexual harassment. i am, and how on earth has this gotten lost in the brunt of all this, one of the original "chided" ones who put up silly post wi/ s&m/faux stein poem. i.e., i put up personal sort of post (joke and parodic poem), and went on to defend it in two, count them, two posts! sheesh. leapin' lizards. prancin' poetics. creamsicles. c) finally, i do NOT say " abstraction [is] void of the personal." i say i'd never thought of abstraction as alternative to hypnotic naval/navel gazing (LOVE those sailors!) of the endless personal. abstraction as ALTERNATIVE. i go on to list ways in which abstraction incorporates personal ("guernica") while having the remove of abstraction, and e. bishops use of abstraction with some of her most personal material (thinking in particular of "the scream," "the shampoo," "four love poems," poem about taxi ride through central park and owl, "rooster," the earthshaking "One Art" (it starts out abstract and suddenly drops into one of the most wrenching direct personals i've ever come across)). so, list, go directly to the source for your latest on What Elliza Said and accept no substitutes! e ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 16:37:13 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Steven Marks Subject: Re: !!whoops! not a plug!! In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Please, everybody, plug away as our list owner only recently reminded us. Where else can we learn about all the great sites and books and pamphlets and magazines, etc? It's not like this stuff is advertised on television. It's not like a lot of it is *even* in bookstores. your faithful plugger and plugee, Steven p.s. for the -emes people: should that be pluggee? What does the extra "g" add? a thousand? > Eliza -- > << sheesh! i just realized -- i didn't mean would everyone on list please > look at my web page (though you're welcome to if you want). i meant, if > you're about to make an assumption about my poetics/critical leanings/ > me, could you do the research there first? >> > > __________________________________________________ Steven Marks http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html __________________________________________________ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 15:43:32 -0500 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Judy Roitman Subject: No RealAudio In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970616202314.006f28a8@bway.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > >And while I am at it, let me make my periodic reminder to post information >about recent publications of your own as editors, publishers, writers >(print, web, and other). Have a chapbook (The stress of meaning) fresh off the (Standing Stones) Press. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Judy Roitman | "Whoppers Whoppers Whoppers! Math, University of Kansas | memory fails Lawrence, KS 66045 | these are the days." 913-864-4630 | Larry Eigner, 1927-1996 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 16:59:36 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: !!whoops! not a plug!! / the EME Steven -- (just to make sure I misunderstand you adequately): > for the -emes people: should that be pluggee? how about a pluggeme? -- most discrete (atomic) unit of a (discreet) plug (as in: an eliptical near-reference to the fact of having written something) & the dream-eme (discrete unit of a dream scenario -- oneiric pixel) then: the e-eme (basic building block of email experience -- this exists somewhat below the level of actual maniffest e-language; it's the abstract idea of email communication, as an all-but-inchoate sub-particle of such) also to note: the eme-eme -- most discrete unit of an analytical perspective d.i. p.s.: further on the Kim debate: Joseph Lease & Thomas Bell each make points worth making. Every drop-soul must learn the byways of the ocean for itself, neh? Still, there are limits as to what a given reader need read. And in conversation (at least), courtesy has much to recommend it. The business of what lies beyond personality, is subtle & difficult but needful & interesting. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 17:48:22 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: David Israel Subject: Re: ships << what if there was just one, teensy, weensy, little ship, not even a ship but a shiplet, tucked away in one corner -- or maybe, say, one, just one sailor trope? >> This reminds that in Creeley's charming little book *Autobiography* (Hanuman Press -- also in some collection of writings -- but the Hanuman Press volume [small enough to fit in hand] seems suited to this text), he remarks that Chs. Olsen alleges that the ideograph of a boat is thought to be, historically, the first known sign of the self. Somewhere in the quatrains of Rumi's (in C.Barks' version), is a fine one beginning -- in the boat of myself . . . . (& he speaks, also, of being subsumed in the surround of water -- but I forget the particular words) -- composer Stephen Dickman told me he set this verse to music . . . . Among Tagore's *Crescent Moon* poems (Steve M. -- not yet gotten my NYROB, but soon) -- a collection entirely concerned w/ childhood experience -- is one remarkable poem -- initial lines linger in memory: Day after day I float my paper boats one by one down the running stream In big black letters I write my name on them and the name of the village where I live I launch the paper boats . . . [. . . . precis of remainder of poem: and I look out as they wander away -- I know that somewhere downstream, you'll find them and know who I am!] It's seems significant that the child/poet writes both his personal name as well as the name of his village -- individual in its setting of community. One alone would not be enough. The dailiness of the sailing of the boats -- and the sense of unknowing where they're going -- and the imagination of a dstination where recognition occurs -- all these elements of the idealized rustic child-writer's narrative are evident in ways that seem charmed. d.i. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 09:28:50 +1100 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: ships Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Eliza - you wrote "and walt whitman, of course, combined both naval(body) gazing and naval (sea) gazing" It was a joke, Joyce. Here in the antipodies we gaze at our "navels". But to stay with militarism & abstraction what was that line from the seventies from the feminist poet Marge Piercy - something like "a general admired an abstract painting so much he had an entire country bombed into its reproduction" Cheerio for now Pam ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 09:19:24 +1000 Reply-To: jtranter@sydpcug.org.au Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: Mocking the New Zealanders MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In a recent posting, Alan Sondheim said: " murky slugged-vine hungs duwn truiling frum durk-wull, skein-cutchers uf jennifer's wumb un the muve thruugh julu; jewel-julu mirrurs bluud-durk spheres with perfect ruy-trucing us distunce turns buck un itself; birth is grunted ucruss the gruin uf prutuculs; yuu're never ulluwed tu furget thut there is nu distunce between neurest puints in these enfulding tis- uses, clused dumuins sputtering in the heuted symphuny uf bluud-red night, in the bluud-durk night " I know Australians are supposed to do it all the time, but I think it's cruel to mock the New Zealand accent like that. » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » John Tranter ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 09:21:25 +1000 Reply-To: jtranter@sydpcug.org.au Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: Dumb jokes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Q: Why do blondes act so dumb? A: So that men can understand them. » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » John Tranter, 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Australia Phone Sydney (+612) 9555 8502 FAX (+612) 9212 2350 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 09:29:21 +1000 Reply-To: jtranter@sydpcug.org.au Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: John Tranter Subject: Varieties of Marxists ... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In a recent posting Kent Johnson (or, as he firmly spells it) KENT JOHNSON wrote ... Well, one can imagine it was quite a bit more complicated than that, but the basic philosophical split was interesting (Davies, btw, is a long-time and committed Zen practitioner), and maybe stands as one of the best examples that the Language moment-- a few people still think otherwise, it seems--was not underwritten by some hegemonic Marxist scheme. Anyway, _Signage_, by Alan Davies, humbly added to Nick Piombino's list. You mean there are other kinds of Marxists? » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » » John Tranter, 39 Short Street, Balmain NSW 2041, Australia Phone Sydney (+612) 9555 8502 FAX (+612) 9212 2350 ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 18:13:26 -0700 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Tenney Nathanson Subject: hasty (haitch tee) em el Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" another techno query: how do you (how does one) set poetry quickly and easily as html, if one writes big long lines. That is, how do you avoid doing THIS: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah assuming it's all ONE line of verse, and get it to do like so (ndented that is): blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah to indicate that it IS all one line of poultry--quickly and easily? just figure a safely short number of characters, then build in a return, and then type six blank spaces at the beginning of the new (non) line? there must be something easier.... thanks? tenney ---------------------------------------------------------- tenney nathanson tenney@azstarnet.com nathanso@u.arizona.edu http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 21:25:58 -0400 Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group Sender: UB Poetics discussion group From: Alan Julu Sondheim Subject: Re: hasty (haitch tee) em el In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19970617181338.5f6f729a@pop.azstarnet.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII That's it, use
or some such or you could set the whole thing and encase it with 

 or some such.

Or you could just let the whole thing flow...

Alan
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 17 Jun 1997 21:55:06 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joseph Duemer 
Organization: Clarkson University
Subject:      Re: ships
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

One of David Israel's great charms is his delicate sense of literary
associations. Creeley/Rumi/Tagore on the self as a boat, very sweet &
apt. Rowing over deep clear water.
_____________________________
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
Phone: 315-262-2466
Fax: 315-268-3983
duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu
_____________________________

"Art cannot be tamed, although our responses to it can be . . ."
     -Jeanette Winterson
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 17 Jun 1997 22:35:12 -0300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Stephen C. Ellwood" 
Subject:      MY NAME IS EMILY VEY DUKE.
In-Reply-To:  <199706172340.JAA18824@mail.zip.com.au>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

MY NAME IS EMILY VEY DUKE AND I AM NOW PARTICIPATING IN THIS DISCUSSION
GROUP.  I DO NOT HAVE A WEB SITE.  I WOULD LIKE TO POST MY POETICS HERE
FOR DISCUSSION AND WILL BE HAPPY TO PARTICIPATE IN ANY TYPE OF (COMPULSIVE
 \NON COMPULSIVE) DISCOURSE PROPOSED.  ABOUT MYSELF AND OTHERS.  I'M
NOT FUSSY.  MY AIM IS TRUE.

OKAY, SOME POETICS FOLLOW:

1)  We arrived in South Africa with fifteen thousand Rands which were
fifteen thousand avails of prostitution.

2)  I feel welcome here

3)  Finally I just told him "Dad, I have to believe that you will protect
me from male sexual desire, including your own."  He was so high but so
lucid, I knew we could discuss anything.  He said "I am so glad you said
that Em.  I can promise you, I will always do that.  You are a beautiful
woman, I am so proud of you, I brag your stories to everyone.  You are my
precious daughter and you are always safe with me.

4)  Me and Tim and Stephen are sitting outside the Trident.  I'm drinking
a chocolate latte.  We have stayed up all night.  It's 10:30 am and
I got a whole bunch of demerol from Anthony last night.  He had sprayed
Farenheight For Men all over his cock and I feared I felt some kind of
sore on the head.

5)  My mother was sorry when I arrived home from South Africa.  I wish
I spoke Japanese so I could tell her to fuck off in another language.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 17 Jun 1997 22:08:19 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joseph Lease 
Subject:      Re: ships
In-Reply-To:  <33A73FFA.5AFA@craft.camp.clarkson.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Split Face

It was our party.  The ancestors had arranged a party for us.  We acted
inappropriately on purpose.  We took off our pants and shrieked.  We
shoved video cameras down our throats.  "That's my throat, byaby.  That's
my throat, baby."  Everything was mommy: the stars, the trees, the matted
grass.  Then, just as suddenly, everything refused to be mommy.  Just
quit--and laughed at us.  We knew we were banal but everything laughed at
us.  We shrieked louder.

Say the word ship.

Think of a ship.
        Matter is water.

        Hear the world beneath.
Hear forests at the bottom.

Touch green cold water.
        People have always said,

        The moon was a ghostly galleon--
need breathing need--



On Tue, 17 Jun 1997, Joseph Duemer wrote:

> One of David Israel's great charms is his delicate sense of literary
> associations. Creeley/Rumi/Tagore on the self as a boat, very sweet &
> apt. Rowing over deep clear water.
> _____________________________
> Joseph Duemer
> School of Liberal Arts
> Clarkson University
> Potsdam NY 13699
> Phone: 315-262-2466
> Fax: 315-268-3983
> duemer@craft.camp.clarkson.edu
> _____________________________
>
> "Art cannot be tamed, although our responses to it can be . . ."
>      -Jeanette Winterson
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 17 Jun 1997 22:08:21 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: ships / boats

Joseph --

<< . . . Creeley/Rumi/Tagore on the self as a boat, very sweet & apt.
Rowing over deep clear water. >>

For your generous & amiable remarks, gratitude.

This also serves to remind of another Asian poem -- a Chinese quatrain I
(re)translated long ago -- discovered it in the large anthology *Sunflower
Splendor* (among the best of such volumes, in my view; & they had a
mirroring Chinese-lang. edition).  The little poem's title (most literally)
would be:

SEARCHING-FOR-SPRING ARBOR

Forget what poet, & (too bad) forget the 1st line (except that it prob. sets
scene of poet in his own small boat, and might have the word "dusk" in
it; the sense is, he's solitary) -- Remainder of the 4-liner runs thus:

|   . . . . .
|  the boatmen in the smokey midst  are each the other hailing
|  this evening of my boat adrift  upon which bank to rest?
|  only toward the water's place of further fragrance sailing

That sense of decision -- of a conflict (however languorous) -- which side
should I go to shack up? what to do now? -- and the insouciant answer:
no no, best to drift on some more (downstream, toward -- maybe --
greater fragrance . . .)

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 16:23:11 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wystan Curnow 
Organization: University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: One small, shameless derby tossed into the air: *I Won!*
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Dear Rob,
           Though I've been in Zagreb and Venice for weeks, its great
to be back and  to hear about your award! Congratutions! Your posts
I've always appreciated. Tell us a little about the book and the
award.
         Wystan
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 17 Jun 1997 21:10:03 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         dbkk@SIRIUS.COM
Subject:      Re: new quotes from old, new quotes from old...
In-Reply-To:  <199706172033.QAA10723@toast.ai.mit.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 4:33 PM -0400 6/17/97, Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest wrote:
>oh for heavens sake, kim dawn is it really too much to ask that posts
>be read carefully before you make assumptions?  this is getting to be
>like some nightmarish party game of telephone.
>
>these posts are getting abominably dull.

Eliza,

I feel for your frustration.  No one likes to feel misinterpreted and then
to see misinterpretations heaped upon that.  But, I'd like to point
out--having been involved in a newsgroup where professional flamers took
over the group for a while (as I mentioned before and was criticized for,
for using the word "flamer")--off-the-wall attacks and misrepresentations
are simply techniques to arouse responses.  It's an ugly game, but it's
just a game, Eliza.  I don't think you have to worry about anyone else
misreading you or taking the inaccurate response seriously.

Dodie
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 00:35:25 -0400
Reply-To:     Tom Orange 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Orange 
Subject:      for "-eme" people
In-Reply-To:  <199706180407.AAA18549@julian.uwo.ca>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

ok then, plug-eme as discrete unit of reference to having written
something:      " read me...! "

dream-eme, oneiric pixel: a rebus, depicts a house with a boat on its
roof, a single letter of the alphabet, the figure of a man running whose
head has been conjured away (cf. traumdeutung ch. 6)

seem-eme, discrete unit of possible resemblance: " =? "


me-eme,
t.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 16:49:05 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wystan Curnow 
Organization: University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
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Dear David,
                 I realise it must be hurtful, but take no notice of
 Jay Schwartz spoil spwartzes. Keep up the good work. And now that
I've got myself into your  good books  ( the allusion did not pass me
by) I'm thinking of putting in for the Yale myself (at Marjorie's
suggestion) and wondered if you--and any other list members come to
that--would write me a reference (refer to whatever you like, see if
I care, damn you and your impartiality! ). I thought of you
especially because I'd like to see more of these Chairs go out of the
country ( and  not necesarily back to the Auld Countrie)and think you
might be sympathetic.
              Wystan
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 18:21:25 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wystan Curnow 
Organization: University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: Inappropriate postings
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Dear Judy,
            Yeah, just what I wuz beginning to notice too. When we've
finally  done with these silly  posts about silly posts we can I hope
get back to silly posts, or preferably folks to real  serious posts
about, like Mainstream poetry  vs radical/experimental poetry, about
academics vs real people, about form vs content, those meat and
potatoes issues we all joined the list to flog to death.
             Wystan
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 05:19:21 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM
Subject:      Help
Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Can somebody send me a copy of the Poetics Digest for 6/17? I inadvertantly
deleted it before I was able to read it. (The "mouse buttons" on an IBM
ThinkPad are not its strong features, or maybe they're its "too strong"
features). Arghh.

Ron

Ron Silliman
262 Orchard Road
Paoli, PA 19301-1116
(610) 251-2214
(610) 293-6099 (o)
(610) 293-5506 (fax)
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
rsillima@tssc.com
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/silliman/
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 06:35:31 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      the Yale game

[was:  Re: Jay Schwartz's complaint]

Mornin' (or maybe evenin'), Wystan --

thanks for your amicable notes; now here's riffin' on your Yale hat-throw.
 Let me see if I (a) understand you and (b) can muster some reply.

<< I'm thinking of putting in for the Yale myself (at Marjorie's
suggestion) and wondered if you--and any other list members come to
that--would write me a reference >>

I assume you're referring to the Yale Series of Younger Poets? (an open
annual publication-competition, entry into which I've described having
made; requirements being (i) no prior BOOK of Poetry published
(chapbooks okay); and (ii) can't be older than 40 years; and (iii) certain
physical particulars abt. what constitutes a properly constituted MS) --

When you speak of "a reference", I suppose you could mean a "letter of
recommendation"?  Well,
1. I feel pretty sure that any such would be of zero positive value (or
relevance) to the competition; believe it or not, they actually read
manuscripts;
2. even if a helpful note of referral *were* of use, I'm not an apt
candidate for providing one -- unless a repentant Yale were interested
now in the referral of a thrice (or so)-loser (kind of like: in a late, sudden
bout of guilt for egregiously having passed over my work . . . ;-) (??);
3. to whom would one recommend?  Actually, the identity of the
ultimate poet-judge (which changes, from time to time if not always from
year to year) is a matter of public record.  I've not kept track as to who
that might be at this point.  (I've no idea what happens at Yale in the
event that a poet-judge is aware of the existence of a particular MS
among the Readers' piles . . . )

Anyhow, month for MSS submissions to said Series is FEBRUARY --
so you've time to work out a gameplan.  [The suggestion that you're
considering applying for this (at Marjorie's recommendation) might've
been a play for ironies unperceived by me; I'm byting on assumptions
otherwise.]

and I've a story:

Last Thanksgiving, I went w/ some chums to a midday brunch at a local
hotel restaurant -- and as we sat before plates from the buffet, I chatted
with the son-in-law of one old friend.  Said son-in-law happens to be a
grad student in English at Yale, so -- anecdotally -- I remarked that in
past years I'd applied for the Younger Poets.  Gent allowed as he'd, in
past years, been a READER for same.  I mentioned the name of the
administrative coordinator -- chap named Yee I think -- with whom I'd
had some correspondence. . . . (generally related to my tendency to bend
the rules anent an upper limit to the number of pages permitted in an
acceptable MS -- after some word of self-explanation, Yale tended to
show some flexibility on that point) --

so here I was chatting away w/ this "faceless Reader" -- who seemed nice
enough.  Alas, I seem to be able to salvage from the experience little Point
of Advice . . .  we ended up going to see the film (from your hemisphere,
Wyst.) Shine. . . telling another tale of winning & losing.  Saith Tagore:

  What music is that in whose measure
     the world is rocked?
  We laugh when it beats upon the crest of life
     & shriek in horror when it retreats into the dark
  But the play is the same that comes & goes
     to the rhythm of the endless music
  You hide your treasure in the palm of your hand
     and we cry that we are robbed
  But open or shut your palm as you please
     the gain & the loss are the same
  At the game that you play with your own self
     you win & lose at once

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 06:44:14 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      Re: hasty (haitch tee) em el

the formatting for screen is done, in large measure, not by the sending
web machine (as i understand this) but by the receiving machine.  so, one
might have a long line which fits on one's OWN screen, thus putting 

at end of line effectively marks line off.  but on other person's screen,
one perhaps using different font size and/or font, line won't fit and will
be broken.

having said that, unless one is at the extreme of long lines, or one's
reader has screen set to big font, this probably wouldn't come up.

re 
, one is working with same recipient formatting difficulty --
on all the computers _i've_ tried this out with, 
 set in line
before text (indicating text is pre-formatted thus exact line breaks
and spacing should be kept intact when formatted by recipient machine)
always ends up displaying in this revolting courier font that looks
like someone typed it badly, and is very difficult to read.

that, however, is MY opionion.  doubtless there are a number of you who
are fond of courier!  and now will deliberately go and set any html
document you HAVE as 
 (and if you do, at end of document close off
with 
 to end preformatting cue) just so it will always have that
hand-typed look... ah for variety...
e
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 08:28:11 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         robert drake 
Subject:      Re: Inappropriate postings
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Wystan:
>...When we've
>finally  done with these silly  posts about silly posts we can I hope
>get back to silly posts, or preferably folks to real  serious posts
>about, like Mainstream poetry  vs radical/experimental poetry, about
>academics vs real people, about form vs content...
>

and I'm hopin those "vs"s stand fr verses rather than versus

lbd
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 08:53:31 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      MY NAME IS OY
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

        It had been
my understanding that poetry
        was supposed to  run
                ten to twenty years
ahead
                of the culture
                I'm runnin back to Ultravox
                and Emo Phillips yall
        keep
this

We need trained squads to make love to the police (no we don't)

___

And what about the idea that poets figure out which is the "correct"
language game to be playing? Kinda insider=tradingish, huh?

Jordamo
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 10:06:02 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry ghost 
Subject:      Re: MY NAME IS OY
In-Reply-To:  Message of Wed, 18 Jun 1997 08:53:31 -0400 from 

On Wed, 18 Jun 1997 08:53:31 -0400 Jordan Davis said:
>        It had been
>my understanding that poetry
>        was supposed to  run
>                ten to twenty years
>ahead
>                of the culture

but to run like that
                        sometimes it helps to plant your feet
        among the runners
    back then
                 who paced the meadows
      1000 to 2000 years
ahead of u.s.

- Enrico
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 10:09:33 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Thompson 
Subject:      Re: for "-eme" people
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 10:07:17 -0400
>To:Tom Orange 
>From:thompson@jlc.net (George Thompson)
>Subject:Re: for "-eme" people
>
>The original "-eme" person was a linguist, Kenneth Pike, who got tired of
>the positivism of earlier American linguistics, which was in his view too
>"etic" [i.e., it studied language without regard to meaning: contrast the
>terms 'phonetics' and 'phonemics']. So an emic analysis of language
>examines the meaning-bearing elements, at no matter what level.
>
>So when Tom turns to "plugemes", "dream-emes", etc. he is being a linguist
>in the style of Kenneth Pike.
>
>In a certain literal sense, phonemes are the most *fundamental* unit of
>any text [language sequence], although sub-phonemic analysis is possible.
>But in another sense, I see no reason to think that any one type of
>analysis [or level of analysis] is more fundamental than any other.
>Clearly, poets will have a serious interest in phonemes and graphemes, as
>well as in the sub-syllabic emes that Tom is fishing around for.
>
>But a couple of weeks go, on another thread, there was discussion of the
>formula, and the examination of larger bodies of text at a much higher
>level than that of the isolated word. In my view there are good reasons to
>view this sort of analysis as just as fundamental as the phonemic one.
>
>So when Charles Olson determines that the syllable is "the king and pin of
>versification" what he means, as he goes on to say, is that the syllable
>"rules and holds together the lines, the larger forms, of a poem"
>[Selected Writings, p.17]. He begins from the syllable and looks *up* from
>it to the higher-level units [the words and lines and larger forms] for
>which the syllable is the "basic" building-block.
>
>Tom on the other hand seems to have begun from the syllable and looked
>*down* into the sub-syllabic regions inhabited by phonemes and other
>microscopic creatures still waiting to be named...
>
>It is all a matter of where one's interest lies, not of any absolute
>"fundamentalism."
>
>I suppose you could say that the most interesting poets are those who have
>explored all these levels. But I would guess that there are some who have
>more interest in one or another, rather than all. And why not?
>
>George
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 10:52:06 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Susan Wheeler 
Subject:      Thanks re Digest
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

For all those (& especially Nick) who made suggestions re texts that look at
the issue of poetic lineage, many thanks.

Glad you're there, out there, even at our diciest.

Susan

Susan Wheeler
wheeler@is.nyu.edu
voice/fax (212) 254-3984
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 08:48:26 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Douglas Barbour 
Subject:      Re: eyerhymes in Edmonton
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Although I was on the organizing committee, I still enjoyed eyerhymes, &
when it was all over I tried to get a bit of it into my journal. I hope
others will report on it, as my report is undoubtedly biased from the
inside. On the other hand I wasnt a major figure on the committee, & it was
really Jars Balan & Peter Bartl who made it the success everyone seemed to
think it was. Still for those of you who werent there, here are some notes
on what happened.

 Not to go beyond the obvious about eyerhymes: that Jars Balan was the
moving force, & did most of the work, & Peter Bartl also did a lot, as did
the various students & support staff over in Art & Design, including Sue
Coberg. I just had to be there, & pick up a few people at the airport, &
enjoy myself & moderate a few sessions. Anyway, it began well & went well,
& apparently most of the participants thought it went very well; was well
organized (it always looks more chaotic from the inside, I guess). And
there was a lot of good stuff during the weekend.
It began officially on Thursday afternoon (the 12th): Stephen Scobie had
come in in the afternoon & I had picked him up along with two others, Dave
Baptiste Chirot & Eduardo Kac. Fred Wah had come in the night before to set
up the paintings he had collaborated on wth artist Bev Tosh. eyerhymes
began with the opening of the first of 3 exhibitions, the Wordsounz & Eye
Rhymes: visual poetry and artist books that John Charles organized at the
Bruce Peel Special Collections library. Then early in the evening Dick
Higgins gave the keynote address. A rambling & wide ranging trip through
the history & present situation of pattern poetry with slides, it was
charming & delightful, not least because he is such an obsessive, a man
possessed by his interest. And there is something winning about such
obsessions when they are ones you appreciate. We then moved down the HUB
Mall to the FAB Gallery for the opening of ImageNations: an exhibition of
visual poetry from around the world. Some great stuff, & then three
readings, beginning with Bob Cobbing, who although aging still has his
chops & uses his great voice wonderfully. Clemente Padin from Uruguay, with
the help of a translator, did a set of conceptual works, acting out
instructions, sounding some things, & generally playing a humorous game
with linguistic concepts. He finished with a choral work for the audience,
sounding various vowels loud & soft, which evryone got into. Mykola
Miroshnechenko, of Ukraine, gave a much quieter & more traditional reading,
but a fascinating one in its way.
Interestingly, the large contingent from Ukraine, which was featured on
Saturday, tended to stay apart, which can be understood because of language
difficulties, but some of the others at the residence were sorry about it.
=46riday set the tone for the conference as a whole. It was Canada day. On
Wednesday evening, when I had brought Bob Cobbing into the college, I met a
bunch of grad students, including Peter Jaeger from Western & others & they
asked if we had a copy of Sons of Captain Poetry & if so could I arrange a
showing. Well, I hadnt thought of it, but it was a great idea, so I checked
it out the next morning & was able to arrange a showing on Friday at noon
(later at 1130 since Fred's reading was not an hour long). Anyway, the
first set of papers included an interesting one on Robert Zend's work by
Stephen Cain; Darren-Wershler-Henry & Christian B=F6k doing a stereo
presentation on both panels of Steve McCaffery's Carnival. Brilliant & a
tour de force, which we came to associate with them. Craig Saper, from the
University of Pennsylvania, gave a paper on the Assembling Movement in
Canada in the 1970s.
=46red then performed the new poems he had written to/for Bev Tosh's
paintings, while she performed a kind of movement as a white 'puppet'
figure against the projections of her paintings. Theyd never done it before
but it was terrific, & everybody loved it, from the response. Having
chaired that, I also chaired the session on bp after lunch. But first we
showed the bp film. I hadnt seen it for a long time, but the students
werent the only ones who had had never seen it, so everyone stayed to
watch. Dick Higgins, who knew barrie well, had never seen it. The ending,
which I had forgotten, was bp singing his elegy for Hugo Ball then climbing
back out through the broken windows. But now that elegy is
self-referential, & I was in tears, & not alone in that. But there were
also all his comments on poetics, which even at that young age were so
right, so on, & still so ignored by so many. Almost everyone I talked to
was glad I had shown it, so I think it was one of those things that only we
could have done & that helped to define the conference. Then the papers on
bp seemed to flow right on from that. Peter Jaeger, who just finished his
PhD on bp, did a good job of exploring what goes on in ABC. And Graham
Sharpe, who's doing his MA on Ganglia/grOnk Press, told us a great deal
about the archive at Simon Fraser, & what he's finding there, & how it
helps define exactly what the press, barrie's own wee effort, did. After
the break, Marvin Sackner, another true obsessive, explained at great
length but with winning charm, how he's slowly creating a new multimedia
database for the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of concrete and visual
poetry. It's something all right. Stephen introduced Darren & Christian for
a reading. Christian has memorized a lot of the dada classics & did a few;
he also read/ performed from Crystallography & an amazing new work in which
he is writing five separate pieces in which all the words therein use only
words with the saem vowel, from a through u. More tours de force. Darren
was quieter, but read some fine pieces from Nicholodeon, & a new piece
which was very witty & intelligent. And we thought, boy these youngsters
are really challenging us.
        Then down to the final opening, at Latitude 53, of Cantextualities:
Contemporary Canadian Visual Poetry. Some wonderful stuff in the show.
Performances included W. Mark Sutherland. from Toronto, who can do a lot
with his voice, although he was apparently 'freaked out' because he's used
to working with a mike, & there wasnt one in that small space. He had some
incredible sounds anyway, & some nifty pieces. But the gallery was
incredibly hot, & close. Re: Sounding was next, &  seemed to go over well.
Paul Dutton went last & he has some incredible pieces, & blew everyone
away. So it was a good evening of sound, even if we were all sweating like
pigs.
Saturday was on the visual poetry of eastern Europe, where there is a long
tradition of pattern poetry. We attended the first set of talks, & they
were interesting, & they did introduce us to a lot of work going on over
there. After supper, some of the poets showed us their work: one of the
heroines of Austrian concrete/sound, Elizabeth Netzkowa read & had read
some of her work, & played taped of some other, very moody, elegiac, but
quite powerful; & she, in her quiet dignity, was impressive. & Bodyvoice,
an improv dance group to which one of my poetry students belongs, did a
short & quite powerful group dance, Untying My Tongue.
Sunday was the longest day of all & we stayed through it all. The rest of
the world was brought in. Brian Reed of Stanford started out with a very
intelligent look at John Ashbery's 'Litany' & resistance to Visual Poetry
in the American Academy. I was chairing this session too, & it was a
delight to do so. Stephen then read from his chapter on Finlay in his
forthcoming book on visual poetry etc. Very solid, very interesting.
=46rancis Edline showed a number of slides inttoducing us to the work of
=46inlay's & Timm Ulrich's visual poetry: another overview, but very helpful
with the pictures. At the next session, Klaus Groh struggled with his
english to introduce us to some traditions which back up his own work. He
was charming & came up with one term, a neologism, many of us immediately
loved: 'trace-catching.' He also said "an art work is like a battery,"
although I didnt quite follow how it was in his talk. Craig Dworkin gave a
superbly intelligent talk on "The Use of Overprinting Considered in Terms
of Information Theory and Post-Structural Linguistics," with some
transparencies & basically from notes: another impressive young grad
student. In the early afternoon, Bohdan Nebesio talked about intertitles in
silent cinema, Clement Padin used his own work to try to come to some views
of a rhetoric of visual poetry. Jesper Olsson of Sweden, another grad
student, told us a lot about the concrete poetry scene in Sweden in the 50s
& 60s; background that helped fill in a missing history, nicely done. Late
afternoon, Adele J. Haft, who is a classical scholar now interested in
map-poems, introduced us to them & asked for more; many had some to tell
her about. Claus Cl=FCver of Indiana talked about what he called Kinetic
poetry, poetry that moves & moves its audience in participation. Johanna
Drucker spoke very wittily about the ways much concrete poetry used letters
differently than she does in her The Word Made Flesh, her wearing of weird
glasses & general stance & delivery turned her lecture into a performance.
Great fun, & provocative. We'd been at it since 0830, but there was another
session before supper: Willard Bohn on Jose Juah Tablada's visual poems. AN
intriguing introduction to someone I had never heard of. And Owen Smith
told us about Fluxus by performing a number of Fluxus pieces, & well too.
After supper, Dave Baptiste Chirot rambled most intelligently about two of
his influences, Kruchonyk & Robert Grenier, with very interesting
references to wcwilliams's poetics. John White of U of London had some very
interesting things to say about 'indexical signs in futurist poetry, much
of which apparently agrees with Stephen's interpretations in his book. We
were by this time tired but stayed around for a couple of creative
presentations. Jan Davis of Australia showed a series of slides of her
collection of artist books on the Solomon Islands, which were beautiful &
more, but in which she didnt seem to come to grips with some of the
political problematics she seemed aware of in her talk. Johanna Bartl of
Germany opened a collection of boxes & laid out their changing contents,
but as she kept going around all ten to put all back in different orders
(same boxes).
But got up & went to the last sessions this morning; on computer
art/poetry, holopoetry, & visual poetics & innovative communication
technology, by Patrick-Henri Burgaud, who showed us videos of his computer
art, which was very colorful & delightful, Eduardo Kak, who has been doing
holographic poetry for more than a decade now, some of it deliberately
meant to offer each eye slightly different views of letters etc., & Eric
Vos, who knows the contemporary technology scene & its possibilities very
well. Then the last session by two people into artist books & collecting.
Martha Carothers talked about signs, & capital letters, what she called
visual essays. She quoted a satire of dumbing down from 1951 that actually
did sound very contemporary. Then Judith Hoffberg, of Umbrella Editions in
California, & a real fan of all this stuff & a hustler of great charm, who
I had enjoyed talked to throughout the conference, although I didnt really
know her, but she seemed to know many of the people there, & was obviously
a longtime friend of Higgins, enthused about three artists she admires for
breaking away from the norm. Such enthusiasm was a great way to end the
official part of the conference. We all went off to the Faculty Club for
lunch, & some talk after about possibly setting up an association or at
least trying to arrange another conference in a few years. Jars was left to
follow some ideas up & help us all keep in touch.

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton  Alberta  T6G  2E5
(403) 492 2181  FAX:(403) 492 8142
H: 436 3320
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Between 'attached' and 'aloft'
getting the poem on the page
a voice tells her on this day
_attend_.
                Phyllis Webb



                       =20
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 10:56:09 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      Re: MY NAME IS OY
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

> >        It had been
> >my understanding that poetry
> >        was supposed to  run
> >                ten to twenty years
> >ahead
> >                of the culture
>
> but to run like that
>                         sometimes it helps to plant your feet
>         among the runners
>     back then
>                  who paced the meadows
>       1000 to 2000 years
> ahead of u.s.
>               I love the facials at Elizabeth Arden
but only God
                        can make a
        classicism

-Jaglom
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 11:02:36 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         ghost 
Subject:      Re: MY NAME IS OY
In-Reply-To:  Message of Wed, 18 Jun 1997 10:56:09 -0400 from 

On Wed, 18 Jun 1997 10:56:09 -0400 Jordan Davis said:
>> >        It had been
>> >my understanding that poetry
>> >        was supposed to  run
>> >                ten to twenty years
>> >ahead
>> >                of the culture
>>
>> but to run like that
>>                         sometimes it helps to plant your feet
>>         among the runners
>>     back then
>>                  who paced the meadows
>>       1000 to 2000 years
>> ahead of u.s.
>>               I love the facials at Elizabeth Arden
>but only God
>                        can make a
>        classicism

the Pope hath spoken (experience
                                  the Rape
       of the Lock (crossing
the Jordan)

- Hagoo
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 11:12:33 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      Re: MY NAME IS OY
Comments: To: ghost 
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

> >> >        It had been
> >> >my understanding that poetry
> >> >        was supposed to  run
> >> >                ten to twenty years
> >> >ahead
> >> >                of the culture
> >>
> >> but to run like that
> >>                         sometimes it helps to plant your feet
> >>         among the runners
> >>     back then
> >>                  who paced the meadows
> >>       1000 to 2000 years
> >> ahead of u.s.
> >>               I love the facials at Elizabeth Arden
> >but only God
> >                        can make a
> >        classicism
>
> the Pope hath spoken (experience
>                                   the Rape
>        of the Lock (crossing
> the Jordan)
>
There ought to be a law against it, Henry.
Mr. Bones, there is

--G Herbert
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 11:10:53 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Poetics List 
Subject:      Eigner Passages
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

                Announcing publication of PASSAGES 5

        in memory of Larry Eigner

contributors include:  Steve Luttrell, Dodie Bellamy, Steve Benson,
Joanne Kyger, Lawrence Upton, Belle Gironda, George Albon, Andy Levy,
Deborah Goudreault, Stephen Ronan, Lee Ann Brown-Laynie Browne-Douglas
Rothschild-Anselm Berrigan-Lisa Jarnot-Bill Luoma-Drew Gardner ("the
Optionists"), Nancy Dunlop, Jack Foley, Kit Robinson, Robert Grenier, Charles
Bernstein, Avery E.D. Burns,  Dorothy Jesse Beagle,  David Baptiste Chirot,
Jack Collom, Bob Harrison, Ben Friedlander, Larry Eigner (includes previously
unpublished material).

Available July 1 (print), September 1 (electronic -- with links to
other WWW Eigner material)

   price and snail-mail address t.b.a.

        http:///writing.upenn.edu/epc/ezines/passages
                poetry@cnsvax.albany.edu

                            co-edited by Ben Friedlander and Chris Funkhouser
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 11:39:39 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Orange 
Subject:      for "-eme" people
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Wed, 18 Jun 1997, George Thompson wrote:

> The original "-eme" person was a linguist, Kenneth Pike, who got tired of
> the positivism of earlier American linguistics, which was in his view too
> "etic" [i.e., it studied language without regard to meaning: contrast the
> terms 'phonetics' and 'phonemics']. So an emic analysis of language
> examines the meaning-bearing elements, at no matter what level.

too much etic, not enough emic, makes fer anemic emes.  maybe requires an
emetic, a poemetics (...urp!...)

> Tom on the other hand seems to have begun from the syllable and looked
> *down* into the sub-syllabic regions inhabited by phonemes and other
> microscopic creatures still waiting to be named...
>
> It is all a matter of where one's interest lies, not of any absolute
> "fundamentalism."
>
> I suppose you could say that the most interesting poets are those who have
> explored all these levels. But I would guess that there are some who have
> more interest in one or another, rather than all. And why not?
>

at the same time i was musing on olson's "projective verse" i was also
reading michelle leggot's take on the opening of zukofsky's "a"-22
        AN   ERA
        ANY TIME
        OF  YEAR
here's a whole field of microscopic creatures which, with their proximate
latin roots, spread out over the whole 1000 lines of "a"-22.  (cf.
"reading zukofsky's _80 flowers_" esp. pp. 34-52)

cheers,
t.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 11:43:00 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Orange 
Subject:      running back to ultravox
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

so we drink and sink
and talk and stalk with
interchangeable enemies and friends
trying on each others' precious skins
while we're dying to be born again
--"artifical life" (1977)
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 12:08:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: This Is A Plug
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

Poems of mine will be appearing shortly in the following:

Prairie Schooner (old, non-innovative stuff)

River City
      } New stuff
Mirage

Patrick Pritchett
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 13:39:37 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: MY NAME IS OY / a sidebranch

Jordon Davis keyed:
>        It had been my understanding that poetry
>        was supposed to  run
>                ten to twenty years ahead
>                of the culture

  it had been my under
                               standing that poetry
was suppsed to be
                              the culture
     but when they
                          parted company did they
part ways?
               or did poetry just race ahead?
    a progressivist theory
                                     (contra nostalgicism)
   a faster-vaster jogger
                                   a quicker city-slicker
if it's circular then po could lag way behind
       & come out ahead or race way ahead
                & end up at end
                       but if the culture went zig
& poetry went zag
   the culture
                  kept zigging
the poets
            kept zazzing
the culture was jigging
      the poets were jagging
                they might soom be spiraling
      in counter concentricies
or else
          something else
                                 else again
again

>                I'm runnin back to Ultravox

who's that?

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 14:40:08 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "John E. Matthias" 
Subject:      ND Review

The summer issue of _Notre Dame Review_ has now been published.
Contributors include Robert Archambeau, Susan Bergman, Eavan Boland, Robert
Boyers, Richard Burns, Esther Cohen, Catherine Daly, Beth Ann Fennelly,
Barry Goldensohn, Janet Holmes, David Hoppe, Colette Inez, Suzanne Paola,
John Peck, Michael Schneider, Barry Silesky, R.D. Skillings, John Howland
Spyker, and Maura Stanton.

Of particular interest to people on the list will be Richard Burns' memoir
about living with Peter Russell in Venice in the 1960s at the period when
Russell was publishing the early and influential Poundian journal _Nine_
and beginning to write his "Elegies of Quintilius." Also Robert
Archambeau's article "Another Ireland" dealing with the work of Billy
Mills, Randolph Healy, and Trevor Joyce. (The second part of this piece
will appear in #5 and deal with Geoffrey Squires, Maurice Scully, and
Catherine Walsh.)

Coming up in the next issue will be a major long poem by Robert Creeley,
"Histoire de Florida," along with substantial excerpts from John Montague's
 poem in progress, "Conversations with David Jones."

_Notre Dame Review_ is published bi-annually. Subscriptions: $15
(individuals) or $20 (institutions) per year. Single copy price: $8. Sample
copies: $6 each. Write to _Notre Dame Review_, Dept. of English, University
of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556.

Selections from the first two issues of _NDR_ can be visited on our website:
http://www.nd.edu/~english/ndr/ndr./htm

John Matthias
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 16:48:07 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "N. Dhillon" 
Subject:      Journey - Manuscript
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

I have recently completed a poetry manuscript and have temporarily
placed it online at http://home1.gte.net/dhillos/journey .  I would
greatly appreciate any comments or feedback you may have on either the
text itself, its presentation, or on what to do with it.

This current online version requires that you have a frames-compliant
browser (>Net2.0 or MSIE2.0). Please let me know if there are any
formatting issues as well.

Thanks and best regards,
Navdeep

(Please cc: me @ ndhillon@gte.com as I'm on the digest version)
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 12:09:05 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Inappropriate postings
In-Reply-To:  <970613130847_-2099050265@emout18.mail.aol.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>I wasn't going to add any more pointless posts, but the beating Jay received
>makes me also want to let him know, as well as his enemies, that I agree with
>his position.  The excessive silliness of many of these posts keeps me from
>being any more active on the board, as Mark Presjnar seems to feel as well.
> Thanks Jay and sorry for the heat.
>
>Standard Schaefer

I could not agree more. And now I understand fully what Jay was trying to
suggest when he walked in here last Tuesday, completely naked and with a
crow on his shoulder. More power to you, Jay!





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 12:41:25 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: syllable. king and pin of versification.
In-Reply-To:  <199706150407.AAA12653@csu-e.csuohio.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>bob grumman mentions:
>>jwcurry has a one-LETTER poem in which he replaces the
>>dot of an i with a finger-print...

I recall a poem by Aram Saroyan (I think) that was a sort-of one-letter
poem. It was an m with one extra bump.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 12:31:56 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: ms. non-provocateur
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>I'm not familar with Sylvia Fraser.  She sounds interesting.  Who is she?
>Where's her work available?
>
>Dodie

She is a former beauty queen from Hamilton who has for 30 years been
writing mushy pop novels and trying to get called "an artist." A few years
ago she published one of those recovered-memory-incest books. It was not
well received. I havent read it, but my mate Angela did and said that it
was pretty bad writing.





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 12:54:18 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: jwcurry, sondheim, kdawn
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>this isn't acker's world baby.
 said this "Kim Dawn"


What the heck is a world baby?

Is that, like, a moon?

Is that, like, the offSPRING of an earth mother?

Is that something they know about in London, Ontario?




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 12:58:01 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: jwcurry, sondheim, kdawn,& Spicer
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Kevin!

That is great news about the Spicertome being finished. And also Gizzi's
book being done too; what a Spicerspring that is going to be. I sent Peter
some colour snaps I took of him standing in front of the window of the room
in which Jack gave those lectures. Oh the world goes so damned fast it's
slow.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 17:11:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: News from Naropa
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

Thanks to quick notice from Anselm Hollo, I had the opportunity today to
attend a talk given by Robert Creeley under the Big Tent on the Naropa lawn.
(Further thanks to Steven & Judy Taylor who loaned me the 3 bucks to get in
 - somehow I'd thought it was free!) I doubt I'll post many such reports from
the Naropa Summer Program but I thought the List might be interested in some
brief notes made from this particular talk by the cher maitre. It was on
Origins.

(Program Notes: Rather hot inside the Tent.  Scapulas and drifting
cottonweed everywhere. Anselm and Creeley stroll up, Anselm sporting a nifty
panama hat. At my right, Steven Taylor dabs at a string quartet & voice
arrangement for Allen Ginsberg's harmonium scoring of one of Blake's "Songs
of Innocence." "It's beautiful. The best thing he ever did," confides ST.
 Also present, besides the usual suspects, Aldon Nielsen, toting camera ).

Creeley begins by discussing the two poets he was most attracted to in
Conrad Aiken's anthology of American Poetry: E.A. Robinson and Marsden
Hartley. In particular in Robinson he was drawn to "the tacit Maine sense
that the world can never be resolved humanly."  Robinson, he says, is "a
great poet of depending" i.e. his work bristles with "or if" and "and if."
He then reads from "Man Against The Sky," interrupting finally with "let's
skip to the chase... you can tell the absolute concentration with which I've
prepared for this." The poem closes on a grand, mordant, give-it-up/all is
lost note. Creeley: "He doesn't see much hope. Again, a dispostion of that
part of the country."

He relates a bit of Robinson's personal history: His father was a failure in
business. His brothers - one a doctor, the other a businessman - were
addicted to drugs and booze, respectively. Meanwhile, Robinson tried to
pursue his "vocation" as a poet.  RC: "Only someone in such a situation
could consider poetry a *vocation.*"
Then a reading, beautifully, "Eros Turannos." "I was drawn to poets who had
worked through the crisis of person."

The first time Creeley ever formally declared himself as poet was in a SFPD
line up - he'd been picked up on a grand vagrancy charge. "And what do you
do for a living Robert?" "I'm a poet." Kerouac was later incensed he'd spent
the weekend in jail. "Why didn't you tell them you have a book in the
library?" RC: "Because I don't."

Then a  reading from Parts 1 & 3 of Hart Crane's "For the Marriage of Helen
& Faustus." ("Capped arbiter of beauty...") "It's as if," RC sez, "here in
America we have to make ourselves up."

Re: Robert Frost - "I did not trust him. I just didn't." Once he and
Ginsberg were looking through an old photo book of poets. Allen had drawn a
Hitler mustache on Frost's photo. Sd RC: 'Why did we hate him so much?"

Then a reading from Henry Vaughan's "I saw Eternity the other night..." RC:
"Vaughan had a curious ability to wait and pace." And he spoke of his regard
for Wyatt and, not surprisingly, Campion.

After that, I had to leave, alas. Maybe Aldon, if he has any time (which I
doubt very much he does) can close these inchoate observations.

Patrick Pritchett
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 18:09:59 -0400
Reply-To:     BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bob Grumman 
Subject:      Re: syllable. king and pin of versification.
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Yes, Aram Saroyan *did* do the one-letter poem with the m with an extra
leg that George Bowering mentions.  It even made one edition of the
Guinness Book of Records as the world's shortest poem!

                                                           --Bob G.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 16:29:40 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      Warning label: do not open if easily offended by silliness
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Well, Bowering certainly came back with a bang.Didn't know he had it in
him. What does it signify, being naked with a crow on the shoulder? Can one
ask, on which *side* this crow is perched? Actually, this posting isnt
particuarly silly. Bu it _might_ have been. The intention was there, but
the impulse flagged. And there are those who will never know they passed up
a non-silly, thoroughly tedious posting. Alack aday. D.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 17:15:42 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jay Schwartz 
Organization: Salestar
Subject:      Re: Warning label: do not open if easily offended by silliness
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

It wasn't my shoulder the crow was perched on.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 12:17:08 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wystan Curnow 
Organization: University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: hello poetics!
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
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Dear Bennett,
                   This is a subject that interests me. Have you
looked at Lawrence Weiner? He appears in one of the L= anthologies.
There's a strange statement of his in Dieter Schwarz's catalogue
raisonne of W's books 'Literature is an attempt to portray within the
context of a narrative or non-narrative structure the relationships
of human beings to human beings, and art isthe relationship of human
beings to objects, that' simple enough (sic!). Poetry essentially is
something that is not translatable; its possible to get an
approximate translation, it's made not to be translated, its made to
have the beauty and the form and the sens of the language itself, and
my work is designed initially to be translated, either into physical
form or into languages, and that's enough of a difference for me.
Literature is essentially about a subjective reality, and art is
essentially about an objective reality.' Its from an interview with
Schwarz of 1989. It is interesting less for what it claims about
literature and poetry, than as an apology ( why I am not a poet) for
his own practices which in terms of the making words  ' material '
are clearly larger than those of any other so-called conceptual
artist.  At least for the sake of argument, I'm not convinced by W's
defence. Indeed, I'd like to see how the texts of Weiner, and say
Hamish Fulton, Richard Long, David Tremlett ( the Brit. backpacker
poets) not to mention , Jenny Holzer  etc etc would survive the 'test
of poetry'. What thoughts?
     Wystan
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 21:22:29 -0300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Stephen C. Ellwood" 
Subject:      Re: MY NAME IS OY
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

ARE YOU PEOPLE MAKING FUN OF ME?  IF SO I DON'T GET IT.  ARE YOU MAKING
FUN OF MY MIDDLE NAME?  VEY?  OR IS THIS POEM SOMEHOW A RESPONSE TO MY
WORK?  SHOULD I GO TO ANOTHER MAILING LIST FOR JUICIER, MORE CHEAP- /
COSTLY-THRILLS-STYLE CORRESPONDANCE?  IF SO, ANY SUGGESTIONS?  I AM SO
SAD AND UNCELEBRATED IT FEELS LIKE A FUCKING VIRUS.  I WANT ACTION....
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 12:33:48 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wystan Curnow 
Organization: University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: hello poetics!
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Bennett,
         Isn't that magazine 'Purple Prose'?
            Wystan
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 18:14:21 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: cummings & the syllable break & phonetic alphabet
In-Reply-To:  <199706180407.VAA02693@pantano.theriver.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Dear List

>Now a literary history question.  I'm not very widely read but my
>impression is that Cummings (in English, at any rate) was the first poet
>to use the "intra-syllabic word-break" to aesthetic effect.  E.g.: as in
>his breaking "inventing" into "inven" and "ting" for the latter's hint
>of "tingle," and "using" into "u" and "sing."
>
>Does anyone out there know of anyone who did this kind of thing before
>him?

Nothing strikes the top of my head about people doing this in English
before or simultaneous with Cummings -- but I'd want to re-read Loy, Elsa
von Freitag Loringhoven, and others, to investigate this. And though the
cross-line syllable breaks aren't present, I do think that some of the
energy Cummings gets from syllabic force is present (and to my mind, in a
more compelling way) in Hopkins, particularly in a poem like The Windhover.

>> Robert Duncan used to have his students transcribe poems into the
>> International Phonetic Alphabet. I've found it to be a useful & interesting
>> exercise to tune your ears It will also give you a visual graph of the
sound
>> structure of the passage or poem in question.

Another good way of getting at this is to take a poem and translate it into
similar sounds of the same language -- also attuning to fine differences
(and fine similarities). For example, I once began a review of Rational
Geomancy (by Steve McCaffery & bp Nichol) with such a translation of the
title (including subtitle, authors, etc.). So the beginning correspondence
went like this:

Rational Geomancy

Rash! Shun algae,
Oh man, see . . .

I would think that any linguistic-based exercise of poetic analysis would
be valuable to students learning, whether it would be such translations, or
dividing poetic lines into structural linguistic tree-like diagrams, etc. I
remember when studying linguistics years ago, thinking it WAS poetry.

charles

ps -- I've been getting the list in digest mode as in the recent past and
for a while to come I'm on a web design list in which I receive more than
100 messages a day and it's just too much. But I miss contributing more to
the poetics list and will try to do a little more. For people at the recent
Larry Eigner tribute, I understand Jack Foley said how nice it was that I
was there. But in fact I wasn't there, although I would love to have been
there. Nice to be thanked, but I apologize to anyone who thought I was
there and didn't have a chance to catch me -- as a couple of people have
reported to me.



chax press   ::   alexander writing/design/publishing
books by artists' hands   ::   web sites built with care and vision
handmade and trade editions of contemporary innovative writing
chax@theriver.com   ::   http://personal.riverusers.com/~chax/
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 18:16:00 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      tenney's html question
Comments: cc: tenney@azstarnet.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Tenney

To get your poem's long lines to read as long lines, there are many ways to
go.
You could choose a line length which seemed to fit for just about any
browser at any resolution -- set your own at 640 x 480 and make sure it
works there, and everywhere you approached the edge, make a new paragraph
break. Then, for each line which was a continuance of what was above,
rather than an entirely new poem line, put in a consistent number of
non-breaking spaces, as they are called. Several in a row, in HTML, might
look like this:

          

(that's assuming that my ampersands will stay ampersands as this email
works its way to poetics list). These nonbreaking spaces would be what you
would want to indicate space in the middle of a line, too.

And if your paragraph breaks seem to space things too wide, play around
with the paragraph formatting specifications. You might look at some of the
HTML code (your browser should have a menu function like "View Document
Source" or something like that) for poems on the chax site   --
http://personal.riverusers.com/~chax/   -- or at the Light & Dust site or
at Electronic Poetry Center -- there are links to both of those on the
links page at the chax site.

More ideal, perhaps, would be to set the poem as a table, with the table
borders set to zero pixels so that there are no visible border lines. Then
make each line a cell in the table. And set the height of the cells so they
work as you want them. In this way, you might make people scroll from left
to right to see the entire line, but the line wouldn't have to break at
all. The code for this, with six lines of "blah" (and you could continue
the length as long as you want, might look like:





blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah
blahblah





blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah
blahblah





blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah
blahblah





blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah
blahblah





blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah
blahblah





blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah
blahblah






If you want me to help you code anything, Tenney, I'd be glad to try and do
so. And if anyone wants to hire me to design web works or help design such,
that is what I do, among other things.

hope this helps,

charles

chax press   ::   alexander writing/design/publishing
books by artists' hands   ::   web sites built with care and vision
handmade and trade editions of contemporary innovative writing
chax@theriver.com   ::   http://personal.riverusers.com/~chax/
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 18:03:44 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      Re: smithsons poetics, artists/poets
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>  6. Smithson's Poetics
> 23. hasty (haitch tee) em el (2)
>Did the sculptors read the poets? This sounds like a naive question, and
>it is, but the reading I do in art history and criticism of the time is
>much more ignorant of words/poetry than the words/poetry is of the art.
>Why is this?

Replying to this after getting it late last night in digest mode . . .

Or maybe the artists just don't talk about it as much? I don't have the
sense that the artists (visual, musical, etc.) are ignorant of the poetry,
although this is a question I like to approach at the local level. Here in
Tucson, I think of the visual artists as, in a sense, much more involved in
the physical aspects of everyday life than the poets are, if that makes
sense. Just, going to an art studio every day, or as much as possible,
confronting the realities within that studio, which are often very
physical. And I find them quite knowledgeable about the poetry which comes
close to them, meaing local poets involved with presses which also inhabit
the same studio buildings, poets who give readings and organize events in
art galleries which also represent the artists, etc. Conversely, I don't
find the poets locally nearly so knowledgeable about local visual artists,
although there are certainly exceptions.

I also find poets sometimes conversant with theory in the abstract, but not
with specific visual theories, and not with technical aspects of the visual
arts. I often find visual artists more able to converse about how a poem is
made than I find poets able to talk about how a painting is made. But I
live with a painter and may simply be in their company more, talking about
such things.

One of my favorite local painters, Jim Waid, studied at New Mexico with
Robert Creeley. Jim's probably 50 years old now, and can talk about a
fairly good range of literature, although certainly more about literature
written 20 to 50 years ago. But then, we're talking about Smithson here, so
perhaps poets more easily talk about visual/conceptual art which happened a
couple of decades ago and has had a good deal of things written about it,
than we can talk about current movements in the galleries of New York and
Los Angeles and elsewhere right now.

As a poet, I think it has benefited me immensely to be joined with a
painter, to get out every month and see visual art with a semi-insider's
point of view, and to go and see it in other communities wherever I go.
Without doing so, I don't think I could begin to understand Smithson and
others of the past, at least not in the same way.

charles




chax press   ::   alexander writing/design/publishing
books by artists' hands   ::   web sites built with care and vision
handmade and trade editions of contemporary innovative writing
chax@theriver.com   ::   http://personal.riverusers.com/~chax/
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 20:59:03 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         ghould 
Subject:      Re: Warning label: do not open if easily offended by silliness
In-Reply-To:  Message of Wed, 18 Jun 1997 16:29:40 -0700 from 

the crow was perched on the southwest side.  His name is Cautantowwit.
Don't mess with him.

- Poe
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 17:32:37 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      Rated G
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

        Now Jay has cleared himself of Bowering's charge (of being naked
with crow on shoulder), my question still goes unanswered, to wit, What
does it signify, being naked with a crow on the shoulder? (I made no
attribution of naked crowness to any one particular person).

If I met a person in such condition, I might think Hmm, taking his crow for
an outing, or, Huh, is this religion? Or Far out, jump back, beats
lobsters! Or Wow, his crow ate his clothes, but he still cares for him! Or
I might somehow try to reconcile "they left him naked" with "they had him
eat crow". In fact, I did try that, & I failed. Is this phrase the very
ikon of opacity to me alone? David
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 20:11:21 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      non-American true-believers
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
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Question: When someone (as the Australian Stalinist JOHN TRANTNER or
the Canadian Spartacist George Bowering have recently done) post four
or five quick, witty ripostes to the list in a row, does it most
likely mean that she or he has been drinking at the machine? I ask
this not out of contentious desire, but out of a gnawing sense of
embarrassed recognition. Thus, I humbly (or imho, imho, imho) propose
that this list add a new rule to its rubric of guidelines: Anyone
caught drinking behind the wheeeeeeel (the e key keeps getting stuck)
will be immediately reported to the authorities in Buffalo.

Ketn
(PS: Sorry if I'm whipping a dead horse, but is it a good thing or a
bad thing that I can no longer read anything by G. Bowering without
imaging a tall, taut, and graying Mounty (ie?) in glossy red, with
ebony black boots to the knees and six-inch stiletto heels?)
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 21:21:17 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         ghould 
Subject:      Re: Rated G
In-Reply-To:  Message of Wed, 18 Jun 1997 17:32:37 -0700 from 

the naked man is obviously King David (of Israel) just having come back
from dancing before the ark of the covenant.  the crow is Poe's raven,
which, as he JUST TOLD US, is Cautantowwit, the Narragansett god of
death and the afterlife, whose abode is in the Southwest.  If you can't
see such obvious allusions, David, you'd better find another list - like
the FUNPOETRY list, where good times are had by all over a shared bowl of
virtual rice krispies.


"Keep talkin' - I'll think about where to aim."
- Spandrift
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 20:35:17 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      (Fwd) "Buddhistic poetry"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Since I plugged the BASM anthology here a few weeks back, and since
there's also been some discussion on Araki Yasusada here, I thought
I'd forward this, which was posted to the CAP-L group today. I've
changed one unclear utterance. There may well be more that I haven't
caught...I seem to always find or think of things I should have
caught or said otherwise after I send and reflect. That's life.  Kent

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From:          Self 
To:            cap-l@tc.umn.edu
Subject:       "Buddhistic poetry"
Date:          Wed, 18 Jun 1997 13:55:38 +0600

About a month ago there was a question on this list about the absence
of Asian-American poets in _Beneath a Single Moon: Buddhism in
Contemporary American Poetry_, an anthology I edited with Craig
Paulenich some years back. The question referred to Walter K. Lew's
introduction in his praised anthology _Premonitions_, wherein our
book is strongly criticized. I am still waiting to see Premonitions,
and so my first look at Lew's commentary was a couple of days ago,
when I saw it quoted  in the current Boston Review, as part of a
response by him and four other Asian-American writers to Marjorie
Perloff's essay ("In Search of the Authentic Other: The Poetry of
Araki Yasusada.") which appeared in the April/May issue of the BR.
This particular response, part of a fascinating and varied section of
brief essays on Perloff's piece, makes the claim that I am the
Yasusada author and directly charges that I am an opportunist and a
racist, fueled by the desire for "self-gain."

I'll say here, for what it's worth, that very few people have any
real knowledge about the nature of Yasusada, and I would like to
suggest that too many have jumped to conclusions about the
origins, aesthetics, and motivations of this highly unusual work.
Further materials are scheduled to appear, including the complete
collection (with an appendix of "critical" materials) from Roof
Books, and I would urge those interested in the meaningful issues
provoked by the "Yasusada affair" to read carefully and reserve final
judgement at least until after the book appears.

In any case, back to the question of the BASM anthology. Here is the
Lew quote I wish to comment on from _Premonitions_:

   "The 45 American poets whose essays and poetry on Buddhist
practice comprise the anthology are all Caucasian, and the book only
mentions Asians as distal teachers (ranging from Zen patriarchs to
D.T.Suzuki), not as fellow members or poets of the sangha...When one
considers the relative obscurity of some of the poets included in the
book, one wonders how it was possible not to have known the
Buddhistic poetry of such writers as [Lawson Fusao] Inada, Al Robles,
Garett Kaoru Hongo, Alan Chong Lau, Patricia Ikeda, and Russell
Leong...[Gary] Snyder's introduction deliberates the
question--'Poetry is democratic, Zen is elite. No! Zen is democratic,
poetry is elite. Which is it?"...perhaps he should have also asked
whether Zen and poetry, as reconfigured in American Orientalism, are
racist."

Before reading this quote, I was quite certain that we had probably
missed, out of ignorance, Asian-American poets who should have been
included in the anthology. But now I am not as sure. If Mr. Lew (and
the other co-signers of the BR response) had carefully considered the
Shambhala anthology, they would have seen that a fundamental criteria
for inclusion was a serious background in Buddhist study and
practice. We were not interested, in the least, in poetry
exhibiting the vague and stereotypical waft of the "Buddhistic." If
anything, our anthology begins to point to the fact that reductive
notions of the "Buddhistic" are one of the by-products of the
"Orientalism" that Mr. Lew denounces. There is simply no way of
boiling down Buddhist artistic expression to any particular
"Buddhistic" characteristics of tone, content, or style.

Now, I still suspect that there are publishing Asian-American poets
who would have met the criteria we established for the anthology, but
their absence was certainly not due to some underlying racist
criteria of selection; we simply (and perhaps to our editorial
discredit) were, and are, unaware of Asian-American poets who also
happen to be Buddhists. Apparently, and unfortunately, so is Mr. Lew,
as I assume he would have mentioned specific names if there were any.

We are *considering* undertaking a second edition of the anthology,
and would welcome any and all suggestions for new poets to include.

Kent Johnson
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 21:35:32 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      DB's Koan
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

>     .   .   .   .   my question still goes unanswered, to wit,
> What does it signify, being naked with a crow on the shoulder?

.  .

. . . . .

..............

....................  CAW !!  CAW !!



.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   caw  !


d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 21:36:54 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joel Felix 
Subject:      electronic book review's "electropoetics"
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hello poetics.  ebr has a new # at
http://www.altx.com/ebr
with contributions from many of our own list number
including Joe Amato, John Cayley, Wendy Battin, and
Issa Clubb.  All these and Harry Mathews! Come here
what the electro poets have to say for themselves.
Is this the new literature of constraints? (Outside
of this quasi-provacative language of marketing, that's
a question that remains, IMO.)  What can an electronic
poetry *do* that print poetry cannot? These questions
and more considered by sharper minds than mine, brought
to you by ebr, at no cost but your leisure.

Joel Felix
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 14:59:23 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wystan Curnow 
Organization: University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: the Yale game
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Dear David,
                It was the (Wheel)  Chair of Modern Poetry at Yale I
had in mind, actually. I'm too old for the Yale Younger Poets. And
just so there's no further confusion, the Marjorie who suggested I
put in for it was Marjorie Stevenson, my next door neighbour, who
knows how tired I am of being an Associate Professor and how I'd love
to put my feet up in New Haven, New Caledonia, or the New Hebrides,
she was the one that drew this impressive Vacancy to my attention.
              Anyway, David, I do appreciate your advice, helpful
anecdotes.
              Best wishes,
                  Wystan
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 19:52:32 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      PG-13 (some naked silliness, but not gratuitous)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Wystan : you have my sympathy. It is hard to turn one's back on the
transparent, because it's so easy to see through.

Henry: you have my pity. It is hard to face into the opaque w/o pretending
you have made it go away.

Spandrift : you have my wonder. I thought when I met you first, that I
*was* on the FUNPOETRY list.

db
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 20:31:55 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Stephen Cope 
Subject:      Re: Address query
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Might anyone know of an e-mail address for Burton Hatlen?

Thanks in advance,

Stephen Cope
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 23:34:37 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gwyn McVay 
Subject:      Re: DB's Koan
In-Reply-To:  <199706190137.VAA14701@radagast.wizard.net>
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David I., I thought it was "Caw Caw Caw Lord Lord Lord Caw Caw Caw."

Gwyn, likely misquoting
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 23:49:29 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Piombino/Simon 
Subject:      Re: Hello poetics
Comments: To: Wystan Curnow 
In-Reply-To:  
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Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Wystan, the fickle finger of deletion has deprived me of the late night
review of your hello poetics post(in response to Bennett Simpson) I was
very much looking forward to
rereading,
and hopefully responding to. Do you still have it, and if so, would you
repost it? Or perhaps another denizen of this list might do me that
kindness? I remember your mentioning Lawrence Weiner, and pointing out how
artists might not be so quick to discuss their views of contemporaneous
literary work.This certainly seemed to be the case with many artist and is
a continuing phenomenon. Which brings to mind how much I miss Susan Bee
and Mira Shor's M/E/A/N/I/N/G, which for ten years brought forth
contemporary artists' and some poets' ideas about art and books with
great energy
and  specificity.Although we do have a promised "M/E/A/N/I/N/G Book" to
look forward to.And we also have, fortunately,  Mira Schor's new
collection of
essays,"Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture" from Duke University
Press.
I know how "personal" messages might annoy some of the faithful, but since
my server claims it is "too many hops" to get a message to me from
Auckland except on
this list, might I ask you here if you still plan to come to the US this
year, perhaps to serenade us with a poem or two from Cancer Daybook and
other more recent works, in the Big Apple and
perhaps elsewhere?
Best wishes,
Nick
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 03:10:48 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      Re: (Fwd) "Buddhistic poetry"
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Kent --

thanks for the informative / interesting post.  Curious, btw, what
the CAP-L group might be.  One assumes from your response that the
little list of poets mentioned --

> . . . . .  such writers as [Lawson Fusao] Inada, Al
> Robles, Garett Kaoru Hongo, Alan Chong Lau, Patricia Ikeda, and
> Russell Leong...

are known to you, and are not deemed to (as you say) meet the
criteria of "a serious background in Buddhist study and practice."
(I'm unfamiliar w/ those writers, wouldn't know.)  You say:

> We were not interested, in the least, in poetry
> exhibiting the vague and stereotypical waft of the "Buddhistic." If
> anything, our anthology begins to point to the fact that reductive
> notions of the "Buddhistic" are one of the by-products of the
> "Orientalism" that Mr. Lew denounces. There is simply no way of
>  boiling down Buddhist artistic expression to any particular
> "Buddhistic" characteristics of tone, content, or style.

Good.  I much enjoyed *Beneath A Single Moon* when it appeared
-- and it proved an eye-opener in sereval ways -- introducing a
number of contemporaries whose work I've come to like, as well as
giving a valuable slant on familiar figures (e.g. Leslie Scalapino)
whom I came to appreciate in a new light.  The mix of poetry,
theoretical writings & biographical matter make it a fine resource.

> We are *considering* undertaking a second edition of the anthology,
> and would welcome any and all suggestions for new poets to include.

hope you do.  Meanwhile, is BASM still in print?  (I noted it to have
been remaindered some years ago . . . hence the question.)

best,
d.i.
 .
 .....
 ............
 \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\
   >    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:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 21:20:55 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: own horn, tooting of same
In-Reply-To:  <199706190401.VAA09183@email.sjsu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

now available from University Press of Mississippi

C.L.R. James: A Critical Introduction
by Aldon Nielsen

in paperback & hardback (though if you spring for the high-priced spread
you'll miss the photo of James that adorns the paper version)

Also available in the Fall from Mississippi

_Minty Alley_ by C.L.R. James
his only novel --
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 18 Jun 1997 21:24:22 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: That was no camera, that was my life
In-Reply-To:  <199706190401.VAA09183@email.sjsu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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despite Patrick's invitation, I won't attempt to summarize the rest of
Robert Creeley's day in Boulder
--
however,,

as he spoke of the Zukofsky tribute earlier in the year at Buffalo,
Creeley began to recall his own experience of Zukofsky and the openings
into earlier poetry that LZ made possible for RC, -- by the time he got to
the reading of a poem, both Creeley and his audience were profoundly moved
-- I felt honored to have been there
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 00:12:14 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Marjorie Perloff 
Subject:      Re: Visual Poetics Conference at Edmonton
In-Reply-To:  <199706190402.VAA20946@leland.Stanford.EDU>
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Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Thanks to Doug Barbour for a wonderful account of the conference!  I'm
heartbroken to have missed it!  Glad Brian Reed and Craig Dworkin did so
well!  I hope there will be a publication and also a society set up. I'm
teaching a grad seminar on Visual Poetics next year.

One question on the latter:  where does on get affordable materials?
Xeroxes aren't really adequate.  Recommendations for books for class use
are appreciated.

Best wishes,
Marjorie Perloff
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 03:15:50 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Bennett M. Sm [Dimpson" 
Subject:      Re: hello poetics!
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Wystan,

There is a magazine called "Purple Prose." There is also one called
"Purple Fiction" and yet another called "Purple Fashion." They are all run
by purple french people from paris, but the articles are written in a
variety of languages: French, English, Japanese, German (the reader is
left to choose according to her abilities). "PP" is more general than the
other two --covers art, music, film, culture/lifestyle interface, glossy
advertizing euro disco dilemmas and danish neutrality. "PF" is styled
literary, and is a real mixed bag of european and american writers, still
glossy. "PFASH" is, as far as I can tell, one of the most elegantly
produced and sexy fashion photography pubs in circulation. No written text
here. The eds. are Elein Fleiss and Olivier Zahm (the latter a reg.
contributer to ArtForum, which "PP" resembles somewhat). You can find any
of the purple pieces in larger bookstores or definitely at Printed Matter
in NYC. (I'm a partial purple participant --hence the purling promotion.)

Pontoons,

Bennett

On Thu, 19 Jun 1997, Wystan Curnow wrote:

> Bennett,
>          Isn't that magazine 'Purple Prose'?
>             Wystan
>

&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:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 01:25:05 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Rachel Loden 
Subject:      Re: Inappropriate postings
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> >I wasn't going to add any more pointless posts, but the beating Jay received
> >makes me also want to let him know, as well as his enemies, that I agree with
> >his position.  The excessive silliness of many of these posts keeps me from
> >being any more active on the board, as Mark Presjnar seems to feel as well.
> > Thanks Jay and sorry for the heat.
> >
> >Standard Schaefer
>
> I could not agree more. And now I understand fully what Jay was trying to
> suggest when he walked in here last Tuesday, completely naked and with a
> crow on his shoulder. More power to you, Jay!
>
> George Bowering.

> It wasn't my shoulder the crow was perched on.

>  Jay Schwartz

Which prompts the inevitable question, Jay, if it wasn't a crow on your
shoulder were you just really happy to see George?

Rachel Loden
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 07:21:46 -0400
Reply-To:     BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bob Grumman 
Subject:      Cummings, Syllables, Nemes....
MIME-Version: 1.0
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I look forward to what Charles ALexander comes up with regarding what I
call the "intra-syllabic word-break."  Can't remember ever coming across
it in Loy but haven't read her that much--and I have to admit that I've
never heard of Elsa von Freitag Loringhoven.  If she was innovating
anywhere near Cummings's level, I'd certainly like to hear more about
her.  Thanks, too, Charles, for the reminder of Hopkins's importance in
this area.  I revisited "The Windhover" where I did find "kingdom"
broken into "king-" and "dom" at the end of the poem's first line and
beginning of its second, which is certainly a precursor of what Cummings
did.  But Hopkins did it to make his first line rhyme with his fourth
whereas Cummings fragmented his words mainly to "disconceal" inner words
and hints of words, like "sing" (and "zing") in "using," and "ting(le)"
in "inventing."  Thus, while Hopkins is boosting the force of his
syllables, Cummings is concerned with the force not of his syllables but
of his *sylbs* (or whatever we decide to call textual entities smaller
than syllables but larger than phonemes).  Although you could say
Cummings makes syllables of "sing" and "ting" above.  (They aren't
syllables in "us/ing" and "in/vent/ing.")  He more clearly works with a
sub-syllable to disconceal in the poem I quoted when he breaks "voices"
into "voi," "c" and "es" to hint of "void"--and "envoi," too, due to the
proximity to "voi" of an "e" broken off from "whose" by a parenthesis
curve.

I do think Hopkins a precursor in word-breaks.  Consequently, I now have
a new, related question: was HE the first to break lines off in the
middle of words?  That would have been an, perhaps THE, important first
step toward what I call infra-verbal poetry--one easy to overlook as
major now that it's been done, and superceded.

I have other questions.  I know that Dadaists broke up words--at least I
can't imagine they didn't--but I doubt that they did so to any aesthetic
purpose (except to provide implicit metaphors of chaos, revolution,
etc.)  Does anyone know much about Dada experiments in this line?  Also,
how prevalent has word-fragmentation been among the language poets?  I
know P. Inman, for one, has used it.  Can't remember if he kept all the
fragments of some of his words, though--rather than just a front or rear
fragment.

I'm among the world's worst literary historians but fascinated by it,
especially the history of literary technique.

Now, just in case this posting isn't dense enough, a few further
thoughts on "nemes."  It crossed my mind that one might want to have
some term at hand to refer to the r's in "brave prince."  You could call
them letters but that seems insufficient if you want to emphasize their
sound--as sort of submerged alliterants.  (I'm continuing my discussion
with Charles Smith about the value of having some term for a partial
phoneme.)  If we called the r's "rudinemes" or some such, we could refer
to "rave rinse" as a phonemic alliteration and "brave prince" as a
rudinemic alliteration.  I know, we're into details of details no one
but the kind of maniac I am could care about.  But it isn't TOTALLY
uninteresting, is it?

One last note--about another neme: "repeneme," a term I coined to refer
to any repeated sound in poetry--like the l-sounds in "total lunacy,"
which aren't either alliterations or consonances but repeat each other
to *some* auditory effect.  Is there some better term available?

                                            --the ultra-nemic Bob G.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 19:34:44 +-900
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Tessitore 
Subject:      Re: Rated G

Naked people with crows on their shoulders are members of a British
doomsday cult. They are often heard mumbling to themselves "Wodwo is
coming, Wodwo is coming."

DT

----------
From:   David Bromige[SMTP:dcmb@METRO.NET]
Sent:   Thursday, June 19, 1997 9:32 AM
To:     POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
Subject:        Rated G

        Now Jay has cleared himself of Bowering's charge (of being naked
with crow on shoulder), my question still goes unanswered, to wit, What
does it signify, being naked with a crow on the shoulder? (I made no
attribution of naked crowness to any one particular person).

If I met a person in such condition, I might think Hmm, taking his crow for
an outing, or, Huh, is this religion? Or Far out, jump back, beats
lobsters! Or Wow, his crow ate his clothes, but he still cares for him! Or
I might somehow try to reconcile "they left him naked" with "they had him
eat crow". In fact, I did try that, & I failed. Is this phrase the very
ikon of opacity to me alone? David




begin 600 WINMAIL.DAT
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M<$$;<&CO!W BL1ZP
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M$!TP+[ #`&9_-<%(Z1OT'M!*5ASA'3<_M4B021X080VP23!O"H7E0;!T!1!B
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M*-<58C(2L"G6"H46P0(`=Q ```,`$! ``````P`1$ ````! ```#T``0````4```!213H@`````*Z8
`
end
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 09:16:22 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      The Overlap
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I'm stunned -- I have zero overlap with the concerns floating around on
the various lists now -- this coming from one whose standards were pretty
dubious to begin with --

so when there's nothing to talk about, sell!

Teachers & Writers Collaborative bought a bunch of copies of Muriel
Rukeyser's ultra-obscure biography of pioneering American scientist
Willard Gibbs, and we can't seem to hawk them in Union Square (intern
hazing ritual) -- so -- our bind is your boon -- copies of _Willard Gibbs_
are $15 ppd to the first five people to email their mailing addresses to
jdavis@panix.com

OK -- O Canada --
Jordan
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 15:22:14 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Warning label: do not open if easily offended by silliness
In-Reply-To:  <33A87A2E.4A47@sirius.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Jay Schwartz alledges that

>It wasn't my shoulder the crow was perched on.

Now I am wondering whether the stress here is on MY or on SHOULDER.

And just for the record, it wasnt my SHOULDER the twelve budgies were
perched on.





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 11:40:27 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan+++Sondheim 
Subject:      <>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

...


every moment when the word leans
it becomes another word and language
gains ascendence across body and
function as if there were speaking
at the beginning of things which
already announced their beginning
because she said there were extru-
sions from the start that wrapped
around itself adjusting her shawl
in the cold wind by the north sea
where ice flows burned the sea down
and brine turned its loamy foamy in
white emerald there in the true sea
where plankton rose and deep blue eyes
and blond hair swirled in black light
of blue by the grey sea by the black
sea by the brine sea by the sea brine
where the words flew as she spoke
into one another as the moment pulls
back and shows its white teeth through
the sizzle of words in color words
pulling back language she commented
i didn't come here for this
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 11:31:24 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      book market
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

There is a business called Book Market, which opens bookstores which are
bargain warehouses, and intentionally temporary, say 4 months, in cities
throughout the US. They also have some permanent stores. But with the
temporary ones, there are incredible bargains when it gets near time to
close. The one in Tucson is closing On June 29, and yesterday I was able to
buy 51 books for $48. Not much in the way of poetry, but I did manage to
find some other interesting books: for example, Women, by Phillippe
Sollers, for $1, Venus Blue, by Gustaf Sobin, for $1,  and Scratches, which
is the first volume of Rules of The Game, by Michel Leiris, trans. by Lydia
Davis, also for $1 -- all books over $4 were $1, and all books $4 and under
were 75% off.

Just saying this in case some of you have this store in your area which is
also getting ready to close. Probably I'm going to find out that these
stores are hurting the independents, and that their labor politics and
other politics is terrible. But for now, all I know is that there is a lot
to wade through, but a lot of incredible bargains.

If you're in Tucson, the store is on Oracle, a block or so north of Roger,
on the same side of the street as Borders and Kinko's.

charles
chax press   ::   alexander writing/design/publishing
books by artists' hands   ::   web sites built with care and vision
handmade and trade editions of contemporary innovative writing
chax@theriver.com   ::   http://personal.riverusers.com/~chax/
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 13:16:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: American Derision
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

Watched a portion of Robert Hughes' new series "American Visions" last night
 - the first hour of Part 4, anyway, before I fell asleep on the couch.  I
found it a particularly irksome exercise and wondered if anyone else felt
the same way.  What a pompous old billygoat Hughes is! He reminds me of
Gertrude Stein's description of Pound: "Ezra Pound is the village explainer.
 Fine if you are a village. If not, not." The lowpoints for me:  Hughes
shortshrifting Rothko (his project to raise Abstract Expressionism to the
level of religious painting was "bound to fail," opined RH, without giving
any reason. Translation:  I don't like this stuff!) And as my wife was quick
 to point out indignantly,  he gave, in the first hour of Part 4 anyway, no
mention of any women artists at all. Where were Helen Frankenthaler? Louise
Nevelson? Diane Arbus? Elaine DeKooning? (to name but a few...)

What I did take away though was a question about the influence of Abstract
Expressionism on Language Poetry.  I've not read anything yet about this,
but a cross-pollenizing current here seems fairly evident. The underlying
idea in both movements being the liberation of the text -- painted, or
written -- from all notions of an imposed narrative logic, that is, a direct
transmission of a pre-constituted and inflexible set of meanings, a rigid,
unchanging code, from to author to viewer or reader.  Meaning, instead, is a
seen as contextualized event -- it does not naturally inhere within a work,
but occurs in the space created at the intersection of painting and viewer,
text and reader. Hughes wore his best look of crinkled bafflement as
Rauscheneberg explained this in so many words to him in RR's studio. Typical
discussions of the evolution of LangPo focus on its literary and political
roots. What I'd like to know, if someone can supply it, is what's been said
on LP's connection to painting?

Patrick Pritchett
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 20:31:23 BST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ira Lightman 
Subject:      Text radicalism and incest radicalism
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII

I have read Sylvia Fraser's incest-book, *My Father's
House*. It isn't just "one of those recovered-memory-incest
books", as George calls it; it was one of the first such
incest books and is very interesting indeed. It uses the
literary trope of multiple voice and text disruption to
figure the eruption into the present of repressed incest
memories from the past.

     These writerly figures do not, I would remind George,
belong to one tradition's use of them; an artist's use of
them around a theme other than the primacy of language
and/or art and/or the slipperiness of the notional self (or
around any of the themes you like) can be *very*
interesting. What bothers George's friend about the
writing of Sylvia Fraser?

        What I think bothers a lot of writers about incest
memory literature is its operatic, sometimes messianic
gestures. Even incest memory literature using postmodern and
modernist text disruption can tend to employ more mawkish or
melodramatic operatic gestures, and this seems to be what
George's rather nasty hearsay from his friend over Sylvia
Fraser suggests:

> "a former beauty queen from Hamilton who has for 30 years
been writing mushy pop novels and trying to get called "an
artist." "

        "A former beauty queen from Hamilton..." means what,
a yokel, someone who'll never make it internationally? She
has for/to me.  "...who has for 30 years been writing mushy
pop novels...": whose melodramatic gestures sentimentalise,
evade debate? Only from one viewpoint. "...and trying to get
called "an artist." " Nasty, George. It does not follow so
easily as you imply, though,  that someone using simple,
melodramatic gestures *is* simple and melodramatic, nor that
the work may not have a more sophisticated effect, or be
enjoyed by sophisticated readers.

Fraser uses a style where the past erupts in a voice
like a demon possessing the autobiographic I of the
present. Ok, this may seem old hat to George's friend,
or "bad writing" in that context. However, to someone
processing recovered incest memories, it's a very
powerful evocative trope; one of the reasons there's a
lot of melodrama and zeal in such books is that the
effort of undoing of a self in denial is a fight: a
fight against denial. The fact that the erupting
voice, however, may seem demonic is very psychologically
interesting (thus interesting about the world: a feature
of "good writing"). The incestuous abuse of a child is
demonic; but so too may seem the return of feelings that one
has repressed to a self in denial!

        Fraser's writing is thus good (as in insightful and
cathartic) and, moreover, may be useful for real
people, supportive helpers. These may be conservative-minded
in their literary tastes but perhaps more socially
radical than George Bowering in fighting incestuous abuse
of children (I say this tartly, melodramatically). Fraser's
*My Father's House* may indeed, unlike any good book
George or his friend could commend, open up the mind of
helpers and incest survivors reading it. To the slipperiness
of realist narrative; which is the kind of
consciousness-raising that other (more high?) lit like
George's more preferred canon can do for others. If the
helpers and incest survivors whose minds have been thus
opened to language openness do not then go on to read
George's preferred canon it may be that it is itself closed
and conservative and in denial and "bad" about incest; as
George's friend implies Sylvia Fraser is about writing.
This norm of closed-off denial in "good writing" may,
indeed, contribute to the very melodramatic gestures
that are a deliberate bad girl bad taste snub to "good
writing" (I think of Karen Finlay here too). Although
I personally like Acker and find Bernadette Mayer's
"Studying Hunger" great writing and great sex-positive
radical work, I find them utterly reactionary and
ignorant about incest radicalism.


Ira Lightman


On Wed, 18 Jun 1997 12:31:56 -0700 George Bowering wrote:

> From: George Bowering 
> Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 12:31:56 -0700
> Subject: Re: ms. non-provocateur
> To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
>
> >I'm not familar with Sylvia Fraser.  She sounds
interesting.  Who is she?
> >Where's her work available?
> >
> >Dodie
>
> She is a former beauty queen from Hamilton who has for 30
years been
> writing mushy pop novels and trying to get called "an
artist." A few years
> ago she published one of those recovered-memory-incest
books. It was not
> well received. I havent read it, but my mate Angela did
and said that it
> was pretty bad writing.
>
>
>
>
>
> George Bowering.
>                                        ,
> 2499 West 37th Ave.,
> Vancouver, B.C.,
> Canada  V6M 1P4
>
> fax: 1-604-266-9000
> e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 09:25:43 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: reappropriating the inappropriate
In-Reply-To:  <199706150403.VAA19058@email.sjsu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Have just now read over all the list mail that came through while I was
virtually elsewhere -- have to ask --

about these "professional" flame throwers

outside of the Army, is there really a market for this profession? can one
apply for such a job, or, as with the posted positions at Yale and
Harvard, is application considered proof of unworthiness?

Is Kim Dawn related to P.M. Dawn?  Delta Dawn?

Has anyone noticed that none of the Summer reading lists posted here
repeats a single title from the NY Times Books of Summer issue?

Where are the flames of yesteryear?
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 13:56:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: Rated G
Comments: To: David Bromige 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

The Raven, of course, is psychopomp, or Guide of Souls to the Land of the
Dead.  Now her lesser cousin, the crow, alas, is merely Guide of Souls to
MLA Conferences and the like. Hence, the sartorial state alleged by Bowering
to this poor, nameless & benighted apparition. Unless, as Kent surmises,
he's been sipping away at a jug of Canadian courage.

Patrick.
 ----------
From: David Bromige
To: POETICS
Subject: Rated G
Date: Thursday, June 19, 1997 12:54PM


        Now Jay has cleared himself of Bowering's charge (of being naked
with crow on shoulder), my question still goes unanswered, to wit, What
does it signify, being naked with a crow on the shoulder? (I made no
attribution of naked crowness to any one particular person).

If I met a person in such condition, I might think Hmm, taking his crow for
an outing, or, Huh, is this religion? Or Far out, jump back, beats
lobsters! Or Wow, his crow ate his clothes, but he still cares for him! Or
I might somehow try to reconcile "they left him naked" with "they had him
eat crow". In fact, I did try that, & I failed. Is this phrase the very
ikon of opacity to me alone? David
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 15:44:14 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: DB's Koan
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I suggest reading Kroetsch's great novel _What the Crow Said_.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 17:23:16 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Wallace 
Subject:      abstractly personal
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

        As a poet whose work has sometimes been called "personal" by those
who consider themselves "abstract," and "abstract" by those who consider
themselves "personal," it seems to me that these two terms can open a
pretty worthwhile mess for thinking about contemporary poetry. The obvious
point that everyone already knows is this: neither the notion of the
"personal" or of the "abstract" is a given. As terms, their meanings are
capable of refiguring depending on the context that is brought to bear on
them.

        Anyone surveying the landscape of poetry practice since the 50s
can see that the "personal" in poetry has often become associated with a
rather standardized poem-narrative about the poet's "personal" problems.
Yet it seems equally clear that the "personal" does not have to result in
such a poem, and that different types of poems might use different notions
of the "personal." The Charles Bernstein et. al list of experiments
recently published in (help here on the citation please) has as one of its
possibilities "write an autobiographical poem without any pronouns"--lots
of room there, yes?

        Yet the notion of "abstraction" in poetry, as it relates also to
other contexts such as painting, equally has a history associating it with
certain kinds of writing, and it has not been uncommon, since the 50s, to
use the terms "abstract" and "personal" as key oppositions in determining
who is
interested in what kind of poetry. But just like with the use of
"personal," the relevance of 'abstraction' to poetry does not have to do
with some pre-defined certainty about what "abstract" poetry will look
like--rather, the poem that results has to do with the particular sense of
'abstraction' that the writer brings to the poem.

        If there is a problem, it is not with the idea of "the personal"
in poetry, or with the idea of "abstraction" in poetry. Rather, it is that
the discourse about 20th century poetry often has an overdetermined
certainty about what these terms mean. "Anne Sexton is personal, and we
don't like that." "Gertrude Stein is unreadably abstract, and we don't
like that." I happen to prefer Stein to Sexton, but it's certainly not on
the grounds that one is personal and the other abstract.

        I think that what I'm saying here is probably obvious to everyone
discussing these issues--I don't mean my remarks here as a particular
response to any other recent takes on the issue. It's a discussion I've
much enjoyed.

        But I will say this: an overdetermined, overly narrow sense of the
possibility of ANY word is actually one of the main curses of public
discussion about poetry. It's a good thing that words don't always care
that much about what we think of them, or otherwise language might become
as permanently narrow as what we often say with it.

        Mark Wallace

/----------------------------------------------------------------------------\
|                                                                            |
|      mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu                                                |
|      GWU:                                                                  |
|       http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw                                       |
|      EPC:                                                                  |
|       http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace                         |
|____________________________________________________________________________|
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 17:37:34 -0300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Stephen C. Ellwood" 
Subject:      MY NAME IS EMILY VEY DESPERATE
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

1)  CAN YOU TELL I'M DESPERATE?  I THINK IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO MISS.  LIKE A
    CAT SPRAYED ME WITH "DESPERATE FOR MEN"

                (ALL OVER HIS PECKER AND I FEARED
                I FELT A SORE THERE, ON THE HEAD)

    IT'S MY TRADEMARK, AT ONCE ENDEARING AND UGLY TO THE BONE.

2)  I'M WAITING FOR THE DOLLARS TO START A SLOW PARADE INTO MY WALLET.  I
LIKE DOLLARS.  I'M WEARING THEM OUT COUNTING THEM UP.  I'M EXTREMELY
BEATIFUL:

         "ATHLETIC, INTELLIGENT, TENDER. OUT SERVICE ONLY."

3)  I'M BITTERLY ENVIOUS OF THOSE I LOVE MOST.  OEDIPALLY!  AND WOULDN'T
HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY CAUSE YOUR SUCCESS IS MY FAILURE SISTER.

4)  DADDY, YOU FUCKED UP AGAIN.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 17:29:01 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Stephen Cope 
Subject:      Re: TAXING GRAD STUDENTS (fwd)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Apologies for burdening the list w/ academic info. But this seemed worthy
of attention and/or distribution. Those in academic positions might pass it
on to their grad. students and/or write the necessary letters to
congress...



>>6/13/97
>>
>>               Tax Scenarios Show Loss of Section 117d
>>          Could Increase Grad Student Taxes by up to 1000%
>>                       or more than $500/month
>>                  SEVEN STUDENT TAX RETURNS BELOW
>>
>>Washington, DC . . . The House Ways and Means Committee has voted in favor
>>of a tax bill that includes among its provisions a tax increase on
>>graduate teachers and researchers of up to 1000% (one thousand percent).
>>In a vote strictly on party lines, the Committee approved the tax proposal
>>originally offered by Chairman Bill Archer (R-TX).  Quick surveys done by
>>NAGPS have concluded that the tax proposal would dramatically increases
>>tax burdens on graduate students making less than $15,000 per year.
>>
>>Among the various changes to the tax code, the Chairman's proposal would
>>eliminate Section 117d of the Internal Revenue code.  Section 117d
>>currently protects from taxation the tuition waivers often granted by
>>universities to graduate teaching and researchers in return for teaching
>>up to 40% of the courses on some of the nation's largest university campuses.
>>
>>Because the value of tuition waivers often exceeds stipends also paid to
>>TAs and RAs, counting those waivers as income has the potential to
>>increase taxes by thousands of dollars per student per year.  Seven
>>student scenarios (listed below) illustrate how some students will pay
>>1000% (one thousand percent) more in taxes, or up to more than $500 per
>>month.
>>
>>In response, NAGPS (the National Association of Graduate-Professional
>>Students) is calling upon students, faculty and administrators throughout
>>the United States to contact members of Congress to protest this new
>>tax.  Graduate students throughout the US have expressed shock and
>>surprise at the proposal, with email listserves, web sites and
>>word-of-mouth quickly alerting students.
>>
>>"It is sad that a bill being offered to make taxes `more fair' has
>>instituted a brand new tax on students many of whom earn less than $15,000
>>per year," said NAGPS Executive Director Kevin Boyer.  "It is also a shame
>>that, instead of taking a pro-graduate-education stance in this bill, the
>>committee chose instead to offer no incentives for graduate education."
>>NAGPS had anticipated that the tax legislation would extend a tax
>>deduction for student loan interest, and would offer a tax incentive to
>>employers who sought to pay for employees' graduate school.  Both
>>provisions have widespread bipartisan support and were promised in 1996
>>Congressional or Presidential campaigns.
>>
>>Those interested in learning more about the tax bill should visit the
>>NAGPS web site at http://www.nagps.org/NAGPS/.  NAGPS is also running a
>>legislative alert email list.  To be placed on the list, send an email
>>request to nagps@netcom.com
>>
>>                       #####
>>
>>       NAGPS Asked:  What if Section 117d were eliminated?
>>          What could be the effect on your tax bill?
>>         These students represent some of the effects.
>>
>>STUDENT #1
>>Female PhD Student
>>Asian Languages & Culture
>>University of Michigan/Ann Arbor
>>
>>CURRENT LAW SCENARIO
>>1997 Gross:                    $ 8,333
>>Projected 1997 Income Tax:     $   268
>>1997 Net Income                        $ 8,065
>>
>>NO SECTION 117D SCENARIO
>>Stipend Income:                        $ 8,333
>>Tuition waiver (2 x $9470):    $18,940
>>Total Income:                  $27,273
>>Projected 1997 Income Tax:     $ 3,109 (+ 1160%)
>>Tuition Paid:                  $18,940
>>1997 Net Income                        $5,224 (-$237/mo)
>>
>>STUDENT #2
>>Married Couple, filing jointly; Male PhD student at the University of
>>Alabama/Huntsville, both residing in Huntsville, Alabama. Recently
>>married.  Husband is student at the University of Alabama/Huntsville.
>>Wife lost her job in 1996 and has augmented income with painting homes.
>>
>>CURRENT LAW SCENARIO
>>1996 Gross:                    $39,836
>>1996 Tax:                      $ 4,405
>>1996 Net Income                        $35,431
>>
>>NO SECTION 117D SCENARIO
>>Stipend Income:                        $39,836
>>Fellowship Income:             $ 6,000
>>Total Income:                  $45,836
>>Projected 1996 Income Tax:     $ 5,081 (+ 15%)
>>Tuition Paid:                  $ 6,000
>>1996 Net Income                        $34,755 (-$56/mo)
>>
>>STUDENT #3
>>Female PhD Student
>>Worcester Polytechnic Institute
>>Resides in Millbury, Massachusetts
>>
>>CURRENT LAW SCENARIO
>>1996 Gross:                    $14,400
>>1996 Federal/State Tax:        $ 2,390
>>1996 Net Income                        $12,500
>>
>>NO SECTION 117D SCENARIO
>>Stipend Income:                        $14,400
>>Tuition Waiver Income:         $10,680
>>Total Income:                  $25,080
>>Projected 1996 Income Tax:     $ 3,992 (+67%)
>>Tuition Paid:                  $10,680
>>1996 Net Income                        $10,488 (-$168/mo)
>>
>>Student says:  ="This would leave me with 10,400, or about 870 per month.  I
>>pay 450 in health insurance, 600 in car insurance, 400 per month for
>>rent, and about 100 per month for utilities. This leaves me about 280 per
>>month for food, clothing, books, entertainment, gas, and other incidental
>>expenses. I have enough trouble as it is living on the 1000 dollars per
>>month that I currently make after taxes.  I never see the extra 10,680
>>dollars that go for my tuition ; they are not in my pocket.  If this tax
>>bill is passed, I would seriously consider leaving graduate school, as I
>>do not think that I could afford to live on the pay that I would take home."
>>
>>STUDENT #4
>>Male PhD Student
>>University of Delaware
>>Resides in Newark, Delaware
>>
>>CURRENT LAW SCENARIO
>>1997 Gross:                    $ 9,600
>>1997 Federal/State Tax:        $   838
>>1997 Net Income                        $ 8,762
>>
>>NO SECTION 117D SCENARIO
>>Stipend Income:                        $ 9,600
>>Tuition Waiver Income:         $11,250
>>Total Income:                  $20,850
>>Projected 1997 Income Tax:     $ 2,527 (+201%)
>>Tuition Paid:                  $11,250
>>1996 Net Income                        $ 7,073 (-$141/mo)
>>
>>Student says:  "To offset the tax difference ($1,713 at least) for me, and
>>to compensate for the increased tax withheld from an increased stipend, the
>>university would have to increase my stipend by more than 20 percent
>>$1,985 bringing it from $9,600 to $11,585."  How can they do this without
>>increasing tuition?
>>
>>STUDENT #5
>>Male PhD Student is a Research Assistant on an EPA Grant and studies at
>>Worcester Polytechnic Institute Resides in Worcester, Massachusetts.
>>
>>CURRENT LAW SCENARIO
>>1996 Gross:                    $14,000
>>1996 Federal/State Tax:        $   549
>>1996 Net Income                        $13,451
>>
>>NO SECTION 117D SCENARIO
>>Stipend Income:                        $14,000
>>Tuition Waiver Income:         $11,280
>>Total Income:                  $25,280
>>Projected 1996 Income Tax:     $ 3,797 (+691%)
>>Tuition Paid:                  $11,280
>>1996 Net Income                        $10,203 (-$270/mo)
>>
>>Student says:  Each year, I pay $3960 rent, $480 health insurance, $360 bus
>>pass, $240 phone, $600 other utilities, $130 membership in two professional
>>societies (American Chem. Soc. and Water Environment Fed.), and $60 to
>>maintain a checking account, for a total of $5830 in expenses before food. I
>>spend another $300 on books and supplies (grad books are expensive!). I'm
>>frugal - I can maintain a home and eat for $10/day, or $3650/yr. That lea=
>>ves $3671, or $306/month for entertainment, clothing, Christmas presents
>>for my nieces, prescription medicines, non-prescription medicines, film
>>developing, and a suit when I graduate.  But this bill would leave me
>>with $299, or $16.58/month. Maybe I won't need that suit."
>>
>>STUDENT #6
>>Female PhD Student
>>Involved with Dartmouth College Graduate Student Council, Resides in
>>Hanover, New Hampshire
>>
>>CURRENT LAW SCENARIO
>>1996 Gross:                    $13,538
>>1996 Federal/State Tax:        $ 1,429
>>1996 Net Income                        $12,109
>>
>>NO SECTION 117D SCENARIO
>>Stipend Income:                        $13,538
>>Tuition Waiver Income:         $29,128
>>Total Income:                  $42,665
>>Projected 1996 Income Tax:     $ 7,709 (+539%)
>>Tuition Paid:                  $29,128
>>1996 Net Income                        $ 5,828 (-$523/mo)
>>
>>Student says:  "Therefore, Dartmouth graduate students would have paid $6280
>>more in taxes, which would have made our income $7258 for the year (46%
>>decrease).  It would not be possible to live in the area on that wage.
>>For 1997, the tuition is now $30,528.  I hope this helps!  I sent the
>>word out  to all Arts and Sciences graduate students at Dartmouth
>>yesterday (291 of us we're a small grad institution) and all who have
>>responded are very upset. It just would not be possible for any of us to
>>pursue a career in research and education if this tax bill passes.  As
>>graduate students, we do not expect high incomes in our chosen fields
>>and, to be here now, we are sacrificing health benefits, pension plans,
>>and high incomes during our 20s and 30s.  All of this we do to become
>>educators and educated researchers for the United States.  Shouldn't they
>>be encouraging us??
>>
>>STUDENT #7
>>Married Couple
>>Wife is a student at George Washington University. Husband employed by
>>federal government.  Resides in Alexandra, Virginia
>>
>>CURRENT LAW SCENARIO
>>1996 Gross:                    $50,528
>>1996 Federal/State Tax:        $ 5,950
>>1996 Net Income                        $44,578
>>
>>NO SECTION 117D SCENARIO
>>Stipend Income:                        $50,528
>>Tuition Waiver Income:         $ 9,050
>>Total Income:                  $59,578
>>Projected 1996 Income Tax:     $ 8,164 (+37%)
>>Tuition Paid:                  $ 9,050
>>1996 Net Income                        $42,364 (-$185/mo)
>>
>>*========================================================================*
>>| >>>> The National Association of Graduate - Professional Students <<<< |
>>|           825 Green Bay Road, Suite 270    PHONE: 847-256-1562         |
>>|           Wilmette, IL 60091                FAX:  847-256-8954         |
>>|          Toll Free 1-888-88-NAGPS * Email to: NAGPS@NETCOM.COM         |
>>*------------------------------------------------------------------------*
>>|        NAGPS 12th National Conference - New Orleans, Louisiana        |
>>|                    October 30 - November 2, 1997                      |
>>+-----------------------------------+------------------------------------+
>>| To access the NAGPS Internet Job Bank, send email to nagps@netcom.com  |
>>*-----------------------------------+------------------------------------*
>>|  ####         WWW Site >  http://www.nagps.org/NAGPS/            ####  |
>>*========================================================================*
>>
>>_____________________________________________________________________________
>> This message   | Help on the lists    nagps-help@nagps.varesearch.com
>> sent using the | Subscribe/remove/etc.
>>       nagps-request@nagps.varesearch.com
>> NAGPS E-mail   | General talk list    nagps-talk@nagps.varesearch.com
>> Server         | Reach NAGPS officers nagps-officers@nagps.varesearch.com
>>
>
>========================================================
>Pascual H. Benito
>Graduate Student
>U.C. Berkeley
>Dept. Material Sci.& Mineral Engineering
>------------------------------------------
>Office: 485 Davis  ph: 510-642-9278
>Home: 916 Mendocino Ave. Berkeley Ca 94707
>Phone: 510-558-9079
>email: pbenito@uclink4.berkeley.edu, or PHBenito@lbl.gov
>========================================================
>
>
>
>================================================================
>* AAASCommunity, the Discussion & News list of the
>* Email Network of the Association for Asian American Studies
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>* Coordinator: 
>================================================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 15:26:27 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Rated G
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Re Bromige's quandary:

I may have forgotten my ear-pieces and mistook someone's saying something
about getting this SHOW on the ROAD.

But there was some kind of bird on there, and he had his shirt off. That I
remember for sure.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 13:24:55 +1100
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:      x
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

x
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 21:07:45 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      summer reading
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I just received several very slightly dinged (as in dented, not made grey)
copies of Richard Elman's novel Tar Beach from Sun&Moon, a bargain at $6.50.
A wonderful book, and I can't imagine better reading for the sand set this
summer.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 09:10:28 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Maria Damon 
Subject:      Re: jwcurry, sondheim, kdawn
In-Reply-To:  <01IK4ZOV8EEY9H1DZ8@iix.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 11:18 AM -0500 6/16/97, Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume wrote:
>I will briefly "third" Kent & Tom's posts.  I too am betwitched, be-
>bothered and  be-wilded by Alan's work as it appears here and at his other
>websites (which I've only just begun to examine). This is exciting
>groundbreaking work and only my own ignorance prevents me from saying more
>about the theory behind the work other than it appears to be the logical
>extension of his work in _Disorders of the Real_. "Confused Fall of Autumnal
>Empire"  now adorns my grey office cube wall.
>
>Patrick Pritchett

hey, sondheim's the greatest. i adore his work and i've let him know back-c.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 19 Jun 1997 15:39:20 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wystan Curnow 
Organization: University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: Second SVP colloquium - update
In-Reply-To:  <199706100715_MC2-1827-6DA2@compuserve.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Dear Lawrence Upton,
                       Please email me details of the October
symposium. It now looks as if I will be in the UK at that time and
would be interested in contritbuting/participating.
                       Best wishes,
                         Wystan

w.curnow@auckland.ac.nz
English Department
University of Auckland
Private Bag, 92019, Auckland,New Zealand
Fax 64.9.3737429
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 07:49:06 +-900
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Tessitore 
Subject:      Re: x

y

----------
From:   Pam Brown[SMTP:P.Brown@LIBRARY.USYD.EDU.AU]
Sent:   Friday, June 20, 1997 11:24 AM
To:     POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
Subject:        x

x
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 11:14:36 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gwyn McVay 
Subject:      Re: x
In-Reply-To:  <01BC7D4E.7152BCA0@annex-1.tiu.ac.jp>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

DT, how on earth can you put forth such a blatantly male-centered
discourse?

On Fri, 20 Jun 1997, Daniel Tessitore wrote:

> y
>
> ----------
> From:   Pam Brown[SMTP:P.Brown@LIBRARY.USYD.EDU.AU]
> Sent:   Friday, June 20, 1997 11:24 AM
> To:     POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
> Subject:        x
>
> x
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 11:33:14 -0400
Reply-To:     shoemakers@cofc.edu
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steve Shoemaker 
Subject:      back in the addle
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Well, I've finished my dissertation, had a small vacation, and cleaned
out my mailbox.  At least it *was* nice & tidy until i sent my "set
poetics mail" command before i went to bed last night.  Now it's
pleasingly packed again and the struggle to catch up, keep up, and
generally hup hup w/ you all begins--let her rip!

steve

ps.

Hi Bennett, you finally "appeared."  I remember those summers in C-ville,
but if you think they're hot you shld try C-town (Charleston).  At least
here, tho, one can stagger over to the ocean and get licked by a wave.
A mountain ain't quite so lubricious, eh?
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 08:35:32 +-900
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Tessitore 
Subject:      Re: x

Actually, that was a plug. Limited handsewn editions of "y" will soon be
availble from my own Euro-American-male-dominated propaganda machine, the O
Press.

DT

----------
From:   Gwyn McVay[SMTP:gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU]
Sent:   Saturday, June 21, 1997 12:14 AM
To:     POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
Subject:        Re: x

DT, how on earth can you put forth such a blatantly male-centered
discourse?

On Fri, 20 Jun 1997, Daniel Tessitore wrote:

> y
>
> ----------
> From:   Pam Brown[SMTP:P.Brown@LIBRARY.USYD.EDU.AU]
> Sent:   Friday, June 20, 1997 11:24 AM
> To:     POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
> Subject:        x
>
> x
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 10:09:26 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         dbkk@SIRIUS.COM
Subject:      Re: Text radicalism and incest radicalism
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At 8:31 PM +0100 6/19/97, Ira Lightman wrote:

>Fraser uses a style where the past erupts in a voice
>like a demon possessing the autobiographic I of the
>present. Ok, this may seem old hat to George's friend,
>or "bad writing" in that context. However, to someone
>processing recovered incest memories, it's a very
>powerful evocative trope; one of the reasons there's a
>lot of melodrama and zeal in such books is that the
>effort of undoing of a self in denial is a fight: a
>fight against denial. The fact that the erupting
>voice, however, may seem demonic is very psychologically
>interesting (thus interesting about the world: a feature
>of "good writing"). The incestuous abuse of a child is
>demonic; but so too may seem the return of feelings that one
>has repressed to a self in denial!

Very interesting post, Ira.  It reminds me of what I was just reading in
Terry Castle's collection of essays, _The Female Thermometer_, Castle's
theory that the uncanny (in Freud's sense of it) was invented by the Age of
Reason.  If the uncanny is the return of something repressed, it cannot
exist without repression.  If one believes in a world of ghosts and the
supernatural, there can be terror, but not the uncanny, because, again,
there is nothing to break through.  Rationalism to the rescue!  So, the
voices coming through as demonic, as you describe them above, to me,
shimmers with uncanniness.

Somewhere in _Mina_ I quote the line, "the return of the repressed excess
beyond the text."  I love that line.  In my version I stick a cartoon POW!
in the middle of it.

Dodie

p.s. And sorry to Pat P., to whom I already went on and on about this
privately.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 12:48:47 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Judy Roitman 
Subject:      query
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Any readings etc. in San Diego the week of July 14?

Please answer before June 26.  Thanks.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judy Roitman                             | "Whoppers   Whoppers   Whoppers!
Math, University of Kansas        |     memory fails
Lawrence, KS 66045                 |         these are the days."
913-864-4630                          |                Larry Eigner, 1927-1996
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 11:49:09 -0700
Reply-To:     ttheatre@sirius.com
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Karen and Trevor 
Organization: Tea Theatre
Subject:      Re: American Derision
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Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume wrote:
>
> Watched a portion of Robert Hughes' new series "American Visions" last night
>  - the first hour of Part 4, anyway, before I fell asleep on the couch.  I
> found it a particularly irksome exercise and wondered if anyone else felt
> the same way.  What a pompous old billygoat Hughes is! He reminds me of
> Gertrude Stein's description of Pound: "Ezra Pound is the village explainer.
>  Fine if you are a village. If not, not." The lowpoints for me:  Hughes
> shortshrifting Rothko (his project to raise Abstract Expressionism to the
> level of religious painting was "bound to fail," opined RH, without giving
> any reason. Translation:  I don't like this stuff!) And as my wife was quick
>  to point out indignantly,  he gave, in the first hour of Part 4 anyway, no
> mention of any women artists at all. Where were Helen Frankenthaler? Louise
> Nevelson? Diane Arbus? Elaine DeKooning? (to name but a few...)
>
> What I did take away though was a question about the influence of Abstract
> Expressionism on Language Poetry.  I've not read anything yet about this,
> but a cross-pollenizing current here seems fairly evident. The underlying
> idea in both movements being the liberation of the text -- painted, or
> written -- from all notions of an imposed narrative logic, that is, a direct
> transmission of a pre-constituted and inflexible set of meanings, a rigid,
> unchanging code, from to author to viewer or reader.  Meaning, instead, is a
> seen as contextualized event -- it does not naturally inhere within a work,
> but occurs in the space created at the intersection of painting and viewer,
> text and reader. Hughes wore his best look of crinkled bafflement as
> Rauscheneberg explained this in so many words to him in RR's studio. Typical
> discussions of the evolution of LangPo focus on its literary and political
> roots. What I'd like to know, if someone can supply it, is what's been said
> on LP's connection to painting?
>
> Patrick Pritchett

Afraid I wouldn't be able to comment on LP's connection to painting,
except to maybe spout out some theories based on my own use of paintings
and art criticism in my work, but I did have the same reaction to
American Visions. Perhaps I'm unfair because I only saw the last
"episode", but I too noticed the absence of women and his derision of
"current" American art. I was disappointed, especially after reading the
article in the Sunday Times about it - I thought that he was bitter on
America because in the end, the series was funded by Britain and not the
U.S.
I think also was his inconsistency of opinion, his editorializing.
"Stations of the Cross", for example, he implied should hardly be called
such. I might agree it probably isn't a fulfilling spiritual experience,
but I think it held greater meaning than he gave it credit for. I also
found his debate with - I forget the artist's name, but he did the
Michael Jackson and Bubbles sculpture - almost disturbing. Of course he
was playing devil's advocate, but he seemed he was trying to get the
artist to justify his work, and they were discussing a work-in-progress!
He also dismissed many pieces with a "but so what", such as the gnawed
chocolate block, but commented favorably on a room filled with dirt.
It was here that I thought of the rhetorical in art - just as in a
workshop I had with Aaron Shurin, where we discussed the rhetorical in
writing. I might agree with Hughs in that being gay or anorexic/bulimic
or having AIDS doesn't necessarily make your art good, and that a room
full of dirt perhaps has subtle(er) implications than does a block of
chocolate. But in any case, I found his concluding dismissal of current
American art disturbing - because his whole point was that it mirors the
society, and hey, look at society right now.
Anway, back to "space created at intersection of painting and viewer".
Yes, another artist commented on that. That the context comes in this
space, and each viewer changes that context. I want to connect this to
another point about how the art is installed - Chinese men behind a
veil, or angles and light making you look at something a certain way -
but I haven't completed that connection in my head yet. Conceptual art
too. Looking forward to more discussion.

(My first big convoluted outburst)
Karen McKevitt
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 13:49:35 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Christina Fairbank Chirot 
Subject:      Re: eyerhymes in Edmonton
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        Thank you to Douglas Barbour for sending a report on from
Edmonton. And thank you again Douglas for the ride for Eduardo and me.
        Walt Whitman wrote in Specimen Days that the real story of the
(Civil) War would never be written in books but would lie in the grave
and silence.  Hopefully some good work from the story of Edmonton will
come, and not so much the story of the event as the work that comes about
from the contacts made at the event. The event is just the start, not the
finish or summation.  A good deal of thanks to Jars Balan and Peter Bartl
and the Ukrainian Languages people at Edmonton for providing un point de
repere, for making this possible.
        I wanted to note a few things not mentioned in Douglas' report
that were quite important at the eyerhymes Conference.
        On Monday, 16 June 97 the grand finale luncheon and an
organizational meeting of the IVLA were held to close the conference.
This was the official closing.
         But there was another, unofficial event
held to bring the conference to its end/beginning and return it to the
poets.  This was an evening of performance held in Lecture Theatre 1
Humanities Centre at 19:30.  Sergei Biriukov of Tambov, Russia and I
(Dave Baptiste Chirot Milwaukee, USA) organized the event and Jars Balan and
Peter Bartl gave us permission to
use the hall.  The readers/performers in their order of appearance:

        Elizabeth Netzkowa & Sergei Biriukov  poetry reading from texts
        Clemente Padin:  presentatiuon of video In Memorium America Latina
        Rafael Levchin:  poetry performance
        Mark Sutherland:  sound poetry
        Mark Sutherland and Sergei Biriukov:  improvised sound poetry
        Sergei Birikov:  Zaum
        Alexandr Bubnov:  poetry, performance pieces and songs
                        accompanied by guitar
        Bob Cobbing:  poems and sound poetry

        The event was attended by about forty people and lasted for two
hours. It was agreed by the poets present afterwards that the best way to
end the conference was unofficially, with performances and international
participation.
        Douglas Barbour noted the Ukrainians being somewhat apart from
"the others" so to speak.  I would say that this is so and not so.  The
so: Ukraine has not long been independent and there is a desire among the
Ukrainians to celebrate and emphasize the distinctiveness of their culture
and traditions.  In the academic West it is easy to frown on nationalism,
but then if you are the person who is carrying the big stick and carrying
all the walking around money, it is always easy to be critical of the
messiness
of people who have only some land and odburately enduring traditions to
announce themselves with. (There are after all reservations in the USA
for just such people. And there is Chernobyl in the Ukraine as a monument
to the Soviet Union.)
        The not so:  no one really approached the Ukrainians.  Language
barrier is no excuse.  The Russians and Ukrainians attended all the talks,
despite little knowledge of English on the part of many.  But on the day
of talks by Ukrainians and Russians (many of these presented in English
language) a large contingent of Canadians and
Americans left the conference and spent nearly the whole day at a large mall.
But you can do this perhaps when you are the person carrying all the
walking around money, perhaps that is why this was so.
        But it showed little solidarity with or interest in other poets
and their work.  Perhaps little interest is equated with little
value--what money is there to be made from such poets?  There is more of
worth at the mall perhaps.
        This was unfortunate as many good presentations were given by
Eastern Europeans.  Jars Balan gave a moving account of the life and work
of the Ukraine's first Concrete poet, Mykola Miroshnychenko, who was
present at the conference and who had read the night before; Oleh
Ilnytzkyj gave a terrific talk on the work of Mykhail Semenko and Sergei
Biriukov gave a dramatic theoretical and historical accounting of
Futurism, made vivid & immediate by his readings of Kruchonykh'
s and Kamensky's Zaum and Ferro-Concrete pieces.  As Douglas Barbour
noted, palindromes are very imporatant in Ukrainian language and poetry,
and there were talks and examples on this provided by Alexandr Bubnov and
Ivan Luchuk.  (Much discussion after among Luchuk, Mykola Soroka, Bob
Cobbing and myself as to whether or not Luchuk has written as he claims
the longest palindrome ever--3, 333 characters. The discussion continued
through the rest of the conference as it hinges on the nature of
extension--that is, what is the hinge by which the extension is hinged .
. . from that starting point you can get into quite wide areas of visual
and sound rhyming or what Robert Grenier calls "rhymms"  and interrealtions.)
        In many ways I know for myself and the Russian and Ukrainian
poets the conference provided an opportunity to thank in person Gerald
Janecek for his works The Look of Russian Literature and Zaum The
Transrational Poetry of Russian Futurism. Gerald Janecek and his work
have had a huge impact and influence on my own work and that of the
Russian and Ukrainian poets with whom I met and exchanged materials.  He
gave a wonderful and detailed and moving presentation on the life and
work of Rea Nikonovna, one of the most intersting and important of
contemporary Russian visual and mail artists.

        The major accomplishment of the Eyerhymes conference was to bring
together work and workers from many countries and traditions. Visual
poetry is not the hottest new thing just going in a course guide or
trendy web site but
the oldest continuous tradition of writing. Edmonton provided a place to
exchange work and learn of
the ongoing traditions of visual poetry, that these continue and open
possibilities and awarenesses in the world and writing that though
enduring suppression and neglect will go on.  Hopefully the contacts
made at the conference will lead to a renewed sense of a community of
visual poets both independent and working together.
        I would also like to thank Bob Cobbing, Paul Dutton and Clemente
Padin, Sergei Biriukov, Johanna Bartl and Mikalo Luhovyk and jwcurry for
their work and example and many discussions over many long nights.

        Again my thanks to Jars Balan for bringing the work and poets
together, giving energy and hope for ongoing work!

--dave baptiste chirot
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 15:30:42 +0000
Reply-To:     gmcvay1@osf1.gmu.edu
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gwyn McVay 
Organization: Associated Writing Programs
Subject:      Re: x
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>Actually, that was a plug. Limited handsewn editions of "y" will soon >be availble from my own Euro-American-male-dominated propaganda
>machine, the O Press.

Fine, as long as O Press uses Quark XPress.

Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 15:13:11 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Piombino/Simon 
Subject:      Re: o
Comments: To: Daniel Tessitore 
In-Reply-To:  <01BC7D54.EF4DA7E0@annex-1.tiu.ac.jp>
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DT:
Since O Books is already taken (Leslie Scalapino's Press) what about
Uh-Oh Press?
Nick P.
On
Fri, 20 Jun 1997, Daniel Tessitore wrote:

> Actually, that was a plug. Limited handsewn editions of "y" will soon be
> availble from my own Euro-American-male-dominated propaganda machine, the O
> Press.
>
> DT
>
> ----------
> From:   Gwyn McVay[SMTP:gmcvay1@OSF1.GMU.EDU]
> Sent:   Saturday, June 21, 1997 12:14 AM
> To:     POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
> Subject:        Re: x
>
> DT, how on earth can you put forth such a blatantly male-centered
> discourse?
>
> On Fri, 20 Jun 1997, Daniel Tessitore wrote:
>
> > y
> >
> > ----------
> > From:   Pam Brown[SMTP:P.Brown@LIBRARY.USYD.EDU.AU]
> > Sent:   Friday, June 20, 1997 11:24 AM
> > To:     POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
> > Subject:        x
> >
> > x
> >
>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 15:29:03 -0400
Reply-To:     daniel7@IDT.NET
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Zimmerman 
Organization: Bard-O
Subject:      Re: Cummings, Syllables, Nemes....
Comments: To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net
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Bob Grumman wrote:
>
> I look forward to what Charles ALexander comes up with regarding what I
> call the "intra-syllabic word-break."  Can't remember ever coming across
> it in Loy but haven't read her that much--and I have to admit that I've
> never heard of Elsa von Freitag Loringhoven.  If she was innovating
> anywhere near Cummings's level, I'd certainly like to hear more about
> her.  Thanks, too, Charles, for the reminder of Hopkins's importance in
> this area.  I revisited "The Windhover" where I did find "kingdom"
> broken into "king-" and "dom" at the end of the poem's first line and
> beginning of its second, which is certainly a precursor of what Cummings
> did.  But Hopkins did it to make his first line rhyme with his fourth
> whereas Cummings fragmented his words mainly to "disconceal" inner words
> and hints of words, like "sing" (and "zing") in "using," and "ting(le)"
> in "inventing."  Thus, while Hopkins is boosting the force of his
> syllables, Cummings is concerned with the force not of his syllables but
> of his *sylbs* (or whatever we decide to call textual entities smaller
> than syllables but larger than phonemes).  Although you could say
> Cummings makes syllables of "sing" and "ting" above.  (They aren't
> syllables in "us/ing" and "in/vent/ing.")  He more clearly works with a
> sub-syllable to disconceal in the poem I quoted when he breaks "voices"
> into "voi," "c" and "es" to hint of "void"--and "envoi," too, due to the
> proximity to "voi" of an "e" broken off from "whose" by a parenthesis
> curve.
>
> I do think Hopkins a precursor in word-breaks.  Consequently, I now have
> a new, related question: was HE the first to break lines off in the
> middle of words?  That would have been an, perhaps THE, important first
> step toward what I call infra-verbal poetry--one easy to overlook as
> major now that it's been done, and superceded.
>
> I have other questions.  I know that Dadaists broke up words--at least I
> can't imagine they didn't--but I doubt that they did so to any aesthetic
> purpose (except to provide implicit metaphors of chaos, revolution,
> etc.)  Does anyone know much about Dada experiments in this line?  Also,
> how prevalent has word-fragmentation been among the language poets?  I
> know P. Inman, for one, has used it.  Can't remember if he kept all the
> fragments of some of his words, though--rather than just a front or rear
> fragment.
>
> I'm among the world's worst literary historians but fascinated by it,
> especially the history of literary technique.
>
> Now, just in case this posting isn't dense enough, a few further
> thoughts on "nemes."  It crossed my mind that one might want to have
> some term at hand to refer to the r's in "brave prince."  You could call
> them letters but that seems insufficient if you want to emphasize their
> sound--as sort of submerged alliterants.  (I'm continuing my discussion
> with Charles Smith about the value of having some term for a partial
> phoneme.)  If we called the r's "rudinemes" or some such, we could refer
> to "rave rinse" as a phonemic alliteration and "brave prince" as a
> rudinemic alliteration.  I know, we're into details of details no one
> but the kind of maniac I am could care about.  But it isn't TOTALLY
> uninteresting, is it?
>
> One last note--about another neme: "repeneme," a term I coined to refer
> to any repeated sound in poetry--like the l-sounds in "total lunacy,"
> which aren't either alliterations or consonances but repeat each other
> to *some* auditory effect.  Is there some better term available?
>
>                                             --the ultra-nemic Bob G.

Bob,
        I haven't the texts at hand, remember seeing hypenations generated
(inadvertently? )by typesetters [do we really KNOW any of those
guys?--probably quite literate!] as early as the 17th cent., & perhaps
before.
        This thread interests me because for the past 30 years or so I've
hidden my secret identity as Captain -Neme-O, i.e., as what Olson called
"a crawler of my own ground." I've reverted, now and then, to a
'syllabic'[? I wonder, not knowing IPA] inventory of my own poems,
starting with the first 'sound' in the poem & making a list of all the
other words in the poem with the 'same' 'sound'--then, having exhausted
the armamentarium, I've looked at the lists to see if any of them bear a
coherence sufficient to consider 'sonic armatures'--not that I'd
necessarily revise to enhance incipient ones [though occasionally I
have], but just to discover what I might have tapped into on Orphee's
radio [cf. Paul Kugler's _The Alchemy of Discourse_, Bucknell UP, 1982].
        This practice has often yielded results interesting to me, at least,
though I'd hesitate to recommend it as a fundamental _generative_
practice of poetics [it does offer more interesting possibilities than
my current obsession, anagrams...a kabbalist at heart?].
        Any other nuts-n-bolts freaks out there?
Dan Zimmerman
485 Parsonage Road
Edison, NJ  08837
732-494-1676
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 14:12:33 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      abstract personal
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Kudos to Mark Wallace for his posting re these terms. These shopworn terms.

Personally, the poetry most commonly called "personal" is not nearly
personal enough for me. Just as the neo-formalists are not nearly formalist
enough for me, either. Bandaid art. Bandaid art would be better, actually.
I would gladly argue that Silliman's giant "abstracts" (humanity
crystallized as motions, 'states',reflection & inwardness as surface
phenomena equal with Q-tip in street) --I'm thinking of _Ketjak_ &
_Tjanting_, but why stop there? I would argue that these are highly
personal, as personal as you can get. *Much more* personal than Sexton or
Plath, say, whose poems have their protocols of the
personal-qua-tabu-subjects. These protocols are heavily coded treaties
between readers & writers.

When Bob Grenier wrote "I HATE SPEECH" much was encoded therein. But surely
one objection was to the way poets were shortchanging themselves (thus,
ultimately, us) by meeting an audience far more than any imaginable
"halfway", by opting for a protocol-model of speech,thus scanting poetry,
which best keeps to itself its thought. Keeps as itself. "Back where the
words are born," I think Grenier writes somewhere. There *can* be thinking
before one speaks. Paradoxically (?), an esthetic quickness is more able to
deliver such, than any plan.

When somebody puts his elbows on the desktop & tells me, "I'm going to
level with you," I reavch for my doubt.

As for neo-formalism (Dana Gioia, I hear, is an adviser to Hallmark), it
lacks micro-intensity. Micro being where lives actually takes place,
neo-formalism is dead.

Sorry about putting the apples in with the oranges. Their apparance of
relation is no accident..

+++++++++

To try to keep down # of postings, two other matters:

towards end of a talk I gave (printed in the first Hills/Talks book, ed
Perelman) Barrett Watten has little good to say re-Rauschenberg. Smithson
has held his interest & barrett has written of this. Too bad Barrett is not
active on this List; he wrote often for _Art Week_ . Michael Palmer had an
interest in Rothko, but denies he himself is a Language Poet. Surely a
check thru Bernstein & Andrews will turn up the linkages our correspondent
(s) are/is looking for.Myself have found Magritte & Escher & Van Gogh & H.
Rousseau & Stuart Davis, to name 5 that stay with me among a host, relevant
to the writing I enjoy, by self or others. Eigner, only LANGPO in the "Ur"
sense, writes to a French correspondent "Moi je suis Henri Rousseau le
Dounaier et Grandma Moses" or much to that effect. There's Matisse in early
Perelman, though I hope I dont have to prove it.

+++++++++++++

Borge Glowering's rdg of Jay's line must be correct, not my SHOULDER, & I
kick myself for missing it, a matter of stress. Doesnt, hwvr, account for
gb's initial sentence (re man naked with crow), nor does gb's latest
reframe job on this List. Probably my love of opacity is making me
unconsciously yet deliberately obtuse. David
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 18:49:06 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Michael Magee 
Subject:      Re: abstract personal
In-Reply-To:   from "David Bromige" at
              Jun 20, 97 02:12:33 pm
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thoughts on David Bromige's very recent post: on Silliamn/personal - yes,
reading *What* in a graduate seminar of Bob Perelman's many of us came to
the same conclusion - *What* is intensely personal, and not, to glance at
a lang po buzz word, schizophrenic at all - it seems the the catalogue of
the ways in which a contingent and pluralist comunity/world/space is
working on a single consciousness. what could be more personal than that?

on lang po & artists: what about a guy like Bruce Nauman?  I was just at
the San Francisco MOMA and saw a - what? - sculpture, I guess, of his
called something like "Imprints of the knees of five famous artists."  One
of the five famous artists is supposed to be de Kooning, but it turns out
they're all imprints of one of Nauman's own knees - a good joke, I
thought.  He also has a couple of pieces in the Phila Museum of Art which
I like, but it's purely an acquaintance's affection.  Anyone know his work
well?

-Mike.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 21:24:16 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Henry Gould 
Subject:      Re: abstract personal
In-Reply-To:  Message of Fri, 20 Jun 1997 14:12:33 -0700 from 

Abstract is not the contrary of personal - concrete is.  & abstract &
concrete are slippery terms about poetry or painting.  An abstract painting
emphasizes the concreteness of the medium; so, I guess, would an opaque
(non-narrative, non-"speech") poem.  But a painted abstraction is set
in a frame, or many frames - some specific, some more general or universal;
the primary frame being the impulse & movement of the whole work.  It's
hard for me to get the point of pushing around these counters (abstract,
personal, more abstract, more personal than you, etc.).  I don't see
how at this level of generality these oppositions mean much in terms of
experiencing the impact of a work of art. If it has any.

- Henry Gould (with doo-be-doo John Dewey looking over his crow)

p.s. seems to me that the MEDIUM of poetry taken up by Plath or Sexton
is the very same one taken up by the language poets.  & I don't see
how the formalities imposed by the former are any more constricting or
artificial than those of the latter.  What does the poem do with its
materials?  This literary progress by short-term one-upmanship will
tell us nothing. That is, it will tell you as little about Plath etc.
as I can tell you about Silliman etc. the times change, the styles
change... then they change back again...
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 22:42:13 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Henry Gould 
Subject:      Re: abstract personal
In-Reply-To:  Message of Fri, 20 Jun 1997 21:24:16 EDT from
              

"An irritated person is moved to do something.  He cannot suppress his
irritation by any direct act of will; at most he can only drive it by this
attempt into a subterranean channel where it will work the more insidiously
and destructively.  He must act to get rid of it.  But he can act in
different ways, one direct, the other indirect, in manifestations of his state
.  He cannot suppress it any more than he can destroy the action of electricity
 by a fiat of will.  But he can harness one or the other to the accomplishment
of new ends that will do away with the destructive force of the natural agency.
  The irritable person does not have to take it out on his neighbors or members
 of his family to get relief.  He may remember that a certain amount of regulat
ed physical activity is good medicine. He sets to work tidying his room...
  ...This transformation is of the very essence of the change that takes place
in any and every natural or original emotional impulsion when it takes the indi
rect road of expression instead of the direct road of discharge.  Irritation
may be let go like an arrow directed at a target and produce some change in
the outer world.  But having an outer effect is something very different from
ordered use of objective conditions in order to give objective fulfillment
to emotion.  The latter alone is expression and the emotion that attaches
itself to, or is interpenetrated by, the resulting object is esthetic...
...The problem of conferring esthetic quality upon all modes of production is
a serious problem.  But it is a human problem for human solution; not a
problem incapable of solution because it is set by some unpassable gulf in
human nature or in the nature of things.  In an imperfect society - and
no society will ever be perfect - fine art will be to some extent an escape
from, or an adventitious decoration of, the main activities of living.
But in a better-ordered society than that in which we live, an infinitely
greater happiness than is now the case would attend all modes of
production.  We live in a world in which there is an immense amount of
organization, but it is an external organization, not one of the ordering
of a growing experience, one that involves, moreover, the whole of the
live creature, toward a fulfilling conclusion.  Works of art that are
not remote from common life, that are widely enjoyed in a community, are
signs of a unified collective life.  But they are also marvelous aids in the
creation of such a life.  The remaking of the material of experience in the
act of expression is not an isolated event confined to the artist and to a
person here and there who happens to enjoy the work.  IN THE DEGREE IN WHICH
ART EXERCISES ITS OFFICE, IT IS ALSO A REMAKING OF THE EXPERIENCE OF THE
COMMUNITY IN THE DIRECTION OF GREATER ORDER AND UNITY. [my caps]

- John Dewey, _Art as Experience_, 1934.  Dewey was obviously a Nazi.

postscript:  there are emotions that are NOT negative [i.e. irritability]
and Dewey does not emphasize the negative emotions.

what this book can do is establish certain relations between reading
[aesthetic receptivity] and awareness [aesthetic judgement] leading to
an understanding of poetry as an ART FORM as opposed to an omnivorous
key to counter-knowledge on the one hand or explosion of rage/lust
/ego on the other.  Aristotle's measure.

"The enemies of the esthetic are neither the practical nor the intellectual.
They are the humdrum; slackness of loose ends; submission to convention in
practice and intellectual procedure.  Rigid abstinence, coerced submission,
tightness on one side and dissipation, incoherence and aimless indulgence
on the other, are deviations in opposite directions from the unity of an
EXPERIENCE [my caps]. Such considerations perhaps induced Aristotle to invoke
the "mean proportional" as the proper designation of what is distinctive of
both virtue and the esthetic.  He was formally correct.  "Mean" and
"proportion" are, however, not self-explanatory, nor to be taken over in a
prior mathematical sense, but are properties belonging to an EXPERIENCE
[my caps] that has a developing movement toward its own consummation."
- Dewey

Dewey is a gold mine.  He's not intellectual, either.  There is no chortling
over apercu or "meaning".  It's a response to a poem or other work of art
as an emotional/intellectual complex fulfilling its purpose over time.......
.......- HG

"an immense amount of organization".  POWER.  Today a friend of mine,
a paralegal, who had asked for flex time of a sort (after working there for
eight years or so), was told she had one option: either keep working her
present hours (40/wk), or work HALF time for LESS pay. Does she have
time for poetry?  She reads it over the radio as a volunteer for a special
program for the blind...    this is what we are up against, folks...
this is the coin of the realm!  Is it art?  Does it reflect?  Move?
Mirror the pressure of the time? IS IT ART?  Or SELF-expression?
Or both?  Who the hell cares... if we were artists we would organize,
and maybe write 1 or 2 poems a year, in prison.  as it is, we're...
academics - or dilettante wannabes.... with long resumes....publication
credits... blurbs.... what a bore.  Auden has a poem about the "artists"
chatting away, with the crucifixion going on in the distance... Auden
was a commie...
...meanwhile the mysterious positive emotion keeps drawing poems out of
flax.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 00:38:45 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Dean Taciuch 
Subject:      Re: abstractly personal
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I take a poet like Robert Creeley to have much to say on the subject of
personal/abstract, that sense of the personal rendered as object ones finds
in much of his work.

And there's the concern for the medium of expression that one often terms
abstract (as Henry Gould notes). Here's a related quote, from WCWilliams--

In a reading in 1950 at UCLA, Williams speaks of "that transition that you
have to make, from the sentimental subject to the structure of a work of
art."

"That's the big general step that has to be made before we can get a
cultured public.  When we take that jump from loving to have a subject that
we love talked about and put into rhymed verse, that's one thing.  When we
have a structure made of words to represent something which is our lives,
here, and we recognize it by the way it's made; you go from there to there,
and that's a tremendous step in the culture of a nation.  Difficult to
make.  Let me point as simply as this: I had a friend, a very good friend,
his name was Hartpence and he was an assistant in a gallery in New York, a
picture gallery, not a gallery but a, well, a shop where they sold modern
paintings.  And while the boss was out, Hartpence was there and one of
their best customers came in, a charming old lady, just as sweet as she
could be. And she liked one of the pictures, quite expensive. But she said,
"Now Mr. Hartpence, I like this picture very much.  But what is all this
down in this corner here?" And Hartpence looked at it. "Madam," he
said,"that is, that is . . . paint." (laughter from audience)  He didn't
make the sale.  I don't think he lost his job, but maybe he did at that.
Sometimes you have to lose your job to make a point. (laughter from
audience)"


And in 1951, at Harvard, introducing "Spring and All":
"Poems are not made of thoughts, beautiful thoughts, it's [sic] made of
words!  Pigments put on--here,there, made, actually."


These were, judging by the audience reactions on the tapes, surprising ideas.


Dean Taciuch
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 00:43:55 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steven Marks 
Subject:      Re: Cummings, Syllables, Nemes....
In-Reply-To:  <33A9164A.63B0@nut-n-but.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Bob G. wrote:

>Also,
>how prevalent has word-fragmentation been among the language poets?  I
>know P. Inman, for one, has used it.  Can't remember if he kept all the
>fragments of some of his words, though--rather than just a front or rear
>fragment.
>
I don't know the answer to this question, but if you want to see a poem
that makes an interesting use of front and rear fragments of words, go to
Chis Alexander's Webzine "n/formation." Look for his poem "ferrites" in
the current issue. URL is

http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/nonce.html

cheers,
Steven

__________________________________________________
   Steven Marks

   http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html
__________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 00:48:01 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      The God of Small Things
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

[ was:  Subject:  Re: reappropriating the inappropriate ]

Aldon Nielsen sounds this genteel provocation:

> Has anyone noticed that none of the Summer reading lists posted here
> repeats a single title from the NY Times Books of Summer issue?

For the record (not the CD tho), I have in mind -- probably -- to
read Arudathi Roy's new (& 1st) novel, *The God of Small Things*
(which I think maybe was reviewed in that NYTBR -- memory now is
muddled or muffled or mottled or fiddled or faddled or fuddled).

Also to note, said volume has just gotten the author in some
curious, censorious legal trouble in India (in her native state of
Kerala) -- (the novel benightedly esteemed immoral or such).

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 00:52:18 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KIM DAWN BAKER 
Subject:      rape
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

i was at the wick last night with betsy leading this big brick laying guy
on letting him buy us drinks when i went to the washroom he followed me
into my stall it was so fast he pulled my shirt and bra up touched my
mouth with his big hand and put his cock in my mouth i dont know how i got
outta there but i did it thundered around six that morning i had just
gotton to sleep i was scared of the big noise i remembered a dream where
my mom was wearing black and blue i was so far outta my body i wish i felt
more.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 21:06:06 -0300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Stephen C. Ellwood" 
Subject:      Re: abstract personal
In-Reply-To:  <199706202249.SAA57800@dept.english.upenn.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Fri, 20 Jun 1997, Michael Magee wrote>
> on lang po & artists: what about a guy like Bruce Nauman?  I was just at
> the San Francisco MOMA and saw a - what? - sculpture, I guess, of his
> called something like "Imprints of the knees of five famous artists."  One
> of the five famous artists is supposed to be de Kooning, but it turns out
> they're all imprints of one of Nauman's own knees - a good joke, I
> thought.

I have a lot of trouble with this type of work, the discourse it
creates/alleges.  It comes from humour and vulnerability (Ihope) but
just operates as an enactment of arrogance, plus doing the dirty work
of turning the world/community/network/lonely nobodies of artists into
a daunting institutuion.  It comes from the longing to be part of a
family, but my feeling is that it instigates that same (painful)
longing in others.  Doesn't that seem less than ethical?  Or at least
less than kind.  I guess in my world (ddesolate these days) I'm hoping
artists and writers are motivated by kindness.  And, as always, personal
insecurity.

I have a question, as well.  What does "Lang Po" stand for?  I'm sorry
for ignorance which I know, for I have my own miniscule area of
expertise, will make me appear poignantly ridiculous.  Oh, I take that
back.  I have no area of expertise.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 23:24:00 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: abstract personal
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

T'ang dynasty poet, what ho?
>I have a question, as well.  What does "Lang Po" stand for?  I'm sorry
>for ignorance which I know, for I have my own miniscule area of
>expertise, will make me appear poignantly ridiculous.  Oh, I take that
>back.  I have no area of expertise.
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 23:33:57 -0700
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"

A few comments on Hughes: in his final episode among the very few currently
working artists he had anything good to say about were Louises Bourgeoise
and Susan Rothenberg. His comments on the dirt-paved loft were more bemused
than celebratory. And he punctured a few silly reputations, like Koons. (If
you're interested in kitsch elevated to art check out Robert Colescott or
Luis Jimenez) His thrust was clearly despair about much of what goes on
these days in the business of art, and I think he's largely right. Some
characters get off rather too easily. Eric Fischl, despite what Hughes
characterizes as his bad drawing, becomes a contemporary master. I've been
waiting without much hope for him to reach puberty. But I, too, am dubious
about many of Hughes' ideas. I think he rather simplifies the history of the
art of this place in order to substantiate a theory of decline analogous to
Turner's "frontier thesis," in this case that American art declines as it
loses contact with its roots in landscape. Rather too neat, and also ignores
the many, like John Lees, still profoundly involved with that landscape.

At 11:49 AM 6/20/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume wrote:
>>
>> Watched a portion of Robert Hughes' new series "American Visions" last night
>>  - the first hour of Part 4, anyway, before I fell asleep on the couch.  I
>> found it a particularly irksome exercise and wondered if anyone else felt
>> the same way.  What a pompous old billygoat Hughes is! He reminds me of
>> Gertrude Stein's description of Pound: "Ezra Pound is the village explainer.
>>  Fine if you are a village. If not, not." The lowpoints for me:  Hughes
>> shortshrifting Rothko (his project to raise Abstract Expressionism to the
>> level of religious painting was "bound to fail," opined RH, without giving
>> any reason. Translation:  I don't like this stuff!) And as my wife was quick
>>  to point out indignantly,  he gave, in the first hour of Part 4 anyway, no
>> mention of any women artists at all. Where were Helen Frankenthaler? Louise
>> Nevelson? Diane Arbus? Elaine DeKooning? (to name but a few...)
>>
>> What I did take away though was a question about the influence of Abstract
>> Expressionism on Language Poetry.  I've not read anything yet about this,
>> but a cross-pollenizing current here seems fairly evident. The underlying
>> idea in both movements being the liberation of the text -- painted, or
>> written -- from all notions of an imposed narrative logic, that is, a direct
>> transmission of a pre-constituted and inflexible set of meanings, a rigid,
>> unchanging code, from to author to viewer or reader.  Meaning, instead, is a
>> seen as contextualized event -- it does not naturally inhere within a work,
>> but occurs in the space created at the intersection of painting and viewer,
>> text and reader. Hughes wore his best look of crinkled bafflement as
>> Rauscheneberg explained this in so many words to him in RR's studio. Typical
>> discussions of the evolution of LangPo focus on its literary and political
>> roots. What I'd like to know, if someone can supply it, is what's been said
>> on LP's connection to painting?
>>
>> Patrick Pritchett
>
>Afraid I wouldn't be able to comment on LP's connection to painting,
>except to maybe spout out some theories based on my own use of paintings
>and art criticism in my work, but I did have the same reaction to
>American Visions. Perhaps I'm unfair because I only saw the last
>"episode", but I too noticed the absence of women and his derision of
>"current" American art. I was disappointed, especially after reading the
>article in the Sunday Times about it - I thought that he was bitter on
>America because in the end, the series was funded by Britain and not the
>U.S.
>I think also was his inconsistency of opinion, his editorializing.
>"Stations of the Cross", for example, he implied should hardly be called
>such. I might agree it probably isn't a fulfilling spiritual experience,
>but I think it held greater meaning than he gave it credit for. I also
>found his debate with - I forget the artist's name, but he did the
>Michael Jackson and Bubbles sculpture - almost disturbing. Of course he
>was playing devil's advocate, but he seemed he was trying to get the
>artist to justify his work, and they were discussing a work-in-progress!
>He also dismissed many pieces with a "but so what", such as the gnawed
>chocolate block, but commented favorably on a room filled with dirt.
>It was here that I thought of the rhetorical in art - just as in a
>workshop I had with Aaron Shurin, where we discussed the rhetorical in
>writing. I might agree with Hughs in that being gay or anorexic/bulimic
>or having AIDS doesn't necessarily make your art good, and that a room
>full of dirt perhaps has subtle(er) implications than does a block of
>chocolate. But in any case, I found his concluding dismissal of current
>American art disturbing - because his whole point was that it mirors the
>society, and hey, look at society right now.
>Anway, back to "space created at intersection of painting and viewer".
>Yes, another artist commented on that. That the context comes in this
>space, and each viewer changes that context. I want to connect this to
>another point about how the art is installed - Chinese men behind a
>veil, or angles and light making you look at something a certain way -
>but I haven't completed that connection in my head yet. Conceptual art
>too. Looking forward to more discussion.
>
>(My first big convoluted outburst)
>Karen McKevitt
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 02:48:00 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan+++Sondheim 
Subject:      Subject: Ex-Mig
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

+++


Subject: Ex-Mig


Exchange of Migrating Names

{b:2} Migrating Names bash: Migrating: command not found
personal-name = Alan***Sondheim To : Travis***Sondheim
 Cc: Subject: Migrating Names -- Message Text --

Names Migrate

Intention transforms across applications; the railroad meets itself on
the other side of the world.

Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 23:21:40 -0400 (EDT) From: Travis***Sondheim
 To: Alan***Sondheim  Subject:
Migrating Names

Thin links break, there are always girls and boys, Travis and Susan,
always time on hand. I'd wonder:

{k:1} date Thu Jun 19 23:24:09 EDT 1997 {k:2} exit
Connection closed by foreign host.
{b:9} date Thu Jun 19 23:23:22 EDT 1997

Susan-Travis fingers grow thin with longing; Jews, they just aren't
_there._ This could be a problem.

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----


To: root@166.84.250.149 Subject: we have no roots

Susan - the problem is theirs.

Travis

+++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++

"It's this sort of thing." "They always say things like this." "You've
got to expect them to feel this way."

"They're _clingy._"


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 03:53:55 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Bennett M. Sm [Dimpson" 
Subject:      What Sauna?
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

This is a funny quote from Weiners. I don't know much about him, but the
business of poetry being essentially humans relating to humans, art
being essentially humans relating to objects feels kinda arbitrary. Humans
always relate to both humans and objects. Art, poetry? What about puppies
and steambaths? Translation is what you want and when you want it. Puppy
is also a word when it pisses on your floor. Why does Weiners limit his
words to concept as material? This quote sounds afraid to go more elastic
with its genres. But that's ok too. Everybody's on the clock. Concessions.

mulling,

Bennett




On Thu, 19 Jun 1997, Wystan Curnow wrote:

> Dear Bennett,
>                    This is a subject that interests me. Have you
> looked at Lawrence Weiner? He appears in one of the L= anthologies.
> There's a strange statement of his in Dieter Schwarz's catalogue
> raisonne of W's books 'Literature is an attempt to portray within the
> context of a narrative or non-narrative structure the relationships
> of human beings to human beings, and art isthe relationship of human
> beings to objects, that' simple enough (sic!). Poetry essentially is
> something that is not translatable; its possible to get an
> approximate translation, it's made not to be translated, its made to
> have the beauty and the form and the sens of the language itself, and
> my work is designed initially to be translated, either into physical
> form or into languages, and that's enough of a difference for me.
> Literature is essentially about a subjective reality, and art is
> essentially about an objective reality.' Its from an interview with
> Schwarz of 1989. It is interesting less for what it claims about
> literature and poetry, than as an apology ( why I am not a poet) for
> his own practices which in terms of the making words  ' material '
> are clearly larger than those of any other so-called conceptual
> artist.  At least for the sake of argument, I'm not convinced by W's
> defence. Indeed, I'd like to see how the texts of Weiner, and say
> Hamish Fulton, Richard Long, David Tremlett ( the Brit. backpacker
> poets) not to mention , Jenny Holzer  etc etc would survive the 'test
> of poetry'. What thoughts?
>      Wystan
>

&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, 21 Jun 1997 04:14:02 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Bennett M. Sm [Dimpson" 
Subject:      Re: smithsons poetics, artists/poets
In-Reply-To:  <3.0.1.32.19970618180344.006d7d2c@theriver.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I don't know what poets do generally.
Is there any such thing as an artist?

"Locals Only" is expandable.
The moon is backyard and Robert Smithson

singing contracts in the craters has found
address books in every single one.

"Winter Solstice, 4000 BC."
Tomorrow night in Rene's typewriter.

Do not lock
and load.

Charlottesville, Virginia photo
index loop poop CPR.

Need cheap tix to LGA, will red-eye,
do while, Bennett


&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:         Fri, 20 Jun 1997 18:31:13 +-900
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Tessitore 

Who was the guy--I think he was British--who, like Hughes seems to have
done, went through the 20th c. on PBS with a rather sarcastic eye maybe
four or five years ago? I think his was more of a biography tour.

DT

----------
From:   Mark Weiss[SMTP:junction@EARTHLINK.NET]
Sent:   Saturday, June 21, 1997 3:33 PM
To:     POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

A few comments on Hughes: in his final episode among the very few currently
working artists he had anything good to say about were Louises Bourgeoise
and Susan Rothenberg. His comments on the dirt-paved loft were more bemused
than celebratory. And he punctured a few silly reputations, like Koons. (If
you're interested in kitsch elevated to art check out Robert Colescott or
Luis Jimenez) His thrust was clearly despair about much of what goes on
these days in the business of art, and I think he's largely right. Some
characters get off rather too easily. Eric Fischl, despite what Hughes
characterizes as his bad drawing, becomes a contemporary master. I've been
waiting without much hope for him to reach puberty. But I, too, am dubious
about many of Hughes' ideas. I think he rather simplifies the history of
the
art of this place in order to substantiate a theory of decline analogous to
Turner's "frontier thesis," in this case that American art declines as it
loses contact with its roots in landscape. Rather too neat, and also
ignores
the many, like John Lees, still profoundly involved with that landscape.

At 11:49 AM 6/20/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume wrote:
>>
>> Watched a portion of Robert Hughes' new series "American Visions" last
night
>>  - the first hour of Part 4, anyway, before I fell asleep on the couch.
 I
>> found it a particularly irksome exercise and wondered if anyone else
felt
>> the same way.  What a pompous old billygoat Hughes is! He reminds me of
>> Gertrude Stein's description of Pound: "Ezra Pound is the village
explainer.
>>  Fine if you are a village. If not, not." The lowpoints for me:  Hughes
>> shortshrifting Rothko (his project to raise Abstract Expressionism to
the
>> level of religious painting was "bound to fail," opined RH, without
giving
>> any reason. Translation:  I don't like this stuff!) And as my wife was
quick
>>  to point out indignantly,  he gave, in the first hour of Part 4 anyway,
no
>> mention of any women artists at all. Where were Helen Frankenthaler?
Louise
>> Nevelson? Diane Arbus? Elaine DeKooning? (to name but a few...)
>>
>> What I did take away though was a question about the influence of
Abstract
>> Expressionism on Language Poetry.  I've not read anything yet about
this,
>> but a cross-pollenizing current here seems fairly evident. The
underlying
>> idea in both movements being the liberation of the text -- painted, or
>> written -- from all notions of an imposed narrative logic, that is, a
direct
>> transmission of a pre-constituted and inflexible set of meanings, a
rigid,
>> unchanging code, from to author to viewer or reader.  Meaning, instead,
is a
>> seen as contextualized event -- it does not naturally inhere within a
work,
>> but occurs in the space created at the intersection of painting and
viewer,
>> text and reader. Hughes wore his best look of crinkled bafflement as
>> Rauscheneberg explained this in so many words to him in RR's studio.
Typical
>> discussions of the evolution of LangPo focus on its literary and
political
>> roots. What I'd like to know, if someone can supply it, is what's been
said
>> on LP's connection to painting?
>>
>> Patrick Pritchett
>
>Afraid I wouldn't be able to comment on LP's connection to painting,
>except to maybe spout out some theories based on my own use of paintings
>and art criticism in my work, but I did have the same reaction to
>American Visions. Perhaps I'm unfair because I only saw the last
>"episode", but I too noticed the absence of women and his derision of
>"current" American art. I was disappointed, especially after reading the
>article in the Sunday Times about it - I thought that he was bitter on
>America because in the end, the series was funded by Britain and not the
>U.S.
>I think also was his inconsistency of opinion, his editorializing.
>"Stations of the Cross", for example, he implied should hardly be called
>such. I might agree it probably isn't a fulfilling spiritual experience,
>but I think it held greater meaning than he gave it credit for. I also
>found his debate with - I forget the artist's name, but he did the
>Michael Jackson and Bubbles sculpture - almost disturbing. Of course he
>was playing devil's advocate, but he seemed he was trying to get the
>artist to justify his work, and they were discussing a work-in-progress!
>He also dismissed many pieces with a "but so what", such as the gnawed
>chocolate block, but commented favorably on a room filled with dirt.
>It was here that I thought of the rhetorical in art - just as in a
>workshop I had with Aaron Shurin, where we discussed the rhetorical in
>writing. I might agree with Hughs in that being gay or anorexic/bulimic
>or having AIDS doesn't necessarily make your art good, and that a room
>full of dirt perhaps has subtle(er) implications than does a block of
>chocolate. But in any case, I found his concluding dismissal of current
>American art disturbing - because his whole point was that it mirors the
>society, and hey, look at society right now.
>Anway, back to "space created at intersection of painting and viewer".
>Yes, another artist commented on that. That the context comes in this
>space, and each viewer changes that context. I want to connect this to
>another point about how the art is installed - Chinese men behind a
>veil, or angles and light making you look at something a certain way -
>but I haven't completed that connection in my head yet. Conceptual art
>too. Looking forward to more discussion.
>
>(My first big convoluted outburst)
>Karen McKevitt
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 05:55:27 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Peter Ganick 
Subject:      announce POTEPOETZINETHREE ----
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

POTEPOETZINE will be sent out this coming monday------
contributors include; kim dawn, susan finnegan, guy
bennett, craig foltz, jim leftwich, john kimball/peter ganick,
john sembrakis, dan raphael, robert j. tiess, steve tills----
to receive your own issue, send your e-mail address to:
potepoet@home.com, mentioning where you saw this
annoucement----

submissions are now being accepted
for POTEPOETZINEFOUR
---an issue devoted to writing by
and about women-------no more than
4 pages, please-------

out-----
peter ganick
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 07:13:15 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      The God of Small Things
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

[ was:  Subject:  Re: reappropriating the inappropriate ]

Aldon Nielsen sounds this genteel provocation:

> Has anyone noticed that none of the Summer reading lists posted here
> repeats a single title from the NY Times Books of Summer issue?

For the record (not the CD tho), I have in mind -- probably -- to read
Arudathi Roy's new (& 1st) novel, *The God of Small Things* (which I
think was reviewed in that NYTBR ? -- memory now is muddled or
muffled or mottled or fiddled or faddled or fuddled).

Also to note, said volume has just gotten the author in some
curious, censorious legal trouble in India, in her native state of
Kerala, through what sounds to be a nonsense suit -- the novelist
being charged with degrading moral standards through her book.

d.i.

p.s.:  I've seen nor hide nor hair of the Poetics listserv -- no
posts, no digests, nada -- for the past 2 days.  Strange.
 .
 .....
 ............
 \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\
   >    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:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 07:20:41 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      oops, never mind
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

in a moments-ago post, I erroneously wrote:

> p.s.:  I've seen nor hide nor hair of the Poetics listserv -- no
> posts, no digests, nada -- for the past 2 days.  Strange.

well, that had been true till I got the "June 18-20" digest -- an
item from which (From Aldon N.) I was in fact responding to.

pardon moi; (chalk it off to the humidity . . . ?)

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 07:54:32 -0400
Reply-To:     BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bob Grumman 
Subject:      Nemes, Names, Lang Po, Viz Po
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

First off, thanks, Steven Marks, for alerting me to Chris Alexander's
"ferrites," which DOES do very nice things with word fragments--and made
me remember I wanted to tell Judy Roitman that I, too, am fascinated by
the different tones, or whatever, of words on the page like "wait" and
"weight," to which I would add "wgt." though its difference from the
others is partly semantic since the abbreviation makes it say "cut&dry,
impersonal, abstract," as well as "feel" different.  Then there are
"gray" and "grey," which are not only "visio-tonally" different, but
semantically different, the "a" making "gray" a much happier hue than
"grey," and also younger since (I think) "grey" is old-fashioned-
seeming.

I also have a few comments for the abstraction/personal thread.  My
impression is that people like Mark W. are for a few words, loosely-
defined, that they can run with while people like Henry Gould and I
prefer many words, precisely-defined.  Anyway, like Henry, I don't see
an opposition between personal and abstract--but I do believe that
abstract implies impersonal.  The way I'd avoid all this is to speak of
object-centered versus people-centered poetry.  Either can be highly
personal or impersonal.  Plath seems mostly people-centered, most
language poets object-centered (the object being language a lot of the
time).  But I'm just musing.

Anyway, that brings me to Stephen C. Ellman's request for enlightenment
on what "lang po" is.  It's short for "language poetry."  As to what
THAT is there is a lot of disagreement.  I consider it poetry that works
against linguistic norms--that is, breaks the rules of traditional prose
and/or verse grammatically or orthographically.  It's language-centered,
but so is much non-language poetry.  It has many socio-political
definitions, too, that have nothing to do with what it actually is.  And
various poets are termed language poets, or NOT language poets, for
purely personal reasons like cliquishness and anti-cliquishness.  It's
all very confusing, and I'm definitely not an authority on it, so would
very much like to see other definitions of it.  Meanwhile, I don't use
the term in my formal taxonomy, going instead with "xenolinguistic
poetry"--which no one else uses, which keeps its meaning from being
corrupted.

Which brings me to viz po, short for visual poetry, and Marjorie
Perloff's request for affordable materials for a seminar on visual
poetry she's doing next year (and it's great that she's doing it, visual
poetry continuing to be severely under-considered by the academy).

Sad to say, while there are a lot of terrific chapbook collections of
viz po around, and zines of it, and isolated articles on it in
small-circulation magazines, so far as I know there haven't been any
full-scale major anthologies of it (in English) since the Solt and
Williams anthologies over twenty years ago, and no worthwhile full-
scale collections of viz po criticism EVER--except Bob Cobbing and Peter
Mayer's *Concerning Concrete Poetry* of 1978.

But I do have a few recommendations:

1. CORE: A Symposium on Contemporary Visual Poetry which contains a bit
of criticism and a few samples of visual poetry but is mainly a sort of
introduction to certain visual poets--as opposed to visual POETRY.  But
most of the serious practitioners have a page or two in it of comments
about where they are in the field and how they feel about it, etc., so
it should interest anyone interested in visual poetry.

The latest issue of SCORE (1015 NW Clifford St., Pullman WA 99163--I
don't know the price; same address should get you information about
CORE, which is probably out-of-print) which has a LOT of state-of-the
-art visual poetry--from Russia, Australia, Uruguay, etc., as well as
the States.

Harry Burrus's anthology O!!Zone Visual Poetry 1996 which has a very
international, large collection of mostly first-rate recent visual
poetry.  I have a review of it in the May issue of Small Press Magazine.
The price I give there I'm pretty sure is wrong--it's very high, if not
($30)--though it's an 11 by 8.5 book of 188 pages.  Burrus's address is
1266 Fountain View, Houston TX 77057-2204.

Then there are two excellent visual poetry websites, the UBUWEB and Karl
Young's Light & Dust Site no student of viz po should be allowed to
ignore.  The first is esp. good on historical visual poetry, the latter
on current visual (and lots of other kinds of) poetry.  And both are
free!

Score, previously mentioned, has published a number of worthwhile
collections of visual poetry, too.  Among the very few other presses
publishing viz po is my own Runaway Spoon Press.  A catalog is available
through the electronic poetry center's links to small presses.  Most of
my books are small saddle-stitched SCRUFFY-NOT-SHODDY productions.
Here're the authors and titles of a few:

John Byrum: CONFLATIO
Jake Berry: EQUATIONS
Karl Kempton: RUNES 6, and RUNES 7
Virginia V. Hlavsa: FESTILLIFES
Richard Kostelanetz: REPARTITIONS IV
Jonathan Brannen: WARP & PEACE
Stephen-Paul Martin: UNTIL IT CHANGES
Lloyd Dunn: INBETWEENING
Larry Tomoyasu: MOCKINGBIRD LITMUS
Harry Polkinhorn: SUMMARY DISSOLUTION
John Martone: FAR HUMAN CHARACTER
G. Huth: GHOSTLIGHT
LeRoy Gorman: HEAVYN
Guy R. Beining: PIECEMEAL, 1 through 8 (8 volumes but single copies
available)

All but the Kemptons are $3 apiece; the Kemptons are $5 apiece.  Not
only are these books representative of high-level current visual poetry
but examples of the micro-press in action and thus capable, I would
hope, of inspiring the truly interested visual poet into similar
publishing efforts.

I hope this biased and incomplete list proves helpful, not only to
Marjorie but anyone curious about viz po.

                                                        --Bob G.

> Bob G. wrote:
>
> >Also,
> >how prevalent has word-fragmentation been among the language poets?  I
> >know P. Inman, for one, has used it.  Can't remember if he kept all the
> >fragments of some of his words, though--rather than just a front or rear
> >fragment.
> >
> I don't know the answer to this question, but if you want to see a poem
> that makes an interesting use of front and rear fragments of words, go to
> Chis Alexander's Webzine "n/formation." Look for his poem "ferrites" in
> the current issue. URL is
>
> http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce/nonce.html
>
> cheers,
> Steven
>
> __________________________________________________
>    Steven Marks
>
>    http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html
> __________________________________________________
Judy Roitman wgt.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 22:37:34 +1000
Reply-To:     jtranter@sydpcug.org.au
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Tranter 
Subject:      Abstract Personal HallmarkCards
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
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In a recent post, David Bromige said :

"As for neo-formalism (Dana Gioia, I hear, is an adviser to Hallmark),
it lacks micro-intensity. Micro being where lives actually takes
place, neo-formalism is dead."

Now come on, David, you now better than to traduce a good poet's name
with loose, malicious and inaccurate gossip like that. Dana Gioia is
not, nor has he ever been, an advisor to Hallmark.

 It's *Hallmark* who is the advisor to *Dana Gioia*. 

Okay?

 » » » » » » » » » » » jtranter@sydpcug.org.au » » » » » »
    John Tranter,  39 Short Street,  Balmain NSW 2041,  Australia
    Phone Sydney (+612) 9555 8502     FAX  (+612)  9212 2350
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 07:43:07 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Maria Damon 
Subject:      Re: Spicer
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Okay, more later, thank you--everybody for all your support.--XXX Kevin

yay, kevin, delighted it's finally in the bag, i look forward to being able
to refer all of my students to it, spicer's developing a minor cult in mpls.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 08:43:51 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Susan Wheeler 
Subject:      Abstract etc.
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

from early journals of Elizabeth Bishop:

"It's a question of using the poet's proper materials, with which he is
equipped by nature, i.e., immediate, intense physical reactions, a sense of
metaphor and decoration in everything -- to express something not of them --
something I suppose, .  But it proceeds from the material, the
material eaten out with acid, pulled down from underneath, made to perform
and always kept in order, in its place.  Sometimes it cannot be made to
indicate its spiritual goal clearly (some of Hopkins', say, where the point
seems to be missing) but even then the spiritual must be felt.  Miss Moore
does this -- but occasionally I think, the super-material content in her
poems is too easy for the material involved, -- it could have meant more.
The other way -- of using the supposedly 'spiritual' -- the beautiful, the
nostalgic, the ideal and , to produce the  -- is the way
of the Romantic, I think -- and a great perversity.  This may be capable of
being treated by a mere studying of simile and metaphor -- This is why
genuine religious poetry seems to be about as far as poetry can go -- and as
good as it can bee -- it also explains the dangers of love-poetry."

Susan Wheeler
wheeler@is.nyu.edu
voice/fax (212) 254-3984
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 08:01:02 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Maria Damon 
Subject:      Re: jwcurry, sondheim, kdawn
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 2:52 PM -0400 6/17/97, Joseph Lease wrote:
>an Irish rock star said--I don't care if it's all been done before--I
>haven't done it all before--
>
>that too is a part of the story--
>
>if what we mean by culture--and history--is character labs--where selves
>reconfigure--

i agree. one of the most exciting things about teaching or writing for that
matter is watching students (or feeling oneself) reinventing the wheel.
this was the principle behind much "experimental education" n the 1970s and
is still very  meaningful to me.  i actually think, too, that part of the
power of acker's wrting comes from a slippage between the "personal" and
the "experimental," deconstructive nature of her writing.  if it were all
one or all the other, it'd be boring, a one-trick pony, etc, and there are
times when i do feel that .  but it's exciting to me the aesthetically
pleasurable, and disturbing, disorientation (regardless of what she herself
says about her writing) that ensues from experiencing her writing as both.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 11:00:22 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "p.c. jaeger" 
Subject:      eyerhymes at Edmonton
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I can't add too much here to what Doug Barbour and Dave Chirot already
posted about the eyerhymes conference, except to say that it was extremely
well organized.  also I think Doug was a bit too modest about his
performance with Steven Scobie at the Latitude 53 gallery in
Edmonton--many of us there thought it was one of the night's highlights,
especially the group's translation of Derrida's Postcard.  & Bob Cobbing's
performance was superb--it was great too see someone of his age and
stature still performing--in fact, his age added to the performance,
because it countered our culture's typical stress on the youthful body
(refreshed by age!).

this was an exceptionally good conference...thanks to all involved.

Peter
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 08:26:33 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: _My Life in the Bush of Ghosts_
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Amos Tutuala died last week -- small obits here and there, but many U.S.
papers failed to quote anything from his books --

If you haven't already, read _The Palm Wine Drinkard_
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 13:01:14 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Dean Taciuch 
Subject:      Nemes, Names, Lang Po, Viz Po
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Bob Grumman wrote:
>I also have a few comments for the abstraction/personal thread.  My
>impression is that people like Mark W. are for a few words, loosely-
>defined, that they can run with while people like Henry Gould and I
>prefer many words, precisely-defined.  Anyway, like Henry, I don't see
>an opposition between personal and abstract--but I do believe that
>abstract implies impersonal.  The way I'd avoid all this is to speak of
>object-centered versus people-centered poetry.  Either can be highly
>personal or impersonal.  Plath seems mostly people-centered, most
>language poets object-centered (the object being language a lot of the
>time).  But I'm just musing.

People are, among other things, objects.  Not merely, but also.

Dean
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 10:11:11 +0000
Reply-To:     jays@sirius.com
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jay Schwartz 
Subject:      Re: announce POTEPOETZINETHREE ----
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Sign me up for a subscription please- I saw this on the Poetics List.

My e-mail is jays@sirius.com.

looking forward to it,

Jay
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 13:38:01 EST5EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         LYNES- KATHERINE 
Organization: Rutgers University English Dept.
Subject:      Re: abstract personal

stephen ellwood asked:

> I have a question, as well.  What does "Lang Po" stand for?  I'm sorry
> for ignorance which I know, for I have my own miniscule area of
> expertise, will make me appear poignantly ridiculous.  Oh, I take that
> back.  I have no area of expertise.

Lang Po is the second cousin twice removed of Li Po.

or  it's language poetry  at least that's what i've translated it
as being and btw expertise can be and often is over-rated.

kl
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 13:47:34 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      representation
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

abstract v. personal was bandied about variously here.  Henry Gould
then remarked,

> Abstract is not the contrary of personal - concrete is.  & abstract
> & concrete are slippery terms about poetry or painting.  An abstract
> painting emphasizes the concreteness of the medium; so, I guess,
> would an opaque (non-narrative, non-"speech") poem.

I guess in painting, the "representational" has often been posited as
the contrary of the "abstract."  Or one hears of "representational"
vs. "nonrepresentational" painting.  In both painting and poetry,
narrative also has something to do with these fulcra, sometimes.

These issues & contraries came to mind when chancing on this:

"It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith.
Reason is itself a matter of faith.  It is an act of faith to assert
that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all."
   -G.K. Chesterton, *Orthodoxy*

Similarly, perhaps (in a manner of speaking) the personal is itself a
matter of the abstract -- a particular  case thereof.  Or should we
rather phrase this vice versa?

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 14:45:14 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         lee ann brown 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 18 Jun 1997 to 20 Jun 1997
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Dear Poetics List,


eeeww!
_______________________________________________________________________________
Back by popular demand...from the SPAM home page...be sure to check this
important Web feature for collectible items,  and show your support for
Hormel's best selling by-product!

S P A M   H A I K U S
Author Unknown

Cold, Pink, gelatinous mass,
The potted meat for which I crave,
Warns of impending earthquake.

Ears, snouts and innards,
A homogeneous mass.
Pass another slice.

Pink tender morsel,
Glistening with salty gel.
What the hell is it?

Cube of cold pinkness
Yellow specks of porcine fat.
Give me a spork please.

Old man seeks doctor.
"I eat SPAM daily", he says.
Angioplasty.

Highly unnatural,
The tortured shape of this "food".
A small pink coffin.

Hors d'oeuvre with great flair:
Spam, Vienna sausage, Chex.
Blend well with Cheez Whiz.

What are the clear parts?
My mind reels, thoughts turn to hooves.
I'd best just eat it.

We joke about SPAM
But secretly we think that
It tastes pretty good.

Watch the pink slab fry.
Its grease can lubricate eggs.
Get ketchup ready.

Spam on Wonder Bread.
He's allergic to sulfites.
Hives come after lunch.

Pressed, the cold slice soothes
Eye, a black-and-blue shiner.
SPAM, what useful stuff.

Parts of pigs o' plenty.
Sumptuous feet and tails.
Rub amber gel through hair.

You don't want to know
What they put in that tin can.
It's scary to think.

Drop a pig in a blender,
Add salt and dye:
The recipe for SPAM.

O D E  T O  S  P A M
by Charlie Johnston

What shining deity from Olympus knelt
down to the earth and hog butt smelt?
Creating then man's eternal desire
for swine entrails congealed by fire.

Where are the Jack Collom SPAM ACROSTICS?

Love,
Lee Ann Brown

Currently reporting from Charlotte, NC
where "Livermush" is made (Neese's Liver Pudding) (a combo of pork parts
and grains) It's black, you slice it and then you fry it.  It's like
Southern Pate'.  Also known as "Scrapple."  I think I feel poetry coming
on.  I'll cheat and include one of my verses from "Amazing Grace" included
in forthcoming book, "Polyverse" (Sun & Moon Press, hopefully Fall 1997) .
. .


Amazing Grits!  How sweet the Redeye
That flavored my Livermush!
Fried Okra, Collard Greens and Chicken, fried
Ice Tea, Lots of lemon, with Mint, crushed.


(Sing to the tune of Amazing Grace)
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 11:21:14 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      POETPOETZINE; Rachel Loden's e-ddress
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

        Yes,good idea Jay, please, Loss, sign me up as subscriber to
POETPOETZINE.

And, excuse the intrusion of private things into the common matrix, but
Rachel Loden, the postmaster tells me the e-ddress I have for you, doesn't
deliver. Cd you b.c. me w/ the right stuff? Thanks, & have a mad
midsommarsnatt all of you fellow-listlings,  what with this wild fullest of
moons out there in deepest summer northernmost sun! Lets get out there & do
something to Romanticism it'll never forget! David
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 11:30:54 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      oops
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I  t h o u g h t  there was something familiar about that title. But then I
thought, "Aw,when you're over 60, everything new sounds the same." I had
e-called a posting by Loss re this e-zine, & mistook him for the issuer.
Sorry, Peter, of course I recognize the title now, I was even in one! Duh.
(But Rachel, its no mistake that I couldnt forward this great joke to you
last nite because of the P.O. Btw, Listlings, LadyHawke@unforgettable.com
(subject: subscribe; body: your name) will send you an off-color (what
joke isnt?) joke a day. It could relieve some of the humor-stress on this
List. David
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 15:12:46 -0400
Reply-To:     BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bob Grumman 
Subject:      Re: Nemes, Names, Lang Po, Viz Po
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Regarding Dean Taciuch's posting, granted, people are also objects, so
to be precise I should speak of objects-which-aren't-people-centered
poetry and objects-which-are-people-centered poetry.  Better: nonsocial-
object-centered poetry and social-object-centered poetry.  For easy
discussion, though, object-centered" and "people-centered" poetry seem
reasonable to me.

Or maybe "pre-human-" or "pre-animal-" or "pre-organism-object-centered
poetry versus "people-centered poetry" would be best: fewest words with
no loss of precision.

I believe, by the way, that there are brain-sections devoted to people
as people, and brain sections devoted to objects, including people as
objects.  There have been people with stroke-related or other brain-
damage (if I remember it right) who couldn't identify people but could
identify objects.  Other data supports this (I am sure I remember, but
can't remember ANY details, so I surrender in advance to any
challenges).  If I'm right about this, it might be that one kind of poet
is using more of certain brain areas than the other, and less of others.
Maybe even working out of different areas.

                                     Still just musing, Bob G.

P.S., I think there are abstraction areas in the brain, too, that are
different from object-related areas.  Another zone some work out
of--like me, possibly too much of the time, I sometimes suspect.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 15:02:31 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Janet S. Gray" 
Subject:      CFP: Oswald/Ruby photo
In-Reply-To:  Message of Sat, 21 Jun 1997 00:11:25 -0400 from
              

Forwarding this on the notion it will be of interest to some list
members:

In-A-Gadda-Da-Oswald is a picture based on the iconic 1963 photo
of Lee Harvey Oswald's murder.  The photo was altered in Adobe
Photoshop, placed on the internet, and quickly became a global
fetish object, gracing walls from the Pentagon to the Australian
outback, as well as being used as an instructional tool in
journalism and English classes.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Oswald can be found at
http://www.tw-zone.com/cosmo/index.html

We are seeking essays, poems, or other forms of writing that
analyze In-A-Gadda-Da-Oswald from the perspectives of cultural
or aesthetic criticism, political analysis, parody, or other
approaches.  Creative and experimental work are welcome.
Please limit submissions to 1000 words.  Writers and thinkers
of all ages and disciplines are invited to submit.

The deadline for submission is October 1, 1997. Send
submissions in ASCII by e-mail to
drcosmo@twilight.tw-zone.com

All submissions will be considered for inclusion in an
electronic journal, "Oswald in a Jam:  Dissemination of
Popular Culture on the Internet."
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 14:32:58 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Judy Roitman 
Subject:      Re: abstract personal
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>
>- Henry Gould (with doo-be-doo John Dewey looking over his crow)
>
>p.s. seems to me that the MEDIUM of poetry taken up by Plath or Sexton
>is the very same one taken up by the language poets.  & I don't see
>how the formalities imposed by the former are any more constricting or
>artificial than those of the latter.  What does the poem do with its
>materials?  This literary progress by short-term one-upmanship will
>tell us nothing. That is, it will tell you as little about Plath etc.
>as I can tell you about Silliman etc. the times change, the styles
>change... then they change back again...



I think --- what the hell do I know, but I think --- it isn't the formalism
that's at issue, it's the placing of things into convenient mythology.  Or
not.  Better not to, even if the mythology is invented right there on the
spot.  E.g., (or is it c.f.?) E. Dickinson, who didn't.  Sometimes.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judy Roitman                             | "Whoppers   Whoppers   Whoppers!
Math, University of Kansas        |     memory fails
Lawrence, KS 66045                 |         these are the days."
913-864-4630                          |                Larry Eigner, 1927-1996
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 15:35:09 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
Subject:      word-breaks
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII

One can always count on Donne to do it if it's a don't:

"Gracchus loves all as one, and thinks that so
As women do in divers countries go
In divers habits, yet are still one kind,
So doth, so is religion; and this blind-
Ness too much light breed;"

from Satire 3, c.1593

Jonson, a little later:

"O, these so ignorant monsters! Light, as proud,
Who can behold their manners, and not cloud-
Like upon them lighten?"

from "An Epistle to a Friend, to Persuade Him to the Wars"

Gary R
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 15:41:58 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Dean Taciuch 
Subject:      Re: Nemes, Names, Lang Po, Viz Po
In-Reply-To:  <33AC27AE.7242@nut-n-but.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Regarding Dean Taciuch's posting, granted, people are also objects, so
>to be precise I should speak of objects-which-aren't-people-centered
>poetry and objects-which-are-people-centered poetry.  Better: nonsocial-
>object-centered poetry and social-object-centered poetry.  For easy
>discussion, though, object-centered" and "people-centered" poetry seem
>reasonable to me.
>
>Or maybe "pre-human-" or "pre-animal-" or "pre-organism-object-centered
>poetry versus "people-centered poetry" would be best: fewest words with
>no loss of precision.

Actually, I think perhaps it's too precise--making distinctions where
they're not needed. Or at least such a distinction is in fact the question
(not an answer).  I'm thinking here of Olson's Projective Verse, among
other things; the idea that one treats the self as an object in a field of
objects.

Dean
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 15:46:18 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      haiku-gram
Comments: cc: lee ann brown 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Lee Ann --

thanks for that.  Although I'm not enough of a spam buff (or for that
matter spam antagonist -- just hasn't much been part of my life) to
have a really proper response to the anonymous sequence, after
sitting here counting out syllables &c, couldn't help but write an
answering few.  Thanks for the haiku-gram (& amazing grits).


  SUMMER SOLSTICE

  Humid in DC!
  the air-conditioner hums
  & just the first day!

  in darkness I type
  is this the post-mod lifestyle?
  my basement outpost

  forget the spam-po
  what I'd really like to see
  is donut haiku

  buttermilk sugar
  they knead me & they fry me
  none taste the center


cheers,
d.i.
 .
 .....
 ............
 \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\
   >    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:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 17:07:40 -0400
Reply-To:     BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bob Grumman 
Subject:      Re: Nemes, Names, Lang Po, Viz Po
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

So Donne donne hyphenated word-breaks at ends of lines long before
Hopkins.  Whaddya know!  Thanks, Gary R.

As for Dean T's bringing in Olson's idea that one treats the self as an
object in a field of objects to support Dean's belief that we don't need
to distinguish pre-human-object-centered poetry from people-centered
poetry (if I have him right), it still seems to me there'd be a
significant difference between the self in a field of non-human objects
and the self in a field of people-objects.  A field of words is
different from a field of rocks is different from a field of people even
if we accept words, rocks and people all as objects.  Or am I missing
something?

                                                     --Bob G.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 17:39:54 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Dean Taciuch 
Subject:      Re: representation
In-Reply-To:  <199706211748.NAA00252@radagast.wizard.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Another way to frame the "abstract vs personal" or "concrete vs personal"
discussion might be to consider separable or paraphrasable content.
"Personal" might (might) be considered as something which the work can be
said to be "about" if there is an "about" to it.  That is, representation
vs nonrepresenation, as David Israel has posed it.  Representational work
has separable content, nonrepresentational work doesn't (or its separable
content is unimportant).

I'm seeing this question of content come up in my classes, as I'm trying to
cover Mac Low and Cage. . .there is a resistance on the part on the
students (undergraduate), which I think is due to their not being able to
say what the poems are "about."  At least that's how they've expressed the
discomfort to me.
The work seems "abstract" to them because there's no separable content,
nothing they can paraphrase when someone asks them "what's that poem about"
(of course, that's not the question I ask them.  That's not the question at
all)

Dean
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 18:24:16 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      representation and separability
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 5:39 PM -0500 6/21/97, Dean Taciuch wrote:
>Representational work
>has separable content, nonrepresentational work doesn't (or its separable
>content is unimportant).
>
>I'm seeing this question of content come up in my classes, as I'm trying to
>cover Mac Low and Cage. . .there is a resistance on the part on the
>students (undergraduate), which I think is due to their not being able to
>say what the poems are "about."  At least that's how they've expressed the
>discomfort to me.
>The work seems "abstract" to them because there's no separable content,
>nothing they can paraphrase when someone asks them "what's that poem about"

Dean -- I disagree wildly. You are correct to suggest that the separable
content may be _intended_ to be unimportant -- but it is nonetheless
_there_, like the pigment Williams alluded to. The resistance of your
students is a real resistance -- the differences of tone, style, whatever,
between different works in which ordinary syntax is kaput or in which the
so-called materiality of language is allegedly foregrounded -- these are
real differences of what we stereotype as meaning. Not much mistaking 'Fits
of Dawn' for 'I Don't Have Any Paper' or 'Toner' or 'Tone Arm' or
Zukofsky's translation of Catullus. (Though

This issue of the importance of the separability of prose meaning from
abstract writing is the main issue (as I see it, anyway) in the interview
between John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch, collected by Anne Waldman in the
anthology _Out of this World_. The interview (which apparently was
conducted on a typewriter and not out loud -- a significant detail for an
interview in which Ashbery explains that the subject of his poetry is
people and objects) has an apprehensive Koch teasing out the meaning of
some Tennis Court Oath era-lines, and a diffident Ashbery just teasing.

Tuba lure only,
Tea glass hyena,
Jordan
Tea glass hyena.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 15:23:22 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         main 
Subject:      Re: representation
In-Reply-To:  <199706211748.NAA00252@radagast.wizard.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Sat, 21 Jun 1997, David R. Israel wrote:

> Similarly, perhaps (in a manner of speaking) the personal is itself a
> matter of the abstract -- a particular  case thereof.  Or should we
> rather phrase this vice versa?

the roman's _persona_ was something to sound through, a face mask fronting
the voice you stood behind; so we get person(s) from artifice. _personae_:
multiple masks of some one mythical face no one ever saw on stage.

personal/abstract, concrete/abstract, personal/impersonal...
stein and creeley were set forward as examples of the abstract and
concrete respectively, and sexton as an example of the personal. how,
precisely, is the personal being configured? perhaps it'd be useful to
look at specific uses of language from, say, stein and sexton.
someone proposed narrative as an attribute of the personal. how is
narrative being defined? is the personal a matter of how narrative is
employed (tonal shifts, tense shifts, uses of grammar, singular and
cohesive speech-act versus polyvocal and conflicting speech-acts, and
so on)? from the examples given, there seems to be an implied connection
between the personal and normative grammar and syntax: ?
if sexton's work is an example of the personal, how is this determined:
use of first-person? personal-historical details? normative syntax and
temporal sequence? lack of self-reflexivity in the poems? conversely, is
stein's work, then, impersonal/abstract/concrete, and why?
anyone wanna propose two specimens for close-reading?
best,
dan featherston
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 19:22:03 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Dean Taciuch 
Subject:      Re: representation, separability, self
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Jordan Davis wrote:
>Dean -- I disagree wildly. You are correct to suggest that the separable
>content may be _intended_ to be unimportant -- but it is nonetheless
>_there_, like the pigment Williams alluded to. The resistance of your
>students is a real resistance -- the differences of tone, style, whatever,
>between different works in which ordinary syntax is kaput or in which the
>so-called materiality of language is allegedly foregrounded -- these are
>real differences of what we stereotype as meaning.

Meaning and content are different things.  Nonrepresentational (abstract)
works certainly have meaning (they _mean_ far more, that is, in more ways,
than do represenational works).  But the paraphrasable content (the
descriptive, the referential) is not as important.

>This issue of the importance of the separability of prose meaning from
>abstract writing is the main issue (as I see it, anyway) in the interview
>between John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch, collected by Anne Waldman in the
>anthology _Out of this World_. The interview (which apparently was
>conducted on a typewriter and not out loud -- a significant detail for an
>interview in which Ashbery explains that the subject of his poetry is
>people and objects) has an apprehensive Koch teasing out the meaning of
>some Tennis Court Oath era-lines, and a diffident Ashbery just teasing.

Well, having just tried teaching _Tennis Court Oath_ I'd sure like to have
found that interview.  But certainly the lines in the TCO poems have
meaning; what they lack is a clearly defined referent.  They will, in the
course of one's reading, find a referent (via the reader) so they become
meaningful.  If the reader is reluctant to do this (if he or she assumes,
for example, that "that's the writer's job, not mine,") then it all looks
meaningless.

And, in an effort to keep my posts down today (nothing from me in over a
month, then, what, four posts today?) I'll respond to Bob Grumman's last
here too:

Bob Grumman wrote:
>As for Dean T's bringing in Olson's idea that one treats the self as an
>object in a field of objects to support Dean's belief that we don't need
>to distinguish pre-human-object-centered poetry from people-centered
>poetry (if I have him right), it still seems to me there'd be a
>significant difference between the self in a field of non-human objects
>and the self in a field of people-objects.  A field of words is
>different from a field of rocks is different from a field of people even
>if we accept words, rocks and people all as objects.  Or am I missing
>something?


Well, it's not that as though we don't make this distinction (human vs
nonhuman) all the time; what I'm suggesting is that the "significant
difference" is not obvious or something to be taken for granted when it
comes to writing.

I am a person / "I" is an object.

Dean
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 19:24:34 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Piombino/Simon 
Subject:      Re: representation
Comments: To: Dean Taciuch 
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Hi Dean Taciuch,
I wonder if it might help to approach Cage and Mac Low's writing to
students with difficulties like this by introducing them to their music
as a parallel effort at dealing with meaning in more oblique ways than is
usually expected. I would like to suggest, in particular, Jackson Mac
Low's amazing relatively new cd "Open Secrets" (1993 Experimental
Intermedia Foundation 224 Centre Street,New York,N.Y> 10013). Here are
some of the cuts:
1. 1st Milarepa Gatha
2. Milarepa Quartet for Four Like instruments
3. Thankss
4. Winds/Instruments
5. 38th and 39th Merzgedichte in Memoriam Kurt Schwitters
6. Phoneme Dance in Memoriam John Cage
This album is an amazing mix of pure music (as in Winds/Instruments, which
evokes an almost melodically harmonic,lyricized Webern) and the Milarepa
Gothas which are spoken word, but for many voices, prominently Ann Tardos,
all of which show the presence of Mac Low's precision of unexpectable
soundings. The Winds/Instruments particularly reminded me of something Mac
Low once said to me when he and I did a collaborative reading with Charles
Bernstein at the Living Theater some years ago.The direction he kept
coming back to was:"Real silences."
Best wishes,
Nick P. On Sat, 21 Jun 1997, Dean Taciuch
wrote:

> Another way to frame the "abstract vs personal" or "concrete vs personal"
> discussion might be to consider separable or paraphrasable content.
> "Personal" might (might) be considered as something which the work can be
> said to be "about" if there is an "about" to it.  That is, representation
> vs nonrepresenation, as David Israel has posed it.  Representational work
> has separable content, nonrepresentational work doesn't (or its separable
> content is unimportant).
>
> I'm seeing this question of content come up in my classes, as I'm trying to
> cover Mac Low and Cage. . .there is a resistance on the part on the
> students (undergraduate), which I think is due to their not being able to
> say what the poems are "about."  At least that's how they've expressed the
> discomfort to me.
> The work seems "abstract" to them because there's no separable content,
> nothing they can paraphrase when someone asks them "what's that poem about"
> (of course, that's not the question I ask them.  That's not the question at
> all)
>
> Dean
>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 11:02:12 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Kinsella 
Subject:      What's in a name? Salt 10 poetry journal
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I've just received an advance copy of Salt 10 - you'll find work
by writers from France, Sweden, England, USA, NZ, and Australia
in there:

Adam Aitken
  Pierre Alferi
    Rae Armantrout
      Karen Attard
        Charles Bernstein
          Andrea Brady
            Veronica Brady
              Andrew Burke
                Helene Cixous
                  Maryline Debiolles
                Gunnar Harding
              Lyn Hejinian
            Paul Hoover
          David Howard
        Paul Kane
      Steve Kelen
    John Kinsella
  Andrew Lansdown
James Lucas
  Jennifer Maiden
    Rod Mengham
      Douglas Messerli
        Peter Minter
          Les Murray
            Travis Ortiz
              Loss Pequeno Glazier
                Simon Perchik
                  Marjorie Perloff
                Peter Riley
              Zan Ross
            Frances Rouse
          Tracy Ryan
        Michael Sharkey
      Ron Simms
    Kathleen Stewart
  Keston Sutherland
John Tranter
  Karlien van den Beukel
    Brenda Walker
      Alan Wearne
        John Wilkinson

______________________________

Enjoy

Best
John K
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 11:08:51 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Kinsella 
Subject:      Salt poetry journal sub details
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Salt sub details: $33.95 for two issues (plus a free copy of Salt 9)
                        for airmail o/s add $20, for surface add $8
                  $67.80 for four issues (plus a free copy of Salt 9)
                        for airmail o/s add $40, for surface add $16

Cheques, money orders, or payment by credit card welcome. All
payments must be in Australian dollars.

Please send to: Fremantle Arts Centre Press
                PO Box 320
                South Fremantle  6162
                Australia
                Fax: 61 8 9430 5242
                Email: facp@iinet.net.au

Salt 10 (320pp) has been printed and is about to be released.

Best
John Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 12:36:33 +0200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Michel Delville 
Subject:      Hughes's theory of decline / Baudrillard's art conspiracy
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Reading yesterday's postings on Hughes' attacks on contemporary art, I was
reminded of an interview Jean Baudrillard published in a recent issue of the
French magazine, *artpress*.  The interview itself was published as a "droit
de r=E9ponse" to the uproar caused in the art world by Baudrillard's=
 article,
"The Art Conspiracy" (first published in the 20 May issue of *Lib=E9ration*)=
,
in which he develop his own theory of decline, arguing that we are all
simultaneously conned by and complicit with the "theatricality" of the art
scene.  What Baudrillard is taking issue with, however, is not so much the
art world as the "aesthetics" that surrounds it, namely "that added value or
cultural veneer behind which intrinsic value disappears".  "We can no longer
pin down the object," Baudrillard goes on, "all we have are the surounding
discourses or an accumulation of visions that end up forming an artificial
aura." (*artpress* no. 216, Sept. 1996). =20

I suppose there's nothing wrong with seeing art as a simulacrum or defining
the art market as a system of easily consumable signs, but there's a rather
disturbing form of nostalgia behind all this which some may find extremely
compromising, if not altogether reactionary.  Mourning the singularity of
the lost object, dreaming of a pre-poststructuralist world in which images
are still connected to the world out there, etc.  And yet, as Baudrillard
himself hastens to add, dodging accusations of aesthetic and political
conservatism: "I know that object does not exist, no more than truth does,
but I maintain the desire for it through a way of looking which is a kind of
absolute, a divine judgement, and which reveals the insignificance of all
other objects.  This nostalgia is fundamental.  It is lacking in all kinds
of contemporary art.  it is a kind of mental strategy which ensures that one
makes proper use of the void."  Baudrillard's own "art" photographs are a
case in point but seem less nostalgic than epigonic, looking back as they do
on the glazed, faded super-realism of Edward Hopper or the early David=
 Hockney.

Too bad Baudrillard -- just like Hughes, I suppose though I did not have a
chance to see the TV programme in question -- puts Jeff Koons, Jesus Rafael
Soto, Anselm Kiefer (a very nostalgic artist if there ever was one) and
others into the same basket.  Of course, the main limitation of
Baudrillard's theories about anything has always been their refusal to
approach the social and cultural specifics of the subjects he's trying to
demystify and "decode". . .
-------------------

Michel Delville
English Department
University of Li=E8ge
3, Place Cockerill
4000 LIEGE
(BELGIUM)
=20
Fax: ++ 32(0)4 366 57 21
e-mail: mdelville@ulg.ac.be
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 12:36:35 +0200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Michel Delville 
Subject:      query / Stein
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Dear listers:

could anybody please backchannel me with the address (and, if possible, the
fax number) of the Estate of Gertrude Stein ?

Many thanks -- yours desperately,

-------------------

Michel Delville
English Department
University of Li=E8ge
3, Place Cockerill
4000 LIEGE
(BELGIUM)
=20
Fax: ++ 32(0)4 366 57 21
e-mail: mdelville@ulg.ac.be
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 06:39:06 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         rsillima@IX.NETCOM.COM
Subject:      Paint, he sd, or move objects around, ride a horse, box, etc.
Comments: To: poetics@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Dear Pat,

LP's relation to painting? An interesting question, although I doubt that
it's one with any kind of conclusive, easy to summarize response. I've heard
at least one person argue, with reasonably convincing terms, that I at least
have been as deeply influenced by Lucy Lippard's art criticism as by any
artist (specifically her work, Six Years: the Dematerialization of the Art
Object). And there have always been lots of painters and visual
artists around, including Susan Bee, Doug Hall, Diane Hall, Francie Shaw,
John Woodall, Jill Scott, Jock Reynolds and Lee Sherry, well as publishers
(notably Geoff Young and Douglas Messerli) who made great use of their
connections to the art world for many, many great covers, writers whose work
often took on aspects that were all but indistinguishable from other art
forms (Johanna Drucker's books, Steve Benson's performances, Grenier's
scrawl). Hannah Weiner and Jackson Mac Low were both acknowledged by the
performance art world even before there was a collective identity to
something like langpo. Abby Child was a great filmmaker already by the time
she began writing.

But another way to look at all these inchoate references would be just to
see how much langpo ("a moment, not a movement") was a phenomenom of the
1970s and look at the visual arts of that decade. It was very much an "in
between" period and not surprisingly conceptual and performance art were at
their most influential during that period. I really got to know Kathy Acker,
for example, through our attending the Bluxome Street events around 1974
when David Anderson sponsored 30 performances by Bay Artists (Tom Marioni,
Terry Fox, etc.) in part to really prod that scene (which in turn led to the
SF Art Dealers Association, which was always trying to get those things out
of their galleries where (1) they couldn't sell it and (2) it too often
stained the wall to wall carpeting, to "donate" half of their collective
storage facility on Langton Street, leading thus to the creation of 80
Langton (now New Langton Arts and around the corner on Folsom). Events at
the Museum of Conceptual Art (Marioni's loft as I recall) on 3rd Street were
popular, always followed by drinks at Jerry's & Johnny's (where the Marriott
Jukebox is now I think).

Later, Jill Scott (an Australian artist who's been back there now for many
many years) and I co-hosted a series at The Farm in SF, one performance
artist and one poet on each bill. One of the things which fascinated
performance folks about the SF langpo scene was that there seemed to be a
shared vocabulary in which writers could talk and learn from one another
while no two performance artists seemed to be doing even remotely the same
thing, so it was very difficult to even discuss the work and actually no
particular impetus to go see what X was doing because it wouldn't have any
impact on your work anyway.

By performance art, I mean the conceptual side of that. The physical theater
community (George Coats, etc.) was a totally different scene and while there
some folks, like George Lakoff, who were very active with it, it never
really connected in the same way. But that may be the bias of my own
perspective speaking.

Ron



Ron Silliman
262 Orchard Road
Paoli, PA 19301-1116
(610) 251-2214
(610) 293-6099 (o)
(610) 293-5506 (fax)
rsillima@ix.netcom.com
rsillima@tssc.com
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/silliman/
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 10:49:56 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      "the scholarly monograph in crisis"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Poetas,

summer daze, weekend Poetics traffic being slower, I'll borrow some
bandwidth to forward the better part of an announcement I got from
another listserv.  I'm no academic and have no personal involvement
in what's discussed.  That being so, I found it a bit interesting for
its metaphorical shades -- reminding of issues in the Po world, etc.

cheers,
d.i.

> ------------------------------
> Subject:  CONFERENCE: THE SPECIALIZED SCHOLARLY MONOGRAPH IN CRISIS
> Date: Thu, 12 Jun 97 13:50:33 -0500 From: H-Net News and
> Announcements Editor  **********
>
> THE SPECIALIZED SCHOLARLY MONOGRAPH IN CRISIS
>
> OR, HOW CAN I GET TENURE IF YOU WON'T PUBLISH MY BOOK?
>
> SEPTEMBER 11-12, 1997
> WASHINGTON, DC
>
> CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY:
>
> AMERICAN COUNCIL OF LEARNED SOCIETIES
> ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITY PRESSES
> ASSOCIATION OF RESEARCH LIBRARIES
>
> "Saving 'Tenure Books' From a Painful Demise"
> Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/1/96
>
> "Profit Squeeze for Publishers Makes Tenure More Elusive"
> New York Times, 11/18/96

> Recent headlines in the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher
> Education warn of the dangers posed by the threat to the specialized
> scholarly monograph.  The primary market for specialized
> monographs--research libraries--has been burdened over the past
> decade with significant increases in the costs of science and
> technology journals, resulting in dramatic decreases in monographic
> purchases. Faced with this eroding market and declining subsidies
> from both universities and funding agencies, university presses can
> no longer afford to publish the specialized research which is
> central to their mission.  As a consequence, young faculty are not
> getting tenured or promoted, undermining the future of education and
> scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

> This conference on the specialized scholarly monograph brings
> together faculty, administrators, publishers, and librarians to
> focus attention on an issue central to the entire academic
> enterprise.  It examines the current state of scholarly
> communication and explores the potential of new technologies to
> provide both new means of dissemination and new formats for
> conducting research and communicating the results.

> The conference examines:
> * the issues involved in the creation and dissemination of scholarly
> communication from the perspectives of a university administrator,
> scholar, publisher, and librarian; * the functions and costs
> involved in the scholarly communication process, examining the
> factors which have contributed to the endangered status of the
> monograph; * expectations for young faculty, and how and why they
> are changing; * how the issues differ across fields and disciplines
> and how these variables affect the decisions made by the presses; *
> current experiments in monographic publishing;  and * new frameworks
> in scholarly communication and how these might provide new models
> for creation and dissemination of research.

> SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
> John D'Arms, ACLS
> Charles Beitz, Bowdoin College
> Scott Bennett, Yale University Library
> Stanley Chodorow, University of Pennsylvania
> Colin Day, University of Michigan Press
> Sandria Freitag, American Historical Association
> Joanna Hitchcock, University of Texas Press
> Steve Humphrey, University of California, Santa Barbara
> Robert Langenfeld, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
> Peter Nathan, University of Iowa
> Teresa Sullivan, University of Texas at Austin
> Marlie Wasserman, Rutgers University Press
> Robert Wedgeworth, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
> Library

> PROGRAM OUTLINE

 { I'll spare you those particulars; the conference is being
held at a Marriott, across the street from my office in DC -- so if
anyone were actually to go, you're welcome to send me an e-m &
I'll say hi  - d.i. }

> For more information or to register online, see
> 
>
>    Mary Case, Director
>    Office of Scholarly Communication
>    Association of Research Libraries
>    21 Dupont Circle, N.W., Suite 800
>    Washington, D.C.   20036
>      (202) 296-2296 X112
>      Fax:  (202) 872-0884
>      Internet: marycase@cni.org
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 11:58:45 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         GrahamD 
Subject:      Re: representation
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

What IS the question you ask them?

Curiously,

David Graham
grahamd@mac.ripon.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________
From: UB Poetics discussion group on Sat, Jun 21, 1997 4:48 PM
Subject: Re: representation
To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

<<<<<<<<<<<<<
The work seems "abstract" to them because there's no separable content,
nothing they can paraphrase when someone asks them "what's that poem about"
(of course, that's not the question I ask them.  That's not the question at
all)

Dean<<<<<<<<<<<
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 14:07:22 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         jarnot@PIPELINE.COM
Subject:      brathwaite
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

i'm trying to get in touch with kamau brathwaite re: a reading.  if anyone
has info, please back channel me.  thanks.  lisa jarnot
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 17:38:29 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry g 
Subject:      Re: representation
In-Reply-To:  Message of Sat, 21 Jun 1997 13:47:34 -0400 from
              

On Sat, 21 Jun 1997 13:47:34 -0400 David R. Israel said:
>
>I guess in painting, the "representational" has often been posited as
>the contrary of the "abstract."  Or one hears of "representational"
>vs. "nonrepresentational" painting.  In both painting and poetry,
>narrative also has something to do with these fulcra, sometimes.

Point well taken, as was Judy Roitman's about the gratuitous or
meretricious use of accepted mythologies as a kind of "representation."
But then, what is the current mythology?  I remember reading Ashbery's
"Tennis Court Oath" as a 19-yr old & responding to it's non-represent-
ational gratuitous non-sense with joy & fascination.  Now I read it &
say "so what?" & feel sorry for the next generation having to "study" it
in classes...  why this drastic shift in response?  Because I think
the "abstract" non-representational in poetry is a function of the
mythology of Symbolism that Valery noted & that I mentioned a few weeks
(days?) ago - it amounts to an aesthetic summed up in one phrase:
_epater le bourgoisie_.(have I got that right?)  Refuse to please the masses.

To Judy: I don't think Plath is as great an artist as E. Dickinson but
I don't think their approaches were so different: they juxtaposed
private experience and the literary & religious forms of the day.

Every work of art abstracts from reality in some degree.  But I think
even non-representational art is evocative of lived experience and actually
proceeds from roots in lived experience.  I agree with Dewey that the
expressive effect of art comes from its fusion of form & substance, and
from the re-working of experience in a new kind of order. Sorry for what sound
like cliches - but you shd read _Art as Experience_ by Dewey for a trumping
of these false dichotomies (form/content, abstract/personal, idea/matter,
etc.) & a concentration on what art really is - a kind of moving/vitalizing
experience DEVELOPING OVER TIME (in countless minute gradations of development.
who wants to talk about "development" as a criterion?  as opposed to
"innovative" or "pioneering" for a while.  we already love the avant-garde.)

I don't think there is such a thing as non-representational poetry.
Or impersonal.  The one would be meaningless, the other generic
(factory-made).  There IS such a thing as personal noise (I've made
some myself) but poetry is a kind of art & gets free of the maker
& available to the audience as something more than noise (i.e. experiential
meaning - even if it's not "cognitive", just "poetic" or expressive).
- Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 18:17:53 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry g 
Subject:      Re: representation
In-Reply-To:  Message of Sun, 22 Jun 1997 17:38:29 EDT from
              

postscript.  there is no non-representational poetry.  Music is mostly
non-representational (except on an emotional level).  Painting can be
either; an abstract painting doesn't "mirror" ordinary sight the way
a representation does, thus it's not an "image" of an exterior reality.
But language is always already representational.  Every word in a
Mac Low poem (Mac Low could be taken as the refutation of all my comments
on this list over many subjects) represents a number of things;
the aleatory correlation of individual words begins to represent things
in a vague way or surprising way.  "Language poetry" [Henry doesn't know
what it is either] may close down ordinary "speech" but it doesn't cancel
representation; the poem "x" or "y" represents a member in good standing
of the alphabet.

The odd thing about a lot of innovative poetry that aims to escape the
commodified "self" of "ordinary" poetry is that it comes off as
purely gratuitous SELF-expression. This may come back to the gnarled
question of "voice" and the deeper impulse toward art-making.  The
necessity involved in forming a "persona", a mask, a speaker - &
all the narrative correlations that entails - might make for a much
RICHER poetry than the fashionable dictates of the unfashionable
"text".
- Henry gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 18:50:20 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      fluent narratolgy
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I have been reading Andrew Gibson's account of Michel Serres's ideas about
"fluent" (nongeometric) narratology.  I'm a newcomer to this idea and it seems
primarily to focus on prose.  I would be interested in sources and ideas
about a similar approach to poetry.
tom bell
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 18:20:42 CST6CDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hank Lazer 
Organization: The University of Alabama
Subject:      Re: XCP

Yunte--

Just wanted to let you know that our Minneapolis panel has been
accepted, officially.  Mark & Maria sent me info on registration,
hotels, etc.  If you didn't get the same packet, let me know & I'll
photocopy it & send it to you.

Here, catching up from the aftermath of Julie's wedding.  It went
well, with lots of overeating, drinking, and general merriment.  My
new job has me extremely busy--yes, no golf these days.  A little
time for reading & writing.  Some time too for a mysterious stomach
ailment (sort of like my post-China stomach problems--intense pain).

Alan & I saw Batman & Robin yesterday--amazing sets, special effects,
zap zap zap....

Hope you are doing well.  Is Julia getting ready to move to NYC?
Will you move to another place in Buffalo?  How goes the
dissertation?

Love,

Hank
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 19:36:47 -0400
Reply-To:     BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bob Grumman 
Subject:      Re: representation
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

To follow up on what Henry G. said about there being no non-representa-
tional poetry because that area is where I feel most out of it as a
would-be understander of ALL poetry.  I, too, think non-representa-
tional poetry not possible.  However, there IS non-representational
textuality.  On the page it's what I call "textual illumagery" or a form
of visual art that uses graphemes (yes, back to phemes) or . . .
typophemes (typographical symbols) to dot out some kind of graphic work,
representational or non-representational.  I have all kinds of trouble
with my fellow visual poets in getting them to agree that this kind of
thing, which I like as much and consider as high an art as visual
poetry, is not poetry.  It's visual art--or, in my lexicon, illumagery.

Orally, non-representational textuality is textual music, or music made
out of phonemes.  Both kinds of non-representational textualities tend
toward representationality, though, word-fragments tending inevitably to
suggest full words.

Either kind of textual non-poetry has its unique tone, and is valuable
for being able to say things about language in expressive modalities
other than the verbal.

                                                       --Bob G.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 09:54:55 +1100
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:      address please
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

"And there have always been lots of painters and visual
artists around, including Susan Bee, Doug Hall, Diane Hall, Francie Shaw,
John Woodall, Jill Scott,"

Apologies for using the list to seek...but I have been trying to find JILL
SCOTT for months now - I know she's moved to Germany & is listed on a web
site there but no email or postal address...& her Sydney dealer is
definitely unhelpful in furnishing a contact address...does anyone have it
please?

Thankyou
Pam BRown
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 20:08:05 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steven Marks 
Subject:      Re: haiku-gram
In-Reply-To:  <199706211946.PAA03587@radagast.wizard.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Sat, 21 Jun 1997, David R. Israel wrote:

>
>   SUMMER SOLSTICE
>
>   Humid in DC!
>   the air-conditioner hums
>   & just the first day!
>
>   in darkness I type
>   is this the post-mod lifestyle?
>   my basement outpost
>
>   forget the spam-po
>   what I'd really like to see
>   is donut haiku
>
>   buttermilk sugar
>   they knead me & they fry me
>   none taste the center
>
the center holds holes
something to nibble around
no mess on my hands


sumer is icumen in, says Steven

__________________________________________________
   Steven Marks

   http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html
__________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 17:37:41 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: abstract personal
In-Reply-To:  <2D316900589@fas-english.rutgers.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>stephen ellwood asked:
>
>> I have a question, as well.  What does "Lang Po" stand for?  I'm sorry
>> for ignorance which I know, for I have my own miniscule area of
>> expertise, will make me appear poignantly ridiculous.  Oh, I take that
>> back.  I have no area of expertise.
>
>Lang Po is the second cousin twice removed of Li Po.

And also grandnephew of Edgar Allan Po.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 21:57:50 -0300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Stephen C. Ellwood" 
Subject:      Re: abstract personal
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Thanks everyone for illuminating me as to "Lang po".  Just to let you
know, I'm Emily Vey Duke, not Stephen Ellwood.  I'm just using his e-mail
account.

Take Care,
EVD
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 13:03:42 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wystan Curnow 
Organization: University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: address please
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Dear Pam,
             I saw Jill almost exactly  a year ago in Amsterdam. Then
she was on a fellowship at ZKM,( address: postfach 6909, Karlsruhe
76049, Germany.) I have a feeling she was not going to be there much
longer but you might try ZKM. I recall us exchanging cards, so I'll
see if I can find hers.
           best wishes
              Wystan
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 18:38:46 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         main 
Subject:      address: karen kelley
In-Reply-To:  <13E4B9C5FB7@engnov1.auckland.ac.nz>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

please backchannel.
thanks,
dan featherston
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 11:59:06 +1100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pam Brown 
Subject:      Re: address please
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Thanks Wystan -
I need to contact Jill about a videotape (what else ?).
Also - the article I wrote about the NZ anthology (the recent Oxford one)
will be published in the Spring issue of "Overland" - I quoted a few lines
from your "Cancer Daybook" poem - briefly...and, really, the article became
more something about Magazines versus Anthologies in the end. If you'd like
to see it I'll send a copy of the magazine...in Spring...then I'd need your
postal address as well.
Thanks again,
Pam Brown

At 01:03 PM 23/6/97 +1200, you wrote:
>Dear Pam,
>             I saw Jill almost exactly  a year ago in Amsterdam. Then
>she was on a fellowship at ZKM,( address: postfach 6909, Karlsruhe
>76049, Germany.) I have a feeling she was not going to be there much
>longer but you might try ZKM. I recall us exchanging cards, so I'll
>see if I can find hers.
>           best wishes
>              Wystan
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 22:37:59 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan * Sondheim 
Subject:      new work (fwd)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

There is new work at the Mirror site below (in Canberra); please check it
out.

When I am online using my linux operating system, you can access an addi-
tional experimental webpage suite at EXPERIMENTAL below.

Please note - Alan

URL:     http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
MIRROR with other pages at:   http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/           TEL 718-857-3671
EXPERIMENTAL (on and off): http://166.84.250.149   Editor, BEING ON LINE
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 22:12:59 -0500
Reply-To:     landers@frontiernet.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Pete Landers 
Organization: SkyLark Publishing Company
Subject:      Re: Happy Genius?
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

On Tue, 17 Jun 1997,
Fred Muratori wrote:

> Anyone know what ever happened to _Happy Genius_, a lit mag that was
> to feature work by some folks on this list?
>

Fred,

You might have lost my email address, or perhaps I moved since we last
traded mail. Email me at landers@frontiernet.net or snail mail me at

Pete Landers
34 Rose Circle
Hamlin, NY 14464

I originally hoped to make two or three mags a year, but now it appears
that publication will be irregular. It will eventually come out. I hope
for good news soon. The content is really good, and I will be very glad
to see it finally take on paper form. There are some people from the
list in it, but there's quite a bit more than that. You'll see. Soon, I
hope.

Pete
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 13:52:43 +1100
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:      oops
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Oops - I meant to send that message to Wystan not to the entire list.
Sorry
Pam
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 00:38:40 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      Buddhistic poetics .  .  .
Comments: cc: KENT JOHNSON 
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--Message-Boundary-12549--
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 00:38:40 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      Buddhistic poetics .  .  .
Comments: cc: KENT JOHNSON 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

[Mon June 23, early a.m.]

Poetas & poeticos,

Have on a few, rare occasions encountered phenomenon of a post that
just won't post.  Kent Johnson sent me one such, and I tried posting
it yesterday on his behalf (along w/ my gratuitous verbose
argumentative tangential introduction) -- to no effect; it (like its
predecessors from his machine) was promptly lost in space.

However, not to be outwitted by the mysteries of some presumed hidden
STOP code, I'm washing this thru the wringer of ASCII conversion via
word processing software, and will then sail the new-pressed moiety
into (one hopes) a receptive cyberspace.  I'm tacking it on as an
attachment [in ASCII DOS text, hopefully readable!] (re-inserting
into an email msg. doesn't suffice to solve the fade phenomenon).

Okay, let's see if this boat can float!

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 00:16:08 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      Re: haiku-gram
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

[d.i.]:

> >   forget the spam-po
> >   what I'd really like to see
> >   is donut haiku
> >
> >   buttermilk sugar
> >   they knead me & they fry me
> >   none taste the center

[Steven Marks]:

> the center holds holes
> something to nibble around
> no mess on my hands

without the coffee
a donut is not done here
darkness to imbibe

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 00:57:28 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      (Fwd) Buddhistic poetics / take two (or ...)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: Multipart/Mixed; boundary=Message-Boundary-8574

--Message-Boundary-8574
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Content-description: Information about this message.

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MIME BASE64 transfer encoding scheme. If you are using Pegasus
Mail or another MIME-compliant system, you should be able to extract
it from within your mailer. If you cannot, please ask your system
administrator for help.

   ---- File information -----------
     File:  062297-buddhist-post
     Date:  23 Jun 1997, 0:56
     Size:  9324 bytes.
     Type:  WordPerfect

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--Message-Boundary-8574--
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 00:57:28 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      (Fwd) Buddhistic poetics / take two (or ...)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Here's another try at forwarding this mystery post -- the earlier
attachment (in ASCII / DOS) may be hard to read; this one is attached
as a WordPerfect file . . .   (after this, I give up, or throw the
ball back into Kent's court . . .)

cheers,
d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 01:21:17 -0400
Reply-To:     Steven Marks 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steven Marks 
Subject:      Re: haiku-gram
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

[d.i.]:

> >   forget the spam-po
> >   what I'd really like to see
> >   is donut haiku
> >
> >   buttermilk sugar
> >   they knead me & they fry me
> >   none taste the center

[Steven Marks]:

> the center holds holes
> something to nibble around
> no mess on my hands

[David Israel]

without the coffee
a donut is not done here
darkness to imbibe

[s.m.]

nut to do but dough
coffee from a hell of beans
my do-dough dissolves



y'all should join in
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 03:06:36 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         lee ann brown 
Subject:      Re: Donuts/Livermush cont'd
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Charlotte Food Haiku

Krispy Kreme donuts
are the only ones for me
Light, flaky, glazed, yum.

Inhale them one by
one - Do the dozens out back,
midnight parking lot.

Livermush, also
known as Scrapple.  Slice it and
Fry it up for me.

Black and crusty is
how my Diddy likes it- He's
afraid cuz it's pork.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 05:45:36 -0400
Reply-To:     daniel7@IDT.NET
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Zimmerman 
Organization: Bard-O
Subject:      Re: Cummings, Syllables, Nemes....
Comments: To: BobGrumman@nut-n-but.net
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------38481D2581B"

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

--------------38481D2581B
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Bob Grumman wrote:
>
> Dan--good to find out I'm not the only nuts-and-bolts freak out there.
> I hope others join us.  Meanwhile, I'd be interested in seeing an
> example of Capt. -Neme-O's lists. you got any lying around?
>
>                                             Best, Bob
>
> P.S., a couple of coincidences: I live in Port Charlotte, Florida, which
> is 25 miles or so from Fort Myers, which is kinda Edison South.  Also,
> one of my other wacked out hobbies is the Shakespeare Authorship
> Controversy (I'm one of the boring traditionalists there); I bring that
> up because I was just writing about an anagram in some 17th-century work
> that's supposed to indicated that Lord Oxford wrote Shakespeare's
> works.  So I've been fooling around with anagrams myself.

Hi, Bob.
        I tried to send this attachment yesterday, but it wouldn't attach, so
I'll try again.
        I apologize for the length of the post, but as you'll see, it probably
couldn't have worked any shorter.

Dan Zimmerman

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QQBkEAAAAABBAGgQAAAAAEEAahAAAAAAQAC9DwAAAABBAHEQAAAAAEEAdBAAAAAAQQB2EAAA
AABAAM8PAAAAAEEAfRAAAAAAQQB/EAAAAABBAIEQAAAAAEEAghA=
--------------38481D2581B--
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 21 Jun 1997 18:29:17 +-900
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Tessitore 
Subject:      Re: abstract personal

Lang Po was a failed marketing ploy, by which chunks of Alpo were shaped
into the likenesses of famous poets. You know, the dogs just gobbled'em up
anyway.

DT

----------
From:   George Bowering[SMTP:bowering@SFU.CA]
Sent:   Monday, June 23, 1997 9:37 AM
To:     POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
Subject:        Re: abstract personal

>stephen ellwood asked:
>
>> I have a question, as well.  What does "Lang Po" stand for?  I'm sorry
>> for ignorance which I know, for I have my own miniscule area of
>> expertise, will make me appear poignantly ridiculous.  Oh, I take that
>> back.  I have no area of expertise.
>
>Lang Po is the second cousin twice removed of Li Po.

And also grandnephew of Edgar Allan Po.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 08:54:34 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      Re: haiku-gram
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

> [d.i.]:
>
>   forget the spam-po
>   what I'd really like to see
>   is donut haiku
>
>   buttermilk sugar
>   they knead me & they fry me
>   none taste the center
>
> [Steven Marks]:
>
> the center holds holes
> something to nibble around
> no mess on my hands
>
> [d.i.]:
>
> without the coffee
> a donut is not done here
> darkness to imbibe
>
> [s.m.]:
>
> nut to do but dough
> coffee from a hell of beans
> my do-dough dissolves

[d.i.]:

nonesistence hides
in the very word donut
nut signifies naught

>
> y'all should join in
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 08:57:09 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      also Re: haiku-gram
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

adding another:

> [d.i.]:
>
>   forget the spam-po
>   what I'd really like to see
>   is donut haiku
>
>   buttermilk sugar
>   they knead me & they fry me
>   none taste the center
>
> [Steven Marks]:
>
> the center holds holes
> something to nibble around
> no mess on my hands
>
> [d.i.]:
>
> without the coffee
> a donut is not done here
> darkness to imbibe
>
> [s.m.]:
>
> nut to do but dough
> coffee from a hell of beans
> my do-dough dissolves

[d.i.]:

nonesistence hides
in the very word donut
nut signifies naught

and what about do?
do of course signifies dough
a dough-naught for you!


> y'all should join in
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 07:58:39 CST6CDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hank Lazer 
Organization: The University of Alabama
Subject:      Re: XCP

Oops.  Apologies--my e-mail on XCP should have gone to Yunte, not to
Poetics List....

Hank Lazer
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 08:55:01 EST5EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         LYNES- KATHERINE 
Organization: Rutgers University English Dept.
Subject:      Re: y'all join in

> [d.i.]:
>
> > >   forget the spam-po
> > >   what I'd really like to see
> > >   is donut haiku
> > >
> > >   buttermilk sugar
> > >   they knead me & they fry me
> > >   none taste the center
>
> [Steven Marks]:
>
> > the center holds holes
> > something to nibble around
> > no mess on my hands
>
> [David Israel]
>
> without the coffee
> a donut is not done here
> darkness to imbibe
>
> [s.m.]
>
> nut to do but dough
> coffee from a hell of beans
> my do-dough dissolves
>
>
> y'all should join in

okay...

yellow innards splooch
bavarian dive bomber
cannot hold center

katherine.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 09:12:38 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Burt Kimmelman -@NJIT" 
Subject:      poetry new york #9

The new issue of Poetry New York has finally arrived from the printer
and has been sent to our distributor so it will be in the stores soon.
I am in the last leg of teaching summer school, and so I will be sending
contributors' copies out in a week or so when I can catch my breath.

Tod Thilleman and I are most grateful to all of the contributors (large
handful read this List) for their patience.

I imagine Tod will be preparing a formal announcement about the issue
soon.


Burt
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 14:32:28 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "F.A. Templeton" 
Subject:      ad Fiona Templeton
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

                          new from ROOF BOOKS          Contact James Sherry
                                                          jsherry@panix.com
                         * CELLS OF RELEASE *         fax 001-212-254-4145
                          by Fiona Templeton          tel 001-212-674-0199

a document of the poetry installation at the abandoned panopticon Eastern
State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, written onsite on continuous paper, one
cell per day, woven throughout the cells

With photographs and notes.
128 pages.  ISBN 0-937804-69-X   * $13.95 *

Order from Segue Foundation, 303 East 8th Street, New York NY 10009, USA
(as a limited offer includes postage & handling)

------------------------

Also from ROOF, by Fiona Templeton

                                *  YOU--The City *

YOU--The City was an intimate citywide play for an audience of one,
produced in New York in 1988, and subsequently recreated in various
cities, including London.

With photographs, instructions, notes, maps, charts.
192 pages  ISBN:  0-937804-38-X    * $11.95 *
(limited offer as above to include postage and handling)
.......................................................................

I enclose ___ x $13.95 for Cells of Release

          ___ x $11.95 for YOU--The City

Name________________________________________________________________

Address_____________________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 10:12:57 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      Tournament at the Electronic Country Club
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

There's a great line in Steve Evans' Impercipient Lecture Series essay --
he characterizes the 80s as such a wild time that Baudrillard could be
received as a great thinker.

Anybody pick up the new UMn History of Structuralism? I was hot to buy it
till I saw the chapter heading "Foucault sells like hotcakes". I like
candy, but ...

What are the rules of this club we're in?

Jordan
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 11:04:30 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      & also Re: haiku-gram
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Thanks, Katherine, for adding a haiku to the donut garland.  Your
post & mine crossed in the mail, so I've here sandwiched your 'ku
inbetween those 2 of mine -- hope others have more dough to add
to this nutsness.

d.i.

[d.i.]:

 forget the spam-po
 what I'd really like to see
 is donut haiku

 buttermilk sugar
 they knead me & they fry me
 none taste the center

[Steven Marks]:

 the center holds holes
 something to nibble around
 no mess on my hands

[d.i.]:

 without the coffee
 a donut is not done here
 darkness to imbibe

[s.m.]:

 nut to do but dough
 coffee from a hell of beans
 my do-dough dissolves

[d.i.]:

 nonesistence hides
 in the very word donut
 nut signifies naught

[Katherine Lynes]:

 yellow innards splooch
 bavarian dive bomber
 cannot hold center

[d.i.]:

 and what about do?
 do of course signifies dough
 a dough-naught for you!


> y'all should join in
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 10:25:05 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: retoot
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

_C.L.R. James: A Critical Introduction_, by Aldon Nielsen, is available at
a discount (why wait for remainders?) from the C.L.R. james Institute in
New York -- if interested in getting a copy from them, email Jim Murray at

jimmurray@igc.apc.org

They also have several publications by James (including discounted copies
of the correspondence James sent to Constance Webb) --

---------------------
on another front, I have been contacted by a freind who is organizing a
speaking trip by Richard Wright's Widow, Ellen, to the U.S. SOON -- if
anybody out there is interested in organizing a speaking date (and has a
few $$ to do so) let me know --

"friend" for "freind" etc --
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 13:45:46 -0400
Reply-To:     daniel7@IDT.NET
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Zimmerman 
Organization: Bard-O
Subject:      attachments
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Sorry I sent an attachment with a recent post to Bob G. Didn't realize
the taboo.
Dan Zimmerman
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 14:05:36 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gwyn McVay 
Subject:      Re: attachments
Comments: To: Daniel Zimmerman 
In-Reply-To:  <33AEB64A.3163@idt.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Living in the world yet not forming attachments is the way of a true
student.

Zengetsu
T'ang dynasty
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 12:40:06 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         michael corbin 
Subject:      Re: Tournament at the Electronic Country Club
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Jordan Davis wrote:
>
> There's a great line in Steve Evans' Impercipient Lecture Series essay --
> he characterizes the 80s as such a wild time that Baudrillard could be
> received as a great thinker.

Or perhaps that fencing off of something called "the 80s", *that*
contained dissipation, contained here in the creeping fin de millennium
is mere succedaneum (a nostalgia of the present?) for this time's (is it
the post-wild "90's"?), this moment's own deliquescence.

"In the wake of all that resurfaces, history backtracks on its own
footsteps in a compulsive attempt at rehabilitation, as if in a
recompense for some sort of crime I am not aware of - a crime committed
by and in spite of us, a kind of crime done to oneself, the process of
which is sped up in our contemporary phase of history and the sure signs
of which today are global waste, universal repentance and resentment
[ressentiment] - a crime where the lawsuit needs to be re-examined and
where we have to be unrelenting to go back as far as the origins, if
necessary, in quest of retrospective absolution since
there is no resolution to our fate in the future. It is imperative that
we find out what went wrong and at which moment and then begin examining
the traces left on the trail leading up to the present time, to turn
over all the rocks of history, to revive the best and the worst in a
vain attempt to separate the good from the bad." (Baudrillard,
"Hystericizing the Millennium")

> Anybody pick up the new UMn History of Structuralism? I was hot to buy it
> till I saw the chapter heading "Foucault sells like hotcakes". I like
> candy, but ...


And the Theorists and the Theory are packaged and shelved neatly
according to one's predilection of recieved greatness or thinkerness,
circulating histories of need (a post-scarcity need, a 90s thing), and a
passion for sweets and scape-goated confidence-persons. Thank bejesus
poetree doesn't languish in such soiled historicity. If structuralism
has a two-volume cenotaph it surely must be done. Whew. Just in time.

> What are the rules of this club we're in?
>


Like the hurricane forecasters watching depressions transform into
larger whirl-wind beasts, the rules, if we can call them that, seem,
well, blurry, despite our over-confidences in our instruments; no
Angelus Novus obediently facing in one (backward) historical direction.
Nope. Alas, all directions at once.

mc
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 12:29:57 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steven Marks 
Subject:      Re: Tournament at the Electronic Country Club
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

>
> What are the rules of this club we're in?
>
> Jordan
>
I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would let me in.

Steven (Groucho) Marks(x)
__________________________________________________
   Steven Marks

   http://members.aol.com/swmarks/welcome.html
__________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 12:35:42 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wendy Battin 
Subject:      info on Bryars?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Anyone familiar with the work of Gavin Bryars?  Just heard an
extraordinary piece called _Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet_ (thanks
Forrest) and wonder what to hunt for next.

Wendy


---------------------------------------------------------------------
Wendy Battin  http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/5471/ashland.html
----------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 15:33:10 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         AERIALEDGE@AOL.COM
Subject:      New Berrigan, Davis,Templeton &&& @ Bridge Street

Lots new & good. Ordering instructions at the end of the post. Thanks poetics
for your support.

1. _The Mooring of Starting Out: The First Five Books of Poetry_, John
Ashbery, Ecco, $25 cl. Collects _Some Trees_, _The Tennis Court Oath_,
_Rivers and Mountains_, _The Double Dream of Spring_, and _Three Poems_. Not
bad.

2. _On the Level Everyday: Selected Talks on Poetry and the Art of Living_,
Ted Berrigan, ed. w/ intro by Joel Lewis, preface by Alice Notley, Talisman
House, $12.50. "So if you start a poem and you put some of it here, and you
want to put the next part of it there, because you have a third part which
you're going to put over here, because when you do it'll look beautiful and
be gorgeous, and it will also be right, that's as good a reason as one can
ever come up with. There's nothing wrong with beauty: although it isn't
necessarily better than ugliness. As William Saroyan says, 'It's no help, but
it's a good thing.' Thank you."

3. _The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection_, Judith Butler,
Stanford, $15.95. Via Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault, and Althusser,
Butler tracks the figure of a psyche that "turns against itself" and seeks to
theorize the ambivalent relationship between the social and the psychic.

4. _Upstairs_, Jordan Davis, Barque Books, $5.Includes the hits "Chippewa
Mishegas," "Layla Playland," "Flub Grid," "Uncle, I'm Cold," and "Tutor Me
Sunlight."

5. _The Politics of Truth_, Michel Foucault, Autonomedia, $8. "Critique is
the movement by which the subject gives itself the right to question truth on
its effects of power and to question power on its discourses of truth. . . .
in a word, the politics of truth."

6. _The Semblance of Subjectivity: Essays in Adorno's Aesthetic Theory_, ed.
Tom Huhn and Lambert Zuidervaart, MIT, $35 cl. Contributors: Martin Jay,
Shiery Weber Nicholsen, Richard Wolin, Rolf Tiederman, Rudiger Bubner, J. M.
Bernstein, Heinz Paetzgold, Gregg M. Horowitz, Sabine Wilke, Heidi
Schlipphacke, and the editors.

7. _Forms of Expansion: Recent Long Poems by Women_, Lynn Keller, U Chicago,
$16.95. Chapters on DuPlessis & Dahlen, S. Howe, Hacker, Dove & Osbey, Grahn,
and Doubiago. "_Forms of Expansion_ is a fascinating and necessary book for
anyone interested in postmodern poetics. . . . Her ability to discern common
patterns within divergent poetics is a singular and brilliant strength."
--Alice Fulton

8. _Retreating the Political_, Phillippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy,
Routledge, $18.95. "If, today, everything is political, how can we re-treat
the political on the basis of its retreat from any specificity whatsoever?"

9. _Hambone 13_, ed. Nathaniel Mackey, $10. Lisa Cooper, Lyn Hejinian, Hank
Lazer, Martha Ronk, Chris Tysh, John Yau, Kevin Young, David Marriott, Araya
Asgedom, Will Alexander, Connie Deanovich, Phillip Foss, Clayton Eshleman,
Joseph Donahue, Michael Boughn, Skip Fox, Ted Pearson, Charles Stein, Paul
Naylor, Julio Cortazar, Larry Price, Norman Finkelstein, John Taggart, Maria
Damon, A.L.Nielsen, Benjamin Hollander.

10. _C. L. R. James: A Critical Introduction_, A. L. Nielsen, U. Mississippi,
$18. "C.L.R. James was a historian who was given to exploring the political
significance of the Cuban Revolution by means of an exegis of the surrealist
poetry of Aime Cesaire. While Discoursing on the development of the literary
imaginationin the United States, he was likely to focus on the political
polemics of a small band of Abolitionists. When advancing his arguments for
the independence of the West Indies from colonial rule he turned to talk of
calypso singers and novelists. Writing a column on the sport of cricket,
James naturally found himself writing about James Baldwin, William
Wordsworth, and Willie Mays. . . . Evidently experience had never taught
James that being interdisciplinary is so very hard to do."

11. _Cells of Release_, Fiona Templeton, Roof, $13.95. A document of the
poetry installation at the abandoned panopticon Eastern State Penetentiary
written on continuous paper over six weeks at the cite with photos and
descriptive material. "as the child turning in the cupboard/from dumbed blows
turning/as the bird makes the nest/pushing out with its breast/turning/beside
myself/curling to the wind/rolling to the wall/releasing room/for you"

12. _Complete Short Poetry_, Louis Zukofsky, Johns Hopkins, $19.95. New in
paperback.

& a few of poetics kinda bestsellas currently in stock. Asterick indicates
signed copies available:
_Aesthetic Theory_, Theodor W. Adorno, $39.95 cl.
_Paradise & Method: Poetics & Praxis_, Bruce Andrews, $19.95.
_Onward: Contemporary Poetry & Poetics_, ed. Peter Baker, $29.95.
_Drafts 15-XXX: The Fold_, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, $12.*
_The Cold of Poetry_, Lyn Hejinian, $12.95.*
_Some Other Kind of Mission_, Lisa Jarnot, $11.
_Imagination Verses_, Jennifer Moxley, $8.95.
_The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History_, Bob
Perelman, $15.95.
_Wittgenstein's Ladder: Poetic Language and the Strangeness of the Ordinary_,
Marjorie Perloff, $27.95.
_In Memory of My Theories_, Rod Smith, $9.*
_Reponse_, Juliana Spahr, $10.95.*
_Sonnets of a Penny-a-Liner_, Mark Wallace, $9.*
_Frame (1971-1991)_, Barrett Watten, $13.95.

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, 23 Jun 1997 15:30:54 EST
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Keith Tuma 
Subject:      Re: info on Bryars?
In-Reply-To:  Message of Mon, 23 Jun 1997 12:35:42 -0400 from
              

Wendy--

You might be interested in John Taggart's notes on Bryars' "Jesus' Blood. . ."
(and other matters, from Reich to Stevens to Scarry) in _Apex of the M_ 4.
Called "Jesus' Blood:  Notes & Overlays."  66-85.


--Keith
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 09:55:04 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Attachments
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Uh, I understand the frustration someone might feel not being able to get
through to the list or with how ASCII reconfigures texts, but sending
e-mail attachments to more than 500 people on an e-mail discussion  list is
not a good idea.

These don't always come through legibly, especially for those of us who
receive the list in digest form.



Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 12:54:14 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Herb Levy 
Subject:      Re: info on Bryars?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

He's a British composer (now) working in what gets called a post-minimalist
style, which in his case ends up being darkly moody, often pretty, melodic
music.  There's little else recorded that follows that slowly opening
timbral format of Jesus' Blood, a fairly early work (the 1st, shorter,
version of which is about 20 years old).

There's one other early work recorded, The Sinking of the Titanic, on the
same label (Phil Glass's, I can't remember the name right now) as the CD of
Jesus' Blood.

Bryars' more recent music can be heard on a couple of good CDs of chamber
music on ECM (After the Requiem & Vita Nova), & a disc of string quartets &
duos on Argo.  Argo also has a recent CD with a cello concerto, a piece for
percussion ensemble and something else I forget, which I haven't heard yet.




>Anyone familiar with the work of Gavin Bryars?  Just heard an
>extraordinary piece called _Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet_ (thanks
>Forrest) and wonder what to hunt for next.
>
>Wendy
>
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>Wendy Battin  http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/5471/ashland.html
>----------------------------------------------------------------


Herb Levy
herb@eskimo.com
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 16:46:08 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      long article up for criticism if yr up for it!

The Personal, the Political, and the Just Plain Awful


One problem with the current trend toward a "We Did It!" mode of criticism is its frequent inaccuracy.  "We Did It"-style modern writers and critics often speak of the Confessional trend in poetry as if personal revalation in literature were unique to this era, as if the single most important and compelling aspect were that... "We Did It!"

But personal revelation in literature was in force long before, say, Sexton and Lowell.  Consider the Biblic Psalms of David, or the Song of Solomon.  Or, from the early sixteenth century, this luscious, deeply moving and extravagantly personal lyric by Thomas Wyatt:

------------------------------------------------
INDENT
------------------------------------------------
(Untitled)

"They fle from me that sometyme did me seke
With naked fote stalking in my chambre.
I have sene them gentle, tame, and meke,
That nowe are wyld and do not remembre
That sometyme they put theimself in daunger
to take bred at my hand; and nowe they raunge
besely seking with a continuell chaunge.

"Thancked be fortune, it hath ben othrewise
Twenty tymes better; but ons in speciall,
In thyn(1) arraye after a pleasaunt gyse,
When her lose gowne from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her armes long and small(2);
Therewithall swetely did me kysse,
And softely saide, deare hert, howe like you this?

"It was no dreme: I lay brode waking.
But all is torned thorough my gentilnes
Into a straunge fasshion of forsaking;
And I have leve to go of her goodenes,
And she also to use new fangilnes.
But syns that I so kyndely ame served,
I would fain knowe what she hath deserved."

1.      thyne: thin
2.      small: narrow

----------------------------------------------
END INDENT
----------------------------------------------


There is a rich vein of the deeply personal in Wyatt's poems.  In one sense, the value of this is historical; one gets a sudden glimpse into the bedchambers, manners, emotions over four hundred years ago.  There is, however, a great deal more to the poems -- an ear for glorious phrasing, an astoundingly graceful and haunting word choice, a gift for the unexpected turn, the sudden flash of deep feeling -- that are almost the signature of a Wyatt poem.

What is meant by the "personal" here is a focus on a lived life, one with cracks, confusions, deep and often haunted glimpses into the writer's everyday.

One sees a line, a combination of the personal and exquisite artisan again and again in literature.  For example, consider the work of John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Hart Lovelace, Christopher Smart, Anne Hutchinson, and Jane Taylor.  But mid-nineteenth century, this vein seems to disappear.  There is, of course, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Barrett-Browning, Byron, Keats, Poe.  But even when professing to be at their most personal, there is almost never a sense that the artist has taken her or his hand out of the breast pocket and stopped declaiming.   A glimpse of that old style of blazing directness and clarity gleams from out of Longfellow's "Children's Hour," and in much of the work of Emily Dickinson, but it doesn't appear in force again till the early twentieth century.

Switch to the present day.  As editors and writers,  Jordanne and I are often given poems about the most private aspects of their writer's life.  As poets, we find all sorts of personal moments making their way into our poems.

Does that make the writing good?  Decidedly not.

I'm reminded of something a friend said about teaching Composition in college: "Right at the beginning of the course, I tell the students that while they might find themselves using personal material in the course, they may find it is too painful and uncomfortable to work with.  And I also tell them that they do not automatically get a good grade when they put something personal in a text."

My main gripe at the moment is the flood of incest and molestation poems.  They seem to generally start with an air of self-conscious daring, then move quickly to a fairly standard body of images, phrases, and plot twists, finishing often with either righteousness or melodrama or both.  Just to start, there is not very much that is daring, in a literary sense, about writing an incest poem; an enormous number of writers have done and are doing it even as we read (or write).  Further, while a tone of "I'm saying something controversial, something I know people will argue with" is almost always present, really, who defends incest?  I cannot think of a single instance, at this moment, of anyone saying they think incest is good, or should become a standard family practice.  Thus the set-up fairly reeks of straw dummies.

Having said this, yes, I have written one.  And one of my favorite poems in the world is a poem by Bruce Weigl on the subject, "The Impossible."

Certainly incest is terrible.  So are war, pestilence, famine, domestic violence, child abuse, illness, the death of parents and loved ones, rape, and a million other things.  But it will never be the case that it doesn't matter what one writes, if one just remembers to write about an Important Subject.

To put this in a slightly different context, I have an acquaintance, a Mediocre Poet par excellence.  He has been writing mediocre poems for a quarter of a century -- poems with trite phrases, poems whose last stanza can be predicted from about the middle stanza on (and sometimes earlier).  Typical example (not actual but representative):
        He rode in a frenzy
        over the mean streets,
        her words echoing in his head,
        her soft lips a memory.

One day, Mediocre Poet discovered a Subject: racism.  Now I saw such oeuvres as:
        He rode his bike in a frenzy
        over the mean streets,
        the ugly words, "black bastard,
        nigger, boy" echoing in his head.

He would declaim these works passionately, glare in a sort of righteous froth if one did not immediately explode with praise -- "didn't we CARE about racism"?   But that wasn't the point.  Whether we cared about racism or not, they were mediocre poems, and he was asking me and his other listeners and readers to evaluate him as a writer, to put him in the context of writing.  He wanted our praise as writers, praise for him as a writer, space in a magazine as a writer, but if we had any criticism of the writing, he ignored the writing to fixate on the subject.

A writer does not do a cause any favors if the writing is bad.  More important to us as writers, it is in attention to details, to good writing, to finding the most accurate, clear truth -- a truth we know and care enough about to peel off our public "self" and reach deeper to get at -- that our most "important" poems, and indeed, writing, lies.

Important poems may not always be about earth-shattering subjects.  Maxine Kumin writes a poem about swimming, a simple poem about going to a college swimming pool and swimming in meter to "Abide With Me."  But inside that simple, important poem is a shimmering, aqua, gentle voice telling me about habit, about roots, about the weary reality of constant travel.  Inside that simple poem -- a deeply personal moment conveyed in a stripped-down, unself-glorifyng way -- Kumin takes one of the greatest risks a writer can take: she shows her honest self without an effort to impress us, to write herself into a herioc narrative.

The risk is the truth, the step back from "what will people think of me when they write this poem."  The skill is a matter of seeing, and a matter of deeply honed technique.

A deeply felt but clumsy poem about incest by a modestly skilled writer may still be important to the writer, to the writer's family and friends.  Given to me by someone close in a moment of sharing deeply personal matters with each other, such a poem might well be deeply moving.  But -- and here is where our Mediocre Poet comes in -- sent to me in a literary context, that is, put up to evaluation in a literary context, it is what it is: a not well written piece of writing.  And in that literary context, as an editor, as a public writer, I must evaluate the clumsy poem that way because it is my job to say when the emperor has no clothes.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 16:48:21 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      WHOOPS -- format-corrected copy

The Personal, the Political, and the Just Plain Awful


One problem with the current trend toward a "We Did It!" mode of
criticism is its frequent inaccuracy.  "We Did It"-style modern
writers and critics often speak of the Confessional trend in poetry as
if personal revalation in literature were unique to this era, as if
the single most important and compelling aspect were that... "We Did
It!"

But personal revelation in literature was in force long before, say, Sexton and Lowell.  Consider the Biblic Psalms of David, or the Song of Solomon.  Or, from the early sixteenth century, this luscious, deeply moving and extravagantly personal lyric by Thomas Wyatt:

------------------------------------------------
INDENT
------------------------------------------------
(Untitled)

"They fle from me that sometyme did me seke
With naked fote stalking in my chambre.
I have sene them gentle, tame, and meke,
That nowe are wyld and do not remembre
That sometyme they put theimself in daunger
to take bred at my hand; and nowe they raunge
besely seking with a continuell chaunge.

"Thancked be fortune, it hath ben othrewise
Twenty tymes better; but ons in speciall,
In thyn(1) arraye after a pleasaunt gyse,
When her lose gowne from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her armes long and small(2);
Therewithall swetely did me kysse,
And softely saide, deare hert, howe like you this?

"It was no dreme: I lay brode waking.
But all is torned thorough my gentilnes
Into a straunge fasshion of forsaking;
And I have leve to go of her goodenes,
And she also to use new fangilnes.
But syns that I so kyndely ame served,
I would fain knowe what she hath deserved."

1.      thyne: thin
2.      small: narrow

----------------------------------------------
END INDENT
----------------------------------------------


There is a rich vein of the deeply personal in Wyatt's poems.  In one
sense, the value of this is historical; one gets a sudden glimpse into
the bedchambers, manners, emotions over four hundred years ago.  There
is, however, a great deal more to the poems -- an ear for glorious
phrasing, an astoundingly graceful and haunting word choice, a gift
for the unexpected turn, the sudden flash of deep feeling -- that are
almost the signature of a Wyatt poem.

What is meant by the "personal" here is a focus on a lived life, one
with cracks, confusions, deep and often haunted glimpses into the
writer's everyday.

One sees a line, a combination of the personal and exquisite artisan
again and again in literature.  For example, consider the work of John
Donne, George Herbert, Richard Hart Lovelace, Christopher Smart, Anne
Hutchinson, and Jane Taylor.  But mid-nineteenth century, this vein
seems to disappear.  There is, of course, Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Shelley, Barrett-Browning, Byron, Keats, Poe.  But even when
professing to be at their most personal, there is almost never a sense
that the artist has taken her or his hand out of the breast pocket and
stopped declaiming.  A glimpse of that old style of blazing directness
and clarity gleams from out of Longfellow's "Children's Hour," and in
much of the work of Emily Dickinson, but it doesn't appear in force
again till the early twentieth century.

Switch to the present day.  As editors and writers, Jordanne and I are
often given poems about the most private aspects of their writer's
life.  As poets, we find all sorts of personal moments making their
way into our poems.

Does that make the writing good?  Decidedly not.

I'm reminded of something a friend said about teaching Composition in
college: "Right at the beginning of the course, I tell the students
that while they might find themselves using personal material in the
course, they may find it is too painful and uncomfortable to work
with.  And I also tell them that they do not automatically get a good
grade when they put something personal in a text."

My main gripe at the moment is the flood of incest and molestation
poems.  They seem to generally start with an air of self-conscious
daring, then move quickly to a fairly standard body of images,
phrases, and plot twists, finishing often with either righteousness or
melodrama or both.  Just to start, there is not very much that is
daring, in a literary sense, about writing an incest poem; an enormous
number of writers have done and are doing it even as we read (or
write).  Further, while a tone of "I'm saying something controversial,
something I know people will argue with" is almost always present,
really, who defends incest?  I cannot think of a single instance, at
this moment, of anyone saying they think incest is good, or should
become a standard family practice.  Thus the set-up fairly reeks of
straw dummies.

Having said this, yes, I have written one.  And one of my favorite
poems in the world is a poem by Bruce Weigl on the subject, "The
Impossible."

Certainly incest is terrible.  So are war, pestilence, famine,
domestic violence, child abuse, illness, the death of parents and
loved ones, rape, and a million other things.  But it will never be
the case that it doesn't matter what one writes, if one just remembers
to write about an Important Subject.

To put this in a slightly different context, I have an acquaintance, a
Mediocre Poet par excellence.  He has been writing mediocre poems for
a quarter of a century -- poems with trite phrases, poems whose last
stanza can be predicted from about the middle stanza on (and sometimes
earlier).  Typical example (not actual but representative):
        He rode in a frenzy
        over the mean streets,
        her words echoing in his head,
        her soft lips a memory.

One day, Mediocre Poet discovered a Subject: racism.  Now I saw such
oeuvres as:
        He rode his bike in a frenzy
        over the mean streets,
        the ugly words, "black bastard,
        nigger, boy" echoing in his head.

He would declaim these works passionately, glare in a sort of
righteous froth if one did not immediately explode with praise --
"didn't we CARE about racism"?  But that wasn't the point.  Whether we
cared about racism or not, they were mediocre poems, and he was asking
me and his other listeners and readers to evaluate him as a writer, to
put him in the context of writing.  He wanted our praise as writers,
praise for him as a writer, space in a magazine as a writer, but if we
had any criticism of the writing, he ignored the writing to fixate on
the subject.

A writer does not do a cause any favors if the writing is bad.  More
important to us as writers, it is in attention to details, to good
writing, to finding the most accurate, clear truth -- a truth we know
and care enough about to peel off our public "self" and reach deeper
to get at -- that our most "important" poems, and indeed, writing,
lies.

Important poems may not always be about earth-shattering subjects.
Maxine Kumin writes a poem about swimming, a simple poem about going
to a college swimming pool and swimming in meter to "Abide With Me."
But inside that simple, important poem is a shimmering, aqua, gentle
voice telling me about habit, about roots, about the weary reality of
constant travel.  Inside that simple poem -- a deeply personal moment
conveyed in a stripped-down, unself-glorifyng way -- Kumin takes one
of the greatest risks a writer can take: she shows her honest self
without an effort to impress us, to write herself into a herioc
narrative.

The risk is the truth, the step back from "what will people think of
me when they write this poem."  The skill is a matter of seeing, and a
matter of deeply honed technique.

A deeply felt but clumsy poem about incest by a modestly skilled
writer may still be important to the writer, to the writer's family
and friends.  Given to me by someone close in a moment of sharing
deeply personal matters with each other, such a poem might well be
deeply moving.  But -- and here is where our Mediocre Poet comes in --
sent to me in a literary context, that is, put up to evaluation in a
literary context, it is what it is: a not well written piece of
writing.  And in that literary context, as an editor, as a public
writer, I must evaluate the clumsy poem that way because it is my job
to say when the emperor has no clothes.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 17:52:06 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      henry g's [always] provocative response!

Hi Elliza,

I liked your essay, like hearing your voice, which seems to come from a
different atmosphere from a lot on there (is it the Rochester MN atmosphere?).
I have a couple comments on it - first, maybe you'd want to get into the
difference between personal & confessional (confessional always seems to
have an aura of shame or taboo around it - which is like an automatic
increase in "sex-appeal" or relevance for some people.  Personal is, as you
point out, more basic & perennial).  The other thing is just an editorial
quibble - I think you use variations on the word "deep" too often.  Another
thing - I think people might question the historical aspect of it - the
section about the personal up to mid-19th cent. - seems a little simplified.
Does the "declamatory" in the Romantics you mention have anything to do with
a response (on their part) to the neo-Classicism of Pope, Dryden, etc. who
also socially-refined away the "personal" that you find in its rawness
(& sexiness) in Donne, Wyatt, etc.? Were the Romantics trying to re-personalize
English poetry - & perhaps fighting an uphill battle?  As you say it was not un
until the early 20th (Eliot on the metaphysicals, Pound, Williams) that the
Renaissance "came back".

Nowadays our avant-garde symboliste aquademiques & our post-Amerique
neo-formaliste nostalgiques leetle Reech poetes divide the scene between
them in their manneriste formalities & the blazing personal of wheech you
speeque is found onlee in the intersticees...

pleez forward to poetique leeste eef you theenk eet is provocateef...-Henry G

--------------

e, forwarding
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 10:43:44 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: & also Re: haiku-gram
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 11:04 AM 6/23/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Thanks, Katherine, for adding a haiku to the donut garland.  Your
>post & mine crossed in the mail, so I've here sandwiched your 'ku
>inbetween those 2 of mine -- hope others have more dough to add
>to this nutsness.
>
>d.i.
>
>[d.i.]:
>
> forget the spam-po
> what I'd really like to see
> is donut haiku
>
> buttermilk sugar
> they knead me & they fry me
> none taste the center
>
>[Steven Marks]:
>
> the center holds holes
> something to nibble around
> no mess on my hands
>
>[d.i.]:
>
> without the coffee
> a donut is not done here
> darkness to imbibe
>
>[s.m.]:
>
> nut to do but dough
> coffee from a hell of beans
> my do-dough dissolves
>
>[d.i.]:
>
> nonesistence hides
> in the very word donut
> nut signifies naught
>
>[Katherine Lynes]:
>
> yellow innards splooch
> bavarian dive bomber
> cannot hold center
>
>[d.i.]:
>
> and what about do?
> do of course signifies dough
> a dough-naught for you!

do-ough a de-ar
a whole in one
raison drops in bun

>
>
>> y'all should join in
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 18:34:20 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      post mystique
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

My public thanks to David Israel for his unflagging and heroic
efforts in getting my little post about the Beneath a Single Moon
"controversy" (not here but at CAP-L) onto the list. When I asked
David to help me out, I never imagined it would cause him so much
trouble, and my apologies if the space taken up was disproportionate.

For those who might be interested in the issue,  a
recent development is a post (from an "abd" doctoral student in East
Asian Languages at University of Chicago) in which every
editor and poet involved in the anthology is accused of being a
racist through and through and of only being capable of comprehending
a "candy-Buddhism" that is designed to culturally expropriate Asian
Americans. (I'm trying to be fair and accurate.)

This only goes to further prove that people from Chicago don't
hesitate to tell you exactly what they think.

I'm going to be vacationing in distant parts for all of July starting
next week, so a good rest of the summer to all.

Kent
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 20:05:01 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KIM DAWN BAKER 
Subject:      the abstract personal
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE

she started crying today. suddenly.
the limbs hang loose like dripping socks on a vent in a closed room,
filling the air inside the room . lungs without breath.
i drew the drapes.
i lied under the covers. I covered my face.
i feel like I deserved it.
i think all women should carry guns.

space of the room. space of the page.
blank. white. coded.
(I have smoked so many cigarettes today I have no throat left.)
vida simon wrote;" these words are stains." end quote)
I want a wet nurse to carry me under her breast for ever.
and she said, dont touch me.
and he said;
nothing.
she never spoke or felt the desire for touch again.
she hated her more than she hated him. she split from her self, again and
again and hated each of the many sides.
she felt nine years old. she feared she would never understand daylight
again.

the space of the page =3D the space of the room

they are both of the body. the body of the tongue moistens the page and
salts the periphery of the room. the tongue is the important limb here
because it is the vehicle of sexuality and the vehicle of
l a n g u a g e .
this is a tired tongue.
this is a dry mouth.

the mark upon the page. the incision/inscription of mark into/upon/beneath
the skin. the mark is the memory. the memory is always there. she is not
always present.
she lost her mouth.
she lost her will.
the drapes are drawn.
what I feel at this moment is authentic. I believe this. my face wettens
as I read or write anything to do with=20
 the (disembodied)/my(embodied) body.
this is a result of language.
the body refers to a body, any body, a depersonalized body, a body other
than my own, or my own, a room, a space, a page, the social body, the body
of language, etc.
my body refers to this skin this flesh of mine which are penetrated,
stabbed, marked, incised upon. this skin which sweats, sticks, breathes,
suffocates, this suicidal body.
through language (coded) I can (pre) determine the stasis of the dis /
embodied state of my corps through my use of words. there is power in this
choice of whether it is mine or nobody=D5s or everybody=D5s. but it is alwa=
ys
all three. plus the other/s. which makes six, the splits duplicate
themselves. these bodies are transparent but can still bleed and stain and
be cut through with knife.

there is no difference between the abstract and the personal. abstraction
is an unnecessary term, it is a defunct of language. it describes nothing.
except the inability to describe.=20
abstraction is as, if not more personal than what is deemed to be
personal, because the abstract purposefully encodes itself to be
indecipherable to the viewer. the abstract is dishonest. it is in hiding,
it has kidnapped the free flowing body, it constricts, it mangles, it
distorts, until there is no memory upon the surface, there is only
diluted, misplaced memory.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 21:17:00 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: info on Bryars?

Some dozen years ago, Gavin Bryars was among the composers whom
Charles Amarkhanian interviewed in his live interview-plus-music series
"Speaking of Music" (held at the Exploratorium, at the Palace of Fine
Arts in San Francisco, during several years in the pre-deliquescent 80s).

I recall that Bryars seemed to have a bit of a dry sense of humor.  The
"Jesus Blood" piece still lingers in memory these many years later.  One
had the sense that he emerged -- generally speaking -- out of a world /
sensibility akin to other experimentalists (esp. Terry Riley & Steve
Reich) who'd toyed w/ tape loops & who came to be called minimalists.

Among Herb Levy's always-good music annotations, was this:

<< Bryars' more recent music can be heard on a couple of good CDs of
chamber music on ECM (After the Requiem & Vita Nova), & a disc of
string quartets & duos on Argo.  >>

By the by, one of those string quartet pieces of Bryars' was just lately
used by NYC choreographer Gloria McLean (erst a dancer w/ the late
Eric Hawkins' company, & now doing her own thing) in setting a new
dance piece.

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 20:35:46 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Maria Damon 
Subject:      Re: _My Life in the Bush of Ghosts_
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

wow, i had no idea tutuola had been alive all this time...yes, his work is
amazing.  i tried to get it on the list of 20 books that MFA students have
to read here, but no dice.

At 8:26 AM -0700 6/21/97, Aldon L. Nielsen wrote:
>Amos Tutuala died last week -- small obits here and there, but many U.S.
>papers failed to quote anything from his books --
>
>If you haven't already, read _The Palm Wine Drinkard_
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 20:35:49 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joseph Zitt 
Subject:      Re: info on Bryars?
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Wendy Battin wrote:
>
> Anyone familiar with the work of Gavin Bryars?  Just heard an
> extraordinary piece called _Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet_ (thanks
> Forrest) and wonder what to hunt for next.

Bryars is a big name in new music circles ("new" not necessarily
indicated when a piece was composed). He has a *lot* of stuff out.
His other best known work is "The Sinking of the Titanic", which
keeps expanding. The most recent version (I think) is on the Point Music
label (who also did the recent version of JBNFMY. I'm eager to hear his
new album (on ECM?) with Charlie Haden.

My favorite things of his were the albums he did on the Obscure label in
the 70s: shorter versions of the above two pieces, and an opera, Irma,
built from Tom Phillips's "A Humument". I don't know if it's been
rereleased though.

There's more info on the Web at http://www.netpoint.be/abc/music/bryars/
and http://www.december.org/ among other places.

*feep*
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 21:44:03 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: Attachments

Duly noted -- sorry, won't do it again.

d.i.

/ / / / /
>
> Date:    Mon, 23 Jun 1997 09:55:04 -0700
> From:    Herb Levy 
>
> Uh, I understand the frustration someone might feel not being able to
>  get through to the list or with how ASCII reconfigures texts, but
>  sending e-mail attachments to more than 500 people on an e-mail
>  discussion  list is not a good idea.
>
> These don't always come through legibly, especially for those of us
>  who receive the list in digest form.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 20:32:53 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      help find
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Sorry to bother the list with this, but does anyone have an email address
for Matthias Regan -- I seem to have misplaced it, and I recently had some
Chax broadsides I sent to him returned to me, so I'm trying to find him.

thanks,

charles

ps -- please email me directly.
chax press   ::   alexander writing/design/publishing
books by artists' hands   ::   web sites built with care and vision
handmade and trade editions of contemporary innovative writing
chax@theriver.com   ::   http://personal.riverusers.com/~chax/
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 23:28:55 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!

Eliza,

I'm on a diff wavelength than most of the folks I read on the POETICS list,
but, as a certified lit critter and publisher of poetry which has sometimes
been seen as "confessional," I figure I might as well let you know what I
think of your article and use it as an opportunity to take a stand for a
particular sort of "personal" writing.

The way I read it, you're arguing against giving automatic *literary* pats
on the back to poets who write about their own incest/abuse and you're
upholding some sort of standard of good poetry which these poets--like other
poets--need to meet in order to qualify *as* good poets.  Okay.  I don't
know many people who would disagree with you on these grounds, just as you
don't know many people who would support the notion that incest is a Good
Thing.  Honestly, I don't see any bigger flood of "plain awful" poetry about
incest than I see about other "personal" subjects, ranging from death to
sex.  And I think if it was there, I *would* see it, because I study and
write about sexual abuse survivor literature along with several other
literatures of trauma.  So I'm not convinced that you aren't creating a
straw woman to bash here.  Question is, why?  I mean, why pick on incest
poetry particularly?

For the last 10 years I've been working with and publishing Viet Nam veteran
writer poets--mostly working class guys, mostly *guys*, and mostly of the
leftist antiwar stripe; enlisted men and noncoms, usually not officers and
never officers over the rank of captain.  If you know the military, you know
what kind of guys I'm talking about.  Some of them have gone through
creative writing programs, have MFAs, some from "good schools."  But mostly
they aren't  poets of the sort usually discussed on this list. Now, I *like*
the work of a lot of poets discussed on this list, but I don't think it's
the only kind (or even the best kind) of poetry out there.  I think the guys
I publish are pretty fucking good, maybe *because* they are mostly talking
about things that matter to them in the way that few things matter to
*anyone*--matter in the way that life and death matter when they're up close
and personal and you've crossed the line between them and the most important
thing in your life is to make other people SEE/READ how *much* they matter.
A poem about swimming (which, of course, really *isn't* about swimming, or
not in the way that we usually think of swimming) just isn't the same.  Can
be good, even great.  But not the same.  These poets I'm talking about, they
aren't waving; they're drowning.  And that makes all the difference.

Because I publish a journal in which I often feature the work of veteran
poets, I'm inundated with Bad Viet Nam Veteran Poetry.  You're right.  Just
cause a guy pours his heart out on a page doesn't make it art.  You wouldn't
believe the number of poems about the Wall I'm subjected to every year, and
almost every goddamn one of them *sucks*.  In fact, I've been thinking of
doing a stuffed owl version of "Bad Wall Poetry" subdivided into sections
called "You're Dead and It Makes Me Blue/I Oughta Be Dead Too,"  "Those
Motherfucking Politicians Sent You Off To Die/And They Never Even Told Us
Why," "If To the POW Cause You Are Not True, I'll Hold My Breath Till My
Face Turns Blue," and "I Dodged the Draft So I Wouldn't Get Kilt/And Now
I'll Bore You With My Guilt."  Yeah, there's a lot of bad poetry about the
Viet Nam war out there.  More of it, I'd wager, than there is bad incest
poetry, because by my calculations there's a lot less incest poetry out
there overall.

There are also stunningly good poems by vets about their war experience, or,
rather, about the way they've come to reimagine and reconstruct their
experiences so that they *tell* us something in a way that touches us
someplace new.  So you know where I'm coming from (and as a counter to your
Mediocre Poet), I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about.  David
Connolly is a working class guy whose Irish American family has lived in
South Boston for generations.  He doesn't have a creative writing degree,
but he's taken a lot of workshops and he's struggled to refine his poetry
for going on twenty years.  W.D. Ehrhart (a rather more well-known working
class Viet vet poet--see the latest issue of _War, Literature & the Arts_
which is devoted to his work) "discovered" David when David and his adult
daughter took Ehrhart's course at U-Mass Boston.  David's got over 20 years
in working for the phone company.  He's an IRA symp, a strong union man, a
dedicated father, and a friend who would ride shotgun for you through the
gates of hell.  In short--exactly the kind of person, and poet, of which I'm
most fond.  David's also the kind of poet who can do a reading and hold an
audience rapt, take them along for a whiplash rollercoaster ride and then
slam their heads into a wall so that they fucking WAKE UP when he's reading.
Maybe that's not what you want out of a poet, but it's one of the things I
want, so I published his book, _Lost in America_.  You gave a 16th C.
example of a poem containing personal revelation that you liked, and a 20th
C. example of the mediocre.  Here are two 20th C. examples I think are swell.

The first is David Connolly's prose poem and--like other poetry--it helps if
you know the lingo of the genre, so I'll tell you now that "dien cai dau" is
Vietnamese for crazy (shortened in English pidgeon to "dinky dow").  "Ops"
are operations, "grunts" are combat infantry, "boonierats" are soldiers who
stayed out in the bush, "APC" is an armored personnel carrier, the Michelin
was a French-owned rubber plantation, ARVNs were the soldiers of our South
Vietnamese allies (in soldier lore not known for their courage), "MP" is
Military Police," and "LT" is a lieutenant.

___________________________

LETTER TO THE BEAR, LOST IN AMERICA

Hey Bear,

Listen up! You remember coming in from those road ops, the convoys back and
forth to Cu Chi, fucking caked in clay? And no one would take a shower
because some big-assed red bird was sitting up on the roof, like he was the
spirit of death or something? Remember? That bird had nearly twenty hard,
young killers milling around in towels and shower shoes, all rolling their
eyes, saying shit like, "Not me, m'man, I ain't going first, uh uh, no way,
nevah happen!" I think that Chicano gunner started it about birds being bad
luck because he asked me one time if the Irish thought so and I told him,
"si, m'man, es verdad." Then that dien cai dau Clyde, the grunt the NVA
loved to nibble on, that dude who had forty, fifty little shrapnel hits on
him, and a couple of big ones, who wasn't afraid of shit, he grabbed
Gracie's shotgun and jacked one ready. Now I knew that shotgun was full of
deer slugs, man. I knew that round would go through that bird like off-duty
sailors through a corner full of whores. And I knew the sound of the gun
would scatter those boonierats like they were fucking ARVNs. But I was high
and I knew he'd fire before I could speak, and he did. He let go at that
bird, man; remember how it disappeared?  For a few seconds, a smoky halo of
red feathers hung just above the shower, then began to fall on the crowd
which by that time had become an absolute clusterfuck of towels and assholes
and elbows, half of them trying to get away from the gunfire and the rest
trying to get out from under the birdshit and red feather rain. And the
slug, it kept going, man, up, right into one of those transformers on the
poles along the perimeter road. It whanged into the case and the top just
burst open with sparks. What a pop, huh, like the Fourth of Fucking July.
Then the power line fell and the guy going by in the jeep swerved to avoid
it and drove right into the open deck of that old APC?  That stopped
everyone in their tracks, huh?  If there was one thing we all understood and
appreciated, it was destruction, man. We were all howling and shit, pointing
to the dipshit driver who was grinning and waving like I'm OK, Ma, to us.
Then the jeep blew, and that old, gas-powered track lit off from it and the
ammo in both started to cook. That driver was trying to jump up his own ass
to get out of the way.  We were all fucking dien cai dau by then,
hysterical, holding on to ourselves, cheering and watching it all.  People
were passing around doobies and putting red feathers in their hair and shit,
roaring out what was blowing off.  There's .50s; there's some M-60, yea,
grenades!  Then the MPs came, fucking housecat cops, and broke it all up,
actually told us that what we were doing was dangerous.
      That night, it was all we could talk about, the "Big-Assed, Bad Luck,
Bird Blast Blast," everybody all fucked up, giggling about it, all high and
shit, well into the night?
      And the next morning we went into the Michelin. And only Gracie and
Shock, Ratshit and the LT, and you and I came out.  Then Ratshit and Gracie
and the LT, they all got wasted up north.
      So listen, Bear.  The other morning, the phone rang, and I found out
that Shock was dead, man. And this morning, as big as life, there was a
bright red cardinal in my yard.  I might have been a dumb grunt, but I'm not
stupid.  I let him be.
     So now it's just you and I, Bro, who remember when we laughed at death,
then met him, him and his fucking bird.  I hope it's not just me.
     Out.

___________________________

So maybe that pins your meters and maybe it doesn't.  Me, I laughed myself
sick the first time I heard David read it, and then, when I read it in
hardcopy, read it over and over again, marveling at the layers he'd managed
to create.  That's *personal*; David's got nightmares about the
up-close-and-personal deaths of each one of the guys he's named above, and
they wake him up screaming.  In my opinion, his gift is turning that into
poems that make things happen for listeners and readers.  Reading to a
roomful of vets (and these are vets with Ph.D.s--most of them in
literature--at the Sixties Generations conference) he's got to keep pausing
because you can't hear him over the roar of laughter.  And then you can hear
a pin drop in the silence after the last four paragraphs. After which,
slowly, you can hear folks start to murmer, "Fucking A, man, fucking A."

The second poem is by Horace Coleman.  Horace is also a Viet Nam vet--Air
Force.  In Viet Nam he was an air traffic controller, which apparently
wasn't much fun during the Tet offensive.  At home, he was a black man who
couldn't get a job doing what he'd been trained to do, and so he went off
and got an MFA at Bowling Green, taught for a while, and then opted out of
the literary life and into a job at McDonnell Douglass where he's been
working for more than 15 years.   His book _In the Grass_ took him over 20
years to complete, time stolen from earning a living, dealing with
nightmares, and assembling a life out of the pieces left to him by the war.

ORIANA FALLACI

It was on a small plane
playing checkers
on the green chessboard of Viet Nam.
Riding with the cargo door open,
swaying in the bumpy air
like drab chandeliers, GI issue,
on our way from Can Tho to Saigon
or was it Saigon to Can Tho?
The loud engines talked
to each of us, alone,
going to, and from, our private hells.
Fallaci, as usual, beautiful in
braids, unlabeled non-issue fatigues, and loafers.
No story here; no flirtations; no interviews.
Just the quiet of grunts,
a round-eyed woman,
and the danger, somewhere,
we all love.
Now breast cancer may kill her
if smoking cigarettes while
breathing pure oxygen doesn't.
Something is going to
get us all, eventually.

_________________________________


>The risk is the truth, the step back from "what will people think of me when
>they write this poem."  The skill is a matter of seeing, and a matter of deeply
>honed technique.

Couldn't agree with you more, Eliza, but, again, I think you'd be hard put
to find folks who *disagreed* with you on this count.  A critic and an
editor has got to do her job.  I send most of the VWar poems I receive back
to their authors with rejection slips.  So I've gotta ask, what's your
point?  I simply can't find any place where anyone says that, for example, a
piece of writing about incest is good writing merely because it's about
incest.   On the other hand, I don't regard an incest poem (or a VWar poem)
with greater suspicion because of its subject matter.  The article won't
work for me, at least, unless you make clear exactly *who* you are challenging.

Best,
Kali
Kali Tal
Sixties Project & Viet Nam Generation, Inc.
PO Box 13746, Tucson, AZ 85732-3746
kali.tal@yale.edu
Sixties Project: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/sixties/
Home Page: http://www.azintl.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 02:58:44 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan * Sondheim 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I like the sections you quote but you seem to place heavy emphasis on
class origins and background - which is fine - but then you don't know our
backgrounds or class origins or pain either. And the fact that someone has
been through Vietnam and is working class doesn't result in a particular
kind of writing - I know of other examples.

What I'm trying to say, is why give background, as if that negates or cri-
tiques the work on this list, since our various backgrounds are, I assume,
unknown to you?

The writing you present stands by itself; I wonder about the need, as
well, describe it as working class, as if it needed that buttressing.

And I don't have a creative writing degree.

Alan
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 10:24:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: abstractly personal
Comments: To: Dean Taciuch 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

Reminds me of a story Valery tells about Mallarme and Degas. (I paraphrase
wildly):

Degas: I really want to write a poem - if only I had some ideas for one.
Mallarme: But my dear Degas, poems aren't  made with ideas - they're made
with words!

Patrick Pritchett
 ----------
From: Dean Taciuch
To: POETICS
Subject: Re: abstractly personal
Date: Friday, June 20, 1997 11:43PM

And in 1951, at Harvard, introducing "Spring and All":
"Poems are not made of thoughts, beautiful thoughts, it's [sic] made of
words!  Pigments put on--here,there, made, actually."

These were, judging by the audience reactions on the tapes, surprising
ideas.

Dean Taciuch
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 12:03:42 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Susan Wheeler 
Subject:      Brathwaite film/video
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

A LONG time back someone asked about a video on Kamau Brathwaite's Mother
Poem.  I've just seen it -- it was made for the CBC by Margaret Harris in
April of 1996 and is called "Walking the Steps of the Imagination."  It
follows Brathwaite and his students on a trip to Barbados and is perhaps 20
minutes long.  Hope this helps albeit tardily.

Kudos to the haiku daredevils --

Susan

Susan Wheeler
wheeler@is.nyu.edu
voice/fax (212) 254-3984
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 12:05:30 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Piombino/Simon 
Subject:      Re: abstractly personal
In-Reply-To:  <01IKG441Z04U9YCYB0@iix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

"...Journals are really communal books. Writing in a group is an
interesting symptom- which hints at a further great development of the
writing business. Perhaps sometime people will write, think, and act en
masse-whole communities, even nations will undertake a work."

from Novalis, Philosophical Writings, translated and edited by Margaret
Mahony Stoljar, SUNY Press,1997.

The above quote from a manuscipt of Novalis written between 1797 and 1799.

Nick P.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 12:11:58 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Rachel Kubie 
Subject:      Syllables & Scribes
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Other examples of syllabic breaks can be found in manuscripts copied
by scribes in the Middle Ages--if you happen to have any of those in your
back pocket.  I'm looking at Parkes' Pause And Effect, (1993)--on the
hist. of punctuation--with the chapter, "The layout and punctuation of
verse." These breaks were also elaborate demonstrations of rhymes, where,
for example, several lines would be broken off and bracketed with the
final rhyming syllable displayed in the grand  *littera notabilior*  on
the right hand side of the page. More complicated displays were created
for leonine rhymes--those at the cesura--splitting lines across the page
in order to break the rhme off from its words to display.  These were not
created by the authors--but then, authors were also later than readers
and scribes in including punctuation in manuscripts--it was the ms.
keeper who wanted to assure approprate readings of the text, i.e. "Look!
Look! A Rhyme!  cummings is maybe doing something similar?--assuring a
reading.

        I very much hope this is relevent because I'm so happy to
mention it & I would go on for an hour to plug Parkes' bk if I weren't
out of cigarettes.  Btw, I'm trying to put a paper together on the
history of verse on the page (in phonetic alphabets) & if any listmembers
could give your brainy well-versed helps, I'd be grateful. I'm trying to
stay as superficial and material as possible--papers, inks, lettering,
typeface, spelling, punctuation, spacing, line-breaks, etc.. I'm also
trying to stay out of this century, tho' I haven't narrowed it more than
that. (In a great History of the Book class for summer.) Thanks--
R. Kubie
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 09:43:21 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      yesterdays mail
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Excuse the intrusion, but I want to reach as many potential posters-to-me
as possible: I lost all messages from sunday & monday, so if any of you
posted me personally, would you be kind enough to re-post that message? (If
you posted me abstractly, however, you needn't bother). Thanks, David
"bumblethumbs" B
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 10:54:48 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!

>What I'm trying to say, is why give background, as if that negates or cri-
>tiques the work on this list, since our various backgrounds are, I assume,
>unknown to you?
>
>The writing you present stands by itself; I wonder about the need, as
>well, describe it as working class, as if it needed that buttressing.

Well, since I wrote a whole book about why the identity of the author
matters, I guess I think it matters, *particularly* in the case of authors
who are also trauma survivors.  (And I've got grave argument with poets and
critics who feel it doesn't matter, since I view quite a bit of poetry which
appropriates the experience/race/gender of others as, uh, inappropriate--a
view which is likely unpopular on this list.) As for the emphasis on class,
that seems to be the factor that is consistent in the vet poets I publish.
It wouldn't be as important to me if I were describing a set of incest
poets, for example.  When I write about incest literature, *race* seems to
me much more important than class.  If the work "stands on its own" (and I
don't think *any* work "stands on its own, it's just with some work and some
audiences, things more easily go without saying) then it surely can't *hurt*
to have more information about the author, unless one feels that facts
somehow get in the way (a notion which is distressing, indeed).

It's troubling to me that my decision to emphasize class, to discuss the
working class nature of this vet poetry, is seen as some sort of critique of
other poets on the list.  In fact, I *do* know the backgrounds of some of
the other poets and would count, for example, Joe Amato's (hi, Joe!) working
class background as a (maybe *the*) major influence on his poetry and
criticism, though Joe himself might disagree (and is certainly, if he does
disagree, going to say so here in inimitable Joe fashion).  In my view,
people don't talk about class nearly enough--it matters in writing, as it
matters in other parts of life.  We've had long discussions on the list
about the benefits and drawbacks of the literary academy, creative writing
programs, etc., and we don't need to rehash them (or maybe we do). It seems
to me clear that the institutionalization of poetry in the academy has the
effect of creating an environment which often works to exclude working class
poets.  I find that working class poets generally have less patience with
Theory (and please do notice the capital "T", for I am by no means arguing
that working class poets do not have theories of poetry) and more interest
in writing poetry that creates movement in the world (teeth or trees or
lemons piled on a step) than do poets with middle- and upper-class
backgrounds.  This is meant as no insult; merely an observation.  I happen
to find Theory compelling, and I argue with my working-class scholar friends
(particularly those involved in working class studies) about it all the
time, but then, I'm from an upper-class background myself and so I'm aware
that my interest might simply work to underline their point.

Coming from a background in African American and Women's Studies, it would
be hard for me to make an argument that the identity of the poet doesn't
matter.  I'm of the Omi & Winant persuasion here; I don't think identity is
essential, but I think that people essentially identify and that how we
think about what we are creates not only what *we* are but, when we're
members of a dominant group, what *other* people think they are; we limit or
define what other people can and cannot be.  So if I'm going to talk about a
poet, I'm going to talk about that poet's (complex) location on the
race/gender/class grids and, if I don't know enough about the poet, I'll ask
questions.  But, yeah, I do think those answers are important.

Kali
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 13:21:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: Paint, he sd, or move objects around
Comments: To: rsillima 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

Ron,

Thanks for the great summary of the SF scene in the 70's and its bearing on
LP. You're right  - there is no neat and tidy way to sum up all that
exchange, but it's interesting to think on. I lived in SF from 1975 to 77
but alas, was oblivious to the great goings-on. Was a freshman at State,
thrilled to be reading Pound and WCW for the first time. Can only surmise
what I would have made then of what y'all were doing.

btw: thought of you last nite while watching a re-run of Ken Burns'
"Baseball" series, Part 9: the 1975 Red Sox-Reds World Series, Bill
Buckner's heartbreaking grounder bloop, Bill "Spaceman" Lee's lovely cosmic
jive, and of course, Kirk Gibson's smash in 1988 against your A's.

Best,
Patrick
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 14:28:51 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wendy Battin 
Subject:      Re: info on Bryars?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Many thanks, Herb, Keith, Joseph Z. & David I., for info and
recommendations.  Am especially intrigued by mention on the netpoint site
of GB's "miced media piece" & imagine it takes godlike patience to get
them all trained.

Wendy

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Wendy Battin  http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/5471/ashland.html
----------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 13:42:05 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

well i've just finished wrestling an air conditioner into our bedroom (hi
kali!) and, thank the lord, it hasn't blown a fuse... yet... so at least
we'll be sleeping cool here in chicago when it's this
hothothotmuggymuggymuggy...

i come to these issues of identity and appropriation in terms of struggle,
and play... i like work that shows me either, or both... for example, i've
posted before re my suspicions re story (as opposed to narrative)... but
hey, i like a good story---so if you're gonna tell me one, well then i
expect that you'll turn things to show me that you've sweated over those
character/plot/structural issues... i guess then that my judgment in such
matters is tied to my understanding of the way stories/narrative (can)
work, and expecting authors to attend to such difficulties (whether
conventionally or in less orthodox terms)... so yeah, it's a judgment
call... but thing is, i come to a given work through its context, a context
in which the work itself, formally speaking, plays a major role... but so
many things do---the author, of course, the publication, the press, the
era, the time of day, my mood... sometimes i find it easy to dismiss the
author, sometimes less so... sometimes i find the author(-function)
paramount in fact---when i'm familiar with a given author's oeuvre, so to
say, i tend to read across all of her works...

i'm using the term "work" here self-consciously... yeah, i was raised very
working class, you bet... but class is shifty, you can shift in and out of
different classes... which is not to say that you can forget... perhaps you
can, i can't, or won't...

and of course i don't mind theory, Theory, whatever---i would say that
being theoretical is generally a good thing (i didn't use a T, now)... of
course, i see the currents i'm involved in as a writer to be broader, more
popular than those that inform Theory as such... even pop cultural theory
isn't really popular...

anyway, part of the issue i see in this thread has to do with the status of
the real... i think the real still has real status... i use "real" here as
a category (sometimes i'll write "actual," just b/c, as we all know,
everything is real, or can be deemed so) and i'm prone to ask if in fact
the struggle over this category isn't a key factor in distinguishing
different groups of writers and readers...

ok, i'm sweating now!...

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 19:58:23 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "L. MacMahon and T.R. Healy" 
Subject:      more haiku-gram
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>>[d.i.]:
>>
>> forget the spam-po
>> what I'd really like to see
>> is donut haiku
>>
>> buttermilk sugar
>> they knead me & they fry me
>> none taste the center
>>
>>[Steven Marks]:
>>
>> the center holds holes
>> something to nibble around
>> no mess on my hands
>>
>>[d.i.]:
>>
>> without the coffee
>> a donut is not done here
>> darkness to imbibe
>>
>>[s.m.]:
>>
>> nut to do but dough
>> coffee from a hell of beans
>> my do-dough dissolves
>>
>>[d.i.]:
>>
>> nonesistence hides
>> in the very word donut
>> nut signifies naught
>>
>>[Katherine Lynes]:
>>
>> yellow innards splooch
>> bavarian dive bomber
>> cannot hold center
>>
>>[d.i.]:
>>
>> and what about do?
>> do of course signifies dough
>> a dough-naught for you!
>>
>>[D.P. Salmon]
>>do-ough a de-ar
>>a whole in one
>>raison drops in bun


[Randolph Healy]
Sphere before torus
when the centre was not holed
goodbye nut hi  ring

batter my heart and
artery o sweet and fat
confectionary
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 12:04:50 PDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hoa Nguyen 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and racism
Content-Type: text/plain

Dear List:

Below please find a forward from the CAPL list.  I wanted to share this
with you because I find this subject of great interest and want to
respond to Dean A. Brink's assertions.

Thanks,

Hoa



>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 18:19:01 -0700
>From: "Dean A. Brink" 
>To: Discussion of Contemporary American Poetry 
>Subject: Re: (Fwd) "Buddhistic poetry" & racism (fwd)

I find this discussion about the place of Buddhism in American poetry to
be representative of the mainstream - from Gary Snyder to any number of
poets that employ Asian imagery for superficial exotic effects. We need
to turn the anthropological eye back on the non-Asian Americans who have
convinced themselves that they are the superior, true Buddhist poets of
the day.

What is exposed by the anthology and the defense by its contributors,
editors, and others is the extreme to which Orientalism is indeed a
unacknowledged part of American poetry and poetics. It goes hand in hand
with a rhetoric of sincerity and is always riddled with "bad
consciousness" born out of its blindness to the historical.

Who gains from this? Certainly it does Asian-Americans no good. Poetry
by Asian-Americans tends to include poetry highly conscious of
stereotypes, orientalism, racism, and the many ironies born of the
ahistorical ignorance exhibited in Kent Johnson and his associates.

That Lew and others are angry should be Mr. Johnson's first clue that he
may be in the Buddhistic loop of consciousness, but he's out in apple
pie left field otherwise.

That Asian-Americans would be excluded is obvious: the editors of the
anthology sought to reinforce a "vision" of Asia (for which Buddhism
serves as a metonym) that is less-than-discretely post-colonialist in
tone. The white Buddhist tribe represented in the anthology purveys the
myth of the Christian missionary superiority as it expropriates candy
Buddhism. Buddhism becomes a commodity among a New Age people ('in
search of deeper truths') who sample various religious imagery to evoke
a sensibility that peaks with their pleasantly bourgeois conundrums, or
offers a refreshing disorientation vis-a-vis the logocentrism of
everyday life.

On the one hand I want to say Johnson and the others "can't help it,"
its so much a part of the current atmosphere in American poetry and New
Age that has made a market for anything ostensibly Asian. But if not now
when are we going to take to task this offensive mumbo jumbo of
orientalists? Just because they defend themselves on religious terms
doesn't mean they aren't contributing to a discourse that can be
considered pernicious - elitist, racist, orientalist, simply narrow and
self-serving.

At the same time, this is a devoicing of Asian Americans, eclipsing them
not in theory but in practice, as Johnson has shown.

Kent Johnson already has demonstrated that the "aesthetic" criteria
"naturally" require the most dynamic Buddhist poetry in America. The
anthology achieves this, he writes. It contains the

>>most vibrant
>>interfacings of spirituality and artistic practice in contemporary
>>American writing.

If this is "spirituality" it is a crass form, for it is so thoroughly
rooted in the most typical uses of religion for ideological ends. It can
be interesting as a study of organized desperation, millenium panic, or
a new twist on patent American paranoia.

We don't even have to open the can of worms over who is Buddhist, who a
good poet; the criteria are so thoroughly orientalist (and ahistorical)
that they cannot help but have to exclude Asian-Americans, who are too
historically grounded to "be of use" to the construction of this
discourse (Orientalism, Ltd.).

>
>dean brink
>
>abd, East Asian Languages and Civilizations
>University of Chicago
>
>dean@w-link.net



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=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 15:01:48 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry g 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!
In-Reply-To:  Message of Tue, 24 Jun 1997 10:54:48 MDT from 

Kali makes a lot of interesting points that raise the question(s) about
what poetry is now... & I agree with Joe that the stance toward what is
"real" is important (as Chas. Peirce said, everybody has a philosophy
whether they know it or not).

I guess I will keep following/adapting Dewey here & say that poetry is
basically a kind of free expression, but it's always grounded in some
kind of experience, & if you deny the experiential it trivializes the
work.  The weight of it comes from awareness of background.  All writing
is a kind of reflection, but "critical awareness" also involves some kind
of distance... so writing "from your identity" (on the grid) might involve
writing AWAY from your identity.  If poetry is promoted for its use-value
alone (empowerment) the tendency while empowering also blunts the critical
edge (or one of its edges, anyway)... I'm sure the Lingo Potters among us
have "something" here.

My own view is that poetry has this double-edge, coming from experience
- lived, felt, authentically rendered - on the one hand, and coming, on the
other hand, from the sky.  I mean this in all seriousness.  Criticism/
inspiration = freedom.  I'm talking about the "emotion of multitude" as
Yeats called it, or more profoundly, Whitman's cosmic inspiration -
"I exude my flesh in eddies & jags" or however it goes - or Coleridge's
Imagination as the "I AM" - to me this is the linch-pin of both unity
& individuality.  Art shares this "representative" universality in expressing
particular experience & helps make possible the graftings & cross-overs
on Kali's "grid" that in my view are the only hope, unless we all want to
live in the regional archives of our own true memoirs. But you have
to experience it.  It comes from the sky.  The sky is universal enough
for an earth-creature (you can throw in a few stars, too, if you want -
rhymes with Mars, jars, and also Lars).

An awareness of "where the writer's coming from" sure would reduce the
level of mediocre art; it would also make appropriations, masquerades,
& imitations (not, in my view, always inappropriate) more effective.
In fact most writers' personal data is now available in full on the internet.
Mine was there even before I got published. See http://www.fbi.nerd -
you'll find yourself there too.

- Henry Gould

Jack Spandrift's new CD, "Byron Hello Mercury", is available on the
Aliens R Us label.  Throw $10. up in the air & wait for the light.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 15:30:54 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
Subject:      Wyatt and not another?
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII

While I agree that Wyatt wrote some great poems, I think we should
remember that what counts as deeply personal for him is a complex
problem for us reading him today.  His lyric experiments were fabricated
from a wealth of 15th century cliches, and it might be true that most
of his word-choices were borrowings that were meant to sound quite
familiar. He did put them to strange uses now and then, but given his
trouble with Henry VIII over Anne, he could not risk sounding too personal
unless he wanted to get moved from the Tower to the chopping block.

One of my favorite Wyatt poems is neither original nor personal in our
sense of those terms, but compelling in its impersonal sense of
contradiction:

Fortune doth frown.
What remedy?
I am down
By destiny.

Gary R
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 14:48:25 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Judy Roitman 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and racism
In-Reply-To:  <199706241904.MAA01116@f36.hotmail.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

And if Dean Brink had run into some Chinese monks indulging in a little
IndianSubContinentalism 1000 years ago by, horror of horrors, actually
writing poems informed by their Buddhist practice --- what would he have
said then?

Complain about the editors' hyperbole, complain about the editorial
decisions, but you'd better believe this little Russian American Jewish
[not Christian, oh no] Buddhist who's sat hard on the cushion for over 20
years in sanghas which include Chinese, Japanese, Korean (and
Chinese-American, Japanese-American, Korean-American] members as both
students and teachers is not "purvey[ing] the myth of the Christian
missionary superiority as it expropriates candy Buddhism."

*Candy* Buddhism?  What kind of candy is that?  Buddhist practice is
fucking hard, buster.  No feel good shit, no way.  Your teeth will break
into smithereens on that kind of candy, for sure.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judy Roitman                             | "Whoppers   Whoppers   Whoppers!
Math, University of Kansas        |     memory fails
Lawrence, KS 66045                 |         these are the days."
913-864-4630                          |                Larry Eigner, 1927-1996
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 13:44:49 PDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hoa Nguyen 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and Racism
Content-Type: text/plain

>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 18:19:01 -0700
>From: "Dean A. Brink" 
>To: Discussion of Contemporary American Poetry 
>Subject: Re: (Fwd) "Buddhistic poetry" & racism (fwd)

Hoa here.

I have been thinking alot about "orientalism", "racism" and editing an
anthology.  I would like to go through Brink's message as a way into
this dialogue about __Under a Single Moon__ co-edited with Kent Johnson
and its subsequent scrutiny by Walter Lew in his anthology
__Premonitions__.  In Lew's editor's afterward (which Kent supplied
earlier so I won't duplicate his efforts)  Lew pointed to a lack of
Asian American voices in American letters.  Lew also used the C. Forche
edited anthology __Poetry of Witness__ as an example of editor bias in
action (suggesting that certain atrocities, when by the hands of the
American government, where not "witnessed" here by Asian eyes).
I want to also encourage a response to this criticism from Carolyn
Forche and others familiar with the Witness anthology.  Also would like
to know if the CAPL is discussing the Witness anthology as well as USM.
(Apologies if this discussion took place before I joined).

Brink said:

"I find this discussion about the place of Buddhism in American poetry
to be representative of the mainstream - from Gary Snyder to any number
of poets that employ Asian imagery for superficial exotic effects. We
need to turn the anthropological eye back on the non-Asian Americans who
have convinced themselves that they are the superior, true Buddhist
poets of the day."

This assertion itself is lacks the very "anthropological eye" that the
writer calls for-- indeed what is "Asian imagery"?  Rice paddies, water
lilies?  I do not know which Americans he is referring to as being
"convinced of their superiority as true"-- I know that Phillip Whalen,
whose health is failing along with his eye-sight at the Zen center where
he is abbot, could not be held guilty of this.  Nor could his poetry.

"What is exposed by the anthology and the defense by its contributors,
editors, and others is the extreme to which Orientalism is indeed a
unacknowledged part of American poetry and poetics. It goes hand in hand
with a rhetoric of sincerity and is always riddled with "bad
consciousness" born out of its blindness to the historical."

I agree that Orientalism is often unacknowledged in American *anything*,
including poetry.

"Who gains from this? Certainly it does Asian-Americans no good."

What?  My only response to this is "SAYS YOU!!"  But seriously, I am
frustrated by this smug paternalistic attitude.


"Poetry by Asian-Americans tends to include poetry highly conscious of
stereotypes, orientalism, racism, and the many ironies born of the
ahistorical ignorance exhibited in Kent Johnson and his associates."

I am sorry to break Mr. Brink tidy bubble of how Asian Americans tend to
be-- (as a representative of the not-so-model-minority)-- but
Asian-Americans can model the very stereotypes that are offered as
models of Asians-- Frank Chan, in his foreward to __ The Big
Aiiiiiiii!__, was in fact, highly critical of fellow Chinese American
writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan for what he read as
embracing the white-Christian assumptions about the misogynistic and
incompetent Chinese male character.  And Garrett Hongo's _Open Boat_
anthology was equally criticized for its narrow aesthetic decisions for
it excluded experimental writing by Asian-Americans, which, it was
contended, furthered an image of what Asian Americans wrote like--
traditional, narrative, image-driven lyric.

"That Lew and others are angry should be Mr. Johnson's first clue that
he may be in the Buddhistic loop of consciousness, but he's out in apple
pie left field otherwise."

That Lew was the first to voice his concern about anthologies-- using
Johnson and Forche as two examples-- says more.

And what does it say for editors/editing practices when my work-- which
is "experimental" in approach-- is accepted for an anthology edited by
(white) editors (with similar experimental tastes) and also rejected by
the (Asian) editors of an anthology of Vietnamese American poets (with a
more image based lyric narrative take of poetry)?  (see #3 below).

"That Asian-Americans would be excluded is obvious: the editors of the
anthology sought to reinforce a "vision" of Asia (for which Buddhism
serves as a metonym) that is less-than-discretely post-colonialist in
tone. The white Buddhist tribe represented in the anthology purveys the
myth of the Christian missionary superiority as it expropriates candy
Buddhism. Buddhism becomes a commodity among a New Age people ('in
search of deeper truths') who sample various religious imagery to evoke
a sensibility that peaks with their pleasantly bourgeois conundrums, or
offers a refreshing disorientation vis-a-vis the logocentrism of
everyday life."

That there were no Asian Americans in this anthology was suprising to me
given the geographical origin of Buddhism.  This to me does also say
something about the social pressures that are exerted between groups.
Mr Lew said as much-- and I agree that anthologizing in general is a
tricky thing.  Buddhism is commodified because-- hello look around you--
editors have to find a handle for poetry in the market place.  Calling
yourself a school of something has a similiar affect-- even when the
"handle" groups disparate approaches to writing.

Buddhism is not held as the property of Asians-- and the whole point is
to practice and give--  to suggest that it is "expropriated"
feels to me another way of making Asians subverient to the dominant.

I want to make further points but am running out of time (have to go to
work) and want to post this for Kent Johnson's response before he takes
off for vacation.  So in brief--

1)  Is there any anthology that does not reflect the interests, cohorts,
and tastes of the editor?


2)  Is there any anthology that is pure from the wider social contructs
the editor operates in?

3)  Wouldn't it be closer to the truth for any editor to write something
like "The poets/poems in this collection are my friends, people I
admired and/or work I am interested in that I happened to see or was
sent to me.  I have presented them in book form because I want others to
see it and hope that there is enough interest in these poets so that I
can continue to publish poetry-- because we all should have more
poetry".


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=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 16:49:43 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!

kali
i'm a little puzzled on a few points.  first, i DID say quite clearly that at
the moment, my gripe is incest poetry.  i did NOT say the only, or primary, or
biggest group of bad poetry is incest poetry, only that at the moment, that is
my particular gripe.

i said that because that is the main amount of bad poetry i'm seeing.  i don't
see that much bad vietnam poetry (though i know the material, having seen my
share of it and then some) so i don't have so much of a problem with it at
the moment.  when i was in at umass boston where we have a lot of vet poets,
i saw a lot more and then it bugged me more.  when i was at a writing
conference run by vietnam vets (which is, by the way, where a friend who ran
one of the workshops gave me, as badly needed advice, the gem "bad poetry
should NEVER be celebrated.  he is, by the way, a working class guy who
writes about vietnam and is one of the people i'd have quoted if i'd have
had room.  HIS writing i celebrate from here to christmas!) i saw a bunch
more, but still, i saw even more incest poems than vietnam poems.  who knows,
maybe i have a sort of look that says "give me your tired, your hungry,
your incest/molestation poems..."  i'm sure you know that bruce weigl (who
i mention as writer of one of my favorite incest/molestation poems) is a
vietnam vet who writes some of the most extraordinary poetry, and vietnam
poetry, i've ever read, so i'm a bit puzzled that you bring in vet poetry
as if i wouldn't know about it...  maybe i missed something there?...

also, i am not setting up straw dummies in the least.  again, maybe this is
a reflection of our editorial approachability, but alot of the writers whose
work i don't take, or who i don't cheer and froth at the mouth (mediocre poet
has been awful at times.  and wait a minute, i SAY that, so again, having
given at least one example from life, isn't it pretty clear i'm getting
flack on this?... anyway, before i got lost in the paranthetical forest...
i wrote this article in part as something to refer people with a gripe because
i kept stressing boring quality issues about their Important Subject poems.
i mean, i have fantasies of xeroxing this en masse and just automatically
handing it out whenever the usual quarrel starts.

don't any of the people you send rejection slips ever get back to you?  mine
do, and how!

i wonder if i should rewrite to be a little more explicit here, but one of the
big problems when a writer writes the Big Subject poems is that there are a
million meaningless cliches out there on the Big Subjects.  and when writer
gets very enamored of the Big Subject, they often stop actually listening to
the vein of real feeling inside/wherever that they are (hopefully) writing
from, and tap straight into a mainline of Big Cliches on the Big Subject.  i
remember, to use an example you might relate to, a vietnam war poem by a
writer who began one story line, with one character, only to get so caught
up in big cliches that he ended up contradicting a number of points in his
story line just because he got sucked into putting down those cliches instead
of following his story.  when asked how if he said so and so was a quiet guy
he could later give a description of so and so, i believe the phrase was,
"busting chops left and right" he was unable to really come up with anything.
when asked to pare back to what he wanted to describe, to say in just prose
words what happened, it turned out to have a substantially different feel from
poem, which was a very melodramatic "and then i ripped the top off that
sucker and sneered at death" etc... moreover, some of the actual events
changed!  THAT is what i'm addressing, in part, when i describe getting
caught in the cliches and forgetting the real experience/idea/germ of poem.

e
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 14:11:26 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jay Schwartz 
Organization: Salestar
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

This response is from Kathy Lou Schultz, she asked me to post it for her.

I agree whole-heartedly with Kali Tal that a discourse around
class and poetics is lacking, if not invisible, and welcome
the opportunity to discuss these important issues more in-
depth. That said, my response to the construction of a
"working class poetry" is set out below.

First, the drive to create "poetries of identity" (a phrase
I've been using for some time) tends to solidify normalizing
tendencies in terms of forms, style, and content, i.e. does a poem have
to be narrative, "I"-based and "about" work in order to be
considered "working class"? In all of the "working class" poetry
anthologies I've seen it does.

Furthermore, drawing a straight line between one's "identity"
and one's poetics is problematic at best and confuses the
biographical information about the poet with poetic works that genuinely
seek to explore, unseat, complicate subjectivity.  The obvious point
to be made is that identities are infinitely mediated and complex;
coming from a particular class, race, gender, etc. is not--and
should not be--the map through which one can trace a trajectory toward a
particular type of poetic expression. n.b. I find the quest
to uncover a "women's language" to be wrought with the same
oversimplification.

For example, are we sure that "working class poets generally
have less patience with Theory"? Which working class poets? Where?
And if I, with my working class background, write poetry which
concerns itself with Theory is my writing no longer "working class"?
Do we define poetries of identity based on biographical data?
content? form? Can this be applied to other art forms? For example,
how could I discern a "working class" sculpture from a ruling
class one?

It cannot be disputed that privilege leads to the time, space
and circumstances in which to produce art. Poor and working class
writers are not afforded this luxury. This affects poetic
production in important ways and is perhaps the most
frustrating aspect of trying to write that working class writers face.
Yet a shared class background does not necessarily lead to a shared
poetic. What is needed is a critical discernment which uses
biography, social and historical contexts, and other factors
as lenses through which to examine poetic works, not a process of
labelling which conflates identity with poetic production that only
succeeds in putting poems, and poets, into little boxes.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 17:49:02 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Kali,
     Since we now sem to be somewhat more direct and honest here, I do have
a couple of words to toss in:

     My first response to an article on this issue (which I think may have
given
impetus to this current revolt against the personal) was - this lady is afraid
of something.  The something might be honesty, reality, therapy, etc....,
but the
something is there. I suspect it might be an element in other attitudes (I get a
little squirmy reading about castration, I think).

     But as a psychologiist I know it is a mistake and retraumatizing to push
overmuch for confrontation.

     Reality of experience might or might not matter when it comes to
literature,
but I think much of this kind of discussion obscures some essential points.
"Good" writing is related to if not synonymous with "authentic" living.

     1. I think "good" writing hits universals and universals are usually found
in the most intense personal experience (whether presented realistically or in
fantasy (e. g., Conrad, Styron).

     2.  Writing itself (or the act of "honing" a piece) leads to universality
or honesty of personal experience (John Gardner's "On moral fiction" comes to
mind here.  He was as honest as his writing and he felt his writing keep him so.

     3.  In my experience writing, life, and therapy do not differ in any
essential
aspects.  One can be deceptive (toward self as well as others) in any of these
activities, but it generally shows.

I don't think, BTW that all literature should try for authenticity any more
than
I think all life should be serious.
tom bell
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 19:10:12 +0000
Reply-To:     dmachlin@flotsam.com
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         Dan Machlin 
Subject:      Kinsella/Jaeggi Reading Cancelled

The reading/performance of John Kinsella and Urs Jaeggi at The Segue
Performance Space in New York  scheduled for this Thursday, June 26, is
unfortunately cancelled.  There are plans for another reading in
November.  Sorry folks!
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 00:01:46 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         john chris jones 
Subject:      parts of the cyberepic
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

cyberepic: 4th posting

5

(more of the Dante/jones conversation)



... and I'm not a clone, types Dante.

mr. jones lets that stand though he wonders at D's vocabulary ...

So now Dante, he types (if your new new presence or even resurrection is to
be credited) please tell me how you are going to do this rewriting of
everything that we fail to believe in? Are you going to infer your whole
argument from the absence of capital letters or are you going to look at
all the other kinds of significant detail that you can perceive in modern
life?

Dante replies swiftly to this, for his mind is already full of expectations
and immediacies and he can't wait to get his thoughts into conjunction with
all the details and practicalities (as well as the theologies or their
substitutes) that he guesses are waiting for him in this manifestation six
or seven hundred years after the first Dante gave his poetic vision to the
world as it was ...

But he has a difficulty, he types, still speaking of himself in the third
person. It is that as pure spirit, no more mortal nor human than the forms
of these letters, he has no direct way of encountering modern life as it's
lived, nor even of reading the printed literature. All he can get to is
what his still surprised correspondent, mr. jones, can write in words on
this screen. Are you willing to do it, mr. jones, he asks. Are you able to
give me enough of a picture of life as you people live it for me to react
to and recompose into the more complete reality that I don't believe you
believe in yourselves? I mean the undivided world.

Yes I can, types jones immediately, dropping the mr. It is lucky for you
that you've reached the screen of someone who has not only lived a long
time but has written thousands of pages in which he has noted his thoughts
and experiences. They are waiting to be made sense of ... How did you know
that I have them, and have despaired of finding someone like you to help me
out?

Don't ask me to break the illusion completely, mr. jones, it's not my forte
to destroy. I am here to read all you have written and then to reply with
my own version of things, as seen from my position, still an exile, but
never losing my faith in the good and the beautiful while retaining an eye
for what is not.

Can you wait until the morning Dante, types jones, for it's time I went to bed.

Dante, requiring no sleep, food, air, nor any earthly sustenance, asks if
there is something already written that he can read and study in the night?

Uh ... yes there are thousands of pages, types jones, and many are hardly
legible or understandable to anyone but myself ... But here are some I call
noteart that I've begun to type out ...

Just copy and paste them onto the screen, types Dante, and attend to your
dreams ... I wish you well.

But mr. jones is already asleep and into his dream come more words by
Wallace Stevens:

The fault lies with an over-human god,
Who by sympathy has made himself a man ...

(from 'Esthetique du mal', The collected poems, Faber and Faber, London,
1955, p315,lines and poem chosen by chance process before reappearing in
dream and on screen)




(c) 1997 john chris jones
You may transmit this text to anyone for any non-commercial purpose if you
include the copyright line and this sentence.


If you want to read more of it, or would prefer it to stop, please tell me
backchannel and I'll try to act accordingly. This is its first publication.


Previous postings appeared in Poetics Digests of 4-5th, 9-10th and 11th
-12th June 97.



(correction to previous posting:

N'est pas? ... Or shall I say non =E9? or is it non=E9?

should have appeared as

N'est ce pas? ... Or shall I say none or non e?

Eudora read my accented e as =E9. Dante forgives both of us - he says we
are as we are and he is something else.)
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 17:24:52 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hugh Steinberg 
Subject:      Re: more haiku-gram
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>>>[d.i.]:
>>>
>>> forget the spam-po
>>> what I'd really like to see
>>> is donut haiku
>>>
>>> buttermilk sugar
>>> they knead me & they fry me
>>> none taste the center
>>>
>>>[Steven Marks]:
>>>
>>> the center holds holes
>>> something to nibble around
>>> no mess on my hands
>>>
>>>[d.i.]:
>>>
>>> without the coffee
>>> a donut is not done here
>>> darkness to imbibe
>>>
>>>[s.m.]:
>>>
>>> nut to do but dough
>>> coffee from a hell of beans
>>> my do-dough dissolves
>>>
>>>[d.i.]:
>>>
>>> nonesistence hides
>>> in the very word donut
>>> nut signifies naught
>>>
>>>[Katherine Lynes]:
>>>
>>> yellow innards splooch
>>> bavarian dive bomber
>>> cannot hold center
>>>
>>>[d.i.]:
>>>
>>> and what about do?
>>> do of course signifies dough
>>> a dough-naught for you!
>>>
>>>[D.P. Salmon]
>>>do-ough a de-ar
>>>a whole in one
>>>raison drops in bun
>
>
>[Randolph Healy]
>Sphere before torus
>when the centre was not holed
>goodbye nut hi  ring
>
>[L. MacMahon]
>batter my heart and
>artery o sweet and fat
>confectionary

I love everyone
says the old cop on his beat
let 'em eat donuts.

Hugh Steinberg
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 19:33:12 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and racism

Judy --

<< And if Dean Brink had run into some Chinese monks indulging in a
little IndianSubContinentalism 1000 years ago by, horror of horrors,
actually writing poems informed by their Buddhist practice --- what
would he have said then? >>

yes, I was thinking abt. that today while walking down the street (a
familiar enough theme): the migration of Buddhism to America & its
interesting resonance w/ a kindred migration to the (erstwhile foreign)
East Asian lands some time ago, a few turns of the calendrical --

cheers
d.i.

  Stepping over the sleepers the fires the calendars
  my voice turns to you
     - W.S. Merwin, "The Way to the River"
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 20:02:04 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: more haiku-gram

>[d.i.]:

> forget the spam-po
> what I'd really like to see
> is donut haiku

> buttermilk sugar
> they knead me & they fry me
> none taste the center

>[Steven Marks]:

> the center holds holes
> something to nibble around
> no mess on my hands

>[d.i.]:

> without the coffee
> a donut is not done here
> darkness to imbibe

>[s.m.]:

> nut to do but dough
> coffee from a hell of beans
> my do-dough dissolves

>[d.i.]:

> nonesistence hides
> in the very word donut
> nut signifies naught

>[Katherine Lynes]:

> yellow innards splooch
> bavarian dive bomber
> cannot hold center

>[d.i.]:

> and what about do?
> do of course signifies dough
> a dough-naught for you!

>[D.P. Salmon]:

>do-ough a de-ar
>a whole in one
>raison drops in bun

>[Randolph Healy]

>Sphere before torus
>when the centre was not holed
>goodbye nut hi  ring

>[L. MacMahon]

>batter my heart and
>artery o sweet and fat
>confectionary

>[Hugh Steinberg]:

>I love everyone
>says the old cop on his beat
>let 'em eat donuts.

[d.i.]:

no start & no end
till you yourself nibble the
do (history) nut
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 20:47:51 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      further re: Buddhism and racism

further on the --

why did the Patriarch come from the West? [i.e., from India to China]
threadlet of the "Is American Buddhism an expropriation from East
Asia?" threadlet of the "Beneath a SINGLE [heavens!] Moon" thread . . .

it's my impression that one of the great delights, in the early centuries of
Chan [Zen] in China, was that of having authentic native-born Buddhist
teachers re-inventing Buddhism with a Chinese face, rather than (as was
the wont for a good while theretofore) always looking to India &
Indianism for authority & authenticity.

And teachings (& then, Buddhist poetry!) given in Chinese! -- that was a
radical new development.  Esp. when poets integrated the new teachings
with native ("classical" Chinese) literary forms of expression -- not
simply the doggeral of scripture, but the more subtle hues of "personal"
(naturalistic) experience, underpinned by Buddhist theory & practice.

& teachings even in a vernacular, jaunty, experimental Chinese (rather
than the usual: blah-blah-blah Sanskritized Chinese of the scriptures that
people kept on running over to India to find more of -- always making a
big deal of India, always assuming that only from India could you get
"real" Buddhism.  It took a long time to get over that).  After Hui Neng,
the whole thing began seriously to break loose -- he still taught the
Diamond Sutra, but his realization (or do I misremember?) was arrived at
while grinding rice in the temple kitchen -- not while mouthing
fancy-dancy Sanskrit (which he didn't know at that point, meseems).

In the next several generations, you had these radical forms of teaching --
folks burning up the Indian sciptures, glaring, talking plainspeak, or not
talking, or asking & answering questions that no one in Indian Buddhism
(the erst standard of authenticity) would have so posing or so answering.

(anyway, nothing like a good occasion for a rant, n'est pa?)

cheers, d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 21:01:56 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steven Marks 
Subject:      Re: more haiku-gram
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

[d.i.]:

forget the spam-po
what I'd really like to see
is donut haiku

buttermilk sugar
they knead me & they fry me
none taste the center

[Steven Marks]:

the center holds holes
something to nibble around
no mess on my hands

[d.i.]:

without the coffee
a donut is not done here
darkness to imbibe

[s.m.]:

nut to do but dough
coffee from a hell of beans
my do-dough dissolves

[d.i.]:

nonesistence hides
in the very word donut
nut signifies naught

[Katherine Lynes]:

yellow innards splooch
bavarian dive bomber
cannot hold center

[d.i.]:

and what about do?
do of course signifies dough
a dough-naught for you!

[D.P. Salmon]:

do-ough a de-ar
a whole in one
raison drops in bun

[Randolph Healy]

Sphere before torus
when the centre was not holed
goodbye nut hi  ring

[L. MacMahon]

batter my heart and
artery o sweet and fat
confectionary

[Hugh Steinberg]:

I love everyone
says the old cop on his beat
let 'em eat donuts.

[d.i.]:

no start & no end
till you yourself nibble the
do (history) nut

[s.m.]:

from naut- to navel
my do-naught, my omphalos
which one to fill up?
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 18:03:29 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: Is the self-evident evidence of a self?
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Have just finished reading the responses in the current _Boston Review_ to
Marjorie Perloff's earlier article on the Yasusada texts and their
publication (yes, it takes a while for things to reach me up here in the
mountains --

more interesting to me even than the "original" success de/du scandal(e)
is the mode of response here -- the "Yasusada" affair becomes a screen
upon which a writer might project his or her anxieties of the day -- for
example:

Mr. Simic tells us "With the rise of literary theory in the last 20 years
and the quick turnover of critical approaches, not only American but world
literature lost out."  Now, this is preceded by the complaint that "Our
big secret, our unspoken literary scandal, is the near total ignorance by
our writers, editors and academics of literature being written elsewhere
in the world."  Mr. Simic appears to believe that the place on the coffee
table once held by Robbe-Grillet (or "even" an anthology of Spanish
poetry) is now given to a succession of THEORISTS -- which only goes to
show that Mr. Simic visits a different class of coffee tables from any I
have ever experienced.

but it would seem that this theory is not read any more closely than the
texts of Yasusada were -- for Greg Glazner and Jon Davis tell us in their
response that "Michel Foucault's writings, which focus exclusively on
uncovering social power structures, lurk in the background of this
confused literary scene."  EXCLUSIVELY?

more close reading of the same sort: Simic concludes his letter -- :Only
in our academic cirles is the claim being made that it's philosophically
impossible, even for an experienced cook, to judge whether the meal
prepared by someone else was cooked badly or not."  the which makes me
wonder if Simic's experience of literary theory has in fact been confined
to coffee tables.

of course, there is a bit of theorizing going on in Glazner and Davis's
contribution -- They would distinguish a "true multicultarlism" from
whatever it is they think is going on, one in which "'Excellence' would
have to return . . . " immediately adding "that standards for such a
complex range of work would never achieve anything approaching certainty"

well, as my good buddies Romy and Michelle would say, duh --

so, the problem is that all this poiltically correct relativism and
victimology has taken us away from true standards of excellence, which we
need to get back to as fast as we can, though we can never be certain what
those standards may be --

Mr. Weinberger adds:

"Yasusada occurs at a moment when the Eng. Dept. has split into two
contradictory 'post-modernisms": multiculturalism and deconstruction (and
its spin-offs).  One side wants to hear the stories that haven't been
told, and the other doubts that stories can be told. (One side, at least,
still wants to read literature.)"

I suppose it would be too much to expect people to read closely, quote
accurately, attempt fair representations of the positions of others (you
know, those "others" we hear about so much now), or at least to give some
evidence of ever having read the works they claim now dominate academic
literary study --

but I have to get back to all these books of poetry and fiction and
criticism my wife and I have piled all over our own little coffee table --
If this smattering of abuse whets your appetite, get the current issue of
the _Boston Review_ for the full text version (and Marjorie Perloff's most
restrained reply) --



[and did I miss something in the Yasusada affair?  I hadn't heard that
these texts had been published by English Departments]

interdepartmentally yours,
aldon
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 20:58:58 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      further re: Buddhism and racism, p.s.

an inadvertant elision:

<< . . . glaring, talking plainspeak, or not talking, or asking & answering
questions that no one in Indian Buddhism (the erst standard of
authenticity) would have [DREAMED OF] so posing or so answering. . .
. >>
d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 13:35:04 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Wystan Curnow 
Organization: University of Auckland
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!
In-Reply-To:  <199706242149.RAA23153@use.usit.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Thomas,
          To be frank I have a squirmy feeling that you've re-
traumatized the lady Eliza.   Unless of course you're NOT being
straight. Should we expect irony from a psychologist?
          Yours sincerely,
             Wystan
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 22:15:37 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      no trauma but puzzlement

dear wystan and tom and all

no i'm not re-traumatized!  um, wystan, i'm not entirely sure the original
article tom mentions was mine -- he goes back to revolt against the
personal and throws in castration, and i had a thought he might have meant
initial k dawn posts?...

if he meant my article, bang on the nose!  i am terrified of more hordes
of disgruntled relatives of Mediocre Poet waving sheaves of bad writing
at me in a Mediocre but very sincere frenzy!

i have made a serious ommission in terms i think.  i don't mean true as
in, necessarily, real and it actually happened.  i mean true in that it
is a compound of observed reality, contains flashes of all sorts of
reality blended through the magic of your fiction set into writing.  you
all remember the post months ago about someone listening to conversation
in a cafe as part of a class assignment, and it was rather different than
they imagined it would have been.  THAT is the idea -- a fully imagined,
true in that it has versimilitude, even if in its own world.  for example,
vonnegut's people are exceedingly wacky, eugene o'neils people are
exceedingly tormented, flannery o'connor's people are exceedingly funny
and so on.  i am not convinced anyone as bizarre as a vonnegut character
ever quite existed, but he has the details down so well, has so much
consistency and versimilitude, works with such intensely imagined
world, and i've heard people say things like the things his characters
say so often that i'm not sure but what they might not exist somewhere.

by the by, point about privileging more "important" types of experiences,
i.e. poem about vietnam automatically more "important" than poem about
swimming is, i think, the heart of a dangerous fallacy.  a bad poem
about vietnam which is full of cliches, internally inconsistent, not
based on real observation but based on crummy t.v. show cliches, is
not automatically better, or more important than a lovely poem about,
say, "Go, lovely rose!  Tell her that wastes her time and me..."

when i want a poem that touches a bitter, betrayed, empathetic mood
in me, and i go to the bad vietnam poem, it is still, well, YUCK!
i am re-traumatized.  i am fed a slimy syrup of cliches.  now, i am
in a particularly buoyant summer mood, or, have just lost another
very dear patient, and find that rose poem, and i am moved, it is
really fine, feel something strong said about eternity.  same, am
feeling particularly lost and without hope, and read swimming poem,
or most of maxine kumin, and i am given for a strong timeless
reading moment a waft of old new england, of roots, joy, peace,
long musings on all sorts of things...  i got, in other words, what
i came for in well written poem.  now, imagine a well written viet
nam poem.  but i want summer, bouyant good humor, wit, delicacy,
lovely imagery, that incredible high of being directly connected
for a moment to a long ago point in history.  um, the vietnam poem
might be very very good, but it is not giving me those things.

that a poem transmits a reality, full, imagined, multi-shaded, even
a not true but realistic reality, is, i would think, the main thing.
an abstract poem could do the same thing, no? -- it is, if well
made, the poet's well crafted multi-level work.  has its own internal
principles, contains coding in the way it is put together...  the
leaps between spicers images, the intense bursts of experience.

by the by, i'm not sure how class got dragged in here but my motto
on same is don't make assumptions. people you might assume are the
Upper Class (put in subtext elitist snob rich repressors) may in
fact be poor as church mice, the only people for generations in
their family to have any school at all, autodidacts, may work in
job cleaning -- think of judy grahn, meridel leseur, tillie olson.
all gloriously verbal, tremendously brilliant, add audre lord to
that list, all very capable of using polysyllabic latinate words
and all the buzzwords anyone could desire.  and all working class.
can work in opposite direction.  class.  much more delicate than
at first seems.  always at work in america, just not so overtly.
and, in america, often, even most often, bounded in terms of
employment, not birth.  the kali tal who has academic job at
yale is, indeed, considered in class many steps above laboring
slob who does secretarial/administrative work and works as nurse's
aide.  same kali tal enjoys automatic respect, privileges, social
assumption of "eligibility" for all sorts of things working jane
gets snubbed for, be working jane ever so erudite!
e
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 21:40:20 +0000
Reply-To:     ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Robert Archambeau 
Organization: Lake Forest College
Subject:      In Defense of Simic
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

Aldon Nielsen wrote:

> Mr. Simic tells us "With the rise of literary theory in the last 20 years
> and the quick turnover of critical approaches, not only American but world
> literature lost out."  Now, this is preceded by the complaint that "Our
> big secret, our unspoken literary scandal, is the near total ignorance by
> our writers, editors and academics of literature being written elsewhere
> in the world."  Mr. Simic appears to believe that the place on the coffee
> table once held by Robbe-Grillet (or "even" an anthology of Spanish
> poetry) is now given to a succession of THEORISTS

Well:

If we take Simic to mean that we are faced with an either/or situation,
in which we can read either poetry or books of theory, then his point is
cetainly objectionable, even before we take into account the challenging
of the theory/poetry distinction that has been at the heart of a great
deal of writing over the past couple of decades.

But:

I think Simic has a valid point in that graduate schools tend to
encourage a great deal of cosmopolitan foraging around for the latest in
literary theory (a good thing), but fail to extend that encouragement to
poetry, novels, etc (an inexcusably bad thing).

And:

This was certainly my experience throughout most of grad school, and has
been the experience of friends of mine at several institutions -- one is
urged to know about what people are theorizing in Europe and (less
often, and only more recently) elsewhere, but if you don't come to
graduate school with the sense that you ought to look into Serbian or
Tamil or Swedish or Egyptian or Australian poetry, you almost certainly
won't pick it up there.  Even multiculturalism tends, too often, to
refer only to American multiculturalism.

So:

We need more people like Simic (whose _The Horse Has Six Legs_ is the
best anthology of Serbian poetry to be published in America, and whose
_Another Republic_ helped introduce many European and Latin American
writers in the US), people who are willing and able to cross cultural
boundaries and bring work from elsewhere to us.  If he comes off as
frustrated in this essay, I suppose he's been given cause enough, as
American education and American readers continue all-too-often continue
to do only lip service to the idea of a cross-cultural literary dialog.

To Reiterate and Conclude:

Pushing students to read theoretical writers from all over the globe is
a good thing, a real gain over earlier and more insular practices.  We
ought to extend this cosmopolitan urge to nontheoretical writing as
well, and we have, by and large (with exceptions, absolutely, but they
_are_ exceptions and not the rule) failed to do so.  And whatever we may
think about what Simic implies about theory, he is absolutely right in
urging American readers to be less insular, and in worrying that the
academy is failing to right the situation.



--
Robert Archambeau
Department of English
Lake Forest College
Lake Forest, IL 60045

http://www.lfc.edu/~archamb/
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 23:49:50 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      Re: no trauma but puzzlement
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Great post Elisa.  yes,the reference was to k. dawn's.
tom bell

At 10:15 PM 6/24/97 -0400, you wrote:
>dear wystan and tom and all
>
>no i'm not re-traumatized!  um, wystan, i'm not entirely sure the original
>article tom mentions was mine -- he goes back to revolt against the
>personal and throws in castration, and i had a thought he might have meant
>initial k dawn posts?...
>
>if he meant my article, bang on the nose!  i am terrified of more hordes
>of disgruntled relatives of Mediocre Poet waving sheaves of bad writing
>at me in a Mediocre but very sincere frenzy!
>
>i have made a serious ommission in terms i think.  i don't mean true as
>in, necessarily, real and it actually happened.  ,,,,
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 00:12:12 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!

Joe Amato -- both w.class ("Joe") & top-drawer? ("Amato" -- Italianate
daliant -- W.Stevens' "scrivening amorist": amore [moon hitsyer eye] =
amato -- a relation of Laurie Amat's? [SF performance musician; neh,
unlikely]) . . . Joe says:

<< anyway, part of the issue i see in this thread has to do with the status
of the real... i think the real still has real status... i use "real" here as a
category (sometimes i'll write "actual," just b/c, as we all know,
everything is real, or can be deemed so) . . .  >>

 Real walks        into a restaurant
 best believe the dude getsa table

 from the other side  ov the tracks?
 nurture nature      ( birch   beech )

 like money on trees?     sure shit man
 actual leaves    autochthonous article

 can handle everyting   like what if stuff
 really happens? takes it in stride    he's

 got the scoop   or did you really think
 they call him real for     idle courtesy?

  whistling diction?  re  al  i  ty
  check    mate    illusion credit

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 01:25:47 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Orange 
Subject:      simic, theory vs. multicult
In-Reply-To:  <199706250408.AAA15442@julian.uwo.ca>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

one measure of the ways in which (primarily french) theory has enjoyed a
"translational advantage" over other foreign-language writing (poetry,
fiction, etc.) as a function of academic disciplinarity:

i was going thru early essays by j. hillis miller (collected in _theory
now and then_, duke up 1991).  the very first essay, "the antitheses of
criticism: reflections on the yale colloquium" (1966, contemporaneous with
the infamous johns hopkins gathering), states in no uncertain terms in the
first paragraph, "for most of the participants part of the impetus for the
next advances in literary study will come from one form or another of
european criticism."  then you get the essays on poulet and the geneva
school.  references to saussure marx nietzsche freud derrida deleuze do
not appear until a 1972 essay, "tradition and difference."

e.g., he mentions in passing "'repetition' in the nietzschean sense of
that term as it has, for example, been identified by deleuze in
_difference et repetition_ or in _logique du sens_." -- with no ensuing
explication of the very tortuous conceptualization contained in those
texts, especially the former -- of course, neither of these texts had been
translated into english yet, but the assertion is that one *should* know
them if one doesn't already...).

witness too the praise heaped upon g. spivak for her translation of and
especially her preface to _of grammatology_, she a more or less
traditional yeats scholar up until that point.  (and e. said, too,
primarily a conradian...)

certainly very few foreign-language poetic/fictional/dramatic texts in
translation could ever have enjoyed the uncritical, unquestioning embrace
of north american english literature departments in the 1970s and 1980s.

and especially at graduate levels, at which point translated texts become
more or less rejected outright as objects of study: let the comparative
literature people worry about that.

comparative literature's major disciplinary crisis now of course is how to
formulate responses to multicultural studies; here's miller again in his
(1991) preface:
        in this new and as yet almost unimaginable global economy we are
        entering, made one world by these new technologies, the isolated
        study of single national literatures will soon seem as outmoded as
        old-fashioned nationalisms themselves.
[as well as the use of single national theories??]
        such study must be replaced by multi-lingual and multi-ethnic
        disciplines of collective research and teaching. these new
        disciplines are themselves as yet hardly imagined, like the new
        world we are entering.

i guess we are to start imagining!

t.
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 17:30:10 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

It seems to me that if the poet's background is essential to reading the
poem, then it would affect the poem in such a way that the reader of the
poem would know what it was.

I mean I am reminded of the old 60s thing. A says what's yr sign? B says
Pisces. A says I knew you were a Pisces from the way you......




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 23:17:46 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: grad school and the writers union
In-Reply-To:  <01BC7212.7E334BC0@annex-2.tiu.ac.jp>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>
>Has anyone ever taken a count of writers (serious writers--who'll do it no
>matter what) who are in the academy and out? I'd be willing to bet most are
>out. The in-ones might be more visible, but are they a majority, really?
>
>DT
>

Well, let's look at the generation just before mine. The writers inside the
academy include Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Ed Dorn, Robert Kelly, Amiri
Baraka, Jerome Rothenberg, D.G. Jones, Louis Dudek, Robin Blaser, Allen
Ginsberg, Anselm Hollo, Archie Shepp. William Eastlake, not many women.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 24 Jun 1997 23:41:30 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!

Kathy writes:

>What is needed is a critical discernment which uses
>biography, social and historical contexts, and other factors
>as lenses through which to examine poetic works, not a process of
>labelling which conflates identity with poetic production that only
>succeeds in putting poems, and poets, into little boxes.

Ummmm, yeah, sort of.  I come from a background in African American and
Women's studies, so I'm kinda committed to the notion that certain
categories of identity exist, though I'll be the first to say that the
boundaries of these categories are fluid and that their instability is an
integral part of their definition--they are floating signifiers which diff
groups wrestle over, trying to "fix" them for their own particular
(race/gender/class) specific ends.  So, Kathy, I'm hardly interested in
sticking poems, or poets, or people into little boxes.  Still, I find
generalizations useful, as long as it's clear that I'm not deeply invested
in them and that I expect the ground to shift.

Quite a bit of my book, _Worlds of Hurt_ describes the pressures on
"identity poets" and writers to generate narratives which conform to the
normative identity group prescriptions (and proscriptions).  I don't like
those pressures, so I'd hardly want to enforce them on working class poets
or anyone else. I think that the anthologies of working-class poetry Kathy
mentions would be as vulnerable to my critique as were the anthologies of
incest literature I slammed for their unconscious tendency to reinforce
white middle-class racist values.

None of this means that "working class" is a useless descriptor.  It merely
means that we need to understand it as a complex concept signalling a
constellation of social locations and cultural/economic influences.  Working
class origins are common to most of the Viet Nam veteran poets whose writing
I admire.  There's no straight line there; merely a correlation.  Kathy's
jump from my description of those poets to her own distaste for the search
for a "women's language" is, in my opinion, not warranted. I don't think
there's a "women's language" either (despite the fact I really like Dale
Spender's essays and think Suzette Hadin Elgin's SF is great).  I *do* think
that there are correlations between being a female person and being
oppressed in particular ways, and being allowed a certain range of
*expression* but I also think that the forms oppression and expression take
are shaped by (surprise) factors like race/class/culture.

It would never occur to me to define a particular person of working class
origins as "not working class" because of the way they wrote or theorized.
It's sort of like saying something a woman does is "unfeminine."  In short,
it's absurd--anything I do is feminine by definition, since I'm female--and
it's the action of an oppressor. Instead, I'm interested in trends in
working class writing, not in dictating format. My observations were
categorical (based on the poets I know and with whom I work, and the working
class scholars/critics with which I discuss that poetry) and not
prescriptive.  It's my job, as a critic, to make distinctions.  I use them
when I think they'll be useful.

Henry's comments about the "double edge" of poetry ring very true to me, and
I find his dualist description ("You have to experience it. It comes from
the sky") most useful.  Henry's "universal" seems to me to be quite
different from Thomas Bell's:

>1. I think "good" writing hits universals and universals are usually found
>in the most intense personal experience (whether presented realistically or in
>fantasy (e. g., Conrad, Styron).

I *don't* think good writing hits universals in that sense. I actually think
that most good writing takes work to understand, and I do find Styron,
particularly, to be the sort of writer I'd call appropriative in ways I can
only characterize as--for lack of better words--stupid and evil in a manner
that only privileged white men in this culture are *allowed* to be stupid
and evil. (And I know this last statement will evoke strong reaction. But,
hey, that's how I see it.)

When I teach, for example, Morrison's _Song of Solomon_, my biggest job is
convincing my mainly white, usually middle- to upper-class students that
they do *not* understand the book, that there is an entire dimension (the
black cultural/literary dimension) to which they they are almost wholly
blind, and that taking the time to *learn* to read Morrison will pay off
because it will make them more complex, more perceptive human beings in the
long run, they will get a lot more jokes, and they may even make better
political decisions because of what they have learned.  Styron (and writers
like him) give white, privileged readers the *impression* that they
understand what is going on in "alien" minds, but they don't have the
discipline/respect to pay attention to what folks who belong to the culture
they represent are *actually* writing, thinking, feeling, seeing. I mean,
_Confessions of Nat Turner_? Really....

And, Eliza, I do know Weigl's poetry--even know Weigl, though merely in
passing, as a table-mate at conference dinners.  I consider his work to be
carefully wrought, but more self-consciously literary (more in the MFA loop,
I suppose) than the writing I like best.  He and John Balaban are the most
celebrated Vwar poets, like Tim O'Brien and Robert Olen Butler are the most
celebrated Vvet novelists, but in all of their cases, I find that the
ultra-refined nature of their work actually undercuts the message that they
are ostensibly trying to get across. I like their early works best, and find
that at each remove, the intensity and the clarity of the poems are dimmed,
though structurally they are more elegantly contrived.  Actually, the vet
poetry you heard/read at the Joiner Center's writing workshops is probably
mostly the sort of vet poetry I *don't* much care for, though a few writers
I admire are in regular or semi-regular attendance (Ehrhart and Leroy
Quintana come to mind immediately).  In answer to your other question--about
the reaction of people to whom I send rejection slips--I do find that they
sometimes write back.  But I take a lot of time with my rejection letters
(which is one reason why I'm almost a year behind in my editorial responses)
and I find that people react positively to letter which explains clearly
what I think works or doesn't work about a poem.  If they agree with me,
they can revise.  If they don't agree, they can blow me off.  Works out
pretty well.  Can't say that I've received more than 2-3 huffy responses in
almost ten years of editing _Viet Nam Generation_.  Don't know what
conclusion to draw from that, but there it is.  And I'm still curious about
why the bad incest poetry bugs you so much.  I mean, bad Vwar poetry doesn't
*bug* me like you seem to be bugged.  I just don't publish it.

For someone who wants others to read her carefully (a reasonable desire, and
one I try to fulfill), you don't seem to be reading me very carefully.  You
write, in apparent response to me:

>by the by, point about privileging more "important" types of experiences,
>i.e. poem about vietnam automatically more "important" than poem about
>swimming is, i think, the heart of a dangerous fallacy.

I was quite careful about stating that poetry about traumatic events in the
life of the writer was *not* better or worse than other writing, but merely
different.  The only time *I* used the word "important" was in reference to
the feeling of the author of a certain type of VWar poetry that the most
"important thing" is "to make other people SEE/READ" the impact of that war.
My comment follows:

>A poem about swimming (which, of course, really *isn't* about swimming, or
>not in the way that we usually think of swimming) just isn't the same.  Can
>be good, even great.  But not the same.  These poets I'm talking about, they
>aren't waving; they're drowning.  And that makes all the difference.

As I said--I thought--clearly, I do not think all poetry about traumatic
events is "good" poetry, so it's pointless to take me to task for that.  It
doesn't seem to me to be an either/or proposition.  I *like* poems about
swimming, value them.  Why does making distinctions between them mean that I
have to *choose* between them or privilege one over the other?

>employment, not birth.  the kali tal who has academic job at
>yale is, indeed, considered in class many steps above laboring
>slob who does secretarial/administrative work and works as nurse's
>aide.  same kali tal enjoys automatic respect, privileges, social
>assumption of "eligibility" for all sorts of things working jane
>gets snubbed for, be working jane ever so erudite!

Errrr, that would be some *other* Kali Tal.  This particular Kali Tal is an
underemployed part-time academic living in Tucson. She codes HTML and does
freelance writing to pay her bills, shares a house with students cause she's
too broke to live alone, and tries to keep a nonprofit press afloat with no
institutional support.   None of the above erases her
born-with-a-silver-spoon sense of upper-class privilege--the kind of
privilege that years of poverty can never entirely undo.

I didn't (and don't) make any assumptions about the class of any poet on
this list--some I know and thus my opinion is not based on assumption;
others I don't know but I have seen reference to their class status in their
own posts or other writings.  Why so touchy on the whole issue?  Surely it's
a reasonable subject to broach.  The writers you name--Grahn, LeSeur,
Olson--all self-identified/identify specifically as working-class writers,
which of course does not mean that they are incapable of complex and even
jargon-filled writing (though they generally did not/do not indulge in the
latter, I'd argue, specifically for ideological reasons).  I think that you
are reading/seeing in my texts only the hooks you are looking for, instead
of paying attention to the words that are actually on the screen in front of
you.  Which leads me, again, to ask:  why is this all so loaded?

Kali
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 00:10:32 -0700
Reply-To:     dean@w-link.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Dean A. Brink" 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and Racism
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

In reply to Hoa Nguyen:

I don't think you are being fair in your criticism of my posting. First,
I was not
attacking Buddhism (I have more Buddhist bones in my atheistic body than
Christian ones, have "sat" and am fairly well-read in various texts from
Dogen in the original
Japanese and Chinese to D.T. Suzuki). My mother's funeral was conducted
by an
American Buddhist who I deeply respect (who is Caucasian for those
interested). Actually, when inspired I even write "Buddhist" on forms,
under religion. My own thought and interest in Japan arose in part out
of my interest in cultures that do not exhibit the closed matrices of
logocentrism. But Buddhism is not my field. Japanese poetry is.

I was clearly attacking the premises for the anthology _Under a Single
Moon_ and the blatant Orientalism in Kent Johnson's postings in general.

My main point was and is that Johnson represents a mainstream
(affiliated or not with New Age phenomena) that naturally thinks that
the aesthetic values, by which he judged the inclusion of an all-white
cast of poets and exclusion of Asian-American poets, are not a form of
bias. This bias is at best in bad faith, and at worst racist (but I
agree that "racism" is too strong a word).

The ax I am grinding is one of someone frustrated with the historical
aporia that has contributed to stereotyping, both in everyday life
(experienced by me with my Japanese friends) and in the proliferation of
books of Japanese poetry that reinforces an image and even language (in
our heritage of Orientalist translations) of nature-worshipping,
overflowing with "Buddha nature," and passive (when I see none of these
things in Japanese).

Hoa Nguyen wrote:
  Brink said:
  "I find this discussion about the place of Buddhism in American poetry

  to be representative of the mainstream - from Gary Snyder to any
number
  of poets that employ Asian imagery for superficial exotic effects. We
  need to turn the anthropological eye back on the non-Asian Americans
who
  have convinced themselves that they are the superior, true Buddhist
  poets of the day."

  This assertion itself is lacks the very "anthropological eye" that the

  writer calls for-- indeed what is "Asian imagery"?  Rice paddies,
water
  lilies?

How could I more clearly spell out the ironic dismissal of "Asian
imagery" than by
following it with "_for superficial exotic effects_."

  I do not know which Americans he is referring to as being
  "convinced of their superiority as true"-- I know that Phillip Whalen,

  whose health is failing along with his eye-sight at the Zen center
where
  he is abbot, could not be held guilty of this.  Nor could his poetry.

May I state that the issue, for me at least, is one of poetic discourse
not religion.
Religion takes many forms, none better or more valid than another.
I'm sorry to hear about Phillip Whalen, whose poetry I admire very much.
What I
was trying to introduce in passing was a contradiction in much American
poetry that positions itself as "Buddhist." Not all poetry, but
certainly Gary Snyder's, for he
more than anyone has developed a voice that has been replicated manifold
by other
poets.
The contradictions that I see in the _poetic discourse_ associated with
Snyder are
between the minimalist clarity (a "less is more" moralism that elevates
inaction and
subject-distancing effects) and an American discursive context for the
ahistoricizing mix of rhetorical devices expropriated from Buddhist
literature. As a random  example I opened Snyder's _No Nature: New and
Selected Poems_  to "The Canyon Wren," which cites Dogen (a major figure
in the founding of the Japanese Soto sect
of Zen Buddhism) and concludes:

"We beach up at China Camp
Between piles of stone
Stacked there by black-haired miners,
      cook in the dark
      sleep all night long by the stream.

These songs that are here and gone,
Here and gone,
To purify our ears."

An exotic image of Asia and Asians figure large here, no? The distance
between the romantic vision of laborers as they camp as
tourists/pilgrims/hikers suggests what? The last stanza suggests the
Buddhist flux of all phenomena, including words and song, purifies our
ears, which may or may not be read as underscoring a redemption.

Hoa Nguyen:

  I agree that Orientalism is often unacknowledged in American
*anything*,
  including poetry.

  "Who gains from this? Certainly it does Asian-Americans no good."

  What?  My only response to this is "SAYS YOU!!"  But seriously, I am
  frustrated by this smug paternalistic attitude.

I am sorry if my attitude offended you. I was trying to maintain a
certain voice
perhaps for the list(s). I would love to try to clarify why I think it
does
Asian-Americans no good. The answere is rather standard: because
Orientalism exoticizes and situates Asians as (often sexual) objects
without the self-determining power of a subject (which is why you are
attacking me, for apparently speaking for Asian-Americans {so...I should
just shut up...}).

But also, the attributed "paternalistic attitude" (I'm not that old,
first time to be
associated with this) is really more of a rebellious attitude, a refusal
to partake in
the manna of Orientalism, both as a student of Asian culture and as an
American
writing and translating poetry. I am rebelling against Snyder, and the
ideology of
New Age consumerism. I will not dismiss Snyder altogether, but wish to
question and explore the rhetorical positions he has developed.

  "Poetry by Asian-Americans tends to include poetry highly conscious of

  stereotypes, orientalism, racism, and the many ironies born of the
  ahistorical ignorance exhibited in Kent Johnson and his associates."

  I am sorry to break Mr. Brink tidy bubble of how Asian Americans tend
to
  be-- (as a representative of the not-so-model-minority)-- but
  Asian-Americans can model the very stereotypes that are offered as
  models of Asians-- Frank Chan, in his foreward to __ The Big
  Aiiiiiiii!__, was in fact, highly critical of fellow Chinese American
  writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan for what he read as
  embracing the white-Christian assumptions about the misogynistic and
  incompetent Chinese male character.  And Garrett Hongo's _Open Boat_
  anthology was equally criticized for its narrow aesthetic decisions
for
  it excluded experimental writing by Asian-Americans, which, it was
  contended, furthered an image of what Asian Americans wrote like--
  traditional, narrative, image-driven lyric.

I have no tidy bubble (I carefully stated "tends to include"), and am
aware that there are Asian-American poets who buy into stereotypes and
even Orientalism.
My assertion is based in part on my readings of _Premonitions_ and _The
Open
Boat_, which by any standards surely engage rather than censor
historical issues of
experiencing racism and stereotyping.

What needs to be discussed perhaps is the role of Buddhist rhetoric in
an American poetic discourse that has been stimulated by Buddhism for
roughly a century. It was certainly Orientalist, exoticizing initially.
When did this stop? What is the role of the shifts of power and cultural
clout over the years and around the Pacific? American-style
Buddhist-based poetics may enjoy an integral duplicity: while the
Western lyric subject displays an understood sense of a logocentric
context, it would be interesting to trace the development of the
(rhetorical) dispersion of subject in American Buddhist-inspired poetry.
What rings as being in "bad faith" is the appropriation of an image of
Asia that exists for the pleasure of the poet? When the Johnson post
came up, it was an opportunity to open up this can of worms.

One more point of interest is the role of "one hand clapping," an image
that enjoys mythic stature in American _poetry_. Isn't part of its
appeal that it resonates with a high-sounding Christian tone and the
very dispersal of logocentric authority?

Oyasumi nasai.
--

db
abd EALC UChicago
dean@w-link.net
abd abd abd abd abd abd db
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 01:16:13 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: grad school and the writers union
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

What's the point, George? Either these folks (none schooled in the craft in
universities, I think) have taught because it's their and the academy's
nature or it's a good gig for the otherwise marginally employable (myself at
times included).

At 11:17 PM 6/24/97 -0700, you wrote:
>>
>>Has anyone ever taken a count of writers (serious writers--who'll do it no
>>matter what) who are in the academy and out? I'd be willing to bet most are
>>out. The in-ones might be more visible, but are they a majority, really?
>>
>>DT
>>
>
>Well, let's look at the generation just before mine. The writers inside the
>academy include Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Ed Dorn, Robert Kelly, Amiri
>Baraka, Jerome Rothenberg, D.G. Jones, Louis Dudek, Robin Blaser, Allen
>Ginsberg, Anselm Hollo, Archie Shepp. William Eastlake, not many women.
>
>
>
>
>George Bowering.
>                                       ,
>2499 West 37th Ave.,
>Vancouver, B.C.,
>Canada  V6M 1P4
>
>fax: 1-604-266-9000
>e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 05:53:08 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and Racism

Dean A. Brink --

I've read, with interest, your response to Hoa Nguyen.  You might note
that meanwhile (or rather earlier -- last night) I posted something in the
manner of a response to Hoa's response to your post.  I shd. search to
see if I have your original post -- I've the odd idea that I've only read it as
cited (responded to) -- but in any event, you do, I'd say, somewhat
clarify your p.o.v. in the most recent missive -- and the specific focus on
Gary Snyder has, at least, the advantage of boiling down to some
particulars what -- in the form of generals (or what might seem
over-generals) -- is rather harder to figure one's way into.

Unfortunately, time at the moment is quite short, but I do want to dash
out a few words on what we could (at this point, maybe) call the Snyder
controversy.  I'd like to remark that I feel you have mis-read this poet; or
at least, that your reading differs tremendously from mine.

So happens, I first became aware of the name of Gary Snyder (in the 70s)
because of his translations of the Chinese poet Han Shan -- later, I
learned that he had also written his own work, and gradually came to
acquaint -- and to like -- what he had done.  In your reading of a few lines
from _No Nature_, you seem to think that he's discussing an Asian
image.  I feel he's presenting a Californian image.  You write:

<< As a random  example I opened Snyder's _No Nature: New and
Selected Poems_  to "The Canyon Wren," which cites Dogen (a major
figure in the founding of the Japanese Soto sect of Zen Buddhism) and
concludes:

"We beach up at China Camp
Between piles of stone
Stacked there by black-haired miners,
      cook in the dark
      sleep all night long by the stream.

These songs that are here and gone,
Here and gone,
To purify our ears."

An exotic image of Asia and Asians figure large here, no? >>

NO, rather, an image of camping out in California.  True, the poet's
manner of approaching (seeing -- articulating about) the campground is
informed by his thinking-through of a contemplative (and literary)
tradition -- but what distinguishes these lines it the radical attempt to
make all that his own, to discover the source of the weave in his own life
& experience and in the world of his immediate surround.  The "nature
images" are not Asian -- they're of what the poet literally saw in front of
his literal nose.  The imagination that organizes them as observation &
recollection & thought -- is an imagination that has digested Buddhist
traditions and sought to find the source of those traditions in the world
(outer and inner) that is literally in front of the poet's nose.  I don't
happen to know where "China camp" is located, but I'll bet you five
bucks it's not in China.

What -- for me -- distinguishes Snyder from (maybe) some prior
generations of travelers-to-the-east (though that'd need to be looked at
carefully) is his interest (everywhere evident) to integrate Asian studies
with his own lived experience.  I'm sure this is related to what bugs you
about him -- and don't right now seem to know how to properly elucidate
or distinguish the difference between what you feel he's up to, and what I
find he's embarked on, except to note that -- as in the above -- his
endeavor is to walk down a parallel line with forebears in a tradition, not
simply to borrow words & phrases.  The "to purify our ears" line is,
seems to me, a specific allusion from Chinese poetry -- which I can't
seem to call up in its particularity.  Oh yes.  Something about one of
those legendary sage figures in Chuang Tse who, when he was
approached by those from the outside world with the plea to help run
the government, responded by washing his ears in the stream -- to wash
out the very notion of getting entangled in ruling others (rather than
quietly seeking his own course under heaven).  It's actually a
pre-Buddhist image from Chinese literature, to tag it at its origins, -- at
least that's my sense of that line; one could perhaps check with Snyder to
see if he recalls having the Chuang Tse passage in mind when he wrote it.
Chuang Tse -- sure it's Asian in its origins, but Snyder is imagining
himself into a rapport with many strands of contemplative tradition, and
I don't find his manner of doing so offensive, nor quite understand why
thinking through a line from Chuang Tse is more suspect than thinking
thru a line from, say, Socrates.  It's simply a question of imaginal
affinities -- so important to any poet, no?

Anyway, this is an attempt to take up a small corner of this dialogue --
not at all to cover its large areas, but merely to make a little basecamp
observation on its mountain sprawl.  There's more that could be said by
way of a modest defense of Kent J. & the Beneith anthology, I feel -- but
can't go further down that road just now . . .

Happy to learn of your interesting-souding interest in these matters, and
certainly look forward to seeing what you may have on offer in terms of
translations from Japanese (etc.) . . .

cheers
d.i.
 .
 .....
 ............
 \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\
   >    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:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 03:49:39 -0300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Stephen C. Ellwood" 
Subject:      Personal Identity as text vs Stands On Its Own
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I just wanted to register my agreement with Kali Tal's description of the
importance of the identity of the author.  To me reading poetry and
prose, and perhaps to an even larger extent looking at visual art, is a
project of untangling the personality/personal insecurities etc. of the
author first and foremost.  That's why I hate formalim; the work does
speak volumes about personal insecurity, but there is a key (like a key
on a map) that you must understand in order to do the untangling, and
that requires a lot of faith that it'll be worth the time it takes to
learn the (rather lengthy) key.
In order for a work to be seductive to me it must provide both
hints and cultivate mysteries about its maker.  I don"t
believe that there is either pleasure or common sense in trying to keep
the two (Work and Maker) seperate.  I hope people don't approach my work
as an entity seperate from the identity I live with/construct.

Sincerely,

Emily Vey Duke.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 06:52:46 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Maria Damon 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

i must say i agree w/ kali on most counts here.  i haven't said this for a
while, but i used to say it often here, i don't think, w/ duncan, that
there are "good and bad poems."  i find it uninteresting to evaluate work
solely (if at all) by its "literary merit," whatever that means.  i tend to
think of things as "interesting" or "boring," and of course those
categories are highly dependent on context, what i know of the poem, poet,
or cultural work the poem does or intends.  in one context a work is
interesting, in another, it's boring or seems out of place.  furthermore, i
take  some issue with the concept that "background" (a word that itself
subordinates certain kinds of information) is an extraneous add-on (my
students often have mixed responses to my historicizing --it's either
"helpful" or it doesn't leave enough time to dscuss the "actual poems"
--but i keep trying to say that this isn't "background," this is *it*). i
also understand, though, that practitioners have different investments in
poetry from critics lke myself, and may have strong feelings about seeing
poets whose work they do not respect getting critical attention.  still,
there's enough kudos and appreciation to go around.  let's not let this
scarcity mentality prevent us from enjoying a full spectrum of poetic
activity.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 04:10:00 -0300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Stephen C. Ellwood" 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and racism
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Just because Buddhist practice is hard (and yes, my ass has borne some
long hours on the cushion as well) does not mean Buddhists, esp. white
western ones (like me) don't have to be extremely diligent, and, dare I
say it, mindfull  around the issue of Orientalism.  I have seen my
share.  I believe it's a disease, and a highly contagious one, in the
buddhist communities I have witnessed here in Halifax and in the US.
Just because we are supposed to give up material attatchment doesn't mean
we are absolved of our responsibility to the be agents of change.


On Tue, 24 Jun 1997, Judy Roitman wrote:

> And if Dean Brink had run into some Chinese monks indulging in a little
> IndianSubContinentalism 1000 years ago by, horror of horrors, actually
> writing poems informed by their Buddhist practice --- what would he have
> said then?
>
> Complain about the editors' hyperbole, complain about the editorial
> decisions, but you'd better believe this little Russian American Jewish
> [not Christian, oh no] Buddhist who's sat hard on the cushion for over 20
> years in sanghas which include Chinese, Japanese, Korean (and
> Chinese-American, Japanese-American, Korean-American] members as both
> students and teachers is not "purvey[ing] the myth of the Christian
> missionary superiority as it expropriates candy Buddhism."
>
> *Candy* Buddhism?  What kind of candy is that?  Buddhist practice is
> fucking hard, buster.  No feel good shit, no way.  Your teeth will break
> into smithereens on that kind of candy, for sure.
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Judy Roitman                             | "Whoppers   Whoppers   Whoppers!
> Math, University of Kansas        |     memory fails
> Lawrence, KS 66045                 |         these are the days."
> 913-864-4630                          |                Larry Eigner, 1927-1996
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 08:38:47 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      Re: more haiku-gram
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

[d.i.]:

forget the spam-po
what I'd really like to see
is donut haiku

buttermilk sugar
they knead me & they fry me
none taste the center

[Steven Marks]:

the center holds holes
something to nibble around
no mess on my hands

[d.i.]:

without the coffee
a donut is not done here
darkness to imbibe

[s.m.]:

nut to do but dough
coffee from a hell of beans
my do-dough dissolves

[d.i.]:

nonesistence hides
in the very word donut
nut signifies naught

[Katherine Lynes]:

yellow innards splooch
bavarian dive bomber
cannot hold center

[d.i.]:

and what about do?
do of course signifies dough
a dough-naught for you!

[D.P. Salmon]:

do-ough a de-ar
a whole in one
raison drops in bun

[Randolph Healy]:

Sphere before torus
when the centre was not holed
goodbye nut hi  ring

[L. MacMahon]:

batter my heart and
artery o sweet and fat
confectionary

[Hugh Steinberg]:

I love everyone
says the old cop on his beat
let 'em eat donuts.

[d.i.]:

no start & no end
till you yourself nibble the
do (history) nut

[s.m.]:

from naut- to navel
my do-naught, my omphalos
which one to fill up?

[d.i.]:

sometimes dear madam
a donut's just a donut
remarked Sigmund Freud
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 08:46:07 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      Re: Personal Identity as text vs Stands On Its Own
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
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Emily Vey Duke observes:

> I just wanted to register my agreement with Kali Tal's description
> of the importance of the identity of the author.  . . .
>   . . .   In order for a work to be seductive to me it must
> provide both hints and cultivate mysteries about its maker.  I don"t
> believe that there is either pleasure or common sense in trying to
> keep the two (Work and Maker) seperate. ...

indeed.  Delight in literature & other arts oftentimes involves the
delight of discovering the look & feel of a person (personality /
sensibility / mind / etc) in its own terrain.  But many of the
consciously arcane traditions & artists (e.g., Magritte) offer this
delight in particular abundance (even if they make one work to find
the "key" as you suggest).  True of much LangPo too.

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 10:09:48 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joel Kuszai 
Subject:      I keep getting reject (fwd)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 22:28:29 -0700
From: Juliana Spahr 
To: kuszai@ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU
Subject: I keep getting reject

My internet service provider keeps changing my email address so now I
can't post to poetics list. Could you please forward the following for
me? Is there anyway to correct this?

        Juliana


Chain / 5
DIFFERENT LANGUAGES

call for work

For this issue we are looking for work that challenges monolingualism and
other forms of
linguistic standardization. Some possibilities: work written in more than
one language,
in nonsense, in zaum, in created languages, in Esperanto, in invented
visual languages,
in iconic languages, in notation, in scores, in symbolic languages, in
colloquialisms,
in dialect, in rebuses. Submissions may address or enact these or other
possibilities.

As always, we especially encourage collaborative, interdisciplinary, and
mixed media
work.

Please send poems, essays, performance texts, film or video scripts,
camera ready visual
art, musical scores, choreographic notes, etc., by December 1, 1997. For
best results,
please send copies to both addresses. Please enclose self-addressed,
stamped envelope.
Please do not send e-mail submissions.

Jena Osman                              Juliana Spahr
English Department                      Department of English
Ursinus College                         University of Hawaii, Manoa
P.O. Box 1000                           1733 Donaghho Road
Collegeville, Pennsylvania 19426-1000   Honolulu, Hawaii 96822


Please note these change of addresses!


Please spread the word.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 10:10:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: Killian at Naropa
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

Got to hear Kevin Killian read last night at Naropa's Summer Writing Program
 - and to meet "The Man Himself" as well as the delightful Dodie Bellamy.

Kevin did more than just read, I should think - he appropriated the podium
with bravura, wit and a warm, excited energy. There were six poems, all of
them marvelous: first, part of his series of Dario Argento/HIV poems ("the
field of the open human page"), which juxtapose the tragedy of human
suffering with the unreal nightmare imagery of horror films. Then an elegy
for Larry Eigner & Bob Flanagan. An imitation of a John Wiener poem. Another
Argento piece, "Trauma." A very moving poem for Steve Abbott ("a thirst so
deep confession doesn't cover it").  And a funny poem called "Zombie" from a
series edited by Rod Smith and others about "Prayer in the Schools." He made
the connections seem evident: between the first surprise of desire and the
painful surprise of pathos. Bravo, Kevin!

Gloria Frym also read. Her story, "To See Her In Sunlight Was To See Marxism
Die," (from Brodkey's story, "Innocence") was a finely crafted examination
of a lingering divorce in which the commerce of the heart is conflated with
the decline and fall of communism and the greedy logic of late capitalism.

Maybe more later...
Patrick Pritchett
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 11:09:10 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Henry Gould 
Subject:      address query

Looking for an email address for Nancy Peters at City Lights Bks.
Please backchannel only : Henry_Gould@brown.edu.  Thanks! - HG
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 08:23:00 PDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hoa Nguyen 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!
Comments: To: Kali.Tal@YALE.EDU
Content-Type: text/plain

Kali wrote: (in part)

 "And, Eliza, I do know Weigl's poetry--even know Weigl, though merely
in passing, as a table-mate at conference dinners.  I consider his work
to be carefully wrought, but more self-consciously literary (more in the
MFA loop, I suppose) than the writing I like best.  He and John Balaban
are the most celebrated Vwar poets, like Tim O'Brien and Robert Olen
Butler are the most celebrated Vvet novelists, but in all of their
cases, I find that the ultra-refined nature of their work actually
undercuts the message that they are ostensibly trying to get across. I
like their early works best, and find that at each remove, the intensity
and the clarity of the poems are dimmed, though structurally they are
more elegantly contrived.  Actually, the vet
poetry you heard/read at the Joiner Center's writing workshops is
probably mostly the sort of vet poetry I *don't* much care for, though a
few writers I admire are in regular or semi-regular attendance (Ehrhart
and Leroy Quintana come to mind immediately). "

-- one American poet writing on the American war in Vietnam not
mentioned by Kali here is Yusef Kumanyakaa, in his book Dien Cau Dau
(spelling?-- "dinky dow" in slang meaning "Crazy people"-- what the
Vietnamese called Americans).  I heard him read from it over ten years
ago and it was a pivotal experience for me, particularly because he is a
poet of color.  I reccommend it highly.  His later works do not deal
with this subject matter and his work has gotten better-- more
interesting, less strictly linear.  (He won a pulitzer!)

cheers--

Hoa


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---------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 11:30:59 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joel Kuszai 
Subject:      WARNING: personal info
Comments: To: core-l@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Hello, A Form Letter
a sort of electronic postcard

I'm sorry for the personal nature of what follows. I am not sure if
that is allowed in poetics. I've not been able to read Poetics but will
now be receiving the digested version. Therefore, I am not sure of the
tenor of the conversation I am stumbling back into. please forgive-

For those of you who have been wondering what has happened to
your local "fool," please allow me to indicate en masse, what the
hell is going on. I'm sorry I've been out of touch. It has been difficult
for me to get access to e-mail and I have also been happy to have
been freed from the electronic yoke for a couple weeks. I'll be back
on line regularly, but it may be several days before I am able to log
in again. Soon, I hope to get e-mail here locally. If I had known it
would have been this much of a hassle at the university, I would
have gone with AOL. Anyway--the delay is over and I should have
a new address within a week or so.

While I had wanted to get away from Buffalo for all sorts of reasons
I would be happy to discuss back-channel, part of getting out of
Buffalo and coming here was/is family related. More than a month
ago, my father and I drove to Boston to help my sister move out of
a bad marriage complete with domestic violence and a 22 month
old boy, who is now living with us here. My sister has come home
with a complex set of obstacles in front of her. She is a very strong
person who is very fortunate to have the emotional and economic
support of my parents, while she transitions into her new life,
addressing the situation she has faced. And her little boy, who is so
sweet and magical and smart and conscientious. I've not really spent
much time around little kids: I've been fortunate to meet the
Bernstein children, Benjamin Sherry, and Kate and Nora
Alexander--but it has been a while since I've seen any of them.
Dylan, my sister's boy, is now saying sentences (however simplistic:
Joel throw ball on roof, mommy happy, hug mommy, etc.)
counting to ten and he knows his alphabet, nevermind about ten
or so species of beenie babies. He also seems to be a very good
listener, and through listening he is able to learn quickly.
So it has been fun for me, even with the gravity of her
initializing agony in coming home. The "domestic violence" she
suffered was of the psychological variety (although on a collision
course with physical violence), and was related most immediately to
issues of "control"--as she had surrendered her "career" for staying
home with baby, etc. Anyhow, good things come of difficult
situations. An example of this would be the fact that through her
participation in a support group, she will probably become involved
in "helping others" in some kind of voluntaristic way. Another
example of this might be a discussion that my composition class had
about domestic roles, domestic violence, etc. We had a great talk,
did some role playing, all in the effort to get "on the table" a
number of issues raised by an essay by Angela Davis on domestic
housework that we had been reading for class. To make a long story
short, by the end of the semester, several women came forward to
discuss violence they had encountered either at the hands of
boyfriends, or harrassment they experienced in the workplace. The
most severe of these involved a nazi skinhead boyfriend who was
beating this very smart history major at UB who happened to be in
my class and happened to write a great study of the roles of women
in the civil war (complete with an intersting bit about these women
who dressed as men in order to fight)--and this from the woman
who came forward very very frightened I have learned a great deal
about this community in suburban buffalo. Anyhow, it was
emotionally draining and I'm surprised I didn't end up at the
counseling center myself. I have this feeling they would have loved
for me to stop by (I talked with them via phone while making a
referral in the situation I just mentioned).

You can imagine joy and also the difficulties we are facing here, as
my sister gains her esteem back, now with full-time job here with
benefits, and getting the young genius into a good
daycare/preschool situation. That has been achieved, and everything
is looking rosey. As you can imagine, there has been incredible strain
on everyone's sense of how they were used to doing things. And my
sister has been adjusting and recovering very well from where she
was only a few months before. My parents house is one of those
classic midwestern two-story homes with an open porch perfect for
afternoon ice-tea. Michigan is beautiful and green lush; East
Lansing, unlike Ann Arbor or Detroit, is kind of a lazy cow town
where they train people to train the cows. The pastoral surroundings
are now a replica of the vicinity of the campus before it was carved
from the Michigan frontier about three or five miles from the
Capitol building. MSU's campus makes the ugly austerity of
University at Buffalo a shocking fact to consider. I've been in my car
only twice since arriving here (although I did borrow my dad's jeep
and his fuzz buster for the hour-trip to Ann Arbor a few times). The
university library is within walking distance and when I'm not
throwing a giant pink bouncy-ball onto the roof to the screeching
delight of little Dylan, I'm usually over there.

The MSU library gave me a community card, and this took some
doing because you're supposd to be a michigan resident. The library
is significantly better that the UB system and unlike Lockwood, the
books are actually on the shelves there. There is a down side to that,
howver, and it relates to what people read in what places. While I
see lots of people reading and studying everywhere I go (and like
Ann Arbor, E.L. has about 6 smoking cafes and 10 non-smoking
cafes within walking distance of the university) I get the sense that
I'm at least an hour from the closest branch of the metropolis.

MSU has lots of great stuff to read that UB doesn't own and since
settling into a rhythm I've been reading mostly "radical history"
papers; memoirs of prison life in the 40s by pacifist objectors; early
days of civil rights movt. (CORE, Fellowship of Reconciliation,
etc.), anti-war stuff from the 40s, 50s, 60s, and also education
materials on the "modern school," which became known as the "free
school" movment in the 60s & 70s. There are lot of people around
here who have done work in this area, from labor history to
"radical" or undergound pop culture--and there is a lot of it to go
through. Lately I find myself reading about the Attica uprising and
the fact that members of the Minutemen drove by the Unitarian
Church on Elmwood in Buffalo in 68 firing multiple rounds,
sending the religious and pacifists scurrying. The church
membership had voted itself a "symbolic sanctuary" for the draft
resisters who had made their protest public and when the cops came
down on the place they busted some heads...

I've been reading issues of the Partisan Review, trying to gain some
perspective on the issues writers faced when USA was getting ready
for war and war was well raging. I didn't know about the Minnesota
case or that earliest jailings for refusing conscription were before war
was even declared. D. Macdonald and the Politics crowd are my
new heroes. Long live Poetry dead! There is a lot to this topic and is
the fermenting soil from which I'm growing my dissertation, which
is about the anarchists in the new york region during that period. I
found a really useful book by Alan Wald on JT Farrell and it helps
me structure my ideas about what the tensions were in the left-
activist writers from the period. Farrell has been a useful figure for
me to study, and the story of what happened to him is a useful
paradigm for how I have felt in that endless and cliched debate
about writing and politics. More on all this later, as it is really where
I am at.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 12:03:16 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      abstract
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

                    art of civilization

if there are libraries, there are books.  if there are books,
there are readers.  if there are readers there are people.  if
there are people there is humanity.

if there are televisions, there are shows.  if there are shows,
there are viewers.  if there are viewers there are people.  if
there are people there is humanity.

if there are books, there is poetry.  if there is poetry,
there are readers.  if there are readers there are people.  if
there are people there is humanity.

If there is televison, there are shows.  If there are shows,
there are viewers.  if there are viewers there are people.  if
there are people, there is humanity

if there is media,

if there is an internet,

if there is a WWW,

                                     possibly.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 12:03:19 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      personal
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

                           Blues

"I was still replaying the old and painful patterns of my childhood, still
getting lost in the same anger and fear that had been there through my
adolescence.... There are things we need to learn in relationship to one
another that are not learned in isolation or solitude...after lots of
attention to healing my emotional wounds and learning to relate more wisely
in the heart, I discovered that I needed to relate more wisely with my body."

hollyhock's sunken face
grasped rage
her moonbeam
held smiles
all entered

Telling
pain
again begin process
healing
We go

on
living closed lives.
Anger moves. It lasts as long as it needs to have its say.. It crackles and
brittles to hatred
at times

Dead dry brittle was as a place of the preservation of the remembrance of
things a time for renewal a deep point of refraction heats reflection
where
'Israel' found itself in the process of Exodus, and where Jesus faced the
Temptations.

Lullabies she sang
still hold back the night

apropos of moonlight becomes you so
agony remodels my mind.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 11:11:21 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

david i, thanx for the lines!...

"amat" yes, but no, relation "amato" only to a small fishing village in
sicily (where my grandfather was a, uhm, fisherman)... and his brother
sailed to sydney, where i may have relatives (and hope someday to find
out)... anyway, no money on that side...

now on my mother's side (she a french citizen by birth, her mother german,
her father french), it's "bourgoin," but i've just learned (not three weeks
ago) that my maternal grandfather was, so to speak, a bastard, and that his
real father was in fact jewish... so bourgoin is not, uhm, real... but
anyway, the war took care of money on that side...

well so, i'm not a buddhist!... and betwixt that thread and the one on
identity, as well as the incipient (to my eye) thread on the status of
identity in translation, i'm not sure what to say!... but herewith an
actual rejection my wife (kass fleisher) rec'd from an agent not long ago,
just to stir *all* the waters some:

"How nice to hear from you again -- but I'm afraid the state of the
publishing industry is even worse than it was in 1993, when we last
corresponded.  I really like your writing, but your aversion to plot would
make it very hard to place your work, especially since it is not translated
from the original Czech, Swedish, or whatever; for some reason, foreign
authors are allowed to dispense with a strong story line, but this is an
indulgence not granted to homegrown first novelists.  I know it's not fair
.... This novel is something that might well appeal to one of the small
presses, but we've given up dealing with them; an agent's chief
responsibility is to see to it that authors are paid promptly and in full,
and the chronic cashflow problems of most small presses can often make this
basic obligation impossible to fulfill."

i should add only that kass and i read and support small presses, and that
neither of us view this response as an anomaly... and also, that this agent
seemed to us most forthcoming, which we both appreciate...

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 12:17:51 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Peter Landers 
Subject:      Re: abstractly personal
In-Reply-To:  <199706250407.AAA27090@node1.frontiernet.net> from "Automatic
              digest processor" at Jun 25, 97 00:08:24 am
Content-Type: text

I think you should publish whatever you damn well please and not worry
about the words "good" and "bad". In my opinion, those words are bullshit.
Everyone does what they want and there's no need to write extensive
explanations for it (unless that's what you want to do). I like what I
like and I might hurt myself with this decision, but I avoid topical
anthologies. Content isn't really what I'm after.

Pete
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 09:59:41 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: " . . . "
In-Reply-To:  <199706251611.LAA15958@charlie.cns.iit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Had Simic argued simply that the Yasusada affair evidenced a certain
regretable insularity among American readers and writers I would have no
objection -- but that is hardly the issue here -- Is it a matter of fact
that, say, fewer American grad. students read Serbian verse now than
earlier, ans is that demonstrably attributable to the "rise" of theory,
etc. -- and in any event, how would that authorize the reprehensible
misrepresentations of "theory" found in those Boston Review letters?  I
seem to remember that when I read Derrida, for one example, I kept running
into essays on Jabes, Joyce, Celan etc. -- I might wish that he wrote on
occasion about Spanish language poets, but the texts of Derrida are not a
good place to look for support for the argument that Thoery doesn't care
about literature -- and so on --  The insularity that Simic complains
about is real, but it is not the result of the "turn to theory" -- and I'd
bet we could fairly easily document this sort of insularity at the height
of the New Criticism, without feeling compelled to blame it on the NC --

People should read more, should read more from other parts of the world,
should read beyond the narrow slice of materials they can get in grad.
seminars -- who would disagree with any of that -- I happen to believe
that people might also do well to be a bit more careful about attributing
such phenomena as Yasusada to other phenomena which may have little to do
with it -- I can't believe that the editors of APR were taken in by the
Yasusada materials as a result of their having been narrowly indoctrinated
in French theory at grad. school --

There's also this in Simic's letter:

"If a Frank Kowalski, a retired milkman in Milwaukee, submitted something
like the following to a literary journal, does anyone really think he
would seriously have a chance:

        I've waited all week, you quietly said,
        to be with you here in this magical place,
        and to tell you something beautiful.

        (It was your sentimental heart
        that always made me laugh
        and this stain on the page is spilt tea.)"

Whether the author has been presented as a retired milman or not, the fact
is that our poetry mags are filled with exactly this kind of verse -- I
suspect that Mr. Kowalski might indeed have a chance -- might even
increase his odds by changing his first name to "Stanley."

I am a former tree chopper/campus cop/computer systems analyst/shoe
salesman/community services worker myself -- With the possible exception
of Sterling Brown, few of us were born to academia and poetry --

yours for more reading all around,.
aldon the Dane
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 09:38:52 PDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hoa Nguyen 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and Racism
Content-Type: text/plain

I am interested in continuing this discussion about  poetry
anthologies/inclusion/exclusion.  Thanks to D. Brink and D. Isreal for
keeping up the dialogue.  I will have more to write later (feeling a
little silent/silenced at the moment) but wanted to respond to two
things:

first re: Snyder's poem--  China Beach is in San Francisco.  It is so
named because Chinese fishermen/residents of the city would/were allowed
to   fish there.

and secondly an errata to my original post where I wrote:

"Frank Chan, in his foreward to __ The Big
Aiiiiiiii!__, was in fact, highly critical of fellow Chinese American
writers ..."

should have read Frank Chin ... in The Big AIIIEEEEE!.

More to come!

Hoa


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Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 12:19:17 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      Orientalism: reply to Dean Brink
In-Reply-To:  <33B0C467.9761F249@w-link.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

> On June 24, David Brink wrote, in reply to Hoa Nguyen:

> I was clearly attacking the premises for the anthology _Under a Single
> Moon_ and the blatant Orientalism in Kent Johnson's postings in general.
>
> My main point was and is that Johnson represents a mainstream
> (affiliated or not with New Age phenomena) that naturally thinks that
> the aesthetic values, by which he judged the inclusion of an all-white
> cast of poets and exclusion of Asian-American poets, are not a form of
> bias. This bias is at best in bad faith, and at worst racist (but I
> agree that "racism" is too strong a word).
>
Dean:

Your reply to Hoa, from which I excerpt here, is very different in
tone and substance from your initial diatribe against the personal
integrity and artistic worth of those associated with the Shambhala
anthology. Your last is quite a bit more reasoned and productive of
useful discussion. Still, you make unsubstantiated charges and seem
confused on some key points, and I want to point these problems out,
because my calling attention to them in the first place was what
sprung this many posted thread:

1) A question to start: Can you please enlighten me re: the
"blatant Orientalism" in my "postings"? This is something new, since
I don't recall you charging that there were any "Orientalisms" in my
two posts per se, but rather in the book. So far as I can tell, _you_
are the only one whose posts have been clearly deconstructed--by
Nguyen--for their unacknowledged orientalist biases. I am directly
asking you, then, since you make the specific charge, to undertake a
close reading of my postings on this matter, and to elucidate
precisely where my  remarks on the BaSM anthology betray "blatant
Orientalism." I am honestly open to consider that my words, like
yours, hide paternalistic and patronizing views. But you must show
how they do and not just make the accusation--hasty accusations
without supporting evidence are the very reason we are talking right
now.

2) When you say that

>"Johnson represents a mainstream (affiliated or not with New Age
>phenomena) that naturally thinks that the aesthetic values, by which
>he judged the inclusion of an all-white cast of poets and exclusion
>of Asian-American poets, are not a form of bias. This bias is at
>best in bad faith, and at worst racist,"

you reveal the basic misunderstanding (which is also shared by Joe
Duemer, btw, who admits he hasn't read the book!): You see--and I
say this for the third time--if you and Walter Lew had more or
less carefully considered the book, you would have quickly seen that
the anthology has rather specific parameters for inclusion that
actually have little to do with our editorial "aesthetic values"!
That is (and read carefully here, please) we only considered for
inclusion those poets who were known to have a background in Buddhist
study and practice. (tho we were not doctrinaire about the definition
of those last two terms, and I would say actually that any "second
edition" would definitely want to be more rigorous about those
parameters.) The poets, through their affiliation with Buddhism,
"selected themselves," and then we allowed them to select their own
poems! Paulenich and myself were largely modest and non-judgemental
compilers.

Aesthetic values? Any cursory look at the book will show that it is
one of the most aesthetically eclectic poetry anthologies ever done,
and this is one of its interesting points: Jackson Mac Low, Steve
Benson, and John Cage, for example, in the same anthology with, say
Jim Harrison, Jane Hirschfield, and Sam Hamill! During the three year
course of putting the anthology together--a process that was greatly
dependent on seeking out potential names from others--we did not hear
of *any* Asian American poet with a past or ongoing personal practice
in Buddhism. No Asian American poets were excluded, therefore,
because we didn't like their poems. They were "excluded" because A)
We were ignorant of Asian American poets who met the parameters we
had set for the book, or B) there were Asian American writers with
Buddhist practice who were aware of our open solicitation for
potential contributors and chose not to submit their work. (I do not
know if this is the case, but it may be.)

One could say, and very responsibly, that our acknowledged ignorance
in "A" reveals a more complex problem (i.e. the relative
invisibility, if you will, of Asian American poets in a culture
suffused with Orientalism), but this is something very different from
the libelous framing of your initial and ill-argued remarks--or from
your comment above that we set out to construct a "white"
anthology in "bad faith." You see, Dean, your indignation is built on
a series of assumptions you have made without really looking into the
facts in a responsible way. I'd like to suggest that the rush to
mean-spirited judgement that you and others have made about the book,
its editors and contributors, has institutional causes that need as
much honest scrutiny as your academic framing of what you perceive to
be the problem with _Beneath a Single Moon_ (not "Under" btw).

Further on you say (and I promise to wrap it up here):

> What needs to be discussed perhaps is the role of Buddhist rhetoric in
> an American poetic discourse that has been stimulated by Buddhism for
> roughly a century. It was certainly Orientalist, exoticizing initially.
> When did this stop? What is the role of the shifts of power and cultural
> clout over the years and around the Pacific? American-style
> Buddhist-based poetics may enjoy an integral duplicity: while the
> Western lyric subject displays an understood sense of a logocentric
> context, it would be interesting to trace the development of the
> (rhetorical) dispersion of subject in American Buddhist-inspired poetry.
> What rings as being in "bad faith" is the appropriation of an image of
> Asia that exists for the pleasure of the poet? When the Johnson post
> came up, it was an opportunity to open up this can of worms.
>
Now some of these remarks are very good ones, and I wish you had
started out this way a few days back. These *are* issues that need
strong investigation, and some of the people in the forefront of
exploring them are North American poets who happen also to be
Buddhist. In fact, if you look at the Shambhala book, I think you
might find  essays there that engage the contours of the above
issues with a fairly high-degree of self-reflexiveness. But what I
find in "bad faith," Dean, is your apparent assumption that the poets
in the anthology are appropriating "an image of Asia" through the
mere fact of their being in an anthology of Buddhist poets! Let me
ask this simple question to conclude: IF it had turned out that there
was representation of Asian American poets in BaSM, would you still
judge the poets as "appropriating an image of Asia"? If you say yes,
then it would behoove you to show, TEXTUALLY, how;  if no, then I'm
afraid your whole argument against the anthology collapses into a
heap of hypocrisy.

I don't mean to sound so annoyed, but I guess I am.
Kent Johnson
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 13:22:27 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bobbie West 
Subject:      more Vietnam

Just curious -- what do those of you familiar with Vietnam vets' poetry think
of Terry Hertzler's _The Way of the Snake_?


Bobbie
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 10:48:09 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Personal Identity as Text vs Stands on its Own
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I promised myself not to get involved in this one, but here goes.

Those of you who read Middle English are probably aware of the greatest of
our anonymous poets, the Pearl Poet, author of the dream-vision of that name
and of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," as well as two shorter pieces. In
times past much ink was spilled in an attempt to nail down his identity, but
to no avail.

A good friend of mine was a student of the middle ages at Berkeley during
the late 60s. A combination of political despair and some very good drugs
had made him increasingly restive in graduate school and more than a little
strange.

It happened that he was required to write a paper on said anonymous poet. He
struggled with the project for weeks and came up blank--nothing to say. Then
in a dream the solution to his problem came to him in the form of a figure
in medieval dress announcing to him "I have come to tell you a great
secret--the true identity of the poet you study. It is I myself, Bowtwine
Lincoln by name."

My friend awoke in a frenzy of excitement--he knew what to write. He
produced a careful account of the identity question that no one had cared
about for a good 40 years and ended by declaring that he had discovered the
answer and describing the manner of its revelation. It was his last act as a
graduate student at Berkeley.

I hope that my account will help clarify some of the issues in this discussion.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 13:42:42 +0000
Reply-To:     ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Robert Archambeau 
Organization: Lake Forest College
Subject:      Simic, Insularity, Theory
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Aldon Nielsen wrote:

> Had Simic argued simply that the Yasusada affair evidenced a certain
> regretable insularity among American readers and writers I would have no
> objection -- but that is hardly the issue here -- Is it a matter of fact
> that, say, fewer American grad. students read Serbian verse now than
> earlier, ans is that demonstrably attributable to the "rise" of theory,
> etc. -- and in any event, how would that authorize the reprehensible
> misrepresentations of "theory" found in those Boston Review letters?

I think we all agree that American insularity has been around for quite
a while (no one said otherwise), but while that insularity has been
somewhat eroded in recent years with regard to theoretical writings, the
same can't really be said for other writing.  Simic's attribution of
causality here is certainly questionable (as I argued before), as are
his statements about theory.  But for all its flaws, his letter draws
attention to the important and very real issue of an incongruity between
a willingness to reach out to the world for theory, and a refusal to do
so with regard to poetry.

IE: I (like Nielsen) disagree with Simic's evaluation of theory.  But I
believe Simic is right in one regard: that there is a general sense in
English Departments that it is urgent for us to know about what's
happening elsewhere in theory, without the corresponding notion that it
is urgent for us to know about what's happening elsewhere in poetry (the
notion receives lip service but little more).

Tom Orange seems to me to come closer than Simic to an accurate
understanding of how poetic insularity has been maintained while
theoretical insularity has broken down, when he writes that:

> one measure of the ways in which (primarily french) theory has enjoyed a
> "translational advantage" over other foreign-language writing (poetry,
> fiction, etc.) as a function of academic disciplinarity:
     .   .    .   .
> certainly very few foreign-language poetic/fictional/dramatic texts in
> translation could ever have enjoyed the uncritical, unquestioning embrace
> of north american english literature departments in the 1970s and 1980s.

This, I think, is a fair statement of how things stand.  And when I say
we need more people like Simic, I don't mean more people who fire off
angry squibs to the Boston Review, I mean more people who do more to end
this insularity than simply grumbling about it (here's where Another
Republic, The Horse Has Six Legs, etc., come in).  The sort of work
Simic has done deserves the kind of attention that Spivak has received
for translating theory, and rarely gets such attention.


--
Robert Archambeau
Department of English
Lake Forest College
Lake Forest, IL 60045

http://www.lfc.edu/~archamb/
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 11:22:02 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      identity of the poet
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I think we derive the poet from the poem. "Wallace Stevens" is not an
insurance lawyer. He might perhaps have been a South American diplomat. I
am agreeing that we want the poem to have been uttered from a person.
(Kierkegaard in his "Concluding Unscientific Postscript", where he writes
that it is an act of faith to read another's poem, & the faith is, that
there was a reality present during the composition that has some equity
with the reader's own, I find persuasive). But I am saying that the
biographies do not necessarily satisfy, & that I believe one has the right
to discard bio-info that in one's imaginative view, doesn't fit the poet
one constructs from the poetry. Yeah, sure, it can be fun to observe the
timidities encoded in Eliot's poetry, & then fit that in with the fact that
he had a double hernia which he never got fixed. And, sure, one can use
such details to elucidate meanings not otherwise likely to surface. But I
take it that the poem was written whatever the poet's necessities) for me,
me the Big Baby Reader or the Sullen Solitary Adolescent Reader, Me the
Otherwise-Muddled Midlife Reader, Me the Incredibly Aged Senile Reader, all
of those Mes at once if applicable. So "Pull down thy vanity" I read with
myself & need never know that its Pound's remorse in the hoosegow. My
remorse has other sources & causes. David.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 12:10:27 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Carrie Etter 
Subject:      Sharon Doubiago
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I am trying to find out the publishers for two of Doubiago's early
chapbooks: _Hymn to the Cosmic Clothesline_ (1978) and _Visions of a
Daughter of Albion_ (1980).  Also, is anyone familiar with Gorda Plate
Press, which apparently recently published Doubiago's _The Husband Arcane.
The Arcane of O._?

Thanks,

Carrie Etter
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 14:41:30 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jonathan Brannen 
Subject:      Amos Tutuola
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I am saddened to learn of the recent death of the remarkable
Nigerian novelist, Amos Tutuola. Rooted in Yoruba folklore, Tutuola's
inventive fiction transcends conventional narrative. No other contemporary
writer of English language fiction (with the exception of Harry Mathews) has
produced a body of work that has given me such pleasure. As a reader,
I will miss him.

Jonathan Brannen
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 13:00:01 PDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hoa Nguyen 
Subject:      A Buddhist's Credentials
Comments: cc: kjohnson@student.highland.cc.il.us
Content-Type: text/plain

Hi.  Dale here.

Dean Brink wrote:

"American-style Buddhist-based poetics may enjoy an integral duplicity:
while the Western lyric subject displays an understood sense of a
logocentric context, it would be interesting to trace the development of
the  (rhetorical) dispersion of subject in American Buddhist-inspired
poetry. What rings as being in "bad faith" is the appropriation of an
image of Asia that exists for the pleasure of the poet? When the Johnson
post came up, it was an opportunity to open up this can of worms."

But the can of worms he opened with Kent Johnson was already full of
sharp hooks.  It didnt't resemble the more thoughtful posting he sent to
Hoa.  In fact, he misread and condemned Kent as a racist without the
same kind attention given to Hoa's problems with himself.

As a Buddhist, Dean Brink should know that race, religion, and poetry
are perhaps a bit less binomial than he acknowledges.  His indignation
over the anthology in question narrows the more open concerns regarding
questions of poetics and race.  I suppose it is the dualistic and
academic foundations of his thought which shape his responses to both
Kent and Hoa.  But his social scrutiny lacks any personal awareness as
an active participant in the very white constructs he critiques.  Kent's
anthology, whatever problems we may have with it - aesthetic, political,
religious - represents one designed collection of American Buddhists who
practice poetry.  To label Kent a racist based on this collection
reveals more of a readiness to indict, rather than a willingness to
confront, the
key issues of race Hoa attempted to address in her post.  Ultimately,
the exclusion of Asians in Kent's anthology is probably more of a
testimony to his honesty on this score than if he had secured a few
token representatives for his project.  Afterall, Kent respected the
limits of his position as a white American Buddhist.  Something,
perhaps, Brink finds too truthful, in the end, to imagine happening in
himself.

Kent should have had his wrists slapped, however, for omitting his own
credentials as a practicing Buddhist.  I once heard, for example, he
sucked the dregs out of D.T. Suzuki's tea pot on a pilgrimage to see the
great teacher in San Francisco, 1971.  Suzuki was reported to have taken
the young Kent by the hand to give the following invocation:  "Dear boy,
collect poems written on origami bird wings.  Freedom is a cherry
blossom!"

Dale Smith






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=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 15:08:07 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher 
Subject:      Re: identity of the poet
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

i think, david b., that what you say probably reflects my reading... mood
too most of the time... not always, but most of the time... i wonder too
the ways in which picking up a book of poems (e.g.) encourages that
response more (or less) than picking up a book of theory... again, i'm not
drawing any hard and fast distinctions here... but i do tend to pick up one
with different expectations than the other (i'm trying not to get all
muddled in intrinsic textual differences etc.)... so when i'm reading
stevens, say, i tend to try to put aside his insurance company lifestyle
(not always!)... with other poets i'm perhaps less... generous?... anyway,
is it easier or more difficult (or does it make no difference?) to fret the
biographical details of a critic vis-a-vis a fiction writer vis-a-vis a
poet vis-a-vis ____?... i'm sure there are (generic) differences, but it's
far from clear to me how they play themselves out...

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 13:23:55 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      pearl poet, french theory of apr editors, kevin & gloria, class
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Mark Weiss,thanks for a nicely unfolded tale! --Here again we have a poem
whose poet exists only as imaginative conjecture derived from the poem
itself--!  Can you b-c the name of that student, & his professor? I ask
this out of idle curiosity. I was there then & might well have had that
dream myself. I remember the paper I wrote, a survey of authorities on the
significance of *green* in _G&the GKnight_. It meant everything. It meant
this, & it meant the opposite of this. Most poetical, & a handy intro to
grad school.

 A friend of mine from those days (we took to one another on the first day
of the medieval lit class, when someone declared that she hoped to know
more about the 12th C than she knew abt the 20th by December, & he & I
noticed each other rolling his eyes up), Erik Storlie (Erik the
Minnesota-Norwegian), has recently published, with Shambala, a book titled
_Nothing on my Mind_, in part a memoir of Berkeley in the 60s (A subject
abt which I expect soon everyone to know more than of the 90s); in part a
tale of his quest for enlightenment thru the Buddha. Theres plenty about
the dept of eng, & the drugs it drove some poor unfortunates to. An
immodest & likely unnecessary caution: dont buy the book to read abt me. I
do not appear at all, although Storlie & I were as close as W.C. is to
Fields; I can only suppose my absence is down to my thoroughly recalcitrant
disposition vis-a-vis lasting enlightenments.

I enjoyed also Aldon the Nebraska-Dane's posting whose key sentence for me
was to the effect that he doubted a narrow education in French Theory
caused the editors of APR to publish Yasusada. Charles Simic is a longtime
friend, & I have yet to see the letters in the Boston periodical. Wherever
you live, though, that sentence of Aldon's has the smack of
pit-&-prune-juice. Robert Archambeau (could that be French-Canadian?) makes
me feel better about Charlie's rep on our List, & he is wise to point out
Simic's contribution in a way that suggests grounds for the impatience of
the Chicago-raised, New-Hampshire-based-Serb--author of a splendid memoir,
that being one thread in my post, _The Unemployed Fortune Teller_ .Good
summer reading!

Pat Pritchett (place in the multicultural soup as-yet undeclared) does a
fine job with Kevin's reading & Gloria Frym's. Keep us posted, Pat! Salaam.
David-the-PacRim-Cockney (class: working-climbing-into-lower middle/middle,
subsequently become declasse thru all that reading & being allowed to pass
as a poet, but you can still tell by the way he handles the patie de foie
that his origins are the kind he has to be proud of, since noone else was).
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 17:23:33 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      the Green Knight / & Kieslowski

Speaking of the Green Knight --

[careat: the following is a bit of a ramble, but does involve the two figures
mentioned above . . . ]

I've roped myself into writing an essay for *Projections* (a DC-based
little journal published by the Forum for the Psychoanalytic Study of
Film) -- said roping having been accomplished through the expedient of
opening my big mouth.  Said journal (btw) has presented a

CALL FOR PAPERS, as follows:

"Projections is calling for contributions to an issue focusing on the work
of Krzyssztof Kieslowski, to be published later this year [1997 -- I was
told papers are being gathered in early July or something - yikes. -d.i.]
Please submit three copies, double-spaced, with an accompanying disc of
possible, to:
Projections, 3502 36th Street, NW, Washington DC  20016
(202) 625-0625"

What has this to do with the Green Knight?  Only that the latter (like the
topic of my Krys. Kies. paper) is sometimes construed (or construable)
as identified w/ the legendary figure of Khizr (of Islamic-land lore),
sometimes known as "The Green One" (who happens to hang out, when
he's not off teaching Arthurian lessons, at the well of Zim-Zim).

Krys. Kies. is, you know, the late great Pole film-man whose Decalogue,
and subsequent trilogy (BLUE, WHITE, RED) have seemed -- to me --
high points of contemp. cinema.  The last-named film (KK's final work)
features the figure of a European retired judge whose hobby is listening in
to his neighbor's phone conversations (using a certain radio technology
for the purpose).  My little thesis is that this judge figure is patterned
after the Khizr known to legend, esp. that in the often-seen tale of Moses
& Khizr (one brief form of which appears in the Koran itself).  Khizr,
who was a knower of destiny & of the hearts of all [said latter trait
wound by KK into the conceit of hearing the phone calls of all] tended to
meddle in human affairs in ways that, superficially, seemed suspect, but
proved entirely benign.  Such (I opine) is likewise the case w/ KK's judge.

Anyhow, I've very little time, it seems, to get this paper together, and
haven't even begun to assemble materials.  For the tale of M. & K., I'll
prob. look in Rumi's Mathnawi.  A friend remarked that Carl Jung has an
essay dealing w/ the figure of Khizr (which might well be where KK
picked him up).  Meanwhile, if anyone in Poetics-land happens to have
info, views, cites, or whatnot concerning either Khizr of Krzysztof
Kieslowski or the film Red, I'd welcome whatever input or opinion or
whatnot.  Backchannel is fine (unless it shd. seem of generalist Poetics
relevance, or GPR).

Haven't heard mention of that Pearl Poet in long time.  What I was
wondering was -- the name of the chap revealed in dream, -- is that a real,
known, documented figure?

A lovely story, yep.

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 14:35:00 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Theory
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My perception (anecdotal--take it as you will) is that recent english dept.
graduate students and newly-minted professors are less widely-read in
literature in the english language than they were when I went to school
before the flood. They are, however, much more knowledgeable about theory. I
have several become aware that the person I'm talking to hasn't read very
much of the author he's larding with interpretation. That, it seems to me,
is a problem.
At UCSD there are no required survey courses for undergraduates or graduate
students in english, so far as I know. Perhaps this derives from
disagreements about the canon. Even if some non-white, non-male names were
added to the canon it wouldn't substantially increase the relatively light
reading burden imposed by such courses where they exist. And a generation of
scholars and teachers could be assumed to be literate.
I'm already ducking the pies that I hear whizzing in my direction.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 14:38:04 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: the Green Knight / & Kieslowski
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Nope. But my friend did expend some effort in trying to find evidence of his
existence.

>Haven't heard mention of that Pearl Poet in long time.  What I was
>wondering was -- the name of the chap revealed in dream, -- is that a real,
>known, documented figure?
>
>A lovely story, yep.
>
>d.i.
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 14:37:36 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: identity of the poet

David writes;

>But I am saying that the
>biographies do not necessarily satisfy, & that I believe one has the right
>to discard bio-info that in one's imaginative view, doesn't fit the poet
>one constructs from the poetry.

That's one way of reading, though it surely wouldn't work for me.  Granted
that we are all trapped inside our own heads, it still seems worth while for
me to assume that there are Others out there--also trapped in their own
heads--who are as real as I am.

And, well.... now that I've started down the slippery slope of acknowledging
that there are other intelligences out there and that I'm not the only
consciousness in the universe, it starts to look like the certainty that
each poem was written for *me* is not only unfounded, but also a mark of my
privileged status as a particular kind of reader (*your* poem can't hurt
*me* because *you* can't hurt *me* so I can damn well read it--and define
*you*--however I want).  I'm not sure what gives a person the "right" to do
anything, *except* power of one kind or another.

And even if you do sit in such a privileged position that your readings are
safe and protected, if you read a poem however you want to, how do you ever
*learn* anything or discover anything *new*?  Language does what it does
because it is--at some level--linked to a belief in identity, in naming, in
the faith that something can come in from Outside.  We can fuck with that
belief--which I understand language poetry does--but we can't do without
it... even when we build careers based on riffing on it.  Guess it's that
Af-Am theory background coming into play again, but, hey, I yam what I yam,
and if you keep substituting your garden variety spud for that sweet potato,
you're gonna miss all that good brown sugar and honey for sure. And, worse,
you're gonna have a hard time predicting when the less privileged are ready
to turn the system (and you) upside down and inside out.

Yo, Joe, I don't think you and David are saying at all the same thing here.
Reads to me that he's not just talking about *ignoring* a poet's bio, but
MAKING ONE UP for the poet if the "real thing" doesn't fit his
desires/expectations.  I think other poets exist, and that they write poems,
because I think other *people* exist.  I admit we will never *know* these
other people in the way we know ourselves, but there's a benefit in the
attempt. The more cues/clues we can gather Outside, the richer our insides
will become and (like most of us who *aren't* privileged in ways that allow
us to ignore Outside meaning), the longer we'll survive.

Kali
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 15:04:16 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: identity of the poet
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My pleasure in reading Donne's love poems is certainly enhanced by the
knowledge of what that love cost him, and I wouldn't want to lose that extra
spice. But the great pleasure in reading Donne comes from elsewhere. I
cherish the individual poem for its intelligence and beauty. I can also
reconstruct, if I wish, a small portion of the otherwise lost workings of
the particular mind and spirit confronted with event and language, more so
if I can expand the field of inquiry beyond the one poem to a larger corpus.
For sure, no matter what I may learn about the man from other sources, in
doing so I'm inventing, if not a biography, at least a hypothesis about what
the man's presence might have been--I can carry on a conversation with the
shade. A caveat--I'm likely to come a lot closer to the process of the man
behind the words if I know enough about the import of words as conditioned
by the larger environment of his time and place--historically, politically,
medically, socially, what-have-you.
But let's look at a more Giraldoesque example. What exactly does my
knowledge that Kit Smart was mad as a hatter add to my appreciation of
Jubilate Agno?

At 02:37 PM 6/25/97 MDT, you wrote:
>David writes;
>
>>But I am saying that the
>>biographies do not necessarily satisfy, & that I believe one has the right
>>to discard bio-info that in one's imaginative view, doesn't fit the poet
>>one constructs from the poetry.
>
>That's one way of reading, though it surely wouldn't work for me.  Granted
>that we are all trapped inside our own heads, it still seems worth while for
>me to assume that there are Others out there--also trapped in their own
>heads--who are as real as I am.
>
>And, well.... now that I've started down the slippery slope of acknowledging
>that there are other intelligences out there and that I'm not the only
>consciousness in the universe, it starts to look like the certainty that
>each poem was written for *me* is not only unfounded, but also a mark of my
>privileged status as a particular kind of reader (*your* poem can't hurt
>*me* because *you* can't hurt *me* so I can damn well read it--and define
>*you*--however I want).  I'm not sure what gives a person the "right" to do
>anything, *except* power of one kind or another.
>
>And even if you do sit in such a privileged position that your readings are
>safe and protected, if you read a poem however you want to, how do you ever
>*learn* anything or discover anything *new*?  Language does what it does
>because it is--at some level--linked to a belief in identity, in naming, in
>the faith that something can come in from Outside.  We can fuck with that
>belief--which I understand language poetry does--but we can't do without
>it... even when we build careers based on riffing on it.  Guess it's that
>Af-Am theory background coming into play again, but, hey, I yam what I yam,
>and if you keep substituting your garden variety spud for that sweet potato,
>you're gonna miss all that good brown sugar and honey for sure. And, worse,
>you're gonna have a hard time predicting when the less privileged are ready
>to turn the system (and you) upside down and inside out.
>
>Yo, Joe, I don't think you and David are saying at all the same thing here.
>Reads to me that he's not just talking about *ignoring* a poet's bio, but
>MAKING ONE UP for the poet if the "real thing" doesn't fit his
>desires/expectations.  I think other poets exist, and that they write poems,
>because I think other *people* exist.  I admit we will never *know* these
>other people in the way we know ourselves, but there's a benefit in the
>attempt. The more cues/clues we can gather Outside, the richer our insides
>will become and (like most of us who *aren't* privileged in ways that allow
>us to ignore Outside meaning), the longer we'll survive.
>
>Kali
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 18:21:21 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!

i liked the kumanyakaa readings i've seen, but he reads VERY fast,
very softly, and the work is so dense and quick that audience and
other readers all straining to catch what we could.  it might have
been venue or he might have been tired...

his work on the page reminds me of neon signs -- quick, intensely
colored, you go by them quickly and they form part of a line that
has its own delicate internal patterns based on slight movements
as the lights pass, as well as the movements of the lights, as
well as the movement of the colors...
e
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 15:56:52 -0300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Stephen C. Ellwood" 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Wed, 25 Jun 1997, Maria Damon wrote
  i find it uninteresting to evaluate work
> solely (if at all) by its "literary merit," whatever that means.  i tend to
> think of things as "interesting" or "boring,"

I am so glad to have someone other than myself articulate these (to me)
essential, I would even say primary, catagories of artworks.  It expresses
the subjective nature of reading/looking in a totally earnest and
unpretentious way.

 and of course those
> categories are highly dependent on context, what i know of the poem, poet,
> or cultural work the poem does or intends.  in one context a work is
> interesting, in another, it's boring or seems out of place.

I would go farther and say that from a poet or artist about whom I have
one set of information (one code of desires) a work will seem boring,
while from another the same exact work would be compelling, make me sick
with yearning...and isn't that the name of the game.

  furthermore, i
> take  some issue with the concept that "background" (a word that itself
> subordinates certain kinds of information) is an extraneous add-on (my
> students often have mixed responses to my historicizing --it's either
> "helpful" or it doesn't leave enough time to dscuss the "actual poems"
> --but i keep trying to say that this isn't "background," this is *it*).

The idea of teaching the work of non-contemperary (dead) artists/writers
from their identities outwards is interesting to me because where is the
space for yearning when the object of desire is dead, only the documents
of her still perpetuate her self?

 i
> also understand, though, that practitioners have different investments in
> poetry from critics lke myself, and may have strong feelings about seeing
> poets whose work they do not respect getting critical attention.  still,
> there's enough kudos and appreciation to go around.  let's not let this
> scarcity mentality prevent us from enjoying a full spectrum of poetic
> activity.
>

It's very true, and remarkably perceptive of you to notice, that it's
hard to watch those who's work we don't respect getting
published/celebrated, but I propose that this is one the instances in
which our subjectivity in critique comes into play the most; that is, I
think that when we are resentful of a y  saying its their work we
object to.

Sincerely, EVD
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 18:24:31 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      Re: Killian at Naropa
Mime-Version: 1.0
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At 10:10 AM 6/25/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Got to hear Kevin Killian read last night at Naropa's Summer Writing Program
> - and to meet "The Man Himself" as well as the delightful Dodie Bellamy.
>
>Kevin did more than just read, I should think - he appropriated the podium
>with bravura, wit and a warm, excited energy. There were six poems, all of
>them marvelous: first, part of his series of Dario Argento/HIV poems ("the

Patrick, Kevin,or ?

Are these avialable in print or electronically anywhere?
tom bell
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 14:50:49 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      hey! Other mind here, please take the trouble to read it
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Kali, your misreading of my post makes me wonder if you really do think
that others exist. Did you overlook the parenthetical reference to
Kierkegaard & the necessary act of faith? Do you follow what I say about
Pound's occasions for remorse not being mine, but that we meet, thru the
poem, in Remorse? Well I recall when I first read that canto, knowing
nothing abt Pound-the-person, being  very moved...by what I _could_ get.
The years I subsequently spent reading about Pound, & his poetry, made
little difference to the original response.

I knew someone had been there when that poem was written. Rationally I know
he wasnt addressing me, db. But I believe that poems by their integral
being _are_ intended to be read as-if meant for me---your me, her me, or my
me.

I dont understand whats so threatening about this belief (except of course,
to people who make a living relating biography to poetry...I know that when
I was teaching, this insight I would advance here, was lost to me. But it
was there when in adolescence I first read poetry.) Nor do I think we get
anywhere by the accusation that I am privileged. I guess I could try to
dumb myself down. Much that you say is certainly lost on me, demonstrating
again the existence of other minds. The difficulty must revolve around an
idea of the uses of a poem. Nowhere do I say others do not exist. But I do
argue for the primacy of the poem, not the poet. The poem, words from
elsewhere, comes to help you to know yourself more fully. What more do you
want? Are you afraid of your self, do you need the poet's laundry-list to
save you from his poem, from the way his poem works in you? Do you check it
out with a private eye each time you begin falling in love?

I appreciate your concern for me, that I will be among those overthrown by
less privileged persons. But why shut the stable-door? That horse has
already gone. I dont follow how knowing Ed Dorn had prejudices that are
socially inacceptable, would save me from the pleasure of, say,
_Gunslinger_, & thereby enable me to survive the revolution that you
anticipate.

I appreciate, too, therre may be an edge to my tone. It's only responding
to the edge in yours, an edge that suggests a mind made completely up, &
that projects its conclusions onto anything that looks, well, threatening.
We could debate this civilly. David B
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 16:03:12 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: anecdotage
In-Reply-To:  <199706252224.SAA28416@use.usit.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

My complaint had, and has, to do with straw men, unfounded assertions,
unstated presuppositions, red herrings etc -- all of which are
demonstrably on display in the letters I cited --

It is true that Simic has done much wonderful work to broaden the reading
habits of Americans -- It is also true that I first read his works in
graduate school -- It is also true that we read no theoretical texts in
those classes -- It is also true that the graduate students I get in my
seminars (from all sorts of universities I hasten to add) appear just as
poorly read on the subject of theory as they are in other areas, including
poetry --

and I suspect we might find it true that Simic has received as much print
space as Spivak over the years if anyone cares to make an actual count
(which says nothing as to the quality of such attention)

again, I want everybody to read more of everything -- I don't think that
end is likely to be accomplished by the kind of thing I see in these
letters in the Boston Review -- rather, I believe they will make some
people take comfort in their lack or reading -- I don't know that --
Unlike Simic et al, I'm willing to advance this as a suspicion rather than
as a certainty --

and yet again, if there is any evidence I might read anywhere that the
"rise of theory" in the academy after '66 has anything whatsoever to do
with the acceptance of the Yasusada submissions by individual editors, I'd
certainly be happy to read it --

"lack of" for "lack or" above

and why is Spivak the whipping girl of this discussion? as opposed to
Johnson or Kamuf??
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 22 Jun 1997 12:14:50 +-900
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Tessitore 
Subject:      Re: bio sphere

Maria Damon and EVD had this exchange:
 and of course those
> categories are highly dependent on context, what i know of the poem,
poet,
> or cultural work the poem does or intends.  in one context a work is
> interesting, in another, it's boring or seems out of place.

I would go farther and say that from a poet or artist about whom I have
one set of information (one code of desires) a work will seem boring,
while from another the same exact work would be compelling, make me sick
with yearning...and isn't that the name of the game.
_________________

I'll throw my ignorance out on the table--what game is this and how does
one play it? can you provide an example (is it possibe?) of identical work
being compelling if written by poet A and boring if written by poet B?

Doesn't  this show that intimate knowledge of the circumstance's of the
writer's life can as easily be a detriment (at least a limitation) to your
reading?

        DT
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 07:50:51 +0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         REBECCA WELDON 
Subject:      Buddhist Poetry
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Early morning in Chiang Rai, Thailand I read the list.  Now I join the fray.
I unattached the Buddhist poetry attachment and was told my hard disk would
be reformatted.  The philosophic implications of this message
notwithstanding I trashed it anyway.  Buddhism and real life enjoy a
love-hate relationship out here.  How about a book of Christian poetry by
Asians?  I'm sure several exist.

Orientalism or the fascination of the so-called west for the so-called east
is tolerable to the point where it supercedes fashion, it then needs
redefinition. My neighbors wear Levis and crucifixes.  Are they Christians?
Is what I write Buddhist because I live in a Buddhist country or American
because I was born there or feminist because I'm a woman or philosophic
because I like questions?  Am I a American Buddhist feminist metaphysicist?

O Lord, define me
for I am lost

rebecca sittiwong
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 19:47:05 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      Light from Another Country
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As someone who has been close to the "Yasusada affair," I'd like to
say just a few words regarding the Aldon Nielsen and Stephen Ellwood
contributions on Charles Simic. To be direct, but in a friendly tone:
"What the hell are you guys talking about?" Simic's response to
Perloff has a few sentences, at most, that relate (and in the most
impressionistic and light-hearted way) to the privileging of "theory"
over poetry in the academy. How you squeeze all of that heavy
critical juice out of a couple nutmegs of Simician wit?

Simic's central argument (tho he admits he has only read the APR
selection, a small part of the Yasusada/Motokiyu oeuvre) is not
complicated or at all difficult to see. It is that Yasusada's poetry
is most unremarkable and that any poet worth her salt can see such.
As illustration, Simic quotes two stanzas from a poem titled "Loon
and Dome," (see Aldon's post from today) claiming that if a Frank
Kowalski from Milwaukee had submitted such writing that it "wouldn't
stand a chance." But Simic's choice of stanzas is interesting,
because in the context of the complete poem, the section in question
is clearly intended by Yasusada ("clearly," that is, even given what
I will say below) to be read as poignantly trite and sentimental. The
whole poem is available in the APR "special supplement."

Now, it's possible to satirize a good many poets through out-of-
context quotes, and I think Simic has the perfect right to do so with
Yasusada if he likes. But that CS chose this particular passage as
representative seems to either A) suggest a lack of attentiveness on
his part in reading and evaluating Yasusada's work, or B) suggest
that he is more or less struggling to find a passage he can poke good
fun at so as to bolster his thesis. (And now that I'm thinking about
it, I guess the same could be said for Aldon Nielsen, who approvingly
quoted the passage!)

It's not a bad thing that Simic doesn't like Yasusada. As Marjorie
Perloff--who in her summary strongly disagrees with Simic's
assessment--puts it, the most notable area of disagreement in the
Boston Review mini-essays has to do with the question of
Yasusada's poetic value, and contention around this point (after
all the near-unanimous gushing from "mainstream" and "avant-garde"
corners alike) is a not unwelcome development to all those who have
been intimately involved in AY's fascinating life. In fact, this
could be seen, I think, as a new issue or phase, if you will, in the
general Yasusada problem: how should works which are not
strictly poetical but also highly elaborate gestures of critique be
judged--particularly when such works have no solid writerly source
against which to press judgement? To say that the poems are "good"
or "bad" as *poems* (or as drafts, letters, English assignments,
shopping lists, etc.) is one way of reacting, but I think it is more
complicated than that; there's a whole complex aura (tho there must
be a better word) that has developed around Yasusada that by now
substantially complicates the matters of reading, classification, and
critical ranking.

In the eight Boston Review responses, Eliot Weinberger is the only
one to hone in clearly on this issue, and while Simic's piece has
some amusing moments, Weinberger's (ok, I'm biased) is even better.
In fact, I heard from EW just the other day after he got back from
the Rotterdam Poetry Festival. He told me that he met with Simic
there and that they chatted at length about the Pearl poet and
disagreed vehemently about Yasusada. And then they parted amicably
and went their own ways, each surrounded by small throngs of swooning
and screaming Dutch girls and boys, reaching out their books of
Serbian and Spanish translations for signing, straining to touch even
the sleeves of these two immortal heroes of late 20th century
American letters.

There are still some places where people care about poetry.

Kent
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 21:08:16 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 

Rebecca Weldon checks in --

<< Early morning in Chiang Rai, Thailand I read the list.  Now I join the
fray. . . .    Orientalism or the fascination of the so-called west for the
so-called east is tolerable to the point where it supercedes fashion, it then
needs redefinition. . . . >>

Interesting (& well said).  Reliance upon the now-fashionable term
"Orientalism," if resorted to as a handy kneejerk putdown (or method of
avoiding serious consideration of what's in question), ain't (one may
suppose) above critique.

<< My neighbors wear Levis and crucifixes.  Are they Christians?
Is what I write Buddhist because I live in a Buddhist country or
American because I was born there or feminist because I'm a woman or
philosophic because I like questions?  Am I a American Buddhist
feminist metaphysicist?

O Lord, define me for I am lost >>

  lost & found

  breath of fresh air

  thanks for the Thai-gram --

  (& do tell us more!)

cheers,
d.i.

  Your body is a camel
  that travvels to the Kaaba of the heart.
  You were asinine not to go,
  it's not that you have no ass.
  If you have not gone to the Kaaba,
  destiny will draw you there.
  Don't run off babbling --
  there's no escape from Allah
        - Jelaluddin Rumi

& here's a verse I mentioned (last week or so . . . ) --

   Late, by myself, in the boat of myself,
   no light and no land anywhere,
   cloudcover thick.  I try to stay
   just above the surface, yet I'm already under
   and living within the ocean.
     - Rumi [this from Coleman Barks, *Open Secret"]
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 19:18:53 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Hugh Steinberg 
Subject:      Re: Komunyakaa
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hoa Nguyen writes:
>
>-- one American poet writing on the American war in Vietnam not
>mentioned by Kali here is Yusef Kumanyakaa, in his book Dien Cau Dau
>(spelling?-- "dinky dow" in slang meaning "Crazy people"-- what the
>Vietnamese called Americans).  I heard him read from it over ten years
>ago and it was a pivotal experience for me, particularly because he is a
>poet of color.  I reccommend it highly.  His later works do not deal
>with this subject matter and his work has gotten better-- more
>interesting, less strictly linear.  (He won a pulitzer!)
>
I couldn't agree more about Yusef.  He's also great to hang around with,
and tells the best stories.

Hugh Steinberg
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 21:48:48 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Thompson 
Subject:      Re: Orientalism: reply to Dean Brink
Mime-Version: 1.0
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I had meant to stay away from this thread, but...

Having myself been a member [tho a marginal one, to be sure] of "the
venerable" American Oriental Society, having attended its conferences and
published in its journal, I suppose that I might be considered an
Orientalist.

I don't like the term and have never applied it to myself, and whenever the
subject of Said's sense of "orientalism" comes up among the staid
philologists with whom I serve my time, I find myself siding with him.

But that doesn't make any difference. Here I am attempting to pass myself
off as a "specialist" in the earliest form of Sanskrit, so-called language
of the gods, a language sacred to Hindus, both in India and right here in
the States too [many of them]. Very presumptuous. Very orientalist.
Frequently very offensive,

My reading of Dean Brink's attack against Kent Johnson [given that I don't
know what came earlier, and I don't know Johnson's anthology, I have to
say: *but* I do know orientalism] is that Brink is trying to push his way
into a position to be an "authoritative interpreter" of Buddhism and
Japanese poetry for the relevant audience. In order to do this, of course,
he has had to discredit his predecessors. And he has done so by pinning
exoticism, new agism, and even racism on them.

I think that Kent Johnson has defended himself very well against Brink's
attacks. He's made it clear, to me at least, that Brink is attacking a
straw man [or perhaps a 'theoretical' man], without really having examined
carefully either Johnson or his anthology.

Look, as others have already suggested, Buddhism is a tradition that began
in India and has moved very skillfully and gracefully across *all kinds of*
cultural borders and across many centuries. That it has taken hold among
American poets now may not be so much a sign of their paternalism and
consumerism, as much as it is a sign of the resilience of the Buddhist
message, which, by the way, Dean Brink has no authoritative claim on,
whatsoever.

Certainly I cannot see how anyone can say that Buddhism is a product that
the Chinese or the Japanese *alone* can speak for. And if Asian Americans
who are also Buddhists want to speak up for Buddhism, then they should
speak up. Instead of trashing other Buddhists.

idam agnaye, na mama [Vedic for "this is for the fire, not for me"]

George Thompson
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 23:22:21 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: more haiku-gram

[d.i.]:
(1)
  forget the spam-po
  what I'd really like to see
  is donut haiku

(2)
  buttermilk sugar
  they knead me & they fry me
  none taste the center

[Steven Marks]:
(3)
  the center holds holes
  something to nibble around
  no mess on my hands

[d.i.]:
(4)
  without the coffee
  a donut is not done here
  darkness to imbibe

[s.m.]:
(5)
  nut to do but dough
  coffee from a hell of beans
  my do-dough dissolves

[d.i.]:
(6)
  nonesistence hides
  in the very word donut
  nut signifies naught

[Katherine Lynes]:
(7)
  yellow innards splooch
  bavarian dive bomber
  cannot hold center

[d.i.]:
(8)
  and what about do?
  do of course signifies dough
  a dough-naught for you!

[D.P. Salmon]:
(9)
  do-ough a de-ar
  a whole in one
  raison drops in bun

[Randolph Healy]:
(10)
  Sphere before torus
  when the centre was not holed
  goodbye nut hi  ring

[L. MacMahon]:
(11)
  batter my heart and
  artery o sweet and fat
  confectionary

[Hugh Steinberg]:
(12)
  I love everyone
  says the old cop on his beat
  let 'em eat donuts.

[d.i.]:
(13)
  no start & no end
  till you yourself nibble the
  do (history) nut

[s.m.]:
(14)
  from naut- to navel
  my do-naught, my omphalos
  which one to fill up?

[d.i.]:
(15)
  sometimes dear madam
  a donut's just a donut
  remarked Sigmund Freud

(16)
  docent of donuts!
  the world is your museum
  a baker's dozen

(17)
  dulcet dolor dough
  the do-do bird is extinct?
  the bride said "I do!"

(18)
  quoth the Prophet "seek
  knowledge even in China!"
  (not hyperbole)

(19)
  that one didn't use
  the word donut even once!
  (what to make of it?)

(20)
  that one only spoke
  of its antecedent verse!
  (how convoluted)

(21)
  maybe donuts aren't
  worthy of quite so much ink
  (uhm is it non-ink?)

(22)
  in shops everywhere
  hundreds of donuts are sold
  w/o one haiku

(23)
  orientalist!
  where are your brown-rice donuts?
  (where's the wasabe?)

(24)
  argumentative
  is not what a donut is
  (don't know nothing much)

(25)
  like a potato
  a rudimentary mind
  is born of some need

(26)
  what complications!
  do (vocabulary) nut
  do (translation) nut

(27)
  do (a question) nut
  do (a subtle answer) nut
  "all things reach their end"
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 23:35:17 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Alexander 
Subject:      gleaning smart
In-Reply-To:  <199706260404.VAA27709@pantano.theriver.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Mark Weiss, you said:

"But let's look at a more Giraldoesque example. What exactly does my
knowledge that Kit Smart was mad as a hatter add to my appreciation of
Jubilate Agno?"

Perhaps nothing, but reading Samuel Johnson saying that Smart was thought
mad because he prayed in the streets, and having Johnson say he would "as
lief pray with Kit Smart as with any man," knowing a bit about Johnson, and
having read Smart's also magnificent "Song to David" adds greatly to my
appreciation of Jubilate Agno, and to my knowledge of prayer and madness.

charles



chax press   ::   alexander writing/design/publishing
books by artists' hands   ::   web sites built with care and vision
handmade and trade editions of contemporary innovative writing
chax@theriver.com   ::   http://personal.riverusers.com/~chax/
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 22:45:37 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: "What the hell are you guys talking about?"
In-Reply-To:  <25D3597A80@student.highland.cc.il.us>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Someone will have to explain to me how to produce a reading of my citation
of Simic's citation of "Yasusada" that can in any way be accurately
characterized as approving --

I spoke of recurring problems in several of the letters to the BR -- the
posts since have for some reason narrowed to Simic -- It takes no critical
squeezing to see that in Simic's last paragraph he is making a truth claim
about the relationship of the "Yasusada" recption to cpntemporary critical
practice.  Nor does it take any critical squeezing to recognize that
Weinberger is making a truth claim about English departments broken into
contradictory postmodernisms, one of which, here named "deconstruction,"
doesn't want to read literature.  One point I tried to make is that a
reading of certain well-known "deconstructors" will reveal a passion for
the reading of literature -- I mentioned, as one example, the essays by
Derrida on Joyce, Celan, Jabes -- I might add here the following quote
from derrida:

"I have never tried to confuse literature and philosophy or to reduce
philosophy to literature.  I am very attentive to the difference of space,
of history, of historical rites, of logic, of rhetoric, protocals and
argumentation.  I try to be attentive to this distinction as much as
possible. Literature interests me, supposing that, in my own way, I
practise it or that I study it in others precisely as something which is
the complete opposite of the expression of private life.   . . . I am not
able to separate the invention of literature, the history of literature,
from the history of democracy."

now, at the risk of boring all with all this repetition -- My complaint is
that several of the letters contain remarkable misrepresentations and
obvious logical fallacies -- In the very act of attributing a narrowing of
reading practices to "theory," the writers of those letters betray an
ignorance of the theoretical texts that appear to be the source of their
complaints -- My ioriginal point was that the reception of "Yasusada" has
become something which these writers will blame upon whatever it is that
they don't happen to like in contemporary literary sociology.  I do not
believe that to be an effective way of understanding what is going on in
our readings of Yasusada, nor do I believe that to be an effective way of
addressing the many problems that do exist in the academic study of
literature --

at this point, I'll simply invite any who are interested to read the full
text of the responses in the BR and decide for themselves if I have in any
way misread them -- the responses are considerably broader in range than
one might gather from the disucssion here (for example -- one opines that
Marjorie herself might be involved in the distribution network for
Yasusada -- and EW adds that we may all be Yasusada -- which may cause
problems for Wesleyan, I suppose)


yours in brotherhood,
Araki
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 21:47:45 -0300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Stephen C. Ellwood" 
Subject:      Re: hey! Other mind here, please take the trouble to read it
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Wed, 25 Jun 1997, David Bromige wrote:

  Do you follow what I say about
> Pound's occasions for remorse not being mine, but that we meet, thru the
> poem, in Remorse? Well I recall when I first read that canto, knowing
> nothing abt Pound-the-person, being  very moved...by what I _could_ get.
> The years I subsequently spent reading about Pound, & his poetry, made
> little difference to the original response.

Maybe the new information made little difference to your original
response, but what about subsequent readings?  I think it's pretty
important to recognize that, just as the biographical information we have
on makers effects our reading and looking, so does our own (ever
changing) biographical information.

> I knew someone had been there when that poem was written. Rationally I know
> he wasnt addressing me, db. But I believe that poems by their integral
> being _are_ intended to be read as-if meant for me
> I dont understand whats so threatening about this belief

I don't think it's this belief specifically so much as that we all get
comitted to our ideas once we state them (often before).  That seems to
me one of the limitations/benifits of a forum like this.  It forces
people to be somewhat adversarial, like "If you don't disagree with me,
what do you have to say?"

 (except of course,
> to people who make a living relating biography to poetry...I know that when
> I was teaching, this insight I would advance here, was lost to me. But it
> was there when in adolescence I first read poetry.) Nor do I think we get
> anywhere by the accusation that I am privileged. I guess I could try to
> dumb myself down.

Privlidge doesn't mean you're smarter, buddy.  Just luckier.

>I do argue for the primacy of the poem, not the poet. The poem, words from
> elsewhere, comes to help you to know yourself more fully. What more do you
> want? Are you afraid of your self, do you need the poet's laundry-list to
> save you from his poem, from the way his poem works in you? Do you check it
> out with a private eye each time you begin falling in love?

To me it souds like you are arguing for niether the primacy of the poem
nor the poet, but for the primacy of the reader.  Now that I can get
behind. As for the question of needing the poet's laundry list to save
{me} from {her} poems, I suggest that it may well do the opposite, that
is, fall me in love with her even more deeply.  And anyway, are you
arguing AGAINST the laundry list?  If so, why?  Why not more, more fully
drawn.  After all, it is the poet, and not the poem, who is love-able.
As in able to love.  Unless the poet's dead, in which case the whole
project is, to me, kind of intolerably painful, or really fantastical
(reading is I guess)

> I appreciate your concern for me, that I will be among those overthrown by
> less privileged persons. But why shut the stable-door? That horse has
> already gone. I dont follow how knowing Ed Dorn had prejudices that are
> socially inacceptable, would save me from the pleasure of, say,
> _Gunslinger_, & thereby enable me to survive the revolution that you
> anticipate.
>
> I appreciate, too, therre may be an edge to my tone. It's only responding
> to the edge in yours, an edge that suggests a mind made completely up, &
> that projects its conclusions onto anything that looks, well, threatening.
> We could debate this civilly. David B
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 02:45:46 -0300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Stephen C. Ellwood" 
Subject:      Re: Light from Another Country
In-Reply-To:  <25D3597A80@student.highland.cc.il.us>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I just wanted to tell you that I am Emily Vey Drunk, not Stephen
Ellwood,  no matter how much I wish that were not the case.  That's how
it is.  I'm Emily Vey Error.  Not Stephen Rejection Elwood.

Yours in diligence,

EVD.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 21:59:24 -0700
Reply-To:     dean@w-link.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Dean A. Brink" 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and Racism
MIME-Version: 1.0
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In reply to Kent Johnson:

Perhaps it is fair to say that we both have been grabbing certain words
of the other and making more than there is there out of them. As you
suggested, this comes with the territory of writing against another and
diatribe. Maybe it would be more productive if we focus more on the
issues and less on the person. This may be partially my fault, for I
based my critique of the anthology on a narrow selection of your words
in defense of your editing policy. After you explained your situation as
editor it indeed does not sound pernicious as my accusations have
asserted. No malice, but still room for more apt reconsideration of your
editing policies. And the more you write about the issues (instead of
attacking me, which I can understand as your words have been under
scrutiny and I do sympathize with you, just hope we can get to the meat
of the issues before Hell freezes over :) .
Unfortunately, at this point, as the discussion has veered in this
personal direction, your words of explanation still ring more of excuses
than accounts of how the factual act of editing an all-white Zen
anthology came to pass. Maybe I missed it, but have you discussed the
"social tensions" that Lew mentions as possible reasons for the
editorial choices (which would shift the discussion from aesthetics and
ideology to the history of Buddhist groups and sects, and poetry
coteries and publishing houses). BTW, Lew's tone in situating _Beneath a
Single Moon_ is very similar to my own: sarcastic, high-toned, and in
disbelief that such stark "omissions" of Asian Americans would be found
in a collection based on the "stated ideal of comprehensive co-existence
beneath a light that illuminates all evenly" (Lew, 582). (Also, I would
like to retract all race-based distinctions that were read into my first
posting, preferring cultural, discourse-based, non-exclusive
affiliations.)

Again, I have not attacked the contents of your anthology but your
defense of your editing policy, which itself speaks to the crux of the
matter. As you write (sorry, I have to quote you to maintain a semblance
of clarity):

>If Mr. Lew (and
>the other co-signers of the BR response) had carefully considered the
>Shambhala anthology, they would have seen that a fundamental criteria
>for inclusion was a serious background in Buddhist study and
>practice. We were not interested, in the least, in poetry
>exhibiting the vague and stereotypical waft of the "Buddhistic." If
>anything, our anthology begins to point to the fact that reductive
>notions of the "Buddhistic" are one of the by-products of the
>"Orientalism" that Mr. Lew denounces. There is simply no way of
>boiling down Buddhist artistic expression to any particular
>"Buddhistic" characteristics of tone, content, or style.

Again, like you and I, you and Lew would seem to be not communicating
clearly.
When you say
>that a fundamental criteria
>for inclusion was a serious background in Buddhist study and
>practice,
I hear a 'certain idea of' serious background…. I also hear a requisite
_self-conscious_ foregrounding of Buddhist practice that may seem (and
this is only conjecture from my experiences in Japan and the opinion of
Japanese friends) absurdly "forced" (what in Japanese is called "riding
the tone" [choushi ni notte iru]). I don't know if this is one of the
charges in the BG piece, as I haven't seen it yet.
The "riding the tone" in much of the Naropa, Snyder and what Lew wittily
calls a "Caucasian Zen circle" poetry, amounts to what seems to me the
ongoing "winking" (to use a technical term) in some of the poetry
(perhaps most prominent in Snyder's style of poetry).

Examples of this winking are in the remainder of this paragraph above:

>We were not interested, in the least, in poetry
>exhibiting the vague and stereotypical waft of the "Buddhistic." If
>anything, our anthology begins to point to the fact that reductive
>notions of the "Buddhistic" are one of the by-products of the
>"Orientalism" that Mr. Lew denounces. There is simply no way of
>boiling down Buddhist artistic expression to any particular
>"Buddhistic" characteristics of tone, content, or style.

Like accusations that I am Orientalist, this twisted logic "winks" at
one. It suggests that maybe this vein of American Buddhist culture that
your anthology represents is antagonistic to Asian Americans, placing
vivid practice first. For expects that one conform to both "serious
practice" and not non-reducible "Buddhistic" characteristics in poetry.
The primary criteria, and bottom line, is a foregrounded practice.

Along these lines, a question that then arises is whether this winking
activism fulfills "spiritual" (interior? amorphous? epistemological?)
desires, or interfaces with social concerns, or ?.

As a specific example by which we might merge the poetic and the
"discursive framing" issues here is the question of how haiku (not
senryu, which are not "serious" and usually used for the sake of
invective, satire, parody and comedy) do or do not carry Orientalist
overtones in English? (This is a question designed to focus discussion,
not reach absolute conclusions.)
More specifically, in practice, does the writing and evaluation of haiku
in English demand a primarily Buddhist (by whatever school of thought
one defines this) epistemological approach to language? Are haiku in
English metonymical representations of Buddhist practice?
And, in the translation of culture in America, when a group, religious
or social, attempts to sustain an image of another culture, to what
degree is that "other" culture necessarily confined to a narrow range of
interpretation, is stereotyped, and made part of a unilateral and
expropriative relationship? And does haiku constitute an example of such
a discourse and practice that collapses formal and ideological
objectives?
Then, are the values cultivated by the practice of writing haiku
Orientalist, for instance, in the sense of speaking longingly and
Romantically of attaining an imaged exemplar Asian subject (be like
Basho, be like Dogen, be like Snyder who wants to be like the above)
while quite selectively engaging the materials and omitting historical
context (like the volume of haiku and waka translated without head
notes, dates, any clue of context)?


dean brink
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 23:58:24 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Personal Identity as text vs Stands On Its Own
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>I just wanted to register my agreement with Kali Tal's description of the
>importance of the identity of the author.  To me reading poetry and
>prose, and perhaps to an even larger extent looking at visual art, is a
>project of untangling the personality/personal insecurities etc. of the
>author first and foremost.

 Would that mean that you get nothing from reading _The Iliad_?




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 15:30:08 +0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         REBECCA WELDON 
Subject:      Oriental, Orientalism, Orientalist
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

The words oriental, orientalism, orientalist reflect a world view centered
in Europe of the 19th century.  This view places peoples and cultures from
the Middle East, Iran, the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and Eastern
Asia all in the same general geographic region: the orient.  This region lay
beyond the Grecian borders of Europe and it's definition alludes to a
different way of thought, i.e. the "oriental" mind.

Orientalism, I believe has legitimate use as a descriptor, since it
expresses a fascination with those things "oriental", this fascination being
on a philosophical level with fashion, the proponents of which are not
primarily known for their erudition.

Orientalists, however and to be sure, possess more than an elementary
knowlege of geography, witnessed by the outcry of Orientalists on our list.
Certainly a scholar of one or several oriental languages would have more
than a superficial knowlege of the region.

Therefore, I plan to found the Western Society of Thailand, to be joined by
other scholars for the purpose of investigating the languages, cultures and
religions of Europe and North America.  This would include a detailed
inquiry into the nature of Oriental Societies and Buddhist Poets.  I would
then be more qualified to comment upon these controversial subjects.

Yours in sincerity,
etc.
etc.
etc.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 01:40:28 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: hey! Other mind here, please take the trouble to read it

>Kali, your misreading of my post makes me wonder if you really do think
>that others exist.

Gnaargh.  And *what* kind of rhetorical flourish was *that*, David?
Civility, like civilization begins at home.  But given your description of
your mode of reading, it seems clear that you are simply doing what you say
you do:  inventing the author.  The Kali to whom you respond exists only in
your imagination, her form is dictated solely by your response to my posts.
Question is, why do you need to invent me in this particular fashion?

I read what you wrote.  I overlooked neither the Kierkegaard reference nor
your homage to Pound.  I just don't *agree* with you and, frankly, I find
your methods *as described in your posts*... unsound. [CAMERA PANS to the
moo-moo draped figure of MARLON BRANDO, as Kurtz, out of control, about to
recite "The Hollow Men," a poem Eliot wrote specifically *to* and *for*
Francis Ford Coppola.]

>The years I subsequently spent reading about Pound, & his poetry, made
>little difference to the original response.

Well, uh, no, it wouldn't, would it?  The original response being always
already the original response.  But you aren't saying, can't actually be
saying that you  read Pound over and over and always the same, can you?  And
if you do bring new information/insight to your reading of Pound, you can't
mean that it springs full-blown from your own forehead, can you?  Or are we
somehow separating "response" from "reading" here in a way that makes
"response" emotional (read: true) and "reading" intellectual (read: false
or--if we're charitable--irrelevant)?

I can't help what things remind me of.  I could, of course, help telling you
about it, but I won't.  Since you're already offended (and when I was being
so polite, too) I'll risk irritating you further.  This "response" to poetry
(which in your construction appears to take place at some deeper and more
meaningful level than contextualization) doesn't seem so different to me
from the hard-on some guys get when they thumb through fuck books. I mean,
that's a "response," right?  And it doesn't matter who the woman (or the
guy) in the photo is--their bio is completely and wholly irrelevant because
the reader is in it for *himself* (or herself, as the case may be).  You can
jerk off over a photo, but it doesn't mean that you're exactly "meeting
through the porn."  I think that focusing wholly on your own response to a
poem (and the bio be damned) objectifies the author and makes him/her merely
a vehicle for your own pleasure.  What you feel might be *real*, but
frankly, my dear, who gives a damn? In the end, all you've got left is a
sticky piece of paper and the need to do it again and again because it
never, finally, satisfies.

>I dont understand whats so threatening about this belief
...
>Are you afraid of your self, do you need the poet's laundry-list to
>save you from his poem, from the way his poem works in you? Do you check it
>out with a private eye each time you begin falling in love?

There's nothing *threatening* about this belief at all.  It's merely
tiresome and, in my opinion, wrong-headed for reasons I have already
detailed. I do *not* privilege emotion over intellect; in fact, I find them
inseparable.  I know a lot of people these days who interrogate their
arousal at materials they find intellectually objectionable--seems to me a
healthy practice and one which results in a more fully realized (and
mutually pleasurable) connection to the erotic. And though I don't hire
private detectives when I fall in love I, like many other folks, do realize
that I'm not at the peak of my decision-making prowess during the period of
most intense hormone poisoning. I've learned that it's wise to listen to my
more clear-headed friends before "following my heart."  While I don't think
emotions are refutable, I surely do think they are fallible.

>Nor do I think we get
>anywhere by the accusation that I am privileged.

Accusation?  Where?  I stated that certain kinds of reading implied a
privileged position.  If you don't think that they do, argue the case.

>I dont follow how knowing Ed Dorn had prejudices that are
>socially inacceptable, would save me from the pleasure of, say,
>_Gunslinger_, & thereby enable me to survive the revolution that you
>anticipate.

There are certain *kinds* of pleasures that one might want to renounce, or
at least to take in moderation with an awareness of their consequences.  My
own moral compass doesn't have a heading called "socially acceptable"; I
make ethical and moral judgements based on a core set of beliefs about the
intrinsic value of human beings and our place in the world.  So it's hard
for me to find pleasure--and to take pleasure in taking pleasure--in an
environment which fosters racism or sexism. I'm interested in moral
bearings, not moral absolutes. For instance, I make a distinction between
the basic sexism underpinning most Hollywood productions, and particularly
evil manifestations of sexism so that I can enjoy watching pop trash like
_Dusk Til Dawn_ or _Batman_, while heartily disliking pop trash like _True
Lies_ or _My Best Friend's Wedding_.  I know what I like, and I know why I
like it. (I'm consistent, if nothing else.) I'm not saying that Dorn's
poetry shouldn't be read or enjoyed.  But I *do* think it ought to be placed
in context, and not *simply* enjoyed without further interrogation.

>an edge that suggests a mind made completely up, &
>that projects its conclusions onto anything that looks, well, threatening.

I am certain of what I *think*, and I state it as clearly and forcefully as
possible.  I am rarely certain that I am right or that I have the last word.
However, you haven't given me any arguments or explanations that are
persuasive enough to make me change my mind.  Perhaps that's not simply my
stubbornness, but also your failure to communicate.

Kali
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 07:50:56 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Henry 
Subject:      Re: identity of the poet
In-Reply-To:  Message of Wed, 25 Jun 1997 11:22:02 -0700 from 

I agree with DB that the thing has to make its own way without support or
investigation by the bio-FBI.  What Elliza was saying I think was that
she likes DIRECT, PARTICULAR, personal address in poems - a personal dramatic
gesture - as opposed to visionary or intellectual abstractions in a writerly
void.  What I thought Kali was saying was that where a writer's coming
from matters in the same way that it just helps to know that Mick Jagger
didn't grow up in the Alabama fields inventing Robert Johnson tunes.
[warning: we already had the Stones discussion. no further comments
allowed. - Blarnes]  I'm not saying a reader's required to do a
background check: far from it!  But most people would like to know when
an imitation or a pastiche is taking place, or the difference between
an "imaginative rendering" & a testimony from experience.  Even if the
imaginative rendering rings true.  Most of the work that reaches print
& wide audience has already been sifted over & over by the cultural
bio-screens anyway.  Until the truth comes out.
- HG
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 08:13:09 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Susan Wheeler 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 24 Jun 1997 to 25 Jun 1997
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Questions that intersect with all three of these threads:

Is it possible to successfully construct a text that emulates, or speaks
from, another's experience?  Is the attempt itself doomed by its lack of
access to another's culture?  Moreover, is the attempt itself necessarily
colonialist/appropriationist -- or does its value depend upon either intent
or result?  And (Marjorie's question in the Yasasuda brouhaha) is the reader
"duped" if the reader mistakes the writer's true identity, or is this simply
another function of the text?

My own answers differ with the day, so I'm interested in others' --

Susan Wheeler
wheeler@is.nyu.edu
voice/fax (212) 254-3984
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 10:27:20 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         James Finnegan 
Subject:      Re: more Vietnam

In a message dated 97-06-26 03:52:14 EDT, you write:

>Just curious -- what do those of you familiar with Vietnam vets' poetry
think
>of Terry Hertzler's _The Way of the Snake_?
>
>
>Bobbie

I'm not familiar with that book/author. I'll try to turn up a copy & read it.


Another notable book is Moon Reflected Fire by Doug Anderson. (Published
by Alice James in about '94). Anderson was a medic in Vietnam. (The book/poet
won a Kingsley Tufts Award.) Not all the poems are directly related to his
Vietnam/war experiences--you can feel the poet trying to disengage somewhat
from that material.

Finnegan
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 10:34:34 EST
Reply-To:     rreynold@rci.rutgers.edu
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         Rebecca Reynolds 
Organization: Rutgers University
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!

> Joe Amato -- both w.class ("Joe") & top-drawer? ("Amato" -- Italianate
> daliant -- W.Stevens' "scrivening amorist": amore [moon hitsyer eye] =
> amato -- a relation of Laurie Amat's? [SF performance musician; neh,
> unlikely]) . . . Joe says:
>
> << anyway, part of the issue i see in this thread has to do with the status
> of the real... i think the real still has real status... i use "real" here as a
> category (sometimes i'll write "actual," just b/c, as we all know,
> everything is real, or can be deemed so) . . .  >>
>
>  Real walks        into a restaurant
>  best believe the dude getsa table
>
>  from the other side  ov the tracks?
>  nurture nature      ( birch   beech )
>
>  like money on trees?     sure shit man
>  actual leaves    autochthonous article
>
>  can handle everyting   like what if stuff
>  really happens? takes it in stride    he's
>
>  got the scoop   or did you really think
>  they call him real for     idle courtesy?
>
>   whistling diction?  re  al  i  ty
>   check    mate    illusion credit
>
> d.i.
>
>
Real walks into a restaurant
orders  a fly for Soup, what Soup

insists      like a joke
belonging to the fly, like the fly

dozing on beef in the gap between
like and                     like

      between
strips (a little strip of this,

little strip of that) in the rust
in the gray

spoon, the rest
in the white sugar, in the tin.   Now this fly

exerts the "fly effect."  Small wind
in the waiter's' ears.  Small breath

as the fly
flew between

spumenti and fork
in the face of the--

between figments of lettuce.  Let us now raise
famus myn.  Was Real

on a lopsided event?  What a juggernaut.  Naught
for love, but the next (what

is the aut   och   tho    nous
article?)  maudlin but tru.  the drowned fly

the tinny effect, the bib.


--Rebecca
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 25 Jun 1997 23:56:47 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: grad school and the writers union
In-Reply-To:  <199706250816.BAA27930@iceland.it.earthlink.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I didnt have a point. I was just listing some names in reply to the
question. Certainly I cannot imagine any other reason for a poet to be in
the university than the one you mention.

>What's the point, George? Either these folks (none schooled in the craft in
>universities, I think) have taught because it's their and the academy's
>nature or it's a good gig for the otherwise marginally employable (myself at
>times included).
>
>At 11:17 PM 6/24/97 -0700, you wrote:
>>>
>>>Has anyone ever taken a count of writers (serious writers--who'll do it no
>>>matter what) who are in the academy and out? I'd be willing to bet most are
>>>out. The in-ones might be more visible, but are they a majority, really?
>>>
>>>DT
>>>
>>
>>Well, let's look at the generation just before mine. The writers inside the
>>academy include Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Ed Dorn, Robert Kelly, Amiri
>>Baraka, Jerome Rothenberg, D.G. Jones, Louis Dudek, Robin Blaser, Allen
>>Ginsberg, Anselm Hollo, Archie Shepp. William Eastlake, not many women.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>George Bowering.
>>                                       ,
>>2499 West 37th Ave.,
>>Vancouver, B.C.,
>>Canada  V6M 1P4
>>
>>fax: 1-604-266-9000
>>e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
>>
>>





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 09:53:10 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Gwyn McVay 
Subject:      Re: Orientalism: reply to Dean Brink
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I appreciated George's reply. I was talking to a prof of Buddhist studies,
also a long-standing (long-sitting?) practitioner, and we realized that
the poetry world is coming to this entire debate somewhat tardily: for
years there have been tensions between American Buddhists of Asian descent
and American Buddhists of the pale people, who have in some circumstances
and communities tended to appropriate the surface forms of Asian Buddhism
without bothering to recognize the contributions of actual Asian-descended
*people.*  How do we not do this? Respect, great mindfulness?

If my aging memory serves, there are relevant articles in at least one
back issue of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, which you can find at:

http://jbe.la.psu.edu/  <--the LA being for Liberal Arts, not Los Angeles

bests
Gwyn
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 11:45:28 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Charles Bernstein 
Subject:      Letter from Jackson Mac Low
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

[Presented here is a letter by Jackson Mac Low to Nick Piombino, revised
for the Poetics List by Mac Low. Mac Low is commenting on Piombino’s
response to Dean Taciuch, that was posted on the list: "I wonder if it
might help to approach Cage and Mac Low's writing to students with
difficulties like this by introducing them to their music as a parallel
effort at dealing with meaning in more oblique ways than is usually
expected. I would like to suggest, in particular, Jackson Mac Low's amazing
relatively new cd ‘Open Secrets’ (1993 Experimental Intermedia Foundation
224 Centre Street,New York,N.Y 10013)."]


Your recommendation to let the students hear the pieces on _Open Secrets_ is a
good idea.  What I do is a great deal different from what John [Cage] did.
There isn't such an overwhelming emphasis on nonegoity in mine. In Anne & my
performances (and in other performances of our pieces) there is a great deal
of choice for performers (in Lucas 1-29 the performers compose their own
parts in accordance with certain  structural rules (based on a kind of
number sequence called the Lucas sequence: 1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18, 29 . . . ,
which determines both lengths of time slots and the number of different
tones in the slots, the larger numbers being made practical by regarding
notes in different tones or by using microtones).

Also, in John's pieces he wants each performer to be her/his own center and
not relate with the others. In mine I encourage them both to be their own
centers and to relate with everything they can hear--each other and
environmental sounds.

I was much influenced by John's work and theories (as well as by himself--a
wise and remarkable person), but, as he often remarked, "It's nice that we
don't tread on each other's heels."

 My "purely" chance-operational poetry (mainly Dec 1954  to Spring 1960)
(see examples in _Representative Works: 1938--1985_, 16-70) and my
"deterministic" or "algorithmic" nonintentional poetry--made by acrostic
reading-through text-selection procedures (mainly from 1960-1963--see Ibid.,
71-127, _Stanzas for Itis Lezak_ [Barton, VT:  Something Else, 1971], and
_Asymmetries 1-260_ [New York: Printed Editions, 1980]) and diastic
reading-through text-selection methods (see, for instance, _The Pronouns--40
Dances--For the Dancers_ [New York: Mac Low, 1964; 2nd ed. London: Tetrad
Press, 1971; 3rd ed., Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1979], _The Virginia
Woolf Poems_ [Providence: Burning Decl, 1985}, and _Words nd Ends from Ez_
{Bolinas, CA:  Avenue B, 1989]  into the 80s and sometimes later--was made
by methods quite different from John's. His mesostic poems--made by
reading-through procedures that entailed certain choices (mainly of how many
of the "wing words"--those on each side of the mesostic word, which was
determined by his method), were begun in about 1968 or 69, and had some
relation to my earlier reading-through methods, but were different in
certain  crucial ways.

Also, from 1955 intermittently on, I employed "translation" methods--ones
through which the notes of musical notations were "translated" into words
from source texts, e.g., my poem "Machault" (_Representative Works:
1938-1985_ [New York: Roof Books, 1986], 35-40]) or vice-versa, i.e., the
words of source texts were translated into music  (e.g., my _Milarepa
Quartet for Four Like Instruments_ [unpublished]).

The work I did from about 1981 on  was sometimes not systematic at all, but
most often was composed freely, though mostly  from the liminal zone between
the conscious and the unconscious, which the British psychologist W.W.
Winnicott called "the transitional space" and Silvano Arieti named "the
tertiary process," since it is the area of intersection between the primary
and secondary processes. [I owe knowledge of these terms to the revised and
expanded version of Austin Clarkson's fine paper for the  November 1995
Mills conference on Cage, "Divining the Intent of the Moment : John Cage and
Transpersonal Aesthetics," which will be published with the other papers
from the conference, edited by David Bernstein, by the University of Chicago
Press.] Examples of this kind of work are the poems in _From Pearl Harbor
Day to FDR's Birthday_ (Los Angeles, Sun & Moon, 1982; 2nd ed., 1995), the
first 2/3 or 3/4 of _Bloomsday_ (Barrytown, NY, Station Hill, 1984---the
last part is made up of nointentionally composed work--poetry, "stories,"
and music),  and the "poems in prose" in _Pieces o' Six_ (Los Angeles, Sun &
Moon, 1992)--with a few diastic exceptions.


All of these--and other works of mine of other kinds that I haven't space to
mention here--was quite different from any poetry or prose John ever wrote,
but so was my "nonintentional poetry." For instance, even though we both
made long poems by reading through [Ezra Pound's] _Cantos_, we did so in
quite different ways. (John liked mine--made by nonintentional consecutive
diastic selection of words & ends of words regulated
by Pound's name) better than his own mesostic poem.)

_Twenties: 100 Poems_ (New York: Roof Books, 1991) &  _154 Forties_ (work in
progress since 1990) are different again, adhering to certain "fuzzy verse
forms" [giving the secondary process a bone to gnaw on], and gathering into
them--mainly by liminal-zone processes--materials from what I heard, saw,
and spontaneously thought of while writing their first drafts. Poems in both
series, but especially the Forties poems are subject to later revision. This
is a  very complex way of working, mainly in the liminal (or tertiary) area,
even though there is a certain  amount of deliberate choice involved. The
choices, however, do not come from an attempt to "say" something definite,
but from intuitions in relation to local sound & meaning rather than to a
global meaning of the whole poem. Both those collections are sometimes used
as sources of chance-operationally made mixes which I run through
computer-automations (by Charles O. Hartman) of my diastic methods.

The thing is that there is too much pairing of John's and my work, despite
our strong mutual regard. We're both concerned with intentionality and
nonintentionality and started doing this sort of work from understandings of
Buddhism, especially Zen & Kegon as taught by Daisetz Suzuki at Columbia
University in the 40s and 50s. But I seldom used "pure" chance operations
after 1960. My algorithmic work is often mistakenly thought to be
chance-generated, as they say, and I too used to think it was
"chance-generated" work, but I realized sometime in the 80s that the only
chance involved is in the making of mistakes (and after a certain
point--especially book publication--the mistakes must be accepted as
integral to the works). Otherwise, whatever gets into the poetry is
determined by the generative method & lies there waiting in the source texts.


I might add that I have been working with many other  kinds, and sometimes
mixtures, of intentionality and intentionality since 1954. In addition to
the methods and processes I've mentioned, some works, e.g., my over 65 Light
Poems, e.g., _22 Light Poems_ (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow, 1968), "The
Presidents of the United States of America" (_Representative Works_,
152-67), and the "From Nuclei" poems (Ibid, 128-31)  involve "nucleus"
words--systematically determined by chance or other means--between which I
wrote freely.  And the performance works are realized by a complex mix of
"deliberate choice" and "intuitive (tertiary-process) choice, though many
were composed by strict chance operations.

Let me add that in my recent _42 Merzgedichte in Memoriam Kurt Schwitters_
(Barrytown, NY: Station Hill, 1994), the first poem --which is also in
_Pieces o' Six_ (168-75)-- was written by impulse-chance-selection from
sources about and by Schwitters, the 2nd through the 30th by computer-aided
chance operations, and the 31st through the 42nd by  computer-automated
diastic methods, which in some of the last Merzgedichte  were supplemented
by use of Hugh Kenner and Joseph O'Rourke's program TRAVESTY, which produces
what Kenner calls "pseudo-texts," determined by lettter-group frequencies in
English.

Thus I never "abandon" earlier ways of working, certainly never repudiate
them. It is to be noted that before late 1954 and from time to time from
1954 to the present, I have written poems by something like the "ordinary"
methods--so-called direct writing. However, many of my  pre-late-1954 poems
were written from the liminal area of the mind (see examples in
_Representative Works_, 3-13). Thus my recent poetry has certain
resemblances with some of work written in the 30s and 40s.


Jackson Mac Low, June, 1997

*****
Shortly we will be putting this letter up at Mac Low's home page at the EPC.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 09:30:34 -0700
Reply-To:     dean@w-link.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Dean A. Brink" 
Subject:      Re: Orientalism: reply to Dean Brink
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Gwyn McVay wrote:

> ... there are relevant articles in at least one
> back issue of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, which you can find at:
> http://jbe.la.psu.edu/  <--the LA being for Liberal Arts, not Los
> Angeles
> bests
> Gwyn

The article "Causation and Telos: The Problem of Buddhist
Environmental Ethics" by Ian Harris would seem to shed light on reading
Snyder.
http://jbe.la.psu.edu/1/harabs1.html

Also: "Ethics and Integration in American Buddhism," by
Charles S. Prebish. http://jbe.la.psu.edu/2/pre3abs.html
Abstract:
"This article identifies and explicates several of the most difficult
and problematic issues facing the North
American Buddhist movement today. It considers not only the obvious
conflict between Asian-American and
Euro-American Buddhism, but also those concerns that most directly
impact on the ethical dilemmas facing
modern American Buddhists. The article considers the tension that exists
in American Buddhism's struggle to
find the ideal community for Buddhist practice in its Western
environment, as well as some potentially creative
solutions."



--
dean brink
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 09:43:04 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: gleaning smart
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Charles--I thought I was taking a median position on this thread, defining
the territories of usefulness of context and text. Obviously a lot of
knowledge is a good thing, and anything that gets one to Boswell's Life of
and Psalm of David is to the good.
The Johnson reference is interesting. The discussion that Boswell records is
on the occasion of Smart being committed after falling to his knees in
florid prayer in the middle of one of London's busiest streets, a danger
more to himself than others and incompetent to provide for his own
wellbeing. The vehemence of Johnson's remark tells us, I think, more about
Johnson than about Smart, and not just about Johnson's own somewhat hysteric
and tortured religiosity. Johnson lived in constant fear of going crazy,
suspected at times that he might be or be seen as insane--he speaks here
preemptively for a benign take on himself.
Johnson never read Jubilate Agno, by the way, never knew of its existence.


At 11:35 PM 6/25/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Mark Weiss, you said:
>
>"But let's look at a more Giraldoesque example. What exactly does my
>knowledge that Kit Smart was mad as a hatter add to my appreciation of
>Jubilate Agno?"
>
>Perhaps nothing, but reading Samuel Johnson saying that Smart was thought
>mad because he prayed in the streets, and having Johnson say he would "as
>lief pray with Kit Smart as with any man," knowing a bit about Johnson, and
>having read Smart's also magnificent "Song to David" adds greatly to my
>appreciation of Jubilate Agno, and to my knowledge of prayer and madness.
>
>charles
>
>
>
>chax press   ::   alexander writing/design/publishing
>books by artists' hands   ::   web sites built with care and vision
>handmade and trade editions of contemporary innovative writing
>chax@theriver.com   ::   http://personal.riverusers.com/~chax/
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 23 Jun 1997 04:20:55 +-900
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Tessitore 
Subject:      Re: identity of the poet

HG wrote:

  What I thought Kali was saying was that where a writer's coming
from matters in the same way that it just helps to know that Mick Jagger
didn't grow up in the Alabama fields inventing Robert Johnson tunes.
[warning: we already had the Stones discussion. no further comments
allowed. - Blarnes]
- HG
___________

How is knowing where a writer comes from the same as knowing where he or she DOESN'T come from? DT
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 12:05:09 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher 
Subject:      heat wave reception...
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

mebbe it's b/c we're just getting out of the heat & humidity here in
chicago---mebbe i'm in one a those "it's too hot to fight like cats & dogs"
moods... but i'm reading at least three disputes hereabouts that seem to me
to be drawing some mighty fine distinctions... IN THIS CORNER ... AND IN
THIS CORNER:

(1) on the one hand, i trust we're all sufficiently aware that no work
"stands on its own"... there's always a context for reception, there are
always constraints and possibilities (of meaning and meaningfulness)
operating in said context... *at the same time*, it should be clear that to
say a work "stands on its own" is to say that one shouldn't evaluate (i.e.,
"good," "bad," or merely "select") a work merely by, say, recourse to its
author's rep (this is that old raison d'etre for the birth of new criticism
oh pleez pretty pleez let's not go there)... i hope to hell nobody believes
THE QUALITY GOES IN WHEN THE NAME GOES ON (though i'm sure we often act
this way at times)... i also hope to hell we all believe that there are
words on the screen (here, i mean---t-h-e-s-e)... so these are matters of
emphasis, finally, and there are so many reasons for emphasizing this, and
not that, when it comes to interpretation... that said, there must be SOME
reason why, as a self-defined *writer*, i find mself at times at odds with
academic writers, and at times at odds with more trade-bound writers... i
would seem to have a foot in each, or many, camps---which suggests, in
pragmatic terms, different motivations, different emphases, and different
ways of talking about same...

(2) for my part, i have seen too many (in my view mock, but often quite
seriously intentioned) "oriental" (term used advisedly) poems---in
english... which is not to make an argument against such practice
across-the-board---more to suggest that i have problems (ideological,
aesthetic) with many attempts to convey such "tone"... but to put it as
simply (or mebbe simple-mindedly) as i can:  the issues growing out of the
thread on yasusada are complex, yes, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist
to understand why a poem appealing to orientalist impulses appeals to
editorial collectives interested in expanding publishing opportunities...
some of the reasons for doing so are savory, some are less so (seems to me
that kent's impulses, wrt his anthology, were/are savory, though it seems
to me that there MUST be "buddhistic" asian-american poets, no?)... which
is why i posted the agent rejection---there is a commonplace understanding
among literary agents that certain formal structures are marketable on the
basis of (what i regard as) questionable assumptions as to nationality,
race, ethnicity, etc.---is anybody surprised by this?---and my observing so
is NOT to be taken as an argument against poetry/literature in translation,
or against minority/ethnic representation (multiculturalism), or against
theory... if anything, this is an argument against (our) rampant
marketplace realities (esp. in publishing), and against (to put it as
nicely as i can) critical myopia... heck, folks, if anything, we need to be
MORE theoretical, no? (pleez note lowercase t)... we need to be as aware as
we can of what we're doing---as writers, readers, publishers, etc...

(3) all of which is to say, I WANT MY ORANGE POPSICLE, NOW...

best,

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 13:06:23 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan * Sondheim 
Subject:      Kill -9 0
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

   *
 *


Kill -9 0


sendmail mailing hell, file moving hell, killing background hell,
killing foreground hell, spam complaining hell, message parsing hell,
attachment error hell, lying thank you hell, starting stopping hell

fyflkjq q flkjs;  dlfjl;kjlj  jennifer-kfdlkjsdfw-hell

y::I did NOT join whatever this person is talking about; the full header
gives your addresses. Please do something about this - it's highly
       [ Problem with attachments!  Fix errors or delete attachments. ]
[1] + Stopped              /julu/local/experimental/bin/pine
{k:18} kill -9 19462
To      : flkjsdf
Subject : Thank you for joining! (fwd)
----- Message Text ----
[2] + Stopped              /julu/local/experimental/bin/pine
[1] - Killed               /julu/local/experimental/bin/pine
{k:21} kill -9 19477
[2] + Killed               /julu/local/experimental/bin/pine
{k:23} b
{k:25} less #pico19462#
Missing filename ("less -\?" for help)

missing naming hell, hacking break-in hell, damage data hell,
removing file hell, stutter splatter hell, signal stopping hell

{k:26} rm *pic*
rm: remove #pico19462#? y
        ***** This service is for authorized clients only *****
WARNING:   It is a criminal offence to:
           i.  Obtain access to data without authority
*                  (Penalty 2 years imprisonment)                       *
           ii. Damage, delete, alter or insert data without authority
*                  (Penalty 10 years imprisonment)                      *
{k:38} kill -9 all
[Yes] jennifer
[Yes] julu
[Yes] jennifer

killing process hell, shutdown hard now hell, process running hell,
lkjsdfj keyboard hell, spatter keyboard hell, spoofing address hell,
sendmail blocking hell, killing all now hell, corrupting file hell

jennifer-dog-writing-hell, julu-cat-yowling-hell,
jennifer-trancing-backup-hell, julu-screeching-zombie-hell,
jennifer-training-dogcat-hell, julu-wailing-canine-hell
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 10:08:48 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: hey! Other mind here, please take the trouble to read it
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Is this an overstatement or are you really nuts?


 This "response" to poetry
>(which in your construction appears to take place at some deeper and more
>meaningful level than contextualization) doesn't seem so different to me
>from the hard-on some guys get when they thumb through fuck books. I mean,
>that's a "response," right?  And it doesn't matter who the woman (or the
>guy) in the photo is--their bio is completely and wholly irrelevant because
>the reader is in it for *himself* (or herself, as the case may be).  You can
>jerk off over a photo, but it doesn't mean that you're exactly "meeting
>through the porn."  I think that focusing wholly on your own response to a
>poem (and the bio be damned) objectifies the author and makes him/her merely
>a vehicle for your own pleasure.  What you feel might be *real*, but
>frankly, my dear, who gives a damn? In the end, all you've got left is a
>sticky piece of paper and the need to do it again and again because it
>never, finally, satisfies.
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 10:07:59 -0700
Reply-To:     dean@w-link.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Dean A. Brink" 
Subject:      Re: post mystique
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

KENT JOHNSON wrote:

> For those who might be interested in the issue,  a
> recent development is a post (from an "abd" doctoral student in East
> Asian Languages at University of Chicago) in which every
> editor and poet involved in the anthology is accused of being a
> racist through and through and of only being capable of comprehending
> a "candy-Buddhism" that is designed to culturally expropriate Asian
> Americans. (I'm trying to be fair and accurate.)

You don't sound very Buddhist. Anyway, why draw everyone else as victims
of this purported abd madness and poetic licence? Take responsibility
for your own editorial actions, which are the focus of this Whitewater
inquisition.

Lew's statement in _Premonistions_ and my own inquiries have
specifically focused on the question of whether the editorial policies
speak to Orientalist and racist assumptions. I'm still waiting for
adequate answers.

Read my  my first post and try engaging in good-faith attempts at
discussion. I had not even seen the anthology and was initially replying
solely to the defense you present of your editing policy (and a history
of Orientalism in American Buddhist poetry).

--
dean brink

abd EALC UChicago
dean@w-link.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 12:20:27 +0000
Reply-To:     ARCHAMBEAU@LFC.EDU
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Robert Archambeau 
Organization: Lake Forest College
Subject:      On not Whipping Spivak
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit

Aldon Nielson wrote:

> and I suspect we might find it true that Simic has received as much print
> space as Spivak over the years if anyone cares to make an actual count
> (which says nothing as to the quality of such attention)
>

>
> and why is Spivak the whipping girl of this discussion?

I don't recall whipping Spivak (we're not back to the whole S/M issue,
are we?).  I merely said I wished translations of poetry were deemed as
urgent as translations of theory, the urgency of which I have affirmed a
few times now.  And while I don't agree with everything Simic said (in
fact I have agreed with Aldon on his main point from the first,
especially re: straw men), this much of Simic's point is absolutely
valid.

It was, and remains, my experience that my colleagues tend to have read,
or at least thought they ought to have read, a fair amount of
contemporary theory in translation, but not even contemplated reading
the work of poets of their own generation, especially poets from
elsewhere.  Spivak's Derrida is a part of academic culture (which is
good) in a way that Simic's Miljkovic is not (which is inexcusably bad).


Aldon: we repeat ourselves.  Let's leave off until we run into each
other at some conference, where we can continue while getting properly
drunk.



--
Robert Archambeau
Department of English
Lake Forest College
Lake Forest, IL 60045

http://www.lfc.edu/~archamb/
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 10:23:40 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Buddhism and Racism
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

For me there's a certain unreality about this thread, perhaps because of my
own ignorance. I do think, however, the discussion would be helped if we
were provided with a list of Asian-American Buddhist poets who could have
been included in "Beneath..." Hey, then we could find out if they're guilty
of orientalism. (Remember, it's Jews who made "Fiddler on the Roof" a hit)

At 09:59 PM 6/25/97 -0700, you wrote:
>In reply to Kent Johnson:
>
>Perhaps it is fair to say that we both have been grabbing certain words
>of the other and making more than there is there out of them. As you
>suggested, this comes with the territory of writing against another and
>diatribe. Maybe it would be more productive if we focus more on the
>issues and less on the person. This may be partially my fault, for I
>based my critique of the anthology on a narrow selection of your words
>in defense of your editing policy. After you explained your situation as
>editor it indeed does not sound pernicious as my accusations have
>asserted. No malice, but still room for more apt reconsideration of your
>editing policies. And the more you write about the issues (instead of
>attacking me, which I can understand as your words have been under
>scrutiny and I do sympathize with you, just hope we can get to the meat
>of the issues before Hell freezes over :) .
>Unfortunately, at this point, as the discussion has veered in this
>personal direction, your words of explanation still ring more of excuses
>than accounts of how the factual act of editing an all-white Zen
>anthology came to pass. Maybe I missed it, but have you discussed the
>"social tensions" that Lew mentions as possible reasons for the
>editorial choices (which would shift the discussion from aesthetics and
>ideology to the history of Buddhist groups and sects, and poetry
>coteries and publishing houses). BTW, Lew's tone in situating _Beneath a
>Single Moon_ is very similar to my own: sarcastic, high-toned, and in
>disbelief that such stark "omissions" of Asian Americans would be found
>in a collection based on the "stated ideal of comprehensive co-existence
>beneath a light that illuminates all evenly" (Lew, 582). (Also, I would
>like to retract all race-based distinctions that were read into my first
>posting, preferring cultural, discourse-based, non-exclusive
>affiliations.)
>
>Again, I have not attacked the contents of your anthology but your
>defense of your editing policy, which itself speaks to the crux of the
>matter. As you write (sorry, I have to quote you to maintain a semblance
>of clarity):
>
>>If Mr. Lew (and
>>the other co-signers of the BR response) had carefully considered the
>>Shambhala anthology, they would have seen that a fundamental criteria
>>for inclusion was a serious background in Buddhist study and
>>practice. We were not interested, in the least, in poetry
>>exhibiting the vague and stereotypical waft of the "Buddhistic." If
>>anything, our anthology begins to point to the fact that reductive
>>notions of the "Buddhistic" are one of the by-products of the
>>"Orientalism" that Mr. Lew denounces. There is simply no way of
>>boiling down Buddhist artistic expression to any particular
>>"Buddhistic" characteristics of tone, content, or style.
>
>Again, like you and I, you and Lew would seem to be not communicating
>clearly.
>When you say
>>that a fundamental criteria
>>for inclusion was a serious background in Buddhist study and
>>practice,
>I hear a 'certain idea of' serious background=85. I also hear a requisite
>_self-conscious_ foregrounding of Buddhist practice that may seem (and
>this is only conjecture from my experiences in Japan and the opinion of
>Japanese friends) absurdly "forced" (what in Japanese is called "riding
>the tone" [choushi ni notte iru]). I don't know if this is one of the
>charges in the BG piece, as I haven't seen it yet.
>The "riding the tone" in much of the Naropa, Snyder and what Lew wittily
>calls a "Caucasian Zen circle" poetry, amounts to what seems to me the
>ongoing "winking" (to use a technical term) in some of the poetry
>(perhaps most prominent in Snyder's style of poetry).
>
>Examples of this winking are in the remainder of this paragraph above:
>
>>We were not interested, in the least, in poetry
>>exhibiting the vague and stereotypical waft of the "Buddhistic." If
>>anything, our anthology begins to point to the fact that reductive
>>notions of the "Buddhistic" are one of the by-products of the
>>"Orientalism" that Mr. Lew denounces. There is simply no way of
>>boiling down Buddhist artistic expression to any particular
>>"Buddhistic" characteristics of tone, content, or style.
>
>Like accusations that I am Orientalist, this twisted logic "winks" at
>one. It suggests that maybe this vein of American Buddhist culture that
>your anthology represents is antagonistic to Asian Americans, placing
>vivid practice first. For expects that one conform to both "serious
>practice" and not non-reducible "Buddhistic" characteristics in poetry.
>The primary criteria, and bottom line, is a foregrounded practice.
>
>Along these lines, a question that then arises is whether this winking
>activism fulfills "spiritual" (interior? amorphous? epistemological?)
>desires, or interfaces with social concerns, or ?.
>
>As a specific example by which we might merge the poetic and the
>"discursive framing" issues here is the question of how haiku (not
>senryu, which are not "serious" and usually used for the sake of
>invective, satire, parody and comedy) do or do not carry Orientalist
>overtones in English? (This is a question designed to focus discussion,
>not reach absolute conclusions.)
>More specifically, in practice, does the writing and evaluation of haiku
>in English demand a primarily Buddhist (by whatever school of thought
>one defines this) epistemological approach to language? Are haiku in
>English metonymical representations of Buddhist practice?
>And, in the translation of culture in America, when a group, religious
>or social, attempts to sustain an image of another culture, to what
>degree is that "other" culture necessarily confined to a narrow range of
>interpretation, is stereotyped, and made part of a unilateral and
>expropriative relationship? And does haiku constitute an example of such
>a discourse and practice that collapses formal and ideological
>objectives?
>Then, are the values cultivated by the practice of writing haiku
>Orientalist, for instance, in the sense of speaking longingly and
>Romantically of attaining an imaged exemplar Asian subject (be like
>Basho, be like Dogen, be like Snyder who wants to be like the above)
>while quite selectively engaging the materials and omitting historical
>context (like the volume of haiku and waka translated without head
>notes, dates, any clue of context)?
>
>
>dean brink
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 13:17:08 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry 
Subject:      Re: identity of the poet
In-Reply-To:  Message of Mon, 23 Jun 1997 04:20:55 +-900 from 

On Mon, 23 Jun 1997 04:20:55 +-900 Daniel Tessitore said:
>HG wrote:
>
>  What I thought Kali was saying was that where a writer's coming
>from matters in the same way that it just helps to know that Mick Jagger
>didn't grow up in the Alabama fields inventing Robert Johnson tunes.
>[warning: we already had the Stones discussion. no further comments
>allowed. - Blarnes]
>- HG
>___________
>
>How is knowing where a writer comes from the same as knowing where he or she
>DOESN'T come from? DT

Query relates to Susan Wheeler's.  In astrophysics circles, this
conundrum is known as the "Pessoa Phase-Warp Effect".  Knowing Pessoa's
heteronyms don't come from him tells you where Pessoa comes from.
Get it?  Or: "I am telling you I am not Pessoa."  [Logical impasse
at work.]  Imagination is free and ambiguity is the foundation of
our democracy.  The perfect imitation of another's experience would
be a work of autobiography, not art.  The imperfect imitation would
be an appropriation; its faulty mimesis would have to be redeemed by
its artistry. Here comes another Great American Writer trying to play
three chords... I don't think I'll rent the video, even. - Henry G.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 13:27:20 +0000
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joseph Zitt 
Subject:      Re: Letter from Jackson Mac Low
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Charles Bernstein wrote:

> Shortly we will be putting this letter up at Mac Low's home page at
> the EPC.

The Silence list will be quite interested in this. Please let us know
when it's up on EPC.
--
---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1---------1----------
|||/ Joseph Zitt ===== jzitt@humansystems.com ===== Human Systems \|||
||/ Austin, Texas! =========== SILENCE: The John Cage Mailing List \||
|/ http://www.realtime.net/~jzitt == <*> <*> == Empty Words == ecto \|
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 11:31:59 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: Orange Popsicle
In-Reply-To:  <199706261723.KAA00063@sweden.it.earthlink.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Am I the only one who reads those magazines just for the stanzas of bio
description alongside each model's picture?  Invariably satisfying -- a
sublime genre --
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:46:50 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      "unreality"

[was:  Subject: Buddhism and Racism ]

Mark Weiss zeros in:

<< For me there's a certain unreality about this thread . . . >>

aha, you're catching on.  Brink and Johnson are (according to a highly
classified bio-FBI multiple-lives report) *both* incarnate budhisattvas,
are deeply in cahoots, and they're trying to pull off this facade of a
serious & heated argument (but watch for crinkles telltale smiles) -- for
what one would presume to be some manner of instructional purpose.

<< I do think, however, the discussion would be helped if we were
provided with a list of Asian-American Buddhist poets who could have
been included in "Beneath..." >>

I for one take Johnson at his word when he confesses that no such poets
were brought to his attention.  BTW, it's been a long time since I perused
the volume in question, but according to my best recollection, it's notable
how "unorientalist" much of the writing proved to be -- I mean, lacking in
some sort of faux-atmospherics.  (Of course every reader has their own
atmosphero-meter . . . )  Not much haiku in their either, for that matter..

(Disclosure: I'd never heretofore tried my hand at the form myself, till I
saw those spam-ku, and just couldn't help meself.)

cheers,
d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:26:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
Comments: To: David Bromige 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

David Bromige has been kind (and canny) enough to throw down the gauntlet -
or rather, let drop the feather - re: my undeclared position vis-a-vis
multiculturalism. Not that it counts for much! But I accept the invitation
to think through an issue I've not devoted much coherent thought to (uh oh,
some are saying...). I've always been more or less a formalist when it comes
to reading poetry - the identity of the poet factors into my reading, if at
all, only  secondarily in relation to the text itself.

But any discussion of identity & poetry begs the question: when we talk
about identity do we mean merely personality and the personal experiences
that stand behind or under the shaping of the text? Or do we mean the
formation of cultural and political constructs at large - distinct codes
imposed on us or written by ourselves -  by which we read each other in the
world and the ways in which these read themselves into the text's creation?
If the latter, then much is to be gained from looking at a work this way,
though I reject the idea of looking at this way exclusively - or exclusively
in any way at all. The text, or poem, afterall, is a kind of alternate
identity fashioned from odds and ends. Identity is not synonomous with
existence, only with context. For some, there appears to be no difference
btwn these. For me, there is. Unfashionable, to be sure, and likely even
untenable.

I do think, though, that discussions of identity have greatly enlarged and
expanded what we mean by the process of reading. And I confess since this
isn't really my beat, I'm woefully not up on the most current thinking about
identity theory in literature. No doubt this has to do with my "identity" as
a member of the ruling class - white male heterosexual. (Dodie Bellamy last
night jokingly told me a guy like me could never get a grant!)  I don't
think the value of an idea or a work rests solely on the personal behavior
or outlook of its author.

What it comes down to for me is reading a poem for its imaginal power - how
has the poet shaped a vision of the world with a view to re-imagining it,
including refining or redefining accepted notions of identity? Identity by
itself is overvalued - it contains a kind of hidden arrogance and blindness.
Especially tribal identities - by that I mean, costly self-aggrandizing
allegiances to family, city, country, religion, gender, race, religion,
politics, sports team, whatever. Live by the identity, die by the identity -
it seems a narrow and restricted way of defining yourself.

BUT - for so many whose identities have been crushed by the juggernaut of
white Western racist imperialism, reclaiming identity (which is really
reconstructing it, often along revisionary "heroic" lines at first) is both
necessary and admirable - and one hopes, not merely a retreat into
arthiritic politics no different than that of one's oppressors. But it's
also a mistake, to me, of reading primarily through the lens of identity. I
guess it's really a question of picking/creating the lens you read the world
through and that does indeed have a lot to do with one's personal situation.


But a poem cannot be limited or reduced simply to the issue of its author's
identity, even if that is the author's overt intention. As a product of the
still and always all too mysterious commerce between the known and the
unknown in a writer's psyche, a poem - as a container of psychic energies -
as an unexampled formulation of the essential sense of surprise arising from
the intersection of the known and the unknown ("I must count on both," sez
Valery), from the dialectic of inside and outside, identity and difference,
self and Other, defies all attempts at narrow categorizations and readings.

Patrick Pritchett
 ----------
From: David Bromige
To: POETICS
Subject: pearl poet, french theory of apr editors, kevin & gloria, class
Date: Thursday, June 26, 1997 10:45AM

Pat Pritchett (place in the multicultural soup as-yet undeclared) does a
fine job with Kevin's reading & Gloria Frym's. Keep us posted, Pat! Salaam.
David-the-PacRim-Cockney (class: working-climbing-into-lower middle/middle,
subsequently become declasse thru all that reading & being allowed to pass
as a poet, but you can still tell by the way he handles the patie de foie
that his origins are the kind he has to be proud of, since noone else was).
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 15:38:55 -0400
Reply-To:     bgrotjoh@cit.mbc.edu
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Bob Grotjohn 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and Racism
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Mark Weiss wrote:
>
> For me there's a certain unreality about this thread, perhaps because of my
> own ignorance. I do think, however, the discussion would be helped if we
> were provided with a list of Asian-American Buddhist poets who could have
> been included in "Beneath..."

Lew made such a list, if "Buddhistic poetry" and Buddhist poetry are the
same things:

"When one considers the relative obscurity of some of the poets included
in the book [BSM], one wonders how it was possible not to have known of
the Buddhistic poetry of such writers as Inada, Al Robles, Garrett Kaoru
Hongo, Alan Chong Lau, Patricia Ikeda, and Russell Leong" (from Lew's
comments on the anthology in _Premonitions_).

Other than Inada's, I don't know the poets' work very well, and I am not
sure exactly what makes poetry either Buddhistic or Buddhist, so I can't
get the discussion much further.  Ikeda's poems (551-555) and Leong's
(542) in _Premonitions_ may be worth a look for starters.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 12:42:20 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: hey! Other mind here, please take the trouble to read it

>Is this an overstatement or are you really nuts?

Sheesh.  Is this a rhetorical question, or are you really such a poor reader?

Now we may both ask:  what kind of question is that?

Kali
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 12:50:42 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: Orange Popsicle

>Am I the only one who reads those magazines just for the stanzas of bio
>description alongside each model's picture?  Invariably satisfying -- a
>sublime genre --

Tammy, 22 years old, 32-22-36, is an aspiring poet as well as a model.
"Writing poetry helps me get more in touch with myself," she says.  "And
guys really like it when you give them a poem."  When she's not frolicking
at the beach, Tammy can be found in the New York Public Library, where she
spends hours each week reading the _Cantos_.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:57:43 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Judy Roitman 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and Racism
Comments: To: "Dean A. Brink" 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

You don't like Snyder's stuff.  You question haiku in English.  All quite
reasonable positions (sorry, all you donut & coffee haiku folks).  But I
think you are conflating very different poetics in thinking that BASM poets
are all trying to imitate Japanese --- and why the emphasis on Japan? ---
models.  Buddhist (and not only Zen --- there are a lot of folks practicing
other Buddhist styles in BASM) influences on American poetry go far deeper
than Orientalist imitations.  The relations among language, mind, and world
-- which much of Buddhist practice focuses on -- are central issues in
poetics.  It is this interplay --- which has no single, "correct"
manifestation --- that is interesting here, and that might reasonably call
for an anthology.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judy Roitman                             | "Whoppers   Whoppers   Whoppers!
Math, University of Kansas        |     memory fails
Lawrence, KS 66045                 |         these are the days."
913-864-4630                          |                Larry Eigner, 1927-1996
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 16:05:55 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         CharSSmith@AOL.COM
Subject:      Re: China Camp

In a message dated 97-06-25 23:59:37 EDT, you write:

<< first re: Snyder's poem--  China Beach is in San Francisco.  It is so
 named because Chinese fishermen/residents of the city would/were allowed
 to   fish there. >>


Snyder claims "Canyon Wren" was written at China Camp on the Stanislaus
River, flowing west out of the Sierra Nevada. It is now submerged under the
waters of the bitterly contested New Melones Dam, the (hopefully) last of the
large-scale multi-purpose dams built in California. Similar names abound
throughout the foothill "gold country," testimony to 19th C labor practices.
Why, it's just upstream from Negro Jack Point.

Charles Smith
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 15:14:45 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Judy Roitman 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and Racism
In-Reply-To:  <199706261723.KAA00063@sweden.it.earthlink.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>For me there's a certain unreality about this thread, perhaps because of my
>own ignorance. I do think, however, the discussion would be helped if we
>were provided with a list of Asian-American Buddhist poets who could have
>been included in "Beneath..." Hey, then we could find out if they're guilty
>of orientalism. (Remember, it's Jews who made "Fiddler on the Roof" a hit)
>

And I just learned on NPR that scat singing owes something to davening and
all that Yiddish biddybiddybombom stuff.

Cultures just don't seem to be able to stay in their defined places, do they.



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judy Roitman                             | "Whoppers   Whoppers   Whoppers!
Math, University of Kansas        |     memory fails
Lawrence, KS 66045                 |         these are the days."
913-864-4630                          |                Larry Eigner, 1927-1996
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 16:36:23 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: Orange Popsicle

From Kali Tal (commenting on Aldon Nielsen):
<<
>Am I the only one who reads those magazines just for the stanzas of
bio
>description alongside each model's picture?  Invariably satisfying -- a
>sublime genre --

Tammy, 22 years old, 32-22-36, is an aspiring poet as well as a model.
"Writing poetry helps me get more in touch with myself," she says.  . . .
>>

Somewhere amidst Andre Codrescu essayish book, The Disappearance
of the Outside, he quaintly (I might say winkingly, but that's I guess not
in vogue today) allows as the central construction of the poet lies not in
the (mere) poetry, but rather in that crucial fiction: the bio-notice  . . .

this also remends of an opera by Robert Ashley (an in-progress segment
of which played in Merkin Hall, NYC some years ago); -- Ashley's sci-fi
scenario involves a figure (named something like "Bob"?) who, being an
extraterrestrial investigator of earth civilization, gives (in recetativ) brief,
verbal-snapshot reports on various of the folks in his immediate (maybe
Sunday brunch-like) surround.  These (strangely epiphanic) reports are
presented in the rhetorical form of personsals-ad-style notices ...

d.i.

p.s.: on personal note, might one be correct in supposing Kali Tal to be
of South Asian extraction?  The Dark One's Rhythm wd. be a tentative
(& for that matter an amateur-orientalist) rendering of the name.  Just
curious (now that we've learned you're actually no Yale professor ...)
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:07:12 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      Idenity of the poet/Hey! other mind here
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Since a gypsy assured my Mum & Dad that I was born to trouble as the sparks
fly up, I was gratified (again) on her account when I logged into the List
today. So much so, in fact, that I had to question my motives in posting my
initial response to this matter of "identity of the poet": was I
unconsciously being more provocative than was called for?  Had it been I
myself stepping over the line who stimulated these howls of execration
masked as rational argument that I now beheld? Had I mooned the List, was
that why one of the Listlings wanted to go on so long about me jacking off?

Well, I've been back thru the correspondence & it does appear to me that I
covered my ass. "Yeah, sure, it can be fun to observe the timidities
encoded in Eliot's poetry, & then fit them in with the fact that he had a
double hernia which he never got fixed. And, sure, one can use such details
to elucidate meanings not otherwise likely to surface." This is far from a
blanket dismissal of biographical information.

Before I continue, a couple of sidebars. Yes, Kali, I am inventing you from
your words & only your words, since I know nothing else about you. You
might be the President of Burma or Harold Bloom's T.A. for all I know. I
know you're on the list, I know you're in Yale, or posting therefrom (but
this I only noticed today), but that's all, so, no, it's just your words to
which I am responding, my creation of a Kali Tal solely from your words. If
you don't like this creation, maybe you should take another look at your
way of putting things. Perhaps at times they do not reflect the real you,
the real you who, we are told, "make[s] ethical and moral judgements based
on a core set of beliefs about the intrinsic value of human beings and our
place in the world."  You know, I may be old-fashioned, but I'm a "show-me"
kind of a guy. I don't feel that my intrinsic value as a human being means
much to someone who reads me as carelessly as you do, & who invites the
List to picture me coming into _Hustler_.

Maybe you aren't so simply that decent, ethical, moral being you'd like to
be. Don't you think you went on a little *long* about male masturbation &
men's objectification of women?  When someone goes on a little *long* with
their analogy, I sniff Subtext. What is this inexplicable commitment to
keep plugging away on this parallel, I ask myself, reading you with my own
continuing investigation of my own subtextual contradictions. Continuing to
create Kali Tal from what her words don't say but do indicate, I might find
a person who hasn't worked through her attitudes towards human sexuality.

But let's not go that far. You're right : male masturbation, when done with
graven images, is wrong. Some of the means by which we poor benighted
devils achieve it, are laughable, to cry over, deplorable, despicable, and,
no matter what a man might tell you (or no matter that he's telling it to
you, & not another woman, or a male buddy), ultimately unsatisfying.  You
know that's right because they keep trying again & again. Like, hmm, that
isn't human sexuality in the larger, non-auto-erotic, picture?

So male masturbation is wrong, & therefore my proposition & conjecture
about the poem?  Wrong also.



(Do you really think your words say only what you want them to say?)


So, onward! Does a poet really believe her/his words only say what s/he
wants them to say? Possibly, but s/he is doomed to disappointment. Sure,
being a poet, privileged in that sense (now that I've learned it's okay to
be privileged), as s/he is in some communities still, privileged on account
of a differing degree of vision, a greater gift with words, there might be
less margin between intention and achievement, between intention & text.
But margin, by the nature of human being & language, there is going to be.
Therefore I decided I wasnt going to sit on my ass until all the checkbooks
had been checked & all the footnotes published. I was going to play reading
a poem as it lay.

When I first heard Mick Jagger sing, I didn't know where he came from. When
I first read Robert Creeley, I didn't know he had only one eye & a lost
father. When I first read Rae Armantrout, I didn't know that poet was a
woman. But their words went in, in like electrical currents, they met with
a recognition in myself of something that was already waiting there,
awaiting articulation, & they caused something to get up & walk & that is
the new.

When I first read Robert Creeley, I didnt even know that he was part of
something called "Black Mountain" or "The New American Poetry." I didn't
know he was somehow part of the New England Tradition in Literature. No,
but I did know he was a big fake!

Only there was something that kept me coming back to his poems, those early
poems, I wanted, you know, to expose his fakery to the light of day. But in
the process, I came under their spell. I saw how terrific they were.

And all this time, I had a Creeley inside me, one not only of my own
creating, because if the mother was me, the father was him, RC, author of
said works. And let me stay with this family analogy (I do have a hangup
about families). RC the guy who gets his laundry done in New England or
upstate NY or out in Albuquerque, he's like the *grandfather* of the poems
I was reading. If RC-the-poet is their father. Because, RC the person, once
having written & made public those poems, cannot wholly control their
reception...any more than a parent can wholly control what other people do
with their kids. Their grownup kids. He cannot be identical with RC the
father of the poems that were gestating in me, becoming ready to be read by
me. RC had a poet-part, RC, a poet-offshoot, who wrote poems that RC the
grandfather might well have not cared to have attributed, were he not the
generous & freedom-loving parent he is. ("That boy of mine bin putting out
stuff in public again about fucking & nothing & love & all them "u"
words?...Oh waal, what th hell, cant stop em now can ya?")

What I am getting at is, still, how the identity of an author is
constructed. Consider the following passage :

  "The first poem that came through me was about the subway system. I
   say that the poem 'came through me' because I had no clear idea of
   what I wanted to say or how I was going to say it. Everything
   happened suddenly. I started writing and then automatically began
   thinking in a different way about words, meanings, repetitions, the
   sound of language. It rushed out faster than my typing ability could
   deal with, but I kept at it, figuring I could unscramble it all when
   it was all over....

    It was as if I were singing, speaking, and acting all at once. An
    inner voice took over, snipping off lines where i felt they ended,
    extending them when it felt the voice needed more room."


This is familiar stuff, although the experience of poetic seizure or
possession is not always as clearly laid out as here. in the eloquent
american of David Meltzer's recent autobiography in Gale Research's
_Contemporary Authors_ series.

So, what about this? In such a fit, a poet might say all manner of things
s/he in his/her social persona might wish to disclaim, to deny, in the name
of morality and ethics, to suppress....news from nowhere concerning human
being, you know. Jack Spicer said it came from Mars, this kind of
information, said the poet was a radio that picked up all manner of
messages beaming through. He was being mataphorical, yup, but to what
degree? What if (and everything I say should always be prefaced by this
phrase) a poet is a sort of transmitter, open at times to messages past
present beaming in from all over? The radio does not know what it
transmits. Now let us imagine the radio.

So who is to know what it transmits, if not us, readers, one by one by one?
Stephen Elwood is correct, I am arguing for the primacy of the reader; but
he is incorrect, seems to me, when he sees this as something different from
the primacy of the poem (which was what I wrote that i was arguing for).
How is the poem ever going to be differed from the reader? By which
privileged reader will other readings be rendered inferior?

Of course, the text is there read it or not,m its on a shelf in the stacks
covered with dust, but the moment an eye lights on it,interpretation has to
begin.  "Hang it all, Robert Browning, Or my Sordello, or yours?" Now, I
can understand why somebody would feel that she has a better shot at a
fuller or more correct interpretation if she is armed with what all the
authorities say about a poem, about all the biographies can suggest about a
poem--all the part of reading I do not dismiss, but welcome as "fun... &
possible elucidation"--but when we recall descriptions of poetic seizure
like that of Meltzer's above, we might want to acknowledge that in such
states, a poet accesses parts of (his) humanity not otherwise open to
her/him, parts that are contradictory as it were, to his/her life
otherwise...in which case, the "life" supplies scant support for
interpretation. And in which case, a reader, though ill-informed as to
biography, critical approaches, & etc, might, with her humanity, create a
more accurate figure of the poet of this particular poem, of the real human
being who somewhere else at some other time made this poem by whatever
means however leaned-in on by the style of the times by history by how
books were at that time produced--she might, & if she does, who's to
gainsay her?

It is in this light that my (granted, somewhat facetious) remark about
Wallace Stevens being not an Insurance Lawyer but a South American
diplomat, was always waiting to be apprehended. The escaped soul of the man
whose marriage sounds like hell, one no doubt of his own making, or
choosing anyway, flew off from Hartford, Ct. & was a parrot in Brazil for a
spell, squawking these unlikely measures, treated as dictation by the
future Ambassador to, uh, say France.

I thought I detected a certain Animus in Kali's remarks, so let me admit to
a certain degree of Anima in my own. There's a troubling belief in
transcendence, in soul-stuff, howbeit materialist, hovering around my
confessions of how I read, & that can be irritating to people who have
allowed themselves to be convinced such is impossible, and that all can be
accounted for, given the will & enough time. But the love of poetry stems
back to childhood, people regress to the accents of the place where they
grew up when they read their poems aloud, the persistence of childhood with
the belief-systems then possible makes itself part of the poem. Or would
you rather read a tract or a postion-paper? In the place sacred to the
poem? And if a poem is not a sacred act, what is it? And if it is an act,
then it is an act of reading-as-though-writing, every time. I read-write
the Stevens' poem with my Wallace Stevens.

Now, it's funny to hear that he was knocked down by Hemingway. Its funny
because its so inappropriate. Its funny like a mattress on a bottle of
wine. It hasnt made much dent in the feelings I get when i read Stevens
poetry.

For me, it has always been the seduction by the poem that has been primary.
Sure, then I want to know all I can about the author. But this is a sort of
pornographic interest, in the sense that pornography is what you know
already, but cant stop spending time with. And we build worlds out of this
pornographic impulse. And it ceases to seem pornographic. But from the
*point of view of the poem*, it strikes me so again. The poem says "You
knew all this already concerning my origins, knew it but didn't know you
knew it, but now you have found it out, it either supports what you thought
when you first fell for me, or it contradicts it--in which case, you are
either going to dismiss the contradictions as irrelevant, or give me up. Go
ahead, give me up. Theres plenty more where you came from. Go on, try to
forget me. I voted for Chamberlain. I screwed goats. 'Beauty is Truth' my
eye! Bye-bye!"

Susan Wheeler reiterates Marjorie's question about a reader being duped. (I
still have to read Marjorie on Yasusada, so excuse me if I repeat her
argument). What is it, to be duped by a poem? Something, that is, of which
one is, by virtue of reading, a co-creator? It is to be fooled by oneself.
And, I agree with Kali, this is something we can do, when we fall in love.
"You were only foolin, while I was falling in love, It's a story as old as
Adam & Eve, I was making love while you were makin believe".
"Hormone-poisoning," Kali terms it, as though hormones were no part of our
bodies but foreign substances introduced by ill-wishers, were not part of
our humanity but inflictions from without.

Poetry is the theory of heartbreak. It wouldn't be very poetic of it not to
include the whole mimetic range of possibilities then, being duped, being
swept of our feet, being preyed upon, being harassed, being rendered
ecstatic, breing massaged, being tickled pink, being amused, being brought
down,being persuaded that hope dies last, & noone to blame but ourselves at
the end of the line. "I fooled myself with kisses, I tried to stop thinking
of, but you were only making believe (Kent), while I (APR) was falling in
love."

I know it was hard on me when I learned that "Robert Creeley" was really,
like they say, Michael Palmer & Tom Clark. But I still cant rid myself of
this of his poems, this presentation of which I dedicate to Kali Tal :


           "Think if
            understanding is
            what you
            had thought

            of it, in
            it you think
            a picture
            comes and

            goes, re-
            flected there
            large faces
            float but

            no harm comes
            to the sleeping
            princess
            ever."





I think it withstands in my meory the typo of one of my students, which put
an 'e' in the place of an 'a' in the 11th line. So you can forget that too.
David
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:20:29 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      china beach
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Charles, China Beach is in San Rafael, N of SF. Or one of them is.

On another matter, as I just b-c'd Pat Pritchett, Dodie's was no joke.

David
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 17:19:33 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 

David B:

>Charles, China Beach is in San Rafael, N of SF. Or one of them is.

Okay, but:  Gary Snyder's poem refers to "beach[ing] at China Camp" --
doesn't reference a China Beach.  At least as quoted (per my memory) by
Dean Brink (who I think must've had it right).  And the ref. to miners
seems in keeping with the China Camp locale, probably.

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 16:35:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: china beach
Comments: To: David Bromige 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

Tis true, tis true about Dodie's "joke" - a remark shared with a laugh by us
both because of its obvious truth. But I'm not complaining. Hell, I'm not
even looking for a grant. I have no emotional investment in the matter. (Or
maybe it derives - talk about class background - from my parent's depression
era "no hand outs" attitude - I'd be shocked if anyone ever gave me money to
write. This is not a laudable attitude - one rather to be overcome). The
subject came up by way of her explaining the inner machinations of SPT
vis-a-vis cutbacks from the California Council on the Arts and how she tried
to get a grant for mulitcultural writers, was rebuffed, but managed things
with a clever end-run, good for her (and them) I say.

Patrick
 ----------
From: David Bromige
To: POETICS
Subject: china beach
Date: Thursday, June 26, 1997 4:15PM


Charles, China Beach is in San Rafael, N of SF. Or one of them is.

On another matter, as I just b-c'd Pat Pritchett, Dodie's was no joke.

David
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 17:48:13 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Wallace 
Subject:      KOJA magazine?
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

        If there's anyone on the list who could backchannel me with
information about a magazine called KOJA, ed. Michael Magazinnik, I would
greatly appreciate it. Apparently there is at least one issue of it in
existence?

        Mark Wallace


/----------------------------------------------------------------------------\
|                                                                            |
|      mdw@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu                                                |
|      GWU:                                                                  |
|       http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~mdw                                       |
|      EPC:                                                                  |
|       http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/wallace                         |
|____________________________________________________________________________|
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:56:07 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and Racism
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Interesting. Did they mention the path of transmission? (oy, sounds like a
virus)
At 03:14 PM 6/26/97 -0500, you wrote:
>>For me there's a certain unreality about this thread, perhaps because of my
>>own ignorance. I do think, however, the discussion would be helped if we
>>were provided with a list of Asian-American Buddhist poets who could have
>>been included in "Beneath..." Hey, then we could find out if they're guilty
>>of orientalism. (Remember, it's Jews who made "Fiddler on the Roof" a hit)
>>
>
>And I just learned on NPR that scat singing owes something to davening and
>all that Yiddish biddybiddybombom stuff.
>
>Cultures just don't seem to be able to stay in their defined places, do they.
>
>
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Judy Roitman                             | "Whoppers   Whoppers   Whoppers!
>Math, University of Kansas        |     memory fails
>Lawrence, KS 66045                 |         these are the days."
>913-864-4630                          |                Larry Eigner, 1927-1996
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 10:51:03 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Ian Wilson 
Subject:      Re[2]: POETICS Digest - 24 Jun 1997 to 25 Jun 1997
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

>Is it possible to successfully construct a text that emulates, or speaks
>from, another's experience?  Is the attempt itself doomed by its lack of
>access to another's culture?

The first question seems to be investigating, in part, the mind/body
problem, and one answer might be that we can't even fully participate in our
own experience let alone someone else's -- if they even exist beyond our
ability to perceive them.

The second question stalls on trying to define what the questioner means by
"culture".

Both questions seem to assume that we're speaking of texts which have some
mimetic properties that allow them to "represent" a reality through the use
of signs that purport to be natural and through the use of the everyday
language which would be that of Realism.

Barthes tells us that signs that claim to be natural are authoritarian and
ideological because it is a function of ideology to naturalize social
reality and make it seem innocent and unchangeable -- as Nature itself.
Realists attempt to conceal the socially relative or constructed nature of
language: it presents the illusion that there is a form of ordinary language
which is natural.  Thus for Barthes the realist sign is unhealthy.  It
attempts to efface its own status as sign to foster the illusion of
receiving an unmediated reality.  The sign as reflection, expression or
representation denies the productive character of language, suppresses the
fact that we only have a world because we have language to signify it, and
what we count as real is bound up with alterable structures of signification
we live within.

Patricia Waugh writes that everyday language endorses and sustains power
structures through a continuous process of naturalization whereby forms of
oppression are constructed in apparently innocent representations.

Thus, both questions also seem have an underlying assumption that one needs
to have some kind of authority to write anything.

My own view is that I'm going to write whatever I can imagine and if my
speaker assumes a different gender or race feel free to get puffed up about
issues of colonization -- but that's your problem as a reader, not mine as
the writer.

IRW
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 15:18:33 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: Hoping to see Dodie and Patrick and Kevin tonight
In-Reply-To:  <199706262156.OAA20703@norway.it.earthlink.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I actually have gotten a couple of grants, but I think it's because the
grantors assumed I was a white male --
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 17:40:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: Hoping to see Dodie and Patrick and
Comments: To: "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

Hey don't get me wrong - I'd love a grant.

The Pseudo-Araki-ite.
 ----------
From: Aldon L. Nielsen
To: POETICS
Subject: Re: Hoping to see Dodie and Patrick and Kevin tonight
Date: Thursday, June 26, 1997 5:25PM


I actually have gotten a couple of grants, but I think it's because the
grantors assumed I was a white male --
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 17:44:40 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      (Fwd) Eliot Weinberger
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Folks: I just received this from Eliot Weinberger. He has given his
permission to forward to the list. It touches on some issues that
have been recently under discussion here. Provocative and honest, as
is EW's style.
Kent


        Dear Kent--

        Thanks for sending me the various letters from Buffalo and Cap-L
concerning Orientalism, your American Buddhist anthology, Yasusada, etc.
Buffaloes, however, tend to stare stolidly into the dirt, paw the ground,
and charge. I'm afraid they will not take your (wholly invented) description
of Simic & me besieged by Dutch groupies as satirical.
        Simic & I did discuss Yasusada in Rotterdam. His position was
essentially: 1) nothing against "hoaxes" per se; 2) Yasusada is a mediocre
poet; 3) tremendous anger that the only way a foreign poet can be published
these days is if there is a melodramatic biographical story attached to the
work. On the last point he's quite right-- what I want to emphasize is his
rage is directed against the current nationalism of US poetry, and not
against Yasusada. I'm not sure this is clear in his Boston Review article.
        As for Walter Lew and Dean Brink: The history of the 20th century is
that the Left fights each other on small points of doctrine, and the Right
triumphs. (I'm so glad I read "Homage to Catalonia" as an impressionable
youth.) Lew and Brink are merely the latest wrinkles in this perennial game:
Playing the "identity" card for maximum self-promotion (in the case of Lew),
their targets are inevitably white liberals in the powerless world of
poetry, rather than the genuine purveyors and sources of racism in this
country. "Yasusada" is a racism to be condemned, but Proposition 189 or
quotas for Asian-Americans at many universities is a problem for others to
worry about.
        [I should note that Lew has attacked me in print as a "Cold War
demonizer of China" for publicly stating two incontrovertible facts: 1) a
vibrant generation of Chinese modernist poets of the 1930's were entirely
silenced by the revolution; and 2) many of the best Chinese poets have been
in exile since the Tiananmen massacre. Of course, with people like Lew you
can't win: My writings on Chinese poetry can only be Orientalism; my small
efforts for Chinese poets mere paternalism. Had I no interest in China,
there would be no reason to single me out as a racist. In short, there is
nothing more Sinophobic than a Sinophile.]
        As for the "racism" of your American Buddhists anthology, this
ignores the fact that Buddhism (like Christianity and Islam, unlike Judaism
and Hinduism) is a proselytizing religion that has been spread by
missionaries and conversion. From the point of view of its various
institutions, an anthology of white American Buddhists is a token of
success, not of appropriation. (Much as, say, Baptists in Hong Kong would
publish a book of Chinese Christians, but leave out English residents.)
        Take the case of D.T. Suzuki, the pioneer purveyor of Zen in this
country. Suzuki was a militant Japanese nationalist who saw his mission as
the purification of the decadent West. (On a parallel front, Zen was
promoted in the 1930's throughout Asia as the most authentic version of
Buddhism as proof of Japanese superiority and as the one true pan-Asian
religion as part of Japanese imperialist dreams.) Suzuki would have read
your anthology as a triumph: the conversion of the heathen.
        On another front, charges of "Orientalism" ignore the central issue
being discussed by western Buddhists: How much of the Asian trappings of the
religion must be maintained? Must we import the Tibetan and Zen monastic
hierarchies? How does one create a "western" dharma? What should the medium
be for the message?
        Poets, as always, are the first glimmers of social changes, and the
interesting thing about your anthology is the first invention of a Buddhist
poetry that is not based on Asian models or full of Asian referents. The
success of Buddhism in the West will rest on the creation of some sort of
indigenous variation. These are among the first signs, as are the "New Age"
excesses denounced by Lew & Brink as Orientalist.
        Finally, Said's book was largely concerned with the "Near" or
"Middle" East, those geographical dislocations, and it is misleading to
extrapolate his (entirely correct) characterization of Western views of the
Arabs amd Persians to the "Far" East of India, China, and Japan. To believe
in the intellectual and spiritual superiority of certain Asian groups-- as
countless intellectuals since German Romanticism have done-- may be
stereotyping, but it is not racism. Compare white attitudes to the African
diaspora at any moment in history. At best-- among the "Negrophile"
Modernists-- black people were being celebrated for the exuberance of their
primitive vitality in contrast to the etiolated West. This is a far
different matter than Hegel's belief that all civilization comes from Tibet;
Voltaire's admiration of Mencius as the greatest philosopher; Pound's belief
that Chinese was the most perfect language for poetry, etc., etc.
        Instead of conducting Orinetalist witch-hunts, your critics should
be spending their time studying African religion.

                                All best---    Eliot
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 16:11:53 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: Idenity of the poet/Hey! other mind here
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

David--I'm assuming I read correctly when I notice irony in the following.
I'm not at all sure that those you address are equally capable of the
reception of same, so I'll be direct: why should masturbation, or any
victimless human pleasure, be yielded to the armies of darkness?


You're right : male masturbation, when done with
>graven images, is wrong. Some of the means by which we poor benighted
>devils achieve it, are laughable, to cry over, deplorable, despicable, and,
>no matter what a man might tell you (or no matter that he's telling it to
>you, & not another woman, or a male buddy), ultimately unsatisfying.  You
>know that's right because they keep trying again & again. Like, hmm, that
>isn't human sexuality in the larger, non-auto-erotic, picture?
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 16:20:22 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: Orange Popsicle
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Graeco-Dutch "beautiful speech?" or Hebrew "a kind of bread?"
>p.s.: on personal note, might one be correct in supposing Kali Tal to be
>of South Asian extraction?  The Dark One's Rhythm wd. be a tentative
>(& for that matter an amateur-orientalist) rendering of the name.  Just
>curious (now that we've learned you're actually no Yale professor ...)
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 18:13:14 -0300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Stephen C. Ellwood" 
Subject:      group action
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

This is a set of poems which are to be printed in a little artist's book
I'm working on, called group action.  I am very uncertain about them, as
it's been years since I have written poetry.

They are the chronicle of a sad ending.

Anything anyone can provide (tear it to shreds, but PLEASE respond,
someone) in the way of critique would be so greatly appreciated.

1)

Sometimes it seemed

we were the envy of everybody

threeway action, a place right downtown, money, all

the kinds of abundance.

We were also remarkably stylish.  Beautiful.

Desired.

Then the cup would dump and the

cats would go hungry cause

none of us would get out of bed.

They'd crawl all over us in tears,

"Daddy, I'm hungry, Daddy, Mommy, wake

up!"

They could get mean when four o'

clock rolled around and we hadn't

stirred.  We were obstinate, even with them.

You should've seen the way we'd

treat each other.  Sometimes you say it's

Familiarity that breeds contempt.  With us it was

much uglier.  It was a compulsion.

When there's three in a bed it's inevitable that

somebody sleeps in the middle.

We never resolved it.  We just started getting

paid for it.

Now the day has passed and I

can't say I'm sorry to see an

end to the squabbling.  It's just the

Glamour I miss, the way it looked to

guests:

Every table in the place loaded

down with white tulips, which

incidentally, smell like the

come of middle aged men (a

scent with which I'm un

comfortably well aquainted.) and

the tall walls bare and the

mirrors everywhere.  Two

cats, two males, and one fine

white lady throwing up in the sink.  No ones

getting off in there, no ones feeling

good. Not even okay but I forgot

I'm not talking about that, this is how it

Looks.  Each srface is a smear of

pages, drawings, missives back and forth

talk about articulate,

these three sure do.  And books and

photos, head shots and full-body,

Incidental dishes, crumbs, and an

illusion of cleanliness thanks to the

special lighting system de

vised by one, executed by another,

merely appreciated by me.

I'm not handy.  I believe I contributed something, though.

I doubt they could've

pulled it off without me.  I'm like a

wire.  I conducted.


2)

To Stephen:

I have every intention of posessing you through

memory, and distorted memory at that.

I have every intention of reinventing you as

cruel, barren, spoilt, tragic, sexually

driven, and then, when it suits me,

I'll alter the lighting and imagine you were

lovely, maligned, adoring, terrified.

Regardless, you-as-you-are-to-me will be lost to you forever (a real

loss) and

you-as-you-are-to-me will be entirely

in my hands.  I am grateful to be free of the

ugly reality of you (didn't love me, didn't feel Posessed by love), and

gratefull to be

inhabiting a city

whos contents

are my whims.

EVD

I'm about to get logged off.

Thanks to those of you who are still reading.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 20:04:00 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Poetics List 
Subject:      (Fwd) !*EMERGENCY RESPONSE NEEDED FOR MUMIA NOW!! (fwd)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 15:56:08 MST7MDT
From: Christopher Alexander 
To: poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu
Subject: (Fwd) !*EMERGENCY RESPONSE NEEDED FOR MUMIA NOW!!

alright, I disappear for months, then resurface just to forward
a message: give me shit if you want, but this is important. Chris

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 1997 22:27:27
From: Marpessa Kupendua 
To: blackpower@infobro.com
Subject: !*EMERGENCY RESPONSE NEEDED FOR MUMIA NOW!!


INTERNATIONAL CONCERNED FAMILY AND FRIENDS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
Press Contact Numbers:  215-476-8812 and 203-847-6721 - Pam Africa
Fax:                    215-476-7551 and 203-846-1937 - Susan Burnett


JUNE 26TH IS THE DATE OF THE LAST HEARING IN MUMIA'S BID FOR A NEW TRIAL

We believe it will be Mumia's FINAL COURT APPEARANCE for a very long time.
THE COURTROOM must be **PACKED** WITH SUPPORTERS, THIS IS *EXTREMELY URGENT*
AS ALL OTHER APPEALS HAVE BEEN THROWN OUT OF COURT AND THE TESTIMONY THAT
PAMELA JENKINS IS PREPARED TO GIVE IS **CRUCIAL** TO OUR FIGHT.

There will be an all day demonstration outside the courtroom and we need you
there to show the PA Supreme court that

THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING
WE WILL NOT ALLOW MUMIA TO BE RAILROADED AGAIN BY JUDGE ALBERT SABO.

People have come to Philadelphia in recent weeks from as far away
as CALIFORNIA, EUROPE and AFRICA TO SUPPORT MUMIA  because they understand
that URGENCY of this situation.  THAT MUMIA'S LIFE IS ON THE LINE!  Governor
Ridge has said he will sign a new death warrant when the PA Supreme Court
denies Mumia's appeal for a new trial.

******************************************************************

ON THE EVENING BEFORE THE HEARING, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25,
1997 AT 6:00 P.M., THERE WILL BE A SHOWING OF THE VIDEO
"A CASE FOR REASONABLE DOUBT" AND A PROGRAM FEATURING
SPECIAL GUESTS TO RALLY SUPPORT FOR OUR BROTHER WILL
BE HELD AT THE AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE BLDG.,
 1501 CHERRY STREET, PHILADELPHIA, PA, INCLUDING:

        AMIRI BARAKA AND FAMILY - NEWARK, NEW JERSEY
        JULIA WRIGHT - PARIS, FRANCE

As you may know, Sis. Julia Wright has been back and forth several
times from PARIS to answer ALL of the calls for support for Bro. Mumia
in these last stages of hearings.  This phenomenal level of SUPPORT
must be matched by those of us right here in the U.S. who want to see
MUMIA FREE.  Following this hearing, it is suspected that Mumia
will be placed on PHASE II and another warrant signed by Gov. Ridge.

*******************************************************************

!! EMERGENCY !!

WE NEED  *EVERYONE* TO CONTACT THEIR LOCAL NEWS MEDIA
*NOW*, CALL INTO LOCAL RADIO SHOWS AND WRITE LETTERS TO
THE EDITOR OF YOUR NEWSPAPERS AND PUT PRESSURE ON THESE
OFFICIALS TO GRANT MUMIA A NEW TRIAL!!   *AS WE KNOW FROM
SUMMERS PAST, **TREMENDOUS  EXPOSURE** and **PRESSURE**
IS THE ONLY WAY TO GET THIS SYSTEM'S ATTENTION!!  THE TIME
IS **NOW** TO ACT!!


--
linda v. russo
linda.russo@m.cc.utah.edu
..
Christopher W. Alexander etc.
nominative press collective

calexand@library.utah.edu
P.O. Box 522402 / Salt Lake City UT 84152-2402

http://choengmon.lib.utah.edu/~calexand/nonce
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 09:22:01 +-900
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Tessitore 
Subject:      Re: identity of the poet

On Mon, 23 Jun 1997 04:20:55 +-900 Daniel Tessitore said:
>HG wrote:
>
>  What I thought Kali was saying was that where a writer's coming
>from matters in the same way that it just helps to know that Mick Jagger
>didn't grow up in the Alabama fields inventing Robert Johnson tunes.
>[warning: we already had the Stones discussion. no further comments
>allowed. - Blarnes]
>- HG
>___________
>
>How is knowing where a writer comes from the same as knowing where he or
she
>DOESN'T come from? DT

Query relates to Susan Wheeler's.  In astrophysics circles, this
conundrum is known as the "Pessoa Phase-Warp Effect".  Knowing Pessoa's
heteronyms don't come from him tells you where Pessoa comes from.
Get it?  Or: "I am telling you I am not Pessoa."  [Logical impasse
at work.]  Imagination is free and ambiguity is the foundation of
our democracy.  The perfect imitation of another's experience would
be a work of autobiography, not art.  The imperfect imitation would
be an appropriation; its faulty mimesis would have to be redeemed by
its artistry. Here comes another Great American Writer trying to play
three chords... I don't think I'll rent the video, even. - Henry G.
___________

I don't get a lot of things and on a regular basis, so entertain my
question put another way:

Saying that R. Johnson is from somewhere in the US and M. Jagger is from
somewhere in the UK is not the same thing as saying R. Johnson is from
somewhere in the US and M. Jagger ISN'T from that place.

Do both of these constructions "help," or just one of them?

DT
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 17:50:26 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      irony & self-abuse
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Mark, thanks for catching that under-indicated irony. The letter I was
coping with goes in various directions, and I couldnt, it appears,deal with
each with the same degree of concentration. I decided to leave the battle
for the honor of male masturbation to another time. But I do write in my
letter, to preface all my assertions with "As if". "As if male masturbation
is wrong.....what then? "

The other day, in the newspaper, "studies show" that the visual function,
with men, is more strongly tied to the pleasure center, than in women. So
that the meaning men find in watching sports (incl. sex ) & the
meaninglessness women find in watching, is accounted for genetically,
rather than, as I had thought, through socialization.  In my experience,
I've known women who loved to watch, & men who couldnt be bothered, but as
a general rule, it appears that genetics rule. And rule blamelessly, I
trust.

So, anyway, in deciding to abandon the fight on one front, I left that
paragraph too bald. I'm glad you decided to be the irony-indicator. David
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 19:43:57 -0300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Stephen C. Ellwood" 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Tue, 24 Jun 1997, henry g wrote:

  If poetry is promoted for its use-value
> alone (empowerment) the tendency while empowering also blunts the critical
> edge (or one of its edges, anyway)...

Could you explain this for me a bit?  The use value thing, I mean.  It
seems interesting and important but I don't fully grasp what it
is/you assert it is.


> My own view is that poetry has this double-edge, coming from experience
> - lived, felt, authentically rendered - on the one hand, and coming, on the
> other hand, from the sky.  I mean this in all seriousness.  Criticism/
> inspiration = freedom.

This is good to read.  I agree and I find it liberating, as a writer, to
utilize that function of my mind/heart, the function of allowing the sky in.


  I'm talking about the "emotion of multitude" as
> Yeats called it, or more profoundly, Whitman's cosmic inspiration -
> "I exude my flesh in eddies & jags" or however it goes - or Coleridge's
> Imagination as the "I AM" - to me this is the linch-pin of both unity
> & individuality.  Art shares this "representative" universality in expressing
> particular experience & helps make possible the graftings & cross-overs
> on Kali's "grid" that in my view are the only hope, unless we all want to
> live in the regional archives of our own true memoirs. But you have
> to experience it.  It comes from the sky.  The sky is universal enough
> for an earth-creature (you can throw in a few stars, too, if you want -
> rhymes with Mars, jars, and also Lars).
>
> An awareness of "where the writer's coming from" sure would reduce the
> level of mediocre art; it would also make appropriations, masquerades,
> & imitations (not, in my view, always inappropriate) more effective.
> In fact most writers' personal data is now available in full on the internet.
> Mine was there even before I got published. See http://www.fbi.nerd -
> you'll find yourself there too.
>
> - Henry Gould
>
> Jack Spandrift's new CD, "Byron Hello Mercury", is available on the
> Aliens R Us label.  Throw $10. up in the air & wait for the light.
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 18:12:04 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics

So what am I to do with all this?  Joe Amato (hi, Joe) says that David
Bromige is a Real Decent Guy, and I tend to trust Joe's judgement about
people.  He says that, knowing me and knowing Bromige, he doesn't really
think there should be an argument; whether through stubbornness or
foolishness we're reading each other badly.  So let me lay down some more,
hopefully more useful, possibly more readable text.

I don't (and never would) argue that poetry doesn't/shouldn't tap deep
emotional wells or bring about insight so powerful it seems mystical in its
origins.  I think identity is a crucial component in poetry, but it does not
*replace* the poem. To me, that's like saying you could replace a whole body
with a leg. The leg isn't the body, but one could say that the body *needs*
the leg--I mean, sure one can get along without a leg, but then one has to
use substitutes, which are never as good.  So I try not to separate the
question of identity from the poem, just like I try not to separate my
notions of my mind and my body:  that is not "my leg"; that is the legness
of me.

I choose the poetry I publish based on a combination of its content and its
form/effect.  I expect good poetry to move me, and change the way I look at
the world.  The insurance lawyer is one of my favorite poets.  As a kid I
had a powerful attraction to Stevens, to Millay and to Baraka (then Jones).
Of the three, my reading of Baraka has changed the most, and it has changed
specifically because I have studied and contemplated the question of African
American identit(ies).  Or maybe I study African American identit(ies)
*because* I read Baraka as child. Coming to African American poetry with
some understanding of African American cultures has made my readings--and my
emotional connections to the works--immeasurably more rich.  Transcendence,
for me at least, is rarely automatic--I find that I have to work for it.  I
find it much like bodysurfing--the ecstatic rush of catching the wave is
possible only after one learns to blend position, timing and strength with a
practiced sense of the ocean and its movement.

Pat writes:

>But any discussion of identity & poetry begs the question: when we talk
>about identity do we mean merely personality and the personal experiences
>that stand behind or under the shaping of the text? Or do we mean the
>formation of cultural and political constructs at large - distinct codes
>imposed on us or written by ourselves -  by which we read each other in the
>world and the ways in which these read themselves into the text's creation?

A combination of both, I think.  Though I usually place emphasis on the
latter at the expense of the former... except when I feel the balance has
gone too far in that direction, and then I try to shift it back.  It's a
balancing act. My own critical writing focuses on the intersection between
individual traumatic experience, creative writing, and national/cultural
mythology; stories are always constructed in collaboration with others, and
are heavily influenced by the narrative norms of the particular culture(s)
in which we dwell.  In addition, our memories (and thus our stories) change
over time, eroding and shifting until they often come closer to matching
mythic narratives than they do to matching the original experience.

Identity is, to me, a crucial issue.  And it seems to me inextricably tied
to how we converse here, on this list, as well as in other arenas.

This argument got started because I posted some poems and included a
description listing some characteristics/identity elements of the authors.
I explicitly named those features which seemed to me to make these poets
distinct from most (not all) of the other poets we discuss on the list.
Seems to me that the conversation could have gone a number of ways.  For
example, someone who knows more poets on this list than I do might have been
able to say, "But, Kali, most of the poets we're talking about *are*
working-class, and so the class origins of these writers *can't* be
distinguishing characteristics."  Or someone could have said, "Hey, Kali, in
addition to class here's this *other* characteristic the poets you describe
share, and so maybe class isn't as important as you think it is; maybe this
other thing is just as important."  Or, upon reading my explanation, someone
might have said, "Well, thanks for the info, but actually I didn't need it.
Still, no harm done." But that's not what happened.

What happened is that I was criticized for posting the bio info, as if that
revealed some weakness, some flaw in my critical approach.  Please note that
I have *never* criticized anyone on this list for *not* posting biographical
info about poets under discussion.  I'm not prescribing correct behavior
here.  When I responded and explained my decision to post the info, I came
under attack (and, given the nature of flamewars, I'm aware that it was a
pretty mild attack) for my description of the reasons why *I* post (and
seek) identity info--it wasn't okay to think identity was important because
it seemed to make people who thought identity was *not* important...
nervous. Seems to me that there's a feeling among those folks that it's not
*fair* to bring up identity because that puts whitehetmale people at a
disadvantage since--in the identity game as constructed in the academy--they
either have a "bad" (oppressor) identity or *no* identity (and thus miss out
on the perks and privileges the politically-correct allegedly award to
people with identities).  (The "Ethnic Needs" aisle in your local
supermarket has no products designed for white people. Of course, it doesn't
meet the real "needs" of "ethnic" people, either....)

I don't mind other folks stating their opinions and making arguments.  I
mean, that's what I'm here for.  And I'll happily and civilly wrangle all
day.  What I *do* mind is being given no ground on which to stand.  I mind
fighting erasure, which seems to me something that women and people of color
must constantly resist in cyberspace.  And I mind, particularly, being read
through the lens of *my* identity by people who are arguing that identity
shouldn't matter.  Take, for example, Bromige's following comments:

>Continuing to
>create Kali Tal from what her words don't say but do indicate, I might find
>a person who hasn't worked through her attitudes towards human sexuality.

>these howls of execration
>masked as rational argument


What the *fuck*? (Pun intended.)  For some reason, some men feel completely
comfortable reading into the sexuality of women who voice opinions that are
openly feminist.  Can't tell you how many times I see women talked about
this way. If it weren't so annoying, it would be almost quaint.  "All she
really needs is to get well-laid, poor thing."  And, like Chomsky says about
people who call him antisemitic, "Hey, what are you gonna do?  Tell them
you're *not* antisemitic?"  Introducing the charge (twisted sexuality makes
twisted arguments) changes the nature of the conversation, erases any
tenable position for my response. The allegation of "irrationality" is
particularly loaded when it's directed at a woman, especially when it's
accompanied by the insinuation that the woman is motivated by some sort of
sexual frustration or incapacity. Sort of like Styron rewriting Nat Turner
as sexually frustrated, thereby shifting the nature of his rebellion from
the political to the (Freudian) personal. It's *that* sort of appropriation
I dislike, and it's *this* sort of situation which makes me feel the
difference between my (female) identity and Bromige's (male) identity
sharply enough to wince.  As a female person, I'm vulnerable to the charge
of manhating.  Calling a guy a misogynist (which, let me make perfectly
clear, I have *not* done and *am* not doing) isn't at all the same thing;
there is no equivalent position for Bromige.  We are not operating from
positions of relative parity, and his (perhaps unconscious) invocation of
female stereotypes has a power I can never match.

>I don't feel that my intrinsic value as a human being means
>much to someone who reads me as carelessly as you do, & who invites the
>List to picture me coming into _Hustler_.

Bromige apparently sees his critique of me as a kind of tit for tat.  But
the over-the-top nature of my porn analogy might have been more apparent if
he were not--like many men--trip-wired for response to perceived "attacks"
by feminists.  I can quite honestly say that I never *once* pictured Bromige
coming into _Hustler_ or any other skin mag as I wrote my post.  Did any
woman reader get that image?  I'd be surprised.  Nor, as Mark Weiss seems to
suggest, do I cede masturbation to "the armies of darkness."  The paragraph
wasn't *about* masturbation and it wasn't *about* Bromige (again, my point
exactly); it was about the play of desire and the objectification of
desire--the pornography of representation, as some feminist critics have
labelled it.  We simply have different answers to the question:  What is a
poem for?

Bromige asks:

>(Do you really think your words say only what you want them to say?)

Words don't ever "only" say anything, and I could as easily turn the tables
and ask him the same question. Others who've joined the "slam identity" fest
have also used this tactic.  Such patronizing (and I mean the word as a
patronymic) tones are tough for me to gloss over and virtually impossible
for me to context without seeming, ummmm, strident. And this rhetorical
strategy is employed to put forward an argument I never even made--I never
claimed (would never claim) that my words (or any poet's words) had a single
meaning.

(I notice now that I have slipped into the third person, addressing an
audience about Bromige, rather than speaking directly to Bromige himself.  I
prefer this, I think, because I find that there is no space for "you and me"
in the conversation with Bromige--rather, there is me reading Bromige, and
Bromige reading me, and I find that his reading of me is a stuffy and
ill-lit box where all my (favorite) parts cannot fit comfortably.  I prefer
to operate from outside when faced with such uncomfortable accommodations.
Probably he feels the same.  The question is, in the darkness of the garden,
can we communicate?)

The invisibility of any identity other than white male, which is the
unstated norm, is made evident in myriad posts, but I'll take Pat's as an
example.  (I'm choosing this post because I think that it was smart and
interesting, and I'd guess that Pat's intent was as far from my reading as I
can imagine; however, I think that whitehetmale "identity presumption"
permeates most POETICS posts.)

Pat writes:

>... I'm woefully not up on the most current thinking about
>identity theory in literature. No doubt this has to do with my "identity" as
>a member of the ruling class - white male heterosexual. (Dodie Bellamy last
>night jokingly told me a guy like me could never get a grant!)  I don't
>think the value of an idea or a work rests solely on the personal behavior
>or outlook of its author.

If you aren't up on identity theory, and you are saying (seemingly without
irony) that your cultural positioning might have an effect on your interest
in identity, why, then, go on to redefine the privileged position as
victimized (you'll "never get a grant"), even in a joking fashion?  A survey
of granting agencies will doubtless demonstrate that most grants still go to
white males, just as a survey of academic employment will confirm that jobs
are awarded along the same lines.  Forgive me for the close reading, but
there seem to be something interesting going on here--simultaneous
distancing from contemporary identity theory and an (admittedly not
forceful) claim to a position based solely on identity (discriminated
against white male heterosexual).  Even if you meant repetition of Dodie's
comment as an offhand joke, it still rests on a bed of identity politics.
"Identity politics" is a word used to describe what women and people of
color are doing when they assert their interests.  White men do the same
thing all the time but it's invisible in the way that ubiquitous things
become invisible--they become "the way things are," presumed to be value
neutral by folks whose privilege is not to notice their privilege.

Then you follow up your whitehetmale self-reference with the assertion that
you "don't think the value of an idea or work rests solely on the personal
behavior or outlook of its author."  Where did that come from?  What critic,
in what context, has said--in this discussion or in identity theory writ
large--that "the value of an idea or work rests solely on the personal
behavior or outlook of its author"?  It's a classic straw-person argument
since no one--certainly no one on this list, here--has taken the position
you stand against. The function of a straw-person is to invoke an enemy
against whom you can position yourself. In this case, the people most likely
to be presumed to be advocating the position you state are exactly the
members of the most oppressed social groups--women and people of color.
These hardly seem to me groups which warrant resistance from relatively
privileged white males, but, then, there *is* that tendency of contemporary
white males to think of themselves as victimized.

Just because the language and culture is sexist and racist doesn't mean that
I don't want to engage with it.  But there's a point at which I tend to
notice that the norms of sexism and racism have been exceeded and we've slid
beyond the boundaries of the tolerable into the realm of the abusive. That's
why I'm taking the time to write such a lengthy response to the argument
between me and Bromige. I place derogatory comments about my *specific*
sexuality in the "abusive" category, and I'd like to register my distress at
their appearance on POETICS.

Kali

"It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or
point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to
the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others thathelp us
make their lives and experiences our own."  -- Emma Goldman.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 21:57:01 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: Idenity of the poet / Bromige's bravura

Well David Bromige, --

at long day's end reading your exposition /
                response / rapture / elucidation /
grapplement / defense / demonstration of a
            view regarding poetry & its reading

elicits thanks for quaint privilege & play
of the peculiar Poetics dialogue phenom
say Kali comprises occasion for same? --
there's credit sufficient to obviate blame

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 19:12:05 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Here is the passage that evoked the responses that you find objectionable:

"This "response" to poetry (which in your construction appears to take place
at some deeper and more meaningful level than contextualization) doesn't
seem so different to me from the hard-on some guys get when they thumb
through fuck books. I mean, that's a "response," right?  And it doesn't
matter who the woman (or the guy) in the photo is--their bio is completely
and wholly irrelevant because the reader is in it for *himself* (or herself,
as the case may be).  You can jerk off over a photo, but it doesn't mean
that you're exactly "meeting
through the porn."  I think that focusing wholly on your own response to a
poem (and the bio be damned) objectifies the author and makes him/her merely
a vehicle for your own pleasure.  What you feel might be *real*, but
frankly, my dear, who gives a damn? In the end, all you've got left is a
sticky piece of paper and the need to do it again and again because it
never, finally, satisfies."

Perhaps your equating of a way of reading with a specifically male interest
in pornography wasn't meant to be provocative. Perhaps its meaning wasn't
dependent on a presumption of a shared negative opinion of pornography.
Perhaps you spoke in code. Perhaps you think that guys accept this sort of
cheapening of an argument if it comes from another guy and only get pissed
off if a woman does it.

For the record, I thought, based on your words, that you were an officer in
the armies of darkness. But then, I don't read very well.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 14:26:23 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: irony & self-abuse
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Aren't these studies painful. In ante-natal classs (i am going as a friend
not a conspirator) the other night the cub-scout leader like woman taking
the glass kept coming back to her 'fact' that she has 25,000 words whereas
he only has 10,000. I felt like screaming by about the hundredth reference
to it, but ,managed to avoid one of my more common words - .01% of my vocab
according to her - in favour of wondering what sort of children the other
'couples' would produce.

Regards,

Dan (am enjoying the heat of some of these discussions in the cold NZ winter)


>The other day, in the newspaper, "studies show" that the visual function,
>with men, is more strongly tied to the pleasure center, than in women. So
>that the meaning men find in watching sports (incl. sex ) & the
>meaninglessness women find in watching, is accounted for genetically,
>rather than, as I had thought, through socialization.  In my experience,
>I've known women who loved to watch, & men who couldnt be bothered, but as
>a general rule, it appears that genetics rule. And rule blamelessly, I
>trust.
>
>So, anyway, in deciding to abandon the fight on one front, I left that
>paragraph too bald. I'm glad you decided to be the irony-indicator. David
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 22:38:19 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         robert drake 
Subject:      Re: KOJA magazine?
Comments: cc: mdw@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

mark--

i've seen only th 1st issue of KOJA, c1996... in an enclosed note,
michael (mikhail on th masthead) was soliciting work for a 2nd issue
planned for spring 97.  contributors to the 1st: michael basinski,
joi brozek, marta deike, raymond federman, alex galper, saha kogan,
richard kostelanetz, konstantin kuminsky, inna mattei, mike meskin,
eileen myles, dennis saleh, genrikh sapgir, lena saprykina, igor
satanovsky, spencer selby, gary sullivan, irving weiss, & th editor.

address: 7314 21 ave. apt 6e, brooklyn, NY  11204.
.


and i wanted to mention: i receive queries similar to this one at
least 2 or 3 times a week--folks trying to track down current addresses
ov some very small publication or author...  there is a continued
interest in literatures that might be commercially "marginal", frm
a wide range of readers.  just wanted to say so, as encouragement to
various who might feel discouraged about the lack of a mass market
for their works...

asever
luigi
trr/burning press/etc
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 22:42:50 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: long article / rustle of language

Henry Higgins --
(w/ thanks to EVD for highlighting the passage):

> I'm talking about the "emotion of multitude" as
> Yeats called it, or more profoundly, Whitman's cosmic inspiration -

not acquainted w/ the Yeats phrase (under-educated in many such
regards), -- but by the by, it calls to mind one from Roland Barthes':

  "the rustle of language"

(an imagistic phrase serving eponymously for title of an essay & a book
of essays) -- the image he uses to conjure this (if memory serves) is the
sort of "rustle" one hears if, not knowing (say) Chinese, one listens to the
bare sound of Chinese being spoken by a multitude (beheld in, I think, a
Chinese movie of multitudes . . . )

Among those iconic Theorists, doesn't Barthes seem maybe the most
susceiptible to (for me, a likeable dash of so-called) Romanticism?

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 20:04:22 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      not "as if," but "What if"
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

with regard to my last posting. Need some sleep! this message was returned
because I had addressed it to "listserb." Must be that Simic thread. David
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 21:49:58 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tenney Nathanson 
Subject:      acrimony, or, being wishy-washy at Wimbleton
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

this is just to register my somewhat (perhaps) inappropriate pleasure at the
growing David / Kali archive.  The acrimonious edge may be more fun from the
sidelines (or not); but anyway it's so nice to sit here watching the ball
fly back and forth, and really irresponsibly not to feel any interest at all
in taking up sides.  They have each answered correctly, that is each one
according to "his" nature.  Emerald becoming emeralds, etc.

(btw I know both the gladiators--though only slightly--and find both nothing
but enjoyable.  go figger.)

yrs w cricked neck,

tenney

----------------------------------------------------------

tenney nathanson

tenney@azstarnet.com
nathanso@u.arizona.edu

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 00:40:54 -0300
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Stephen C. Ellwood" 
Subject:      Re: irony & self-abuse
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I didn't think you were being ironic when you asserted that mastrubating
with, it was Hustler I believe, is a destructive (evil?) thing.  And I
was glad to hear it.

It harms me and my sisters when men allow thier sexual impulse to be
reconfigured by that fucked up capitalist monster that is porn.


Emily Vey Duke.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 26 Jun 1997 21:57:39 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics

>Perhaps your equating of a way of reading with a specifically male interest
>in pornography

No.  You don't seem to read very well.  Please note the line in the
paragraph you quoted:

>And it doesn't
>matter who the woman (or the guy) in the photo is--their bio is completely
>and wholly irrelevant because the reader is in it for *himself* (or herself,
>as the case may be).

Right there, in the heart of the argument is the clear statement that
objects and objectifiers can be either/both male or female.

>Perhaps its meaning wasn't
>dependent on a presumption of a shared negative opinion of pornography.
>Perhaps you spoke in code. Perhaps you think that guys accept this sort of
>cheapening of an argument if it comes from another guy and only get pissed
>off if a woman does it.

Again, lots of rhetorical flourish, little substance.  But then, perhaps you
don't feel you have to demonstrate substance, since you've got the weight of
Culture on your side.  Triple sheesh.

1.  Porn is complicated stuff.  First off, it's real hard to define.  One
man's porn is another woman's erotica, and so on.  So I'm not talking about
"porn" here (never was).  What I'm talking about is the specific
relationship between the fantasy object and the reader. *If* one claims the
right to reimagine the poet at will, and for one's own purposes and pleasure
solely, then it seems to me a not so terrible leap to a parallel with other
sorts of objectifications and appropriations, i.e., a certain way of reading
what--for convenience, though without much accuracy--I'll call
porn-as-placeholder.  It's not the *content* that creates the problem (the
context of a woman's nakedness, for example, matters very much).  It's the
manner of reading.  "Porn" in my estimation describes a *relationship* in
which one party has the power and privilege of objectifying another party,
perhaps against her will, in ways that are echoed and amplified in
oppressive structures throughout the "real" world.  (And I think this is
what Susan Kappaeler means when she talks about the pornography of
representation.) You can continue to pretend that my argument is simply a
knee-jerk antiporn tirade combined with a vicious personal attack on the
good poet Bromige if that's simpler for you.

2.  What "cheapening of an argument" is going on here?  What valuable
material is being destroyed by the introduction of the porn parallel?  Gah.
Why is there always this ferocious response by a few men when a woman
ventures anywhere near the realm of the erotic in other than traditional
dress?  So I compared a way of reading poetry to a way of reading
pornography?  Don't get your panties in a twist.

>For the record, I thought, based on your words, that you were an officer in
>the armies of darkness. But then, I don't read very well.

3.  I'm not an officer, son.  I *work* for a living.

Sgt-Maj Tal, Vagina Dentata Division, Legions of Hell

"A sucking chest wound is nature's way of telling you that you've been in a
firefight."
Kali Tal
Sixties Project & Viet Nam Generation, Inc.
PO Box 13746, Tucson, AZ 85732-3746
kali.tal@yale.edu
Sixties Project: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/sixties/
Home Page: http://www.azintl.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 00:01:35 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Oh my god I've been objectified.

Look, your globalization of a theory about gender relations, like the term
"the pornography of representation," is not lingua franca, it's a code. And
it carries a value judgement for a simple soul like me. Maybe it's the
cultural context.

Actually, I like women in combat boots. But I think it's ungentlemanly to
talk about your lingerie, twisted or not. After all, we hardly know each other.

Maybe we can dispense with the ad hominems.

At 09:57 PM 6/26/97 MDT, you wrote:
>>Perhaps your equating of a way of reading with a specifically male interest
>>in pornography
>
>No.  You don't seem to read very well.  Please note the line in the
>paragraph you quoted:
>
>>And it doesn't
>>matter who the woman (or the guy) in the photo is--their bio is completely
>>and wholly irrelevant because the reader is in it for *himself* (or herself,
>>as the case may be).
>
>Right there, in the heart of the argument is the clear statement that
>objects and objectifiers can be either/both male or female.
>
>>Perhaps its meaning wasn't
>>dependent on a presumption of a shared negative opinion of pornography.
>>Perhaps you spoke in code. Perhaps you think that guys accept this sort of
>>cheapening of an argument if it comes from another guy and only get pissed
>>off if a woman does it.
>
>Again, lots of rhetorical flourish, little substance.  But then, perhaps you
>don't feel you have to demonstrate substance, since you've got the weight of
>Culture on your side.  Triple sheesh.
>
>1.  Porn is complicated stuff.  First off, it's real hard to define.  One
>man's porn is another woman's erotica, and so on.  So I'm not talking about
>"porn" here (never was).  What I'm talking about is the specific
>relationship between the fantasy object and the reader. *If* one claims the
>right to reimagine the poet at will, and for one's own purposes and pleasure
>solely, then it seems to me a not so terrible leap to a parallel with other
>sorts of objectifications and appropriations, i.e., a certain way of reading
>what--for convenience, though without much accuracy--I'll call
>porn-as-placeholder.  It's not the *content* that creates the problem (the
>context of a woman's nakedness, for example, matters very much).  It's the
>manner of reading.  "Porn" in my estimation describes a *relationship* in
>which one party has the power and privilege of objectifying another party,
>perhaps against her will, in ways that are echoed and amplified in
>oppressive structures throughout the "real" world.  (And I think this is
>what Susan Kappaeler means when she talks about the pornography of
>representation.) You can continue to pretend that my argument is simply a
>knee-jerk antiporn tirade combined with a vicious personal attack on the
>good poet Bromige if that's simpler for you.
>
>2.  What "cheapening of an argument" is going on here?  What valuable
>material is being destroyed by the introduction of the porn parallel?  Gah.
>Why is there always this ferocious response by a few men when a woman
>ventures anywhere near the realm of the erotic in other than traditional
>dress?  So I compared a way of reading poetry to a way of reading
>pornography?  Don't get your panties in a twist.
>
>>For the record, I thought, based on your words, that you were an officer in
>>the armies of darkness. But then, I don't read very well.
>
>3.  I'm not an officer, son.  I *work* for a living.
>
>Sgt-Maj Tal, Vagina Dentata Division, Legions of Hell
>
>"A sucking chest wound is nature's way of telling you that you've been in a
>firefight."
>Kali Tal
>Sixties Project & Viet Nam Generation, Inc.
>PO Box 13746, Tucson, AZ 85732-3746
>kali.tal@yale.edu
>Sixties Project: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/sixties/
>Home Page: http://www.azintl.edu
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 02:00:26 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      identity/poetics
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Kali:

This exchange is very interesting, certainly very intense. I wanted
to ask you a question publicly that you'll remember I asked you
back-channel a few days ago. It was in reference to something you
said in a post entitled "Reading Kim Dawn." Dodie Bellamy had
raised a suspicion of sorts regarding Dawn's gender, and you replied:

"I'm also put off by Dodie's later attempt to undermine Kim Dawn's
*author*ity by attempting to cast doubt upon her claim to be female.
(Does it actually matter if KD is female? How would we revise our
interpretation if she were a he?)"

When I asked the other day, you ageed that there at least seemed to
be a contradiction between this and your most recent arguments, and
you graciously offered to explain it sometime if I was interested.
Because the whole question of authorial identity is key in this
exchange you are having with David Bromige and others, and because I
read you now to be saying pretty emphatically that an empirically
verifiable author with an empirically verifiable history is
crucial (lest we fall as readers into a kind of "pornographic"
largesse, where we make of the author a mere object for our
fantasies), I was thinking that now would be a good time to ask you
to clarify the apparent contradiction.

Is your position, perhaps, that it is a matter of context? Does the
contradiction imply that you feel that for some groups, classes,
ethnicities, it is necessary for authors to have a "real,"
traceable identity, but in other cases this is not necessary? Or are
"transgressions" of normative understandings of the author's
function (i.e. where the name of the "author" is the name of the
writer) improper in all cases? The questions Susan Wheeler asked
earlier today strike me as very relevant to all this. I'd like to ask
if you could try to address some of them in your answer.
Thanks.

Kent
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 02:09:27 +0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KENT JOHNSON 
Organization: Highland Community College
Subject:      a next to last word
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

The past few heated days have been some of the most interesting I've
experienced on the list--in part, admittedly, because I've had a
stake in the Buddhist anthology discussion which has had some very
intelligent contributions (well, hey, this is the Poetics list). And
I've certainly been heartened that a number of people have come in
and spoken up in reply to some of the unecessary and ill-founded
assaults against _Beneath a Single Moon: Buddhism in Contemporary
American Poetry_.

I intended to unsub today (need to tomorrow!) before leaving
town, and so I was hoping that my mini-history a
couple days back about BaSM's making and its editorial criteria would
calm Dean Brink's indignation and perhaps lead, if not to an
open and sincere apology, then at least to his temporary practice of
some dignified silence on the matter. _Especially_ since he has now
been led to admit that he made all of his angry and self-righteous
accusations without having even read the book (!)-- a rather stunning
and pathetic admission, in my humble opinion, particularly given the
specificity and gravity of the evaluations Mr. Brink was making
against not just me, but also against the poets in the collection.

Now, it's apparent, no question, that Mr. Brink is intelligent and
knows quite a bit about his field. But it is also now apparent to
most, I think, that on this claim of the anthology's "blatant" and
"bad faith" promotion of "Orientalism", "candy Buddhism", "New
Age" type poetry, and intentional "exclusion" of Asian Americans, he
jumped without a parachute off a towering cliff of assumptions.
People like Hoa Nguyen, David Israel, George Thompson, Judy Roitman,
Dale Smith, and others (forgetting, but trying to remember names off
top) have pointed this out in ways better than I could.

But, rather incredibly, Mr. Brink is still in a snit, trying to make
his way back up the cliff, opening now with a couple of amicable
feints, but then spurting charges again and calling on me to confess
my misdeeds and honestly explain how I could have possibly
constructed an all-Caucasian anthology. He says (before spiraling
away on a tangent about the "orientalist" sub-text of American haiku)
that I appear to be just "making up excuses" rather than really
"explaining" my editorial practices.

Thus I would, with a sigh, like to propose the following to Mr.Brink:
Go find the book, read it, think about it, and then come back and
make your complaint if you still have one. But for goodness sakes,
man, give yourself some space and start over fresh! You've quite
simply made a bad go of it this time around, and you've been
downright abusive toward the integrity of a number of good people in
the process. (Or if you want, you may post me back-channel toward the
end of next month when I get back from other parts--and post me
especially, please, if--in the spirit of Mark Weiss's sound
advice--you have specific Asian American poets with Buddhist practice
you could suggest for a possible second edition (Zen, Theravadan,
Tibetan, Pure Land, the anthology is purely non-sectarian.)

I need to withdraw now. But before doing so, I'd like to point out
that Hoa Nguyen directed a series of very fine questions to me at the
end of her post a couple of days ago. With apologies to Hoa, I'm
unable to take them on at the time, but I wonder if they might be
taken up by others who could in any case provide more thorough and
suggestive answers than I?

So long until August!
Kent
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 03:15:09 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan * Sondheim 
Subject:      Dead as Can Be
Comments: cc: foofwa d'Imobilité 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

 *


   Post-Dryden Fragment


   violent forces pervade the protocols
   Julu screaming in dreadful datagrams
   or Jennifer at war with black hole drops:
   Give them names! Give them names! thus Alan cries
   as RAM fills up, spilled data, TCP
   lumbers half-empty through the swollen wires
   She'd want us! yells one half the Network plane
   She's coming! yells the other back again -
   a bleak occurrence, storms raging far below
   where dim tubes carry photons hot with text
   ready for her, for us, for them, for you; now think
   of crazy-Julu-hell, and file follows file
   to the rim or nervous screen, thin fingers grasp
   the keys, control-X sends, and everything is gone
   from one true world to this, her screen now blanked
   or lost or black or dimmed or otherwise
   just _off,_ she was a little, but the network swells,
   becomes her, us, he, she, we, or them, or you,
   turned against time and space's absence and/or lack,
   or proxy or prosthetic space, or space yet undefined
   as _this_ ID wracks routes and routers work
   at it or through it. such routers, drawn, inert,
   read not nor comprehend our Julu's savage spread
   everywhere that's lost its place, a _thing_
   that isn't there, that Julu-is. Jennifer wisely knows
   _here,_ in frock and smiles, uncanny fantasy
   that she will sing, tune or ditty, all the time
   heard everywhere at once ('that's lost its place') -
   It works! Julu and Jennifer merge hard
   And in their she, an absent Network, dreamed -
   Oh, is this necessary?! one might speak, or not,
   and other answer, as two lips turn one,
   or many or none at all, all this, they say
   is unaccounted-for, and unaccountable, All this,
   they say, is _them, for them! Now routers burn,
   nodes fire, vectors churn: O Jennifer! O Julu!
   Alan prays as data roars, flesh hardens and decays.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 01:10:27 -0700
Reply-To:     dean@w-link.net
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Dean A. Brink" 
Subject:      Re: a next to last word
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Kent, you are obviously not interested in persuing my queries more
objectively. You attack the person. You rally names, but the issues
stand undeveloped: a string of denials and excuses. This is not a
question of your conscience for me (no confessions, please) but of the
way the situation of the editing came to be. Who knows, if we could
sustain a cool exchange we might learn something.

I have no reason to apologize to you. I have based my statements on your
words regarding the editing policy, and was not initially interested in
the anthology's contents (thus naturally didn't read it). It's a matter
of quoting a virtual preface when discussing a specific issue, not of
reviewing your entire anthology. Broadcast that I'm cynical about New
Age things, fine. I'm sure many will agree. Tell them I've attacked
their work (which I have never done, and have denied thrice), and you
are simply lying.

I have been continually been bringing issues to the floor. My first post
was (as has been suggested) perhaps an example of a ritual attempt to
get the discussion going by making overstated claims that later can be
developed by all, fine-tuned, or dismissed. There's been some of this.
But the "in this corner/that corner" makes for a bad taste in all of our
mouths methinks.

There seems to be a chasm between those who revere Asia and those just
are Asian, have lived in Asia, or who study Asia. I do not revere Asia
or hold it up, nor put anywhere or any culture (including of course
American) up on a pedestal. The historical contexts for our various
cultures and mixes of cultures are too interesting and really,
historically beautiful. Including the thought. To revere Asia and
establish a coterie around this is something foreign to me.

KENT JOHNSON wrote that I should
"if not to an open and sincere apology, then at least to his temporary
practice of
some dignified silence on the matter."

Since when do we play the authoritarian God card?

> Now, it's apparent, no question, that Mr. Brink is intelligent and
> knows quite a bit about his field.

Thank you very much. Here, play the voice of God.

> Thus I would, with a sigh, like to propose the following to Mr.Brink:
> Go find the book, read it, think about it, and then come back and
> make your complaint if you still have one.

I don't want to spoil your party, just question the
unconscious/ideological thinking that went into your compilation. I will
not critique this book on those terms, in the context we have created.
Again, the issue for me had to do with the politics of the editing, not
the contents.

> "you've been downright abusive toward the integrity of a number of
> good people in the process."

How could this be so, when I haven't even mentioned anyone but us two?

Sorry our romance will have to be cut short. Backchannel me when you get
back.
There must be some common ground for understanding ...

dean@w-link.net
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 10:11:01 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Cayley 
Subject:      work(s)  text(s)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

     *** one message for many ***
    *** the problem of address ***
   *** cross-posting apologetics ***
       *** and sign(n)ature ***
    *** pretended . embarrassed ***


Hypertext Special issue of _Postmodern Culture_
   http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/issue.597/
   Book Unbound
     http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/issue.597/cayley/

electropoetics issue of _the electronic book review_
   http://www.altx.com/ebr/
   http://www.altx.com/ebr/ebr5/contents.htm
   'Why did they make things like this'
     http://www.altx.com/ebr/ebr5/likintro.htm
   'The King is dead, long live the King' - HT'97
     http://www.altx.com/ebr/ebr5/cayley.htm

Where the Sea Stands Still
   http://www.illumin.co.uk/ica/wsss/

WellSweep
   http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/wells/


beached?







- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - >
John Cayley / Wellsweep Press         http://www.demon.co.uk/eastfield/
1 Grove End House  150 Highgate Road  London NW5 1PD  UK
Tel & Fax: (+44 171) 267 3525         Email: cayley@shadoof.demon.co.uk
< - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 02:16:30 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics

Kent, I'm writing this tonight in hopes you'll catch it before you vanish
for a month.  Fair questions, and I'm happy to answer them.

I did indeed take issue with Dodie's decision to question the authenticity
of Kim Dawn's claim to be a female person, but it was not the question which
bothered me; it was the context.  The purpose of the question *appeared* to
me to be located in Dodie's desire to undermine Kim Dawn's authority. I drew
that conclusion because of Dodie's concommitant criticisms of Kim Dawn's
lack of proper ladylike demeanor (as compared to Kathy Acker's allegedly
exemplary public persona).  Strategically, it seemed that Dodie had made a
particular choice to undermine Kim Dawn's "femininity" first by criticizing
her actions as improper, and then--having established the unladylike nature
of Kim Dawn's speech/acts--delivering a double-whammy by questioning whether
a person so unladylike could indeed *be* a lady or even a woman. So I asked
the following questions, which you quoted in your last post:

>"I'm also put off by Dodie's later attempt to undermine Kim Dawn's
>*author*ity by attempting to cast doubt upon her claim to be female.
>(Does it actually matter if KD is female? How would we revise our
>interpretation if she were a he?)"

Please notice that at the same time I am asking whether it matters if Kim
Dawn is female (and I think it does matter in the context of the discussion
where the question was raised), I am also asking how the knowledge that
"she" was actually a "he" would change our interpretation of the textual
events which we'd read/witnessed.  What I was doing (attempting to do) was
pointing out the way Dodie's inquiry functioned as a rhetorical tactic in
this particular argument.  As I noted in one of my previous posts,

>I don't think identity is
>essential, but I think that people essentially identify and that how we
>think about what we are creates not only what *we* are but, when we're
>members of a dominant group, what *other* people think they are; we limit or
>define what other people can and cannot be.

Dodie's was, I thought, a tactic which reinforced/reinscribed power
hierarchies of a dominant over an oppressed group.  Note, please, that I
consider Dodie, a female person, to be a fully able participant in the
business of reinforcing hegemony.  Identity is a process, not a fixed
position, which is why women can find themselves allied with men against
other women (not, mind you, always a bad thing), or why Malcolm X, after his
pilgrimage to Mecca, could redefine his identity to be ideology-based as
well as (and perhaps even more than) racially based.

>... I read you now to be saying pretty emphatically that an empirically
>verifiable author with an empirically verifiable history is
>crucial (lest we fall as readers into a kind of "pornographic"
>largesse, where we make of the author a mere object for our
>fantasies), I was thinking that now would be a good time to ask you
>to clarify the apparent contradiction.

You do add a twist to the argument that I would never endorse.  "Empiricism"
is possible only when we've agreed upon a standard of measurement, and I
don't think we've yet developed any system for accurately gauging and
testing identity. The problem with your reconstruction of my argument is
that, again, it assumes that identity is fixed. It's not.  In some ways it's
utterly dependent upon context.  Take, for example, my student, Claudaniel.
He's of Haitian descent, appearing to my eyes as a medium-brown
African-American with nappy hair.  But he lives in Tucson and--because he
speaks fluent creole and French and has a talent for languages--picked up
Spanish very easily. In the Southwest, he is often taken for Chicano.  In
Haiti, he's frequently mistaken for white (he says he's the lightest member
of his family), though he's far too dark to be assumed white in the U.S.  In
Brooklyn, where he goes to visit his cousins in the summer, he's usually
assumed to be black, sometimes thought to be Puerto Rican.  If you ask him
what he is, he'll say, "Haitian."  But then he'll pause, and muse for a
moment, and say, "African-American," too.  I couldn't (and wouldn't want to)
measure his identity.  What interests me is the process of his passage
through different social/cultural spaces, and the way his identity emphases
shift when he goes from here to there.  All positions he occupies are
authentically Claudaniel, but the social pressures and circumstances change
as he relocates, and each venue seems to allow for the expression of
different aspects of "himself".

We all experience identity shifts like this to some degree, but persons who
identify (or are identified) as members of oppressed groups experience more
external enforcement of identity than members of privileged groups.  As an
illustration of this, I can offer my African American students' litany of
stories about a) getting stopped for driving a nice car because police
assume that black kids in nice cars are drug dealers; b) getting followed
around by security in department stores because security personnel assume
that black kids are in department stores to steal things; c) dealing with
the poorly concealed racism of the white parents of friends and lovers.
Externally imposed identity is as real as internally embraced identity--few
things are more "authentic" than the knowledge that you could get killed
merely because people *think* they know who you are.  I have African
American friends, a married couple, who fear for the life of their young
adult son because the boy has a psychological illness which causes him to
act aggressively and irrationally at times.  Their son lives in a city that
has a police force with a brutal reputation, and my friends are quite aware
that an episode could be fatal for their son under certain
circumstances--circumstances that white parents would not have to worry
about.  Their son *is* upper-class, but at the same time, he is also African
American.  The importance/primacy of each identifier shifts depending upon
the context.

>Does the
>contradiction imply that you feel that for some groups, classes,
>ethnicities, it is necessary for authors to have a "real,"
>traceable identity, but in other cases this is not necessary? Or are
>"transgressions" of normative understandings of the author's
>function (i.e. where the name of the "author" is the name of the
>writer) improper in all cases?

In my experience, authors tend not to hide their identities unless they have
a specific purpose in mind.  Most authors *like* being known, and those who
don't are anomolous enough so that we know them for *not* wanting to be
known (Pynchon, Salinger).  In cases of deliberately concealed or withheld
identity, I am interested in both the author's intent and in the general
impact of the work.  Some identity-concealing tactics are quite easy to
understand--George Sand, George Eliot, James Tiptree, Jr., etc. wrote under
masculine pen names because it brought them (a limited number of) masculine
privileges.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to analyze that sort of
passing.  Frank Yerby, however, is more interesting.  For those of you who
aren't into romance novels, Frank Yerby is one of the pillars of the genre;
he's black but has constructed his ouevre quite carefully to give no sign of
this.  He made a mint on his writing.  What do I think of this?  I think
it's complicated, and contemplating Yerby always sends me back to James
Weldon Johnson's _Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man_.  (The latter is also
fascinating in terms of the identity question because so many folks mistake
the novel for an autobiography when the "real" JWJ couldn't have been
farther from his protagonist.)  And then there are the well-known "fakes" by
white authors, like "Danny Santiago's" _Famous All Over Town_ or, to bring
class into it, Rebecca Harding Davis' _Life in the Iron Mills_. How about
gender crossing within races, like Ernest Gaines' _Autobiography of Miss
Jane Pittman_, which almost everyone who reads it takes *as* an
autobiography? Or, even within a single "identity," what about the multiple
and self-contradictory autobiographies of Lillian Hellman or Mary McCarthy?
Each one of these works (and their authors) can be read and understood in
context, with identity factored into the mix.

There is no single answer, no prescription, for how and when identity
matters, no formula that will let you know for sure if identity is of
primary importance in *this* case or *that* one.  So I always factor it in,
using as much information as I've got available, asking around for more, and
depending upon the one constant in all of this, which is that no matter how
much I know about a writer, my grasp of his or identity will never be
complete.  Like identity itself, for me understanding is a process rather
than an end to be reached.

Hope this clarifies things.

Kali
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 05:26:02 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Peter Ganick 
Subject:      body-as-text discussion
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

hi buffalo-l-er's---------
i don't think alan sondheim would mind if i
forwarded this post of his to the fop-list
made an hour ago--------
it bears relevance to the "body-as-text' discussion
proposed by kdawn earlier----
out--------
peter ganick

>To: poetics@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu
>From: Peter Ganick 
>Subject: Re: E-Minds Discussion
>
>>Sender: FOP-L 
>>From: Alan * Sondheim 
>>Subject:      Re: E-Minds Discussion
>>To: Multiple recipients of list FOP-L 
>>
>>I'm curious - with your computing skills and equipment - what are your
>>ultimate goals - what do you want to do?
>>
>>I find myself constantly having to pare back, for example, ignoring C++ in
>>order to concentrate on the languages I know to some extent, and can use.
>>With essays, I try to read things that are sent me within three days; if
>>not, I have to expunge them.
>>
>>I move from one operating system to another; I feel I have good knowledge
>>of linux and Win95, poor still of Mac, but getting there. I'm getting
>>close to 250 - 300 messages a day.
>>
>>I want to feel I'm within the internals of the machine, and understand the
>>psychoanalytical and philosophical ramifications of technology. I want to
>>do this without disregarding the body, or its splitting re: issues of em-
>>bodiment and virtuality - and I don't want to go for simplistic answers
>>(which usually carry the day). I try to keep up with "the literature" as
>>best I can; much of it seems anecdotal (this is what a MUD does) or naive
>>(cyber-relationships are/aren't "real").
>>
>>Since I'm not institutionalized, I can rarely go to the conferences I've
>>applied to, to present a paper; there's no money. Since I can't go to the
>>conferences, the feedback on my work is minimal, so I have to conduct im-
>>aginary conversations - _here_ I'm naive, _there_ I've maybe made a point.
>>Although I do get into print (off or online) often, there's no real com-
>>munity of discussion surrounded my work, so these dialogs get increasingly
>>psychotic.
>>
>>Beyond this, I remember when I began thinking through these issues in the
>>70s (I did something called The Structure of Reality then, which I still
>>refer to), I figured I wanted to work on the mediation of mind and world
>>vis-a-vis formal and informal systems - and how this mediation constructed
>>or was constructed by/for mind. And I've remained fastened on this to the
>>present.
>>
>>With your work on your computers, adding programs (I remember you talked
>>about all the Network monitoring addons for Win95 you downloaded), I won-
>>der where your interest lies, what your goals are? And I'm sending this to
>>the lists, since I'm curious about others' configurations as well.
>>
>>(For myself, I've stabilized linux and the Mac and Win95 configs, as well
>>as my Win 3.+ stuff, so they're functional and somewhat interoperational;
>>with the Mac, I've clumsily looked at Applescript, backed out a bit, and
>>do most of my experimentation on linux, either RedHat or Slackware varie-
>>ties. And I still feel that one needs at least some of this in order to
>>understand TCP/IP or other protocols, to understand the Net in general,
>>beyond the user interface. For the user interface is always a system, as
>>Richard MacKinnon might say, of governance, and there's protocol and gov-
>>ernance all the way down, and we had better look at it.)
>>
>>Alan, musing
>>
>>
>>
>>URL:     http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
>>MIRROR with other pages at:   http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
>>IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/           TEL 718-857-3671
>>EXPERIMENTAL (on and off): http://166.84.250.149   Editor, BEING ON LINE
>>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 05:46:22 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: (Fwd) Eliot Weinberger / orientalism?

A chit to register delight in reading Eliot Weinberger's observations (as
forwarded by Kent Johnson).  Among his fine points too numerous to
number, the distinction between "orientalism" (as homage) and "racism"
(as derision) is an interesting one.

The ways in which any writer draws nourishment from writers of the
past (whether those writers lives were grounded in lands & cultures that
are allegedly "other" such as Asian cultures, or that are supposedly
"ours" -- such as so-called western cultures) -- these ways are intimate,
subtle, not always easily tracked, and not, I think, usefully susceptible to
such fervid, broad-brush condemnations as seemed to issue from Dean
Brink (unless I was misreading him?).  (I never once thought of the term
"new age" in connection w/ the Beneath anthology, btw.  There are
several  fallacies that can emerge from not actually looking at a book that
one is maligning.  [One might more meaningfully malign if one has glanced
at the work in question.  ;-} ]

IS Socrates or Shakespeare more "mine" than is Li Po or T'ao Yuan-ming
or the Buddha?  Or are they all "other"? -- I mean, is even Bob Dylan
really "mine"?  Is John F. Kennedy certainly "mine" while Mohandas
Gandhi is definitively "other"?)

These things get complicated.  For instance, it so happens that I taught
the poetry of Li Po and T'ao Yuan-ming and the life of the Buddha in my
Quaker school in Souther Calif. before I was taught about the ideas of
Socrates or the plays of William Shakespeare.   I grew up listening to
Indian music as well as rock'n'roll as well as classical music etc.  Today,
is it now reprehensibly "orientalist" of me still to delight in Ravi Shankar
(from Benares), but suitable for me enjoy the Beatles (from Liverpool)?
In the world, perhaps there are various circles of nearness & distance --
but I'm not sure that geography is quite so bifurcated.  Finally, it's all
"other" and can only be made "mine" by an act of imagination.  To the
extent that imagination is sloppy and lumbering and licking in depth,
charges of whatever "ISM" may be meaningful, perhaps.  But to assume
that -- say -- the poetry of American Buddhists must, ipso facto, be new
agist or orientalist or any other sort of ist, seems a bit sloppyist.

"Culture" (a term of shifty meanings surely) has collective underpinnings
obviously, but it's also personally assembled, individually (re)created.
For any poet worth his Hellenistic slave-salt, imaginal affinities will
blossom where they will, as they will.  It takes work to absorb & gain
things from Su T'ung-Po or Shelley or William Carlos Williams -- the
very act of reading & absorbing is an appropriation of a sort.  But in the
view of poets willing to share her writing with future generations, it's not,
methinks, inappropriate.

These have been lengthy days, -- simply to keep up w/ the Poetics
torrent.  Summer at full throttle.

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 06:08:41 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      p.s, re: (Fwd) Eliot Weinberger / orientalism?

amid early morning e-sloppinesses was my omission of the word "was"
from one sentence:

<< For instance, it so happens that I *[was]* taught the poetry of Li Po
and T'ao Yuan-ming and the life of the Buddha in my Quaker school in
Souther Calif. before I was taught about the ideas of Socrates or the plays
of William Shakespeare. . . . >>

(Actually, I suppose we studied Moses & Hamlet at more or less the
*same* time as we were learning of the Buddha etc.)

Further, Dean -- on one point from your dialogue w/ Kent (since by now
he's perhaps unplugged) -- where he says that just only he, but every
participant in the Beneath book was being indicted? -- to which you
respond that you were only specifically condemning Kent-as-editor? --

one could look back at the flurry & slurry of posts to check, but by my
recollection, *Lew* did seem to condemn the whole kit & caboodle.  It
might be possible that Kent commingled Lew's critique w/ yours -- or did
you perhaps approvingly quote Lew (& thus presumably incorporate
that broad-brush diatribe by inclusion)?  Anyhow, no matter.  Perhaps
you & KJ will meet on other ground after a time.

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 07:39:20 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Susan Wheeler 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 25 Jun 1997 to 26 Jun 1997
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

David Israel wrote:
>
>this also remends of an opera by Robert Ashley (an in-progress segment
>of which played in Merkin Hall, NYC some years ago); -- Ashley's sci-fi
>scenario involves a figure (named something like "Bob"?) who, being an
>extraterrestrial investigator of earth civilization, gives (in recetativ)
brief,
>verbal-snapshot reports on various of the folks in his immediate (maybe
>Sunday brunch-like) surround.  These (strangely epiphanic) reports are
>presented in the rhetorical form of personsals-ad-style notices ...
>
Isn't this his spy thriller eL/Aficionado, or did he use the personal ad
motifs in more than one?

Susan Wheeler
wheeler@is.nyu.edu
voice/fax (212) 254-3984
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 08:16:12 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         hg 
Subject:      Re: Idenity of the poet/Hey! other mind here
In-Reply-To:  Message of Thu, 26 Jun 1997 14:07:12 -0700 from 

David Bromige's long defense of poetic/reader/relativity/seductivity/autonomy
certainly rings true.  On the other hand, there's a certain passion for
the truth, allied to curiosity, which motivates us to see THROUGH the
masks, keep sharpening the focus.  What charmed the adolescent reader
no longer delights (not in every case, but many). & no, it didn't matter
where Mick Jagger came from when you first heard the Stones; but
then you heard Robert Johnson's version. Not that one is necessarily
better than the other; they just bring to mind different histories.
This is partly what I understand Kali to be talking about.
- H. Gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 08:36:04 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         hg 
Subject:      Re: long article up for criticism if yr up for it!
In-Reply-To:  Message of Thu, 26 Jun 1997 19:43:57 -0300 from
              

On Thu, 26 Jun 1997 19:43:57 -0300 Stephen C. Ellwood said:
>On Tue, 24 Jun 1997, henry g wrote:
>
>  If poetry is promoted for its use-value
>> alone (empowerment) the tendency while empowering also blunts the critical
>> edge (or one of its edges, anyway)...
>
>Could you explain this for me a bit?  The use value thing, I mean.  It
>seems interesting and important but I don't fully grasp what it
>is/you assert it is.
>

By use-value I mean the value of a work of writing for political or
propagandistic purposes.  A work can be promoted in order to forward
the interests of a particular group, but ironically there's an inverse
ratio between use-value and intrinsic value.  An example: the
integrity of any Disney version of a folk tale compared to the
original.  The Disney version is pure use-value (useful for Disney).
I'm speaking in general.  Let's not get started on Mickey Mouse
or Fantasia, please.
- Donald Duck

Actually, this doesn't really get very close to your question.  What I
mean is, compare "Quiet Flows the Don", a novel very useful to the Stalin
regime, to "Master & Margarita".  Quiet Flows was useful to the regime
to the extent that it was not critical of same.
- Woody Woodpecker

Can't you find a better example, Woody?  Like, show how a single work
loses its critical edge when used for propaganda?
- Ed Sullivan
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 08:28:11 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         hg 
Subject:      Re: identity of the poet
In-Reply-To:  Message of Fri, 27 Jun 1997 09:22:01 +-900 from 

On Fri, 27 Jun 1997 09:22:01 +-900 Daniel Tessitore said:
>___________
>
>I don't get a lot of things and on a regular basis, so entertain my
>question put another way:
>
>Saying that R. Johnson is from somewhere in the US and M. Jagger is from
>somewhere in the UK is not the same thing as saying R. Johnson is from
>somewhere in the US and M. Jagger ISN'T from that place.
>
>Do both of these constructions "help," or just one of them?

I think the difference between the 2 statements is a function of the fact
that Johnson was the "originator" of the tunes as we know them & Jagger
the imitator.  But Blarnes told us we couldn't talk about this.  Has
anyone read Blarnes' new book - _Shelved in Darkness : Sexuality,
Identity, and Literacy in Karmic Tailspin_ - available from Univ.
of Left Overbie Press soon after the millennium?  I know many of you
can't have read this yet, not having achieved the Tenth Level of
Yogic Relativity, & it's not out yet - for you - but anyway...
- Henry G.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 09:17:53 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Mandel 
Subject:      individual as syndrome
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Someone (sorry not to know who) wrote:

>...To me reading poetry and
>prose, and perhaps to an even larger extent looking at visual art, is a
>project of untangling the personality/personal insecurities etc. of the
>author first and foremost.

Here we have the mess we all have made presented as if it supported an
intellectual or even theoretical position. In a nutshell, the model of a
"rationalized" "individualism" of consumers on a global scale extending to
all manner of relationships winds up in our little "economy" called poetry
in the form of an isolated someone thinking of a poem as a looking glass
into the author, and the author as a mirror for understanding the self.
Reading becomes a "figuring out" of the poem as a stage on the way to
figuring out that ultimate mystery "moi." Yuck.

In particular this yuck leads to ideas like "the primacy of the reader" (huh?)

Here's an alternative model: the minute you have two people together it
becomes possible to do more than the sum of what the two would be able to
do separately. More and other. Think of the poem as a figure of people
coming together rather than as a figure of the author's isolation (rhyme or
mirror for the reader's isolation).

Lets suppose we pursue that idea in some direct and probably overstated way
and conceive of poems as figures of the social contract. Now, there is no
problem whatever responding to The Iliad, right? But, there is also no
problem responding to Wyatt's poems of exile with their (someone wanted to
call them) conventional topoi. Nor to a John Donne sonnet nor Paul Celan's
"Tenebrae." How about that?

If I say that I could not be more bored by anything than by "the
personality/personal insecurities etc. of the author" (let alone
"untangling" them [why?]), I am not stating a difference in taste from the
writer of those words. What scope has poetry if this is its use? What
possible world would we make of such interests? As I said above, yuck.

Tom Mandel


Tom Mandel                      tmandel@screenporch.com
********************************************************
Screen Porch                  *  http://screenporch.com
4031 University Dr. Suite 200 *  vox: 703-934-2034
Fairfax, VA 22030-3409        *  fax: 703-359-9368
********************************************************
              Join the Caucus Conversation
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 09:40:28 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      Re: heat wave reception...

please someone -- give joe a popsicle QUICK -- he's beginning to go
into popsicle failure... palpatations, rapid pulse, shallow breathing...

i did my chemistry exam yesterday, first of three, and have lived to
tell of it.  i feel i must shout this to the world.

does anyone have an atom they'd like spectroscopic notation for,
perchance?  or perhaps orbital analysis?  introduction to chemistry
must be good for SOMETHING in this cruel cruel world...
e
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 10:20:00 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         hg 
Subject:      Re: individual as syndrome
In-Reply-To:  Message of Fri, 27 Jun 1997 09:17:53 -0500 from
              

I think poetry does its thing somewhere in between the Mandel/Bromige
divide.  We're not all cogs in the collective psyche, either.  Two's
a crowd.
- Spandrift, for Blarnes, who's busy on a millennium-book-promo tour
in the 11th dimension.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 10:44:39 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tod Thilleman/Meredith Brosnan 
Subject:      Re: Poetry New York #9
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

much delayed PNY #9 now off the presses. Please e-mail with address and I'll
send and bill.

Cover photo and insides by Anne Arden McDonald performance artist from
recent Kitchen appearance.

Michael Basinski
Yves Bonnefoy
Michel Butor
Nick Carbo
David Clippinger
Annabelle Honza Clippinger
Denise Duhamel
Graham Duncan
Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Rhina Espaillat
Thomas Fink
Cheryl Fish
Grant Flint
Reid Fontaine
Chris Funkhouser
Peggy Garrison
Loss Pequeno Glazier
Henry Gould
Robert Hershon
Francis Jammes
Devin Johnston
Veronika Kapustina
Alexander Klein
Dean Kostos
Lynn Levin
Bill Luoma
Joan McNerney
Philip Metres
Samuel Menashe
Stephen Paul Miller
Sheila Murphy
Joe Napora
Claire Needell-Hollander
Pablo Neruda
Peter O'Leary
Sylvester Pollet
Carl Rakosi
Corinne Robins
Bertha Rogers
Hoyt Rogers
Leslie Scalapino
Elio Schneeman
Chris Semansky
Lee Sharkey
Chris Stroffolino
John Tipton
Rosanne Wasserman
Ben Wilensky

get it while it be hot!
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 10:59:07 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Prejsnar 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 24 Jun 1997 to 25 Jun 1997
In-Reply-To:  <9706261213.AA16188@is.nyu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Responses to poetry, or to the kind of poetries I give a damn about, ought
to be very intense on the level of the text..Background doesn't interest
some readers, in the first instance.  Sound is actually more interesting
than biography; but on the other hand, the experience of sound can't be
divorced from *social/political* stuff (which ain't true of personal
details..) The ear is socially constructed.  Many recent posts about
"knowing who the poet is," in relation to encountering a poem, come down
to a rough consensus that knowing is, for them, a good/important thing..In
relation to that, it's pretty interesting to look at the magazine Antenym,
which goes out of its way to head in the other direction, using a table of
contents to identify the poets, but not identifying 'em in the body of the
magazine...So it takes work to i.d. a poet, and in the first instance
one's experience is of "anonymous" work.  (If my Atlanta compatriot J.
Lowther manages to get his excellent mag Syntactics off the ground soon,
there will be at least two examples of this approach..) As Antenym is one
of the very best contemporary mags, the decision to downgrade the usual
centrality of authorship, is provocative and interesting.  (Steve C. may
wish to comment, if I am misconstuing his aims or POV)

One of the most fascinating things about Yasusada (and this is the major
overlap with Ern Malley, otherwise the political/historical tensions acted
out in the two affairs are quite distinct) is that "he" demonstrates the
tension between these two levels: the level of immediate engagement with a
poetic performance (the antenym-level, as it were) and the background
information.  People who rapidly praised Yasusada, like Max Harris and his
confederates, with their delight in the non-existent Malley, were
responding on the antenym-level, saying the sweep of the poetic
performance was compelling...Or were they? Certainly some people have
insisted in print that it was the faked-up historico-biographical
trappings that impressed people about Yasusada, not the work itself..It
seems there was a probably a mix of motives, varying from reader to
reader.

At this point we haven't yet even addressed the politics of Yasusada; here
again questions of "orientalism" in the strictly pejorative Said sense,
raise their heads..As, in some sense, must have been the intention of the
shadowy cabal floating behind AS!  and Susan W formulates some of these
very well..But fascinating also is the question of whether you can in some
respects experience a poem meaningfully *within a moment* that is pure
response to music, to performative fire.  I think you can, and that too
rapid a desire to insist on *background* slips often into basic
establishment anti-modernist literary-ism.

Mark


 On Thu, 26 Jun 1997, Susan
Wheeler wrote:

> Questions that intersect with all three of these threads:
>
> Is it possible to successfully construct a text that emulates, or speaks
> from, another's experience?  Is the attempt itself doomed by its lack of
> access to another's culture?  Moreover, is the attempt itself necessarily
> colonialist/appropriationist -- or does its value depend upon either intent
> or result?  And (Marjorie's question in the Yasasuda brouhaha) is the reader
> "duped" if the reader mistakes the writer's true identity, or is this simply
> another function of the text?
>
> My own answers differ with the day, so I'm interested in others' --
>
> Susan Wheeler
> wheeler@is.nyu.edu
> voice/fax (212) 254-3984
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 10:14:13 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Judy Roitman 
Subject:      Re: Buddhism and Racism
In-Reply-To:  <199706262156.OAA20703@norway.it.earthlink.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>>
>>And I just learned on NPR that scat singing owes something to davening and
>>all that Yiddish biddybiddybombom stuff.
>>
>>Cultures just don't seem to be able to stay in their defined places, do they.
>>
>>
>>
>>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>Judy Roitman                             | "Whoppers   Whoppers   Whoppers!
>>Math, University of Kansas        |     memory fails
>>Lawrence, KS 66045                 |         these are the days."
>>913-864-4630                          |                Larry Eigner,
>>1927-1996
>>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>

>Interesting. Did they mention the path of transmission? (oy, sounds like a
>virus) (from Mark Weiss)

At least one.  Louie Armstrong used to hang out with a Jewish family and
was "very comfortable with Jewish ritual" (I that's an approximate quote
from Fresh Air --- it was an interview with Armstrong's most recent
biographer).  But apparently there were other paths as well.




---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judy Roitman                             | "Whoppers   Whoppers   Whoppers!
Math, University of Kansas        |     memory fails
Lawrence, KS 66045                 |         these are the days."
913-864-4630                          |                Larry Eigner, 1927-1996
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 09:43:56 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         michael corbin 
Subject:      Re: individual as syndrome
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Possibly semi-related to those recent posts on occidentalism,
pornography of representation, and poetry after the end of things,
gettting to know the author of deeds, etc:


> Reports from Cambodia over the past two days have suggested that Pol Pot, the leader
> of the Khmer Rouge political movement, may have surrendered to breakaway Khmer Rouge
> forces in a remote part of northern Cambodia. These reports could not be confirmed
> independently, but if they are true, a unique opportunity exists to ensure
> accountability for gross human rights violations committed in the recent past.


It is true that a trial of Pol Pot (Saloth Sar) would be an amazing late
20th century event, a window to the soul of historical species being. A
chance to sink one's teeth into a notion of justice that seems to have
become no more than diaphanous will-o-wisp. An arraignment of Saloth Sar
sub judice would be a capsule of possible hope, despite our weak
international
legalisms and our variously enervated humanisms.

But what contexts  for an accounting? Prince Norodom Ranariddh and
Hun Sen knew they made a devilish bargain when they granted an amnesty
to Khmer Rouge foreign minister, and former Pol Pot brother-in-law Ieng
Sary in a true Machiavellian gesture to bolster their variously
contested princely realm. This and other gestures and events has
succeeded in dividing and conquering the Khmer Rouge and indeed why Pol
Pot has been 'captured'. (Ranariddh acknowledges now that maybe Pol Pot
won't be 'turned over'). So Pol Pot might make it to the dock but maybe
at the high price of the analogs of Geobbels and Eichmann (those like
Ta Mok, Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea) using him to purchase their
'amnesty'.

And of course the potential judges dawdle. The superpower's Areopagus is
filled with the money-changers. The right-reverend secretary of state
Albright (who has had her memory lapses with other mass death) cancels
her trip to Cambodia because of 'safety concerns'. Convenient for the
state dept and new-world-clintonism. China has already said that it will
throttle a neccessary Security Council(TM) vote for a Tribunal. Will the
Canadians or the Dutch show a little pluck using their genocide statutes
and take matters into their own hands?

Depite the largest single UN effort of 'peace-making' in its history the
Cambodian 'war' has no periodizing Yalta. Thus, like with South Africa's
"Truth and Reconciliation Commission" where the Erinyes are held in
check by the quid pro quo of confession and amnesty--the plea
bargain--Cambodia, and its accomplices and innocents may know no
atonement. A talking cure. History splits apart. It can have no
Nuremberg. Phnom Penh is not Jerusalem. And justice awaits its suitor.

Of some possible interest:

http://www.cybercambodia.com/dachs/


http://www.yale.edu/cgp/



mc
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 11:45:12 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
Subject:      cfp: Early T.S. Eliot
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII

Dear Poetics Members,

I will be chairing a panel on the recent publication of Inventions of the
March Hare: Poems 1909-1917, for the 1998 Northeastern Modern Language
Association convention in Baltimore, April 17-18.

Topics may include but are not limited to early vers libre in English,
revision and suppression of early poems, poetic reputation, intertextuality,
poetic influence, cultural influence, the composition process, satire
and vulgarity, Christopher Ricks' editing, etc., so long as the focus is on
the poems in this collection, though not exclusively so of course.  No
particular critical method is required, and I hope to include different or
even conflicting approaches if they will make for an interesting experience.

If you are interested please back-channel me for details.  Panelist will need
to become members of NEMLA (an easy and cheap enough process), before the
conference.

Proposals (at least 500 words) and/or essays (10 pages max.) should be
submitted by September 15, 1997.  Electronic submissions welcome.  Thanks.

Gary Roberts
Department of English and American Literature
Brandeis University
P.O. Box 9110
Waltham, MA  02254
groberts@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 12:08:41 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steve Shoemaker 
Subject:      Re: body-as-text discussion
In-Reply-To:  <3.0.1.32.19970627052602.006e88e4@mail>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Interesting forward of Alan by Peter.  What is "fop-list"?  Thanks.

Steve Shoemaker
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 12:12:56 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan * Sondheim 
Subject:      Re: body-as-text discussion
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

It's a list Laurie Cubbison and I co-moderate, fiction-of-philosophy,
fop-l@vm.cc.purdue.edu, which contains anything from experimental writing
to traditional stuff, with occasional discussion. It's fairly small,
around 130.

Alan

On Fri, 27 Jun 1997, Steve Shoemaker wrote:

> Interesting forward of Alan by Peter.  What is "fop-list"?  Thanks.
>
> Steve Shoemaker
>


URL:     http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
MIRROR with other pages at:   http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/           TEL 718-857-3671
EXPERIMENTAL (on and off): http://166.84.250.149   Editor, BEING ON LINE
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 10:04:28 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      individual yuck
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I've been asking myself is there a Mandel/Bromige divide? Tom yucks over
"the primacy of the reader," but I only assented to this description of my
position (by whom excuse me for forgetting) because it could fit with my
belief in "the primacy of the poem" (and this phrase, in turn, is only in
an effort to distinguish how I read poems, from "the primacy of the
author".)  With Bowering & Mandel, I concur, the trouble we have reading
_The Iliad_ is only like the trouble we have reading God : after the
footnotes, we'll just have to make up our own minds. (Neither of them said
anything like that. Still, I think I concur with what they did say.) David
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 12:52:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: More Naropa Readings
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

Last night Naropa offered an embarrassment of poetic riches.

First up was Steven Taylor, who gave a restrained, graceful and downright
beautiful reading of a story/memoir called "Eroica" which recounted his
adventures in Dubrovinik during the last days of Tito with Allen Ginsberg
and Peter Orlovsky. Steven's understated tone and measured cadence
demonstrated masterfully how exactitude of observation can elicit the most
powerful emotional response.  His second piece, a short elegy for Allen, was
deeply moving. Unfortunately, I can offer no lines and I don't think quoting
them out of context would do them justice anyway. I only hope they both show
up in print somewhere soon. (Actually, the second piece did appear in Ed
Sanders' Woodstock Journal...)

Next came Dodie Bellamy, who read a Letter of Mina Harker addressed to Sam
D'Allessandro.  "Gender is the night." Part homage to George Romero, Dodie's
amazing combination of deadpan humor and subversive intent with respect to
the way we view gender, passion and yes! identity mixed a constant sense of
narrative surprise with a piquant unease. The risks she takes in these
letters - their candor and their intimacy - give the sharp double sense of
pleasure and ambivalence arising from our recognition of the disturbing
nature of the familiar  -- and the familiarity of the disturbing -- in our
private emotional atmospheres.

After this Cole Swensen read, largely from her work-in-progress "O," a cycle
of poems about the ways women die in opera (based in part, I gather, from
the work of scholar Catherine Claremont -sp?).  The sections bore such
titles as: "Death By Suffocation," "Death By Knifing" and the like. Cole's
straightforward delivery only underscored the laser-like intensity of these
stark, austere meditations on the unspoken male cultural equations drawn
between women, eros, suffering, passion and violence.  The cumulative effect
was hypnotic - an extraordinary rollcall of the dead.

Finally, Carla Harryman took the stage to read from her new novel, "Gardner
of the Stars," a double dialogue/narrative spoken by the Gardner and his/her
symbiotic other/Double/lover/nemesis M.  "Sometimes I associate uselessness
with the divine." Her reading was, as might be expected, wild, heady,
lyrical, dense, comic, cheeky, unsettling - a complex register in which
dreams, gender, identity (the evening's theme?) were inflated, flattened,
and reconfigured in defiance of expectation. "Gardner" also featured, as did
"Mina Harker," a decapitation, so in concert with Cole's reading, another
leitmotif appeared, prompting Aldon Nielsen to incline his head and murmur
"There's a lot of detached heads here tonight."

Afterwards some of us adjourned to Dolan's across the street in an effort to
raise the detache head quotient, albeit more gently...

Patrick Pritchett
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 14:09:56 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Dave Zauhar 
Subject:      reading theory and not reading.
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I got a little behind, so here's a belated summary response about "theory"
and "poetry" from someone who is in graduate school trying to write about
poetry while trying to write poetry as well. . . . In my six (wince) years
of graduate school at two different institutions, only one seminar on
poetry has been offered, and that was on TS Eliot. This might be a fluke, I
certainly hope so, but there has been at least one seminar on something
billed as "theory" every semester. Not that there's anything wrong with
that, as they say on Seinfeld, but I would concur that more balance would
be helpful. For instance, to pick up on what someone else has mentioned, I
know a couple of people whose comprehensive examination reading lists in
"post-colonial literature" include tons of Spivak, Said, Bhaba, Ahmad etc,
but nothing by, say, Yeats, Conrad, Naipaul, Ramanujan etc, or anyone else
writing fiction or poetry, some of which would probably make the theories
more interesting and more grounded. WARNING: INCOMING ANECDOTE. At my first
institution, the required literary theory seminar featured the usual
suspects and revolved around Derrida and Paul de Man. We read _Of
Grammatology_ and it made no sense. By the time the seminar ended my
attitude toward theory would make David Lehmann look like J.Hillis Miller.
At my current institution, Derrida popped up in another course I had to
take. This time, however, the instructor suggested to those enrolled that
we read Rousseau and Levi-Strauss over the break before the seminar
started. The result? _Of Grammatology_ actually made sense. So do Derrida's
other essays if one bothers to read the figures he is writing about.
However, it's been my experience that "theory" (here speaking of commentary
on literary texts specifically) is often presented as primary material. And
I know a lot of graduate students at a variety of institutions who treat it
as such, who read _Culture and Imperialism_ w/o rereading _Heart of
Darkness_, for example. In short, as someone pointed out, the real problem
is not that graduate students are reading too much theory, it's that
they're reading theory in a vacuum, or worse, reading theory as an excuse
not to read. Why read Shelley if you know what De Man says about the
intentional structure of the romantic image? Why read Jabes if you know
what Derrida says about his work? Why read Jack Spicer if none of those
guys or their disciples has written about him?
        To the question, what, then, are graduate students reading? the
answer at most institutions is, way too many freshman compositions. It's
damn hard to read everything when you have to read a lot of those things.

Dave Zauhar
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 19:54:42 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Karlien van den Beukel 
Subject:      Poems, identities and anthologies.
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I too have been following David and Kali's discussion with interest. I
like extended analogies too, but mine will be innocuous. In Virginia
Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway" (1925) the eponymous heroine is, you will recall,
portrayed going morning shopping in Bond Street. Though I will leave it to
those interested to look up Mrs Dalloway's interior monologue prior to
entering "Mulberry's the florists" I would like to quote that:

Then there were flowers: delphiniums, sweet peas, bunches of lilac; and
carnations, masses of carnations. There were roses; there were irises.

A selection of locally-grown English summer species. Now, to return to
David's post, he picks a personal florilegium for the ocassion of his
writing.(The Latinate word for "anthology" is, like the Greek,
etymologically derived from "flower" and "collection"). I thought David's
post was delightful and important.

Kali, however, has no time to waste on such nonsense. No, she
writes that she "works hard" at her transcendence. She has also worked
hard, of late, at articulating her position on identity politics, writing,
sexuality, and indeed, her own status as a sane and rational person.
Work all due to her initial rhetorical strategy where she equated David's
response to poetry with the mechanical corporeally repetitive responses
elicited by pornographic images. Yet, speaking of mechanical repetition,
her profoundly alienated intellectual labour cannot allow a space for
otium, and speaking of the pornographic image, her chosen analogy operates
in the reverse too, revealing a mentality that regards the poem as a
use-object.

Otium, like Mrs Dalloway's flaneuring, may be the historical privilege of
the materially well-situated, but as an imaginative domain, it should
not be negated. It is a sphere where poems are not assigned a
restrictive use-value, where poems are not categorised according to their
maker's identities in a perhaps theoretically laudable but quite mistaken
act to counter the unfairnesses of this world. It is a sphere where the
poems one returns to (the interesting poems) are without an objective,
without an address.

                        Dandelion

                No blanch witloof handbound dry
                heart to racks a comb
                lion's-teeth thistlehead golden-hair earth nail
                flower-cock up-by-pace dandle lion won't
                dwarf lamb closes night season
                its long year dumble-dor bumbles
                cure wine blowball black fall's-berry
                madding sun mixen seeded rebus


This is one of Zukofsky's "80 flowers" (written 1974-1978). I do not know
the precise genealogy of Zukofsky's cultural identity, and I doubt very
much whether I care. The only biographical item that may be of relevance
is the geographical area where he lived, because I do not recognise all
the vernacular names of the flowers, and perhaps some of them are
indigenous species. These poems are so linguistically rich and subtle, I
can return to them with changed eyes every time.

And yet the extended floral analogy is not a rhetorical strategy to invite
categorisation of this writing as "irrational" or "feminine". Neither is it a
universal peace offering to those who "work hard" at their transcendence.
Or even innocuous. Say your identity politics with flowers?

"The absence of domesticated flowers in traditional Africa, except in some
areas strongly influence by Islam, was linked to the level of agriculture
and to the limits hoe farming placed on the emergence of heavily
stratified cultural forms and in particular cultures of luxury, of
differentiated styles of life that could develop the 'non-utilitarian',
'aesthetic' aspects of horticulture - or rather could develop crops not
primarily oriented to food and war, but to religion, gift-giving and
above all to beauty. [...] Nor yet did they make use of wild ones to any
significant extent in worship, in gift-giving, or in decoration of the
body [..] or in the domain of design or the creative arts." (The Culture
of Flowers, Jack Goody, CUP, 1993).

An ethnocentric Weltanschauung privileges flowers and its represenations
in cultural practice.The literal-minded may choose to relate this particular
to dominant ideologies (though in the cultures of China and India flowers
have a long and important history) and choose to resist, say, "the anthology"
as a category, on political grounds. Given her literal concern with
genealogies and origin, Kali may even have a new cause.


Karlien van den Beukel
Cambridge, England
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 12:36:21 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: Poems, identities and anthologies.
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

A brief corrective to a nice post. Jack Goody's explanation, below, seems to
me insufficient. Those same cultures expend a lot of energy and material
wealth on other forms decoration, and other hoe-farmers (sounds like The
Beggar's Opera)--Polynesians, Melanesians, Amazonians--use at least wild
flowers extensively, and this irrespective of the level of stratification of
their societies.


>"The absence of domesticated flowers in traditional Africa, except in some
>areas strongly influence by Islam, was linked to the level of agriculture
>and to the limits hoe farming placed on the emergence of heavily
>stratified cultural forms and in particular cultures of luxury, of
>differentiated styles of life that could develop the 'non-utilitarian',
>'aesthetic' aspects of horticulture - or rather could develop crops not
>primarily oriented to food and war, but to religion, gift-giving and
>above all to beauty. [...] Nor yet did they make use of wild ones to any
>significant extent in worship, in gift-giving, or in decoration of the
>body [..] or in the domain of design or the creative arts." (The Culture
>of Flowers, Jack Goody, CUP, 1993).
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 15:26:24 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Henry Gould 
Subject:      Re: Poems, identities and anthologies.
In-Reply-To:  Message of Fri, 27 Jun 1997 19:54:42 +0100 from
              

Are you saying that because Kali's background is in African-American lit,
and because an authority says flowers weren't important in African
cultures [debatable, I'm sure], this will motivate her to oppose
the "floral" anthological otiose element in poetry?

?

Ai karamba!

Roses are red
violets are blue
poetry's dead
Scen-o-taffy-koo-koo

Daisies are white
Amaryllis are tall
out of Africa night
up against that wall

Poetry's play
life is pure toil
don't go away--
Ripeness is all--smell

the posies on your way to work
isn't this fun
poetry's a lark
hey diddle diddle...& so on.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 13:33:49 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: Poems, identities and anthologies.

>A selection of locally-grown English summer species. Now, to return to
>David's post, he picks a personal florilegium for the ocassion of his
>writing.(The Latinate word for "anthology" is, like the Greek,
>etymologically derived from "flower" and "collection"). I thought David's
>post was delightful and important.
>
>Kali, however, has no time to waste on such nonsense. No, she
>writes that she "works hard" at her transcendence. She has also worked
>hard, of late, at articulating her position on identity politics, writing,
>sexuality, and indeed, her own status as a sane and rational person.
>Work all due to her initial rhetorical strategy where she equated David's
>response to poetry with the mechanical corporeally repetitive responses
>elicited by pornographic images. Yet, speaking of mechanical repetition,
>her profoundly alienated intellectual labour cannot allow a space for
>otium, and speaking of the pornographic image, her chosen analogy operates
>in the reverse too, revealing a mentality that regards the poem as a
>use-object.

And what is it you are doing here?  Let's take a look behind the curtain....

You choose a single image in Bromige's post, and use my failure to comment
upon or engage with that particular image as the departure point for a
construction of "Kali" (of my *identity*, rather than of my arguments). Then
you use the (unresearched) identity critique to undermine the authority of
my arguments rather than engaging with the texts *as* texts.  That's a
problem.  If you didn't think an author's identity was important, than you
would confine yourself to critiquing the texts on their own terms, *as*
texts, and not draw conclusions about "Kali" *from* the texts.  But if you
*do* think the author's identity is important and that "identity" and "text"
are separate (though perhaps related) objects/phenomena, then discussions of
"Kali's" identity really need to be supplemented with extratextual
information, which, in the immortal words of Sgt.-Major Alan Farrell (Ret.),
"you have not got."  But that's only your first problem.

By starting your description of me with the loaded term "nonsense," you
create a character, a "Kali" with thin, pursed lips who, quite literally,
can't stop and smell the flowers; a humorless automaton in sensible shoes,
who "cannot allow a place" for life or color.  It's a nice image, and it
supports your very lovely essay on otium, but it's your own story and has
little or nothing to do with either the texts I have posted, or the "Kali"
who sits behind the keyboard typing at you.

Your point seems to be that, while I *say* I am working hard on learning the
sort of things that will help me transcend, I am ignoring the hard work and
superior literary craftsmenship that goes into Bromige's transcendence.
Your estimation seems to be that Bromige's transcendence is authentic, while
mine is merely imagined. (How can a woman caught in *profoundly* alienated
intellectual labor and doomed to mechanical repetition because of,
presumably, a lack of imagination or sensitivity, ever hope to *really*
transcend?)  Finally, you wrap up your rousing condemnation of the "Kali"
you've invented with the charge that she is, in fact, engaged in the very
activity for which she criticizes others--jerking off with poetry.

It would be nice, if it weren't so logically flawed.  I don't ask for logic
in poetry.  I ask for a lot of things, but not logic--or at least not the
logic of clear assumptions, correct proofs and demonstrable conclusions.
Those do, however, seem appropriate tools for debates on critical theory.
And if that makes you think I wear sensible shoes, well, I'll just smile to
myself as I look at my feet, clad in black and chrome, chain-draped
Reebocks, with bullets hanging off of them (hollow point .38s which I picked
up in a head shop on Hollywood Boulevard years ago--they were strung on key
rings, and I couldn't resist buying them and clipping them on my rock'n'roll
shoes).

Let's start with the fact that I never criticized Bromige's admittedly
erudite and well-crafted prose. (I regret that I am unacquainted with his
poetry, and I shall remedy that forthwith.)  Though I did not find his post
"delightful" (it is hard to feel "delight", even in good prose, when its
premise is the denial of those things one finds crucially important and when
it contains a personal attack), I did and do recognize that a wealth of
experience and observation went into its writing.  (A sotto voce murmur from
the Bat Cave, "If only, Robin, he'd used his power for *good*.")  So you've
tossed a red herring into the tuna salad, and (maybe) distracted the
audience from my real argument.  Bromige had claimed the reader's equivalent
to "Everything I Know I Learned in Kindergarten"; in short, he asserted that
his initial readings were essentially pristine, fully formed, and revealed
to him all he had to know about the author.  *That* position is the one with
which I took issue, and *that* position was the one to which I referred when
I stated that *I* had to *work* at transcendence, that it was not a gift I
received from the first-contact reading of a poem.  The critique you offer
is aimed at uninhabited terrain--there's nobody there to shell. Harrassment
& Interdiction fire is only effective if it hits somebody.

>Otium, like Mrs Dalloway's flaneuring, may be the historical privilege of
>the materially well-situated, but as an imaginative domain, it should
>not be negated. It is a sphere where poems are not assigned a
>restrictive use-value, where poems are not categorised according to their
>maker's identities in a perhaps theoretically laudable but quite mistaken
>act to counter the unfairnesses of this world. It is a sphere where the
>poems one returns to (the interesting poems) are without an objective,
>without an address.

So we come to your claim that it is *I*, the wrong-headed "Kali Tal" (I am
starting to visualize her as Major Barbara in the first act) who is truly a
cog in the machine, a reducer of poetry to tool for (wo)man's use.  (If I
had a cape, I would twirl in it, looking back at you over my shoulder like
John Lithgow does, through the doorway, eyes glowing, in that immortal film,
_Buckaroo Bonzai_.)  But since the assumptions you've made have been
incorrect from jump street, the conclusion you draw doesn't remotely
resemble anything recognizable. (I do so prefer representational argument to
abstract argument.)

However, I *do* have a patent out on a mechanical poem-counter which sorts
verse and drops it into appropriate containers based on assigned identity.
I'm hoping that the automation process will allow me to fire my human
poem-counters, streamline the identification process, and simultaneously
increase my inventory while lowering my overall costs--raising the poetry
profit margin.

Really, the otium essay could have stood on its own instead of on my head.
It would have been more stable that way.

Kali
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 14:20:20 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: In the Uneven Footnotes of Hung Chow
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I have taken the liberty of forwarding recent list discussions to a friend
on the VITRUE-AL list -- I reproduce here, without further comment, his
reactions:


dear Aldon:

I appreciate your forwarding the recent debates among Johnson, Weinberger,
Lew, Brink et al.  I hope you don't mind, but I shared these posts with
some friends of mine of the DIRTSTAMP-ILL list -- here are a few of their
responses:


Amos:  What the hell are these people talking about?  Some editor didn't
know any Asian-American Buddhist poets, so he, in effect, created one.
What's the big deal?

Andy: Let me get this right.  Somebody complained because Americans don't
read enough poetry in translation.  So, when a bunch of Americans accepted
some poems they thought WERE in translation this was because they hadn't
read enough poetry in translation, because American university students
spend to much time reading literary theory in translation.

Kingfish:  Trust Andy to get it all wrong.  Foucault, who writes
exclusively about sex, has caused American academics to lose all sight of
literary excellence, and this, in turn, has caused the editors of several
American journals, some of whom have not even been to graduate school for
god's sake, to accept as real some poems by my dear frined Araki Yasusada.
This happened because people in the academy don't even want to read poetry
any more, so they are quick to accept poems as terrible as Araki's,
because they don't recognize that Araki, in his terribleness, is subtly
calling into question the important role played by bad verse in
establishing our standards of merit.  This event calls attention to a
crisis: editors today see "social representation" as more real than
aesthetics, despite the fact that they spend so much time reading
mysterious foreign texts on aesthetics, so, to make sure that everybody
else joins them in their hatred of poetry reading, they publish Araki's
bad poems as a means of discrediting the entire potry world.

Mason Jordan Mason:  I can't believe you guys are even responding to this.
Let the buffaloes stamp the dirt and charge the CAPTIOUS-L list all they
want --

Hung Chow:  Who the hell is David Bromige and why is he saying such
terrible things about me?

There were many more contributions, but I don't imagine you care to hear
further from people who can't be bothered to engage you directly.  Please
pass this little bit on to your POETICS list, but don't give anybody my
email address; I'd hate to start getting mail from THAT bunch.  They keep
breaking into stanzas in mid-argument, and who needs that?

Your brother,
Ern Malley
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 14:53:54 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Stephen Scobie 
Subject:      Re: Idenity of the poet/Hey! other mind here
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>Now, it's funny to hear that he was knocked down by Hemingway. Its funny
>because its so inappropriate. Its funny like a mattress on a bottle of
>wine.

David, just wanted to let you know that at least one reader of the list
picked up and appreciated the literary allusion.

Stephen
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 14:56:50 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Stephen Scobie 
Subject:      Re: More Naropa Readings
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>
>After this Cole Swensen read, largely from her work-in-progress "O," a cycle
>of poems about the ways women die in opera (based in part, I gather, from
>the work of scholar Catherine Claremont -sp?).


Catherine Clement: "Opera, or the Undoing of Woman."  University of
Minneapolis Press, 1988.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 18:44:18 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      Re: body-as-text discussion
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Some quotes from _Utne's issue on the "real" as latest most in:

"Cyberlife leads to disembodiment, the exact opposite of what the culture
needs," - Suzi Gablik

"Ray [Paul] concludes 'cultural creatives' demand that all the pieces of
their lives fit together to create an authentic whole...one that merges the
best of modernism and traditionalism, embraces both East and West..."

but "We need to mount a spirited defense of our right and power to seek our
own realities." Jon Spayde
tom bell

At 05:26 AM 6/27/97 -0400, you wrote:
>hi buffalo-l-er's---------
>i don't think alan sondheim would mind if i
>forwarded this post of his to the fop-list
>made an hour ago--------
>it bears relevance to the "body-as-text' discussion
>proposed by kdawn earlier----
>out--------
>peter ganick
>
>>To: poetics@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu
>>From: Peter Ganick 
>>Subject: Re: E-Minds Discussion
>>
>>>Sender: FOP-L 
>>>From: Alan * Sondheim 
>>>Subject:      Re: E-Minds Discussion
>>>To: Multiple recipients of list FOP-L 
>>>
>>>I'm curious - with your computing skills and equipment - what are your
>>>ultimate goals - what do you want to do?
>>>
>>>I find myself constantly having to pare back, for example, ignoring C++ in
>>>order to concentrate on the languages I know to some extent, and can use.
>>>With essays, I try to read things that are sent me within three days; if
>>>not, I have to expunge them.
>>>
>>>I move from one operating system to another; I feel I have good knowledge
>>>of linux and Win95, poor still of Mac, but getting there. I'm getting
>>>close to 250 - 300 messages a day.
>>>
>>>I want to feel I'm within the internals of the machine, and understand the
>>>psychoanalytical and philosophical ramifications of technology. I want to
>>>do this without disregarding the body, or its splitting re: issues of em-
>>>bodiment and virtuality - and I don't want to go for simplistic answers
>>>(which usually carry the day). I try to keep up with "the literature" as
>>>best I can; much of it seems anecdotal (this is what a MUD does) or naive
>>>(cyber-relationships are/aren't "real").
>>>
>>>Since I'm not institutionalized, I can rarely go to the conferences I've
>>>applied to, to present a paper; there's no money. Since I can't go to the
>>>conferences, the feedback on my work is minimal, so I have to conduct im-
>>>aginary conversations - _here_ I'm naive, _there_ I've maybe made a point.
>>>Although I do get into print (off or online) often, there's no real com-
>>>munity of discussion surrounded my work, so these dialogs get increasingly
>>>psychotic.
>>>
>>>Beyond this, I remember when I began thinking through these issues in the
>>>70s (I did something called The Structure of Reality then, which I still
>>>refer to), I figured I wanted to work on the mediation of mind and world
>>>vis-a-vis formal and informal systems - and how this mediation constructed
>>>or was constructed by/for mind. And I've remained fastened on this to the
>>>present.
>>>
>>>With your work on your computers, adding programs (I remember you talked
>>>about all the Network monitoring addons for Win95 you downloaded), I won-
>>>der where your interest lies, what your goals are? And I'm sending this to
>>>the lists, since I'm curious about others' configurations as well.
>>>
>>>(For myself, I've stabilized linux and the Mac and Win95 configs, as well
>>>as my Win 3.+ stuff, so they're functional and somewhat interoperational;
>>>with the Mac, I've clumsily looked at Applescript, backed out a bit, and
>>>do most of my experimentation on linux, either RedHat or Slackware varie-
>>>ties. And I still feel that one needs at least some of this in order to
>>>understand TCP/IP or other protocols, to understand the Net in general,
>>>beyond the user interface. For the user interface is always a system, as
>>>Richard MacKinnon might say, of governance, and there's protocol and gov-
>>>ernance all the way down, and we had better look at it.)
>>>
>>>Alan, musing
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>URL:     http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
>>>MIRROR with other pages at:   http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
>>>IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/           TEL 718-857-3671
>>>EXPERIMENTAL (on and off): http://166.84.250.149   Editor, BEING ON LINE
>>>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 00:12:10 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Karlien van den Beukel 
Subject:      Re: Poems, identities and anthologies.
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Fri, 27 Jun 1997, Henry Gould wrote:

> Are you saying that because Kali's background is in African-American lit,
> and because an authority says flowers weren't important in African
> cultures [debatable, I'm sure], this will motivate her to oppose
> the "floral" anthological otiose element in poetry?
>
>
As you will notice from Kali's post (which I would like to think about
before replying) she ignored the suggestion as have you it phrased above.
I am sure she sees through the etymological sleight of hand, as you do.

If you are interested in African cultures (as opposed to African-American
culture and I am sure I have made the difference clear, at least obliquely
by pointing out the relationship between Woolf's Mulberry the florist's
flowers, Zukofsky's "80 flowers", and their respective geographical
locales)could I add that "the authority", Jack Goody, postulates that in
African cultures (for argument's sake we will allow him the
homogenisation) "the flower is a prelude to a further end, to the fruit or
the grain, never a thing in itself. That notion implies a less autonomous,
more contextualised aesthetic, a more holistic, less dichotomised view of
nature." It is up to you to make of that development what you will.

Karlien
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 19:19:53 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Maria Damon 
Subject:      Re: Idenity of the poet/Hey! other mind here
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At 8:16 AM -0400 6/27/97, hg wrote:
>David Bromige's long defense of poetic/reader/relativity/seductivity/autonomy
>certainly rings true.  On the other hand, there's a certain passion for
>the truth, allied to curiosity, which motivates us to see THROUGH the
>masks, keep sharpening the focus.  What charmed the adolescent reader
>no longer delights (not in every case, but many). & no, it didn't matter
>where Mick Jagger came from when you first heard the Stones; but
>then you heard Robert Johnson's version. Not that one is necessarily
>better than the other; they just bring to mind different histories.
>This is partly what I understand Kali to be talking about.
>- H. Gould

yes indeed, i read it this way too. when students chafe at the concept of
context in understanding a work (and note, d tessitore, i sd context and
not identity, the latter being one element of the former), i point out the
obvious example of ann frank (have i sd this before on this list?).  though
she's a bright, gifted teenage girl under any circumstances, the fact that
she wrote while concealed for 2 years in an attic because she was jewish,
and was eventually captured and died of disease on the eve of liberation,
does make a difference in our reading.  it does bug me when she's held up
as an example of "hope and courage" and people quote that old "in spite of
everything i still believe that people are good at heart" --look where that
got her. she did what everyone did then.  but it can't be denied that her
work is valuable as a document of identity politics of the most dramatic
sort.  not because she writes "i'm jewish i'm jewish," but because her
identity has everything to do with her fate, and the reception of her work.
should it? why not?
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 19:20:16 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Maria Damon 
Subject:      the single moon
Comments: To: dean@w-link.net
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i would just like to comment briefly on one of the issues in this
Buddhism/racism thread.  it's still not clear to me why no Asian Americans
were represented in the anthology; surely, if some knew of the anthology
but "chose not to" submit material, it would be instructive to know why.
one of the ways institutional racism works --not personal prejudice, so
don't misunderstand this as an ad hominem --is that, if it isn't
conscientiously and fairly constantly addressed, it takes over.  in other
words, if there was no active attempt to recruit the works of Asian
Americans, it is not surprising that it was an all-white affair.  i'm
finding this out from organizing this conference.  i can easily see that
unless i do something active to take control --i.e. if i just relied on
"calls for papers" --we won't get much of a cross-cultural swathe at all!
so i'm not bashing anyone, or at least not exculpating myself. just
pointing out the entropic (?) nature of hegemony.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 20:33:19 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      masturbation and appropriate texts to be studied

the bits dropped on both topics puts me in mind of something ...

at a certain point in my career, i had a roomate who had a number of what
would in many circles be defined as hard porn magazines, a partner who gave
me several such texts, and access via a few other means to more.  i got kind
of interested.

most of what i looked at was the playboy and beyond vintage magazine.  and
there were a number of recurrent threads.  one was that the males in the
sexual encounter stories most often had horrific self-images, as constructed
in the texts.  they were generally physically off in some way, were
interrupted in their discourse frequently, frequently said things that were
contradicted and/or proven wrong, and were, in general, just plain nebbishes.

and the females, though sexually available, were often scornful!

what i think i picked up from that was that in order for the versimilitude
to be of enough magnitude to engulf reader in text, text had to contain reality
as readers experienced it, i.e. if they were lost enough to be reading such
magazines, male figures in magazines had to be losers as well in order to be
believable.  women had to be scornful, becasue anyone reading such a magazine
should be scorned.  it may go deeper than reader/at/reading interaction --
men may in general feel like losers and only encounter scornful women at
such juncture as they would read such magazines...

those i knew with magazines were in pretty bad shape except for partner,
who gave them to me as part of erotic play.  the latter is perhaps a bit
personal but hey, we've all donned the rubber chicken suit and thrown the
naked spuds at one time or another except for bowering who does it constantly,
and as he alleges, bromige, who does it but blames bowering...
e
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 19:45:09 -0500
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From:         Maria Damon 
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i feel the need to respond to one of mr weinberger's comments.  he
attributes all of walter lew's critiques to "self-promotion at any cost." i
must take exception to this.  i do not know weinberger, but i've known
walter for over 20 years.  he's many things, but self-promoting at all
costs he's decidedly not.  i've known him to turn down promotional
opportunities others would have killed for because he didn't feel his work
was ready.  why this ad hominem?
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 19:45:36 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Maria Damon 
Subject:      Re: More Naropa Readings
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At 12:52 PM -0500 6/27/97, Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume wrote:
>Last night Naropa offered an embarrassment of poetic riches.
...
>After this Cole Swensen read, largely from her work-in-progress "O," a cycle
>of poems about the ways women die in opera (based in part, I gather, from
>the work of scholar Catherine Claremont -sp?)

wish i woulda bin there, as they say in te upper midwest.  it's catherine
clement (said a la francaise). instead, tho, i'm on the cape enjoying my
life and my body for the first time in months.  i love summer, i love the
ocean, i love the east coast. yay!
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 08:39:39 +0700
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From:         Rebecca Weldon 
Subject:      Identity
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I must apologise for my facetious remarks concerning the orient (I meet too
many Orientalists out here).  The questions of identity are quite serious
and merit discussion.

Kali Tal's Haitian dilemma is experienced everywhere in some form or
another.  I think that in this small world one can pretty safely operate on
the premise that no one is who or what they seem at first meet.  Little Red
Riding Hood didn't recognize the wolf did she?  The difference between life
and a fairy tale is that we hope to live in a society which gives us a
running chance before being devoured (not to say that life is full of
wolves, indeed, I have found the opposite to be generally true).

I live halfway around the world and would not recognize any of you if you
walked into my garden, however, a conversation might reveal your identity.
I hope you wouldn't become upset by my trying to find out who you are,
because I like to know who is walking in my garden.  Were you lost, I would
help.

We have a special kind of identity here in this list.  We wander in and
wander out and are known through our words.  Each of us brings different
experiences to the poetic forum; I marvel at the richness of your world.
Perhaps you would marvel at mine, it enriches identity, and impells me to
write. Writing is the reason I'm here.

I dream the cliff
a road without length, a meal without hunger
dark is dark  rain is rain  cold is cold
awake I walk the cliff
moon expires in silent arc
alone I walk the cliff
stars dim in azure sky
fog haunts descending streams

I stand the cliff and
sun rims behind the ridge
pausing in prayer
pausing still, welling still at cliff's edge
until a molten ray escapes
exploding crystals in the air
splitting diamonds in the fields
funnel spider silken webs
spinning facets catching light
sky a rush of sky blue
air a crackling icy breath

I am at cliff's edge with memory and dawn
final forest wide awake
eyes are birds and flowers
fog breaks in silver form
final am I
a cliff at dawn

(from Ruins, in progress)
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 21:59:06 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         armand schwerner 
Subject:      Western Budhism, Dean Brink, Kent Johnson and George Thompson
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George Thompson writes:

<>


George Thompson's posting seems to me a reasonable response to Brink's
intemperate and unfocussed assault on Johnson and Paulenich's Beneath a
Single Moon. Of the numerous postings concerning themselves with the
Brink/Johnson conversation, few zero in on the material included in the
anthology. I will attempt to do so below by citing a brief excerpt from my
essay in BaSM. David Israel does deal with particulars when he reacts to
Brink's comments about Gary Snyder's "The Canyon Wren." The poem's not in
BASM, but Israel's observations hold good for more than just this one poem:


Brink: << As a random  example I opened Snyder's _No Nature: New and
Selected Poems_  to "The Canyon Wren," which cites Dogen (a major
figure in the founding of the Japanese Soto sect of Zen Buddhism) and
concludes:

"We beach up at China Camp
Between piles of stone
Stacked there by black-haired miners,
      cook in the dark
      sleep all night long by the stream.

These songs that are here and gone,
Here and gone,
To purify our ears."

An exotic image of Asia and Asians figure large here, no? >>


   Israel: <>


I was a very strong backer of Kent's while he was producing Beneath a
Single Moon and am very pleased that he says in his Acknowledgements: "The
caring advice and counsel of Armand Sckhwerner...has been invaluable." I
announce my bias immediately. I'm not an uninvolved commentator here, and
for all I know may yet be pointed to by this or by another Dean Brink as an
unindicted co-conspirator. Kent has already set forth on this list his and
Paulenich's rationale for inclusions:

        <<...the anthology has rather specific parameters for inclusion that
actually have little to do with our editorial "aesthetic values"!
That is (and read carefully here, please) we only considered for
inclusion those poets who were known to have a background in Buddhist
study and practice. (tho we were not doctrinaire about the definition
of those last two terms, and I would say actually that any "second
edition" would definitely want to be more rigorous about those
parameters.) The poets, through their affiliation with Buddhism,
"selected themselves," and then we allowed them to select their own
poems! Paulenich and myself were largely modest and non-judgemental
compilers.

Aesthetic values? Any cursory look at the book will show that it is
one of the most aesthetically eclectic poetry anthologies ever done,
and this is one of its interesting points...>>

I contributed to BASM poetry as well as an essay on my experiences with
Buddhist practice and teachings. I bracket, in the context of this posting,
the essay's comments concerning my grateful debts to those practices and
teachings, referring here only to complex, painful particulars--followed by
some ensuing generalizations--inextricably intertwined within my life in
Buddhism. And it seems to me that my questions and difficulties with
teachings and teacher and hierarchies and importations and naturalizations
largely represent the pervading spirit of many BASM inclusions. Dean
Brink's comments  to Kent Johnson,

 "What rings as being in "bad faith" [in BaSM] is the appropriation of an
image of Asia that exists for the pleasure of the poet."

 Kent Johnson writes in response:

 "... what I find in "bad faith," Dean, is your apparent assumption that
the poets in the anthology are appropriating "an image of Asia" through the
mere fact of their being in an anthology of Buddhist poets!"

In fact, Western Buddhists' often troubled and sometimes agonized attempts
to re-root their Asia-derived practice within a Western soil have often
resulted in more equable, democratic and gender-neutral practice-societies,
concerned to extirpate racist or malign or manipulative attitudes,
concerned to understand  category-errors and  hierarchical fiats
experienced as perhaps illegitimate. Given the idiosyncratic power
relationship traditionally crucial between teacher and student, Western
Buddhists must see as roundly as possible, extra eyes at the back of their
heads.

In these connections, I cite from my BaSM essay, "Notes on a Life in
Buddhism," aware that even such a title runs the danger of reification:

        "We're often taught--and we often come to believe that we
understand--that the achievement of the state of true studenthood depends
upon the capacity to transcend the unenlightened fear of pain, the capacity
to experience the workings of faith, grace, and seminal confusion. We think
of Milarepa, who was able in his cave to dispel the demons of the mind,
seeing that they were merely the demons of the mind. Thus we know that
skeptical questioning may help to protect against some disease.

        Item--Sometimes what we had finally come to accept as our own
projection upon the teacher yields to the realization that our dark
mind-edgers had some merit.

        Item--The dark hints are the projections of the subject.

        Item--The student considers himself "thingified" by his teacher.

        Item--It's frightening to be a student.

        Item--To be a student requires courage.

        Item-It's crucial to find the right teacher.

        Item--It's extraordinarily difficult to find the right teacher,
more difficult than finding the true lover.

        Item--Finding the right teacher, though absolutely crucial, may be
impossible.

        Item--The teacher, like the unrealized but latent state of the
poem, attracts the devotion to the *uncanny.*

        Item--Freedom is a necessary condition of studenthood.

        Item--The teacher is transparent.

        Item--The student experiences the teacher as opaque until he no
longer needs to do so.

        Item--Thus the teacher is the object of all the student's projections.

        Item--The teacher might be contributing to the process eventuating
in some of the student's projections.

        Item--The teacher is not a psychoanalyst.

        Item--The student should not conflate spiritual and psychoanalytics
functions.

        Item--The student must come to recognize the teacher's idiosyncracies.

        Item--A spritual community rarely furnishes the means for
differentiating between the teacher's idiosyncracies and his spiritual
function.

        Item--The teacher identifies the student's realization and
authenticates the student's realization!

        Zen, like poetry, stresses that ultimately all conceptions are
misconceptions--which is not to say there is something "wrong" with
conceiving, but that a hammerlock on an idea serves neither process nor the
growing perception of the boundedness of ideas.... The faith that moves
mouintains is implicated in the appearance of poems and also invents tshe
teacher; we live among others, and our lives are a compound of ever-new
appreciations relating to the blessings of confusion, to trust, to
aloneness, and to the nature of the "real," the naming of which undoes
presence. One of the powers of Buddhism, like that of Blake and Marx, is
its insistent signaling of the human tropism toward reification and of the
suffering this tendency generates."

Armand Schwerner
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 23:09:14 -0400
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From:         George Thompson 
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>I've been asking myself is there a Mandel/Bromige divide? Tom yucks over
>"the primacy of the reader," but I only assented to this description of my
>position (by whom excuse me for forgetting) because it could fit with my
>belief in "the primacy of the poem" (and this phrase, in turn, is only in
>an effort to distinguish how I read poems, from "the primacy of the
>author".)  With Bowering & Mandel, I concur, the trouble we have reading
>_The Iliad_ is only like the trouble we have reading God : after the
>footnotes, we'll just have to make up our own minds. (Neither of them said
>anything like that. Still, I think I concur with what they did say.) David

Well, I myself am glad that _The Iliad_ and God finally got brought up,
since I too have been thinking about them [not that I know personally the
author of either, I hasten to add]. But readers of both will know, a
little, what it is like to read the old hymns that I read, whose authors
are for the most part nothing but names to us [though sometimes barely
distinguishable from the gods they sing of].

These old poets were not anonymous, then. and in fact some of them got
their names from their poems [more precisely from a prominent word or
phrase in their poems]. So in this tradition instead of referring to
Wallace Stevens, we refer to the "Emperor of Ice Cream Poet" and to the
cycle of poems attributed to him. We don't in general have access to
his/her incidental collisions with the likes of Hemingway [who not being a
Brahmin never would have been permitted at the rituals in any case]. I
happen to like this custom of naming poets after their poems, though I
wouldn't base a theoretical position on such a preference. Too orientalist,
perhaps.

In fact, it seems to me that the Bromige / Tal brouhaha might best be seen
as a matter of personal [and other sorts of sometimes lewd] preference.
There are many different types of poetry, and many different types of
readers and authors and identities and cultures and contexts, etc. And
saying so isn't trivial. For each of these differences marks a different
function that poetry can and in fact does serve. *Many* different
functions. And nobody has ever encompassed them all. Nobody. Whatsoever. No
way.

This is not a plea for multculturalism [though that is certainly something
to plead for]. It is a call to recognition of our actual situation[s]. It
is a recognition that breeds tolerance, I think.

Having enjoyed this thread [which, like poetry, has helped me to forget
this obnoxious humidity: yet another function, and one not to be taken
lightly...],

George Thompson
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 18:58:31 +-900
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Tessitore 
Subject:      Re: masturbation and appropriate texts to be studied

Eliza wrote:

what i think i picked up from that was that in order for the versimilitude
to be of enough magnitude to engulf reader in text, text had to contain
reality
as readers experienced it, i.e. if they were lost enough to be reading such
magazines, male figures in magazines had to be losers as well in order to
be
believable.  women had to be scornful, becasue anyone reading such a
magazine
should be scorned.  it may go deeper than reader/at/reading interaction --
men may in general feel like losers and only encounter scornful women at
such juncture as they would read such magazines...

_____________

I think this may be a part of it, but also that it is a bit too easy. By
this argument, everyone who enjoys any kind of 'unlikely hero' movie must
also feel he or she is a kind of real-life loser. Does the endless
popularity of Star Wars or Tolkien's books mean that the vast majority of
people are mental/emotional hobbits living in holes?

DT
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 23:36:34 -0400
Reply-To:     daniel7@IDT.NET
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Zimmerman 
Organization: Bard-O
Subject:      Re: the single moon
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Maria Damon wrote:
>
> i would just like to comment briefly on one of the issues in this
> Buddhism/racism thread.  it's still not clear to me why no Asian Americans
> were represented in the anthology; surely, if some knew of the anthology
> but "chose not to" submit material, it would be instructive to know why.
> one of the ways institutional racism works --not personal prejudice, so
> don't misunderstand this as an ad hominem --is that, if it isn't
> conscientiously and fairly constantly addressed, it takes over.  in other
> words, if there was no active attempt to recruit the works of Asian
> Americans, it is not surprising that it was an all-white affair.  i'm
> finding this out from organizing this conference.  i can easily see that
> unless i do something active to take control --i.e. if i just relied on
> "calls for papers" --we won't get much of a cross-cultural swathe at all!
> so i'm not bashing anyone, or at least not exculpating myself. just
> pointing out the entropic (?) nature of hegemony.


Maria,
        I've read the Buddhism/racism thread with interest and, I hope, with
sufficient disinterest since it began, and have resisted comment until
now. Not that I find what you've said "offensive" or deserving of such a
pejorative; indeed, the question you raise about "institutional racism"
certainly deserves attention. However, it seems to apply more to "real"
institutions [e.g., publishers] than to editors--especially if the
editors have, like Johnson and Paulenich, put out general and public
calls for the sort of work [not work from the sort of people] they'd
like to consider for publication in anthologies.
        Of course, as you say, "if some [Asian Americans] knew of the anthology
but 'chose not to' submit material, it would be instructive to know
why." But the "why" might [easily] not entail racism, institutional or
otherwise, and to imply that it [very well] might appears to involve a
slippage from possibility to probability, from correlation to cause.
        When you say that "from organizing [a] conference [,] i can easily see
that unless i do something active to take control --i.e. if i just
relied on 'calls for papers' --we won't get much of a cross-cultural
swathe at all," it seems to me you take upon yourself too much of a
burden: if Asian-[or any other hyphenated]-Americans choose not to
respond to a 'call for papers,' you might feel disappointed, but you
shouldn't kick yourself. You can just as easily 'become what you
behold,' as Blake would say, by opposing it unwisely or ineffectually
[when it involves rebuking yourself for not having done 'enough' to
combat its excesses] as by acceding to it passively.
        Beyond pointing to attachment as the cause of suffering, Buddhism, as I
understand it, declines to assign blame. If Asian-American Buddhists
ignored the call for submissions to the _Beneath a Single Moon_
anthology, they have no one but themselves to blame [but why would they?
& have they, or do we merely witness a passle of white folks here
worried that they might? & if they might, so what? have editors no right
to their own taste? how many rejections slips have you received without
comment? how many have you attributed to racism? to sexism? to just
plain stupidity? must every public action obsessively make amends for
the sins of racism, institutional or otherwise?].
        You say that "if there was no active attempt to recruit the works of
Asian-Americans, it is not surprising that it was an all-white affair."
I'd rather say that if the call for submissions appeared in a sufficient
number of public places, it seems surprising that no Asian-American
Buddhists responded. That's their problem, not Johnson's & Paulenich's.
This impulse to go overboard to defend the interests of the oppressed &
excluded appears to me not very far from the imperialist attempt to
'rescue' the heathen.
        Tat tvam asi.
Dan Zimmerman
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 20:46:36 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Stephen Cope 
Subject:      Personal info. - New Address
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Sorry to burden the list, but it seemed the easiest way to kill a number of
birds with one stone (so to speak):

For those who may want/need to reach me and/or the now for the most part
defunct We Press, the new address is:

Stephen Cope
POBOX 948544
La Jolla, CA 92037
(619) 299-2286
scope@ucsd.edu


Best,
Stephen Cope
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 00:53:36 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Peter Ganick 
Subject:      Re: body-as-text discussion
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is the body inherently a whole?
does fragmentation occur naturally/unaturally
  for instance the generally accepted practice
  of surgery or amputation?
can't "body" be a fluid concept?
out-----
peter ganick
potepoet@home.com

At 06:44 PM 6/27/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Some quotes from _Utne's issue on the "real" as latest most in:
>
>"Cyberlife leads to disembodiment, the exact opposite of what the culture
>needs," - Suzi Gablik
>
>"Ray [Paul] concludes 'cultural creatives' demand that all the pieces of
>their lives fit together to create an authentic whole...one that merges the
>best of modernism and traditionalism, embraces both East and West..."
>
>but "We need to mount a spirited defense of our right and power to seek our
>own realities." Jon Spayde
>tom bell
>
>At 05:26 AM 6/27/97 -0400, you wrote:
>>hi buffalo-l-er's---------
>>i don't think alan sondheim would mind if i
>>forwarded this post of his to the fop-list
>>made an hour ago--------
>>it bears relevance to the "body-as-text' discussion
>>proposed by kdawn earlier----
>>out--------
>>peter ganick
>>
>>>To: poetics@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu
>>>From: Peter Ganick 
>>>Subject: Re: E-Minds Discussion
>>>
>>>>Sender: FOP-L 
>>>>From: Alan * Sondheim 
>>>>Subject:      Re: E-Minds Discussion
>>>>To: Multiple recipients of list FOP-L 
>>>>
>>>>I'm curious - with your computing skills and equipment - what are your
>>>>ultimate goals - what do you want to do?
>>>>
>>>>I find myself constantly having to pare back, for example, ignoring C++ in
>>>>order to concentrate on the languages I know to some extent, and can use.
>>>>With essays, I try to read things that are sent me within three days; if
>>>>not, I have to expunge them.
>>>>
>>>>I move from one operating system to another; I feel I have good knowledge
>>>>of linux and Win95, poor still of Mac, but getting there. I'm getting
>>>>close to 250 - 300 messages a day.
>>>>
>>>>I want to feel I'm within the internals of the machine, and understand the
>>>>psychoanalytical and philosophical ramifications of technology. I want to
>>>>do this without disregarding the body, or its splitting re: issues of em-
>>>>bodiment and virtuality - and I don't want to go for simplistic answers
>>>>(which usually carry the day). I try to keep up with "the literature" as
>>>>best I can; much of it seems anecdotal (this is what a MUD does) or naive
>>>>(cyber-relationships are/aren't "real").
>>>>
>>>>Since I'm not institutionalized, I can rarely go to the conferences I've
>>>>applied to, to present a paper; there's no money. Since I can't go to the
>>>>conferences, the feedback on my work is minimal, so I have to conduct im-
>>>>aginary conversations - _here_ I'm naive, _there_ I've maybe made a point.
>>>>Although I do get into print (off or online) often, there's no real com-
>>>>munity of discussion surrounded my work, so these dialogs get increasingly
>>>>psychotic.
>>>>
>>>>Beyond this, I remember when I began thinking through these issues in the
>>>>70s (I did something called The Structure of Reality then, which I still
>>>>refer to), I figured I wanted to work on the mediation of mind and world
>>>>vis-a-vis formal and informal systems - and how this mediation constructed
>>>>or was constructed by/for mind. And I've remained fastened on this to the
>>>>present.
>>>>
>>>>With your work on your computers, adding programs (I remember you talked
>>>>about all the Network monitoring addons for Win95 you downloaded), I won-
>>>>der where your interest lies, what your goals are? And I'm sending this to
>>>>the lists, since I'm curious about others' configurations as well.
>>>>
>>>>(For myself, I've stabilized linux and the Mac and Win95 configs, as well
>>>>as my Win 3.+ stuff, so they're functional and somewhat interoperational;
>>>>with the Mac, I've clumsily looked at Applescript, backed out a bit, and
>>>>do most of my experimentation on linux, either RedHat or Slackware varie-
>>>>ties. And I still feel that one needs at least some of this in order to
>>>>understand TCP/IP or other protocols, to understand the Net in general,
>>>>beyond the user interface. For the user interface is always a system, as
>>>>Richard MacKinnon might say, of governance, and there's protocol and gov-
>>>>ernance all the way down, and we had better look at it.)
>>>>
>>>>Alan, musing
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>URL:     http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
>>>>MIRROR with other pages at:   http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
>>>>IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/           TEL 718-857-3671
>>>>EXPERIMENTAL (on and off): http://166.84.250.149   Editor, BEING ON LINE
>>>>
>>
>>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 01:03:13 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan * Sondheim 
Subject:      Re: body-as-text discussion
In-Reply-To:  <3.0.1.32.19970628005336.007167c8@mail>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Sat, 28 Jun 1997, Peter Ganick wrote:

> is the body inherently a whole?
no (re: Lingis on disembodiment)
> does fragmentation occur naturally/unaturally
>   for instance the generally accepted practice
>   of surgery or amputation?
yes/no (re: prosthetic space, trepanning)
> can't "body" be a fluid concept?
always (re: Irigaray, Brossard, Grosz, Butler, etc.)
> out-----
> peter ganick
> potepoet@home.com
>
> At 06:44 PM 6/27/97 -0400, you wrote:
> >Some quotes from _Utne's issue on the "real" as latest most in:
> >
> >"Cyberlife leads to disembodiment, the exact opposite of what the culture
> >needs," - Suzi Gablik

This statement is so problematic! Wow! What is an "exact" opposite? Oh, I
know what she means, but listen to the sizzle of the polarity here! And
"Cyberlife _leading_"??? (_My!_) emphasis! As if there's not always
already a problematic here _and in the space of the real_?

Marijuana leads to crack, the exact opposite, blah blah.

But the body is always already both subject/object and cultural construct,
and these interpenetrate.

Suzi! Suzi!
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 01:05:14 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan * Sondheim 
Subject:      Julu Makes Suzi (this works! I've done it! Alan)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

                            ***** +++ ***** ++++ ****



  julu makes suzi


  41 drums.o3 initrunlvl nntpserver rpc hrmmm
  42  drums.sb        inittab         npasswd.conf    rpmrc
  57 {b:41} drums.o3 initrunlvl nntpserver rpc hrmmm
  58 julu: drums.o3: command not found hrmmm hrmmm hrmmm
  59 {b:42} drums.sb inittab npasswd.conf rpmrc
  60 julu: drums.sb: command not found hrmmm hrmmm hrmmm
  79 {b:41} drums.o3 initrunlvl nntpserver rpc hrmmm
  80 julu: drums.o3: command not found hrmmm hrmmm hrmmm
  81 {b:42} drums.sb inittab npasswd.conf rpmrc
  82 julu-mud: drums.sb: command not found hrmmm hrmmm hrmmm
  101 {b:41} drums.o3 initrunlvl nntpserver rpc hrmmm
  102 julu-mud: drums.o3: command not found hrmmm hrmmm hrmmm
  103 {b:42} drums.sb inittab npasswd.conf rpmrc
  104 julu-mud: drums.sb: command not found hrmmm hrmmm hrmmm
  {b:139} pwd
  /etc/skeleton
  {b:140} cd /
  {b:142} descent to the root
  julu-mud-feather: descent: command not found
  {b:143} cd root
  {b:144} cd *h/awk
  {b:145} ascent up the root
  julu-mud-feather: ascent: command not found
  {b:146} hrmmm hrmmm hrmmm
  julu-mud-feather: hrmmm: command not found
  hhhrm hhhrm hhhrm hhhrm' hhhrm hrmmm hhhrm, hrmmm hrmmm,
  hrmmm hrmmm, hrmmm hrmmm, hhhrm hhhrm hhhrm hhhrm,
  hhhrm hrmmm hhhrm, hrmmm hrmmm, hrmmm hrmmm, hrmmm hrmmm
  {b:147} whoami
  *suzi*
  {b:148} whois suzi
  julu of the grep-feather-chant
  julu of the mud-feather-chant
  75 {b:39} dip-script.dip httpd motdresolv.conf v$
  76 julu-mud-feather: dip-script.dip: command found
  77 {b:40} dip-scriptold inetd.conf mtab rmt
  78 julu-mud-feather: dip-scriptold: *tree*
  {b:149} julu-mud-feather-crystal hrmmm hrmmm
  {b:149} julu-mud-feather-crystal hrmmm hrmmm
  {b:149} julu-mud-feather-crystal hrmmm hrmmm
  {b:149} julu-mud-feather-crystal hrmmm hrmmm
  {b:149} julu-mud-feather-crystal hrmmm hrmmm
                 * system looped *

  SYSTEM HALTED

  SUZI!
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 27 Jun 1997 22:41:41 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: masturbation and appropriate texts to be studied
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

It's possible that your study sample, both of men and soft-core porn
(playboy is pretty mild stuff by current standards), was too small to allow
many conclusions to be drawn. I think it would be safe to say that most men
in most societies have and have always had an interest in what some in their
cultures would consider pornographic. It's even been suggested that the
Venus of Willendorf and her sisters were pinups.
I prefer the term erotic to pornographic, because what's considered beyond
the pale has been so various. Not so long ago women were routinely arrested
in Florida for wearing short shorts and individuals and couples in
Connecticut were arrested for something called "lascivious posture," which
seems to have been any behavior not otherwise forbidden by statute that the
cop found too raunchy. For years the legal line for visual representation
was drawn at pubic hair.
A lot of women seem not to understand why men find the contemplation of
impersonal sexual signs titillating. But most men find it equally difficult
to understand why so many women get turned on by romance novels. What can
one say but vive la difference? Maybe we should refrain from diagnosing each
other.

At 08:33 PM 6/27/97 -0400, you wrote:
>the bits dropped on both topics puts me in mind of something ...
>
>at a certain point in my career, i had a roomate who had a number of what
>would in many circles be defined as hard porn magazines, a partner who gave
>me several such texts, and access via a few other means to more.  i got kind
>of interested.
>
>most of what i looked at was the playboy and beyond vintage magazine.  and
>there were a number of recurrent threads.  one was that the males in the
>sexual encounter stories most often had horrific self-images, as constructed
>in the texts.  they were generally physically off in some way, were
>interrupted in their discourse frequently, frequently said things that were
>contradicted and/or proven wrong, and were, in general, just plain nebbishes.
>
>and the females, though sexually available, were often scornful!
>
>what i think i picked up from that was that in order for the versimilitude
>to be of enough magnitude to engulf reader in text, text had to contain reality
>as readers experienced it, i.e. if they were lost enough to be reading such
>magazines, male figures in magazines had to be losers as well in order to be
>believable.  women had to be scornful, becasue anyone reading such a magazine
>should be scorned.  it may go deeper than reader/at/reading interaction --
>men may in general feel like losers and only encounter scornful women at
>such juncture as they would read such magazines...
>
>those i knew with magazines were in pretty bad shape except for partner,
>who gave them to me as part of erotic play.  the latter is perhaps a bit
>personal but hey, we've all donned the rubber chicken suit and thrown the
>naked spuds at one time or another except for bowering who does it constantly,
>and as he alleges, bromige, who does it but blames bowering...
>e
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 02:11:11 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Fireflies in my room,
my grandfather fallen twice

Th waves are real
and the topless bars

It is lonely to be so fast
you get out of the picture window like that

and the half moon
I look for the clam / or cod half flashes
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 02:26:49 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Jordan Davis 
Subject:      ladies and gentlemen please
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

no future references to individuals named "Jordan" unless you can back it
(them) up "bibliographically" -- which is to say bring up Ford Madox Ford
while I'm on my honeymoon and I'll find a way to index you some day --
love love and love -- esp for the big animated stick hueffer-- J
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 05:06:16 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: body-as-text discussion / cyberlife

Alan * Sondheim notes --
<<
> >"Cyberlife leads to disembodiment, the exact opposite of what the
culture
> >needs," - Suzi Gablik

This statement is so problematic! Wow! What is an "exact" opposite?
Oh, I know what she means, but listen to the sizzle of the polarity here!
And "Cyberlife _leading_"??? (_My!_) emphasis! As if there's not
always already a problematic here _and in the space of the real_? . . .

Suzi! Suzi! >>

Tangentially: if memory serves Suzi Gablik happens to be a critic of
modern & contemp. art; -- e.g., her byline is seen in the *New Art
Examiner*, and she has written a book dealing with Rene Magritte.
Gablik's anti-computer quote likely was lifed from an essay in the New
Art Examiner; -- this topic was discussed there some years ago.

The contra-cyber stance that she expresses is considerably elaborated
(though on perhaps different grounds) by a Boston critic whose name
escapes me at the moment [he wrote a book developing this theme,
entitled something like The Gutenberg Elegy (?)]; -- and a couple years
ago, Harper's Magazine published the transcript of a panel discussion
(including said chap) more or less examining such ideas.

More precisely the Gutenberg fellow was concerned abt. an imagined
erosion of *literary* culture (or maybe, literary experience, narrowly
construed) -- rather than the Gablik proposition of life mediated by
computer culture being directly antithetical to physical / sensual being.

Am reminded of the issue of writing using a computer vs. composing
longhand (or -- betwixt the twain -- via the WCW-typewriter method).
Back a step further, there's verbal vs. written composition (& culture).

A paradox: my brother (a musician) has never much been given to reading
or writing -- but since going online a couple years ago, he's now involved
in both activities (typically for some hours daily).

In my view (but perhaps this is obvious), the internet has "lead to" (or
let's say, allowed) what amounts to a renaissance of epistolary life -- a
development that I esteem (in an approving sense) as neo-Victorian
(though not, w/ that phrase, connecting to the Gablik proposition).

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 10:56:15 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Kinsella 
Subject:      Salt 11
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I'm setting Salt 11 at the moment and will be considering material
up to the 10th of August. The Australian editorial address is: PO Box 202
Applecross  6153, Western Australia. For those outside the Southern
Hemisphere a more useful address may be: Churchill College, Cambridge
CB3 ODS, England. Send work c/- The Editor, John Kinsella.

For those who aren't familiar with Salt's modus operandi it's as
follows: Salt welcomes contributions in all fields, though favours
poetry, poetic fiction, articles and reviews relating to poetry,
and material concerned with contemporary art and art practice. It is
primarily a poetry journal. It is produced jointly by Fremantle
Arts Centre Press and Folio(Salt) Books, and distributed in
Australia by Penguin Books, in the UK by Liverpool University Press
and in the U.S. by International Specialized Book Services
(orders@isbs.com).

Best
John Kinsella
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 11:10:08 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Kinsella 
Subject:      P.S.
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I should say I'm "editing" Salt 11 at the moment and not "setting" -
there are others who should gain the credit for that onerous task!

Best
John K
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 06:25:52 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Maria Damon 
Subject:      Re: the single moon
Comments: To: daniel7@IDT.NET
In-Reply-To:  <33B486C2.250E@idt.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 11:36 PM -0400 6/27/97, Daniel Zimmerman wrote:

>Maria,
>        I've read the Buddhism/racism thread with interest and, I hope, with
>sufficient disinterest since it began, and have resisted comment until
>now. Not that I find what you've said "offensive" or deserving of such a
>pejorative; indeed, the question you raise about "institutional racism"
>certainly deserves attention. However, it seems to apply more to "real"
>institutions [e.g., publishers] than to editors--especially if the
>editors have, like Johnson and Paulenich, put out general and public
>calls for the sort of work [not work from the sort of people] they'd
>like to consider for publication in anthologies.

as i said, my comment is a somewhat generic one, not designed to point the
finger at x rather than y.

>        Of course, as you say, "if some [Asian Americans] knew of the
>anthology
>but 'chose not to' submit material, it would be instructive to know
>why." But the "why" might [easily] not entail racism, institutional or
>otherwise, and to imply that it [very well] might appears to involve a
>slippage from possibility to probability, from correlation to cause.

this is precisely why i sd that it wd be instructive to know why.

>        When you say that "from organizing [a] conference [,] i can easily see
>that unless i do something active to take control --i.e. if i just
>relied on 'calls for papers' --we won't get much of a cross-cultural
>swathe at all," it seems to me you take upon yourself too much of a
>burden: if Asian-[or any other hyphenated]-Americans choose not to
>respond to a 'call for papers,' you might feel disappointed, but you
>shouldn't kick yourself. You can just as easily 'become what you
>behold,' as Blake would say, by opposing it unwisely or ineffectually
>[when it involves rebuking yourself for not having done 'enough' to
>combat its excesses] as by acceding to it passively.

i'm not flagellating myself. i'm pointing out a truism. it is true that i
do not have the energy of a true crusader like, for example, george lipsitz
or dave roediger, or even our own kali tal, who appear to be tireless.  i'm
not. so, diff folks have differing amounts of energy to bring to their
tasks however they define them. but at least, if i don't have the energy to
pursue anti-racist agendas as far as others do, i don't want to end up
blaming those i've stopped pursuing.

>        Beyond pointing to attachment as the cause of suffering, Buddhism,
>as I
>understand it, declines to assign blame. If Asian-American Buddhists
>ignored the call for submissions to the _Beneath a Single Moon_
>anthology, they have no one but themselves to blame [but why would they?
>& have they, or do we merely witness a passle of white folks here
>worried that they might?

this whole thread, as i understand it, took its departure from a comment
made on the anthology by Walter Lew, a first-generation Korean American, in
the afterword of *his* anthology, Premonitions.

& if they might, so what? have editors no right
>to their own taste? how many rejections slips have you received without
>comment? how many have you attributed to racism? to sexism? to just
>plain stupidity?

i tend to think the former two causes are subsumed as categories within the
latter.
must every public action obsessively make amends for
>the sins of racism, institutional or otherwise?].

what was obsessive about my post?

>        You say that "if there was no active attempt to recruit the works of
>Asian-Americans, it is not surprising that it was an all-white affair."
>I'd rather say that if the call for submissions appeared in a sufficient
>number of public places, it seems surprising that no Asian-American
>Buddhists responded. That's their problem, not Johnson's & Paulenich's.
>This impulse to go overboard to defend the interests of the oppressed &
>excluded appears to me not very far from the imperialist attempt to
>'rescue' the heathen.

this is a strange comment. do you really think that it's going overboard to
want to represent a range of different cultures at a conference entitled
"cross-cultural poetics?"  methinks thou art distorting my words, my
intentions, and my point, which was about as general and bland as could be,
in order to re-personalize a post that i specifically made as unpersonal as
i could, except insofar as i invoked my own current experience. Ive wanted
to stay out of the excessively personal, ad feminam/hominem aspects of
recent threads, now i have embroiled myself in one.  oy!  i'll withdraw.
what's with all of this crankiness? is it the heat, or now that summer's
here we (academics anyway) have more time to obsess in front of our screen?
as ever, md
>        Tat tvam asi.
>Dan Zimmerman
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 06:28:02 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Maria Damon 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
In-Reply-To:  
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 2:11 AM -0400 6/28/97, Jordan Davis wrote:
>Fireflies in my room,
>my grandfather fallen twice
>
>Th waves are real
>and the topless bars
>
>It is lonely to be so fast
>you get out of the picture window like that
>
>and the half moon
>I look for the clam / or cod half flashes

ah jordan, how'd you know i was here in woods hole? it's dreamy, i'm in
love with the air, with being here, with moving my body. can't stand the
thought of going back to the static-air midwest with its grueling heat and
pious attitudes!
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 06:28:35 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Maria Damon 
Subject:      Re: masturbation and appropriate texts to be studied
In-Reply-To:  <199706280541.WAA22588@germany.it.earthlink.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

mark weiss wrote:
>A lot of women seem not to understand why men find the contemplation of
>impersonal sexual signs titillating. But most men find it equally difficult
>to understand why so many women get turned on by romance novels. What can
>one say but vive la difference? Maybe we should refrain from diagnosing each
>other.
>

a few years ago, when i read my first harlequin novel as an "assigned text"
for a study group, i was struck by how structurally similar they were to
s/m novels such as the story of O or gay work by some of the folks
anthologized by john preston as well as some preston himself.  of course
the harlequins were far less interesting and creative, far less "literary"
and hence boring.  but similar power dynamics gave both genres (if they can
be said to be separate genres) their underlying logic.  when i suggested
this to my study group, and that we follow up w/ a gay male s/m text, they
demured for unstated reasons.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 00:37:18 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

little boxes
on
the
hillside
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 10:11:01 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher 
Subject:      Re: Identity
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

oh i think we SHOULD try, in calls for papers and conferences and the like,
to reach out some in getting diverse representation... what's the harm in
same?... in my view, for so many reasons, it's not enough to observe,
simply, that "such and such [group] didn't respond" (which is not a
criticism of anybody's past or present practices!)... that said, IF i'm
invited to talk/speak/contribute, i can't at the same time be asked as a
whitehetmale to erase mself... though i would think that my contribution
should call into question my own subject-site (at least at the level of
basic reflexiveness---of searching mself some---and i have a kind of faith
that if i do so, the results will be (self-)evident)...

anyhoo, i feel i must remark that it's nice to see that *this* discussion
includes a half-dozen WOMEN!... really, a discussion of identity and such
like on poetix w/o the customary deluge of men-only or men-primarily... oh
and in remarking so, you will note that i tip my hat in favor of reaching
out some...

anyway, i've attached something that i thought might be of interest, but
it's not directly related to any current thread...

best,

joe

> Posted at 7:50 a.m. PDT Friday, June 27, 1997
> HarperCollins closes the book on 100 authors

> NEW YORK (AP) -- In an unexpected budget-cutting
> move, HarperCollins is closing the book on more
> than 100 authors whose titles it had promised to
> publish, The New York Times reported today.
>
> The venerable publishing house -- which lost $7
> million in its last fiscal quarter -- canceled 36
> titles it believed would sell poorly. It trimmed
> another 70 books because its authors missed their
> deadlines.
>
> Some of the axed titles were featured in the
> company's fall catalog. All the canceled authors
> will be paid the full advances due under their
> contracts, said Anthea Disney, the company's chief
> executive.
>
> ``It's a way of trying to make sense out of the
> business,'' she said. ``In all honesty, I don't
> want to publish books that we won't get behind and
> publish well.''
>
> HarperCollins' decision to cancel manuscripts that
> had already been completed is considered highly
> unusual in the publishing industry, where houses
> usually cut back by reducing future acquisitions.
>
> Rebecca Brown, whose novel ``The Dogs: A Modern
> Bestiary'' was on HarperCollins' hit list, said the
> decision seemed to reflect publishing's increasing
> focus on profits over quality.
>
> ``Publishing now is not about supporting and
> nurturing and having this inquiry into culture that
> Gertrude Stein and (Ernest) Hemingway and Maxwell
> Perkins were trying to do,'' she told the
> newspaper. ``It's about selling Michael Jackson
> biographies and advertising things. It's more in
> line with selling cigarettes.''
>
> Other canceled titles included a number of novels,
> cookbooks, a mystery, a biography, a European
> travel guide and an art collection book by Edith
> Vonnegut, daughter of author Kurt Vonnegut.
>
> HarperCollins, a unit of Rupert Murdoch's
> NewsCorp., published 1,600 books in the trade
> division last year.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 11:10:34 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Identity / Snyder's evocations

Rebecca Weldon writes from Thailand:

<< I must apologise for my facetious remarks concerning the orient (I
meet too many Orientalists out here).  The questions of identity are quite
serious and merit discussion. . . . >>

While *some* of your words were tongue-in-cheek, others seemed
straightforward and (I'd say) germane.  For instance, the semantic
fuzziness of "orientalism," lent some dash of clarity by your rooting it in
19th century origins, denoting an aspect of the response of a Eurocentric
mentality in its imaginal encounter w/ "the Oriental mind" (a phrase
which one finds in, for instance, Rudyard Kipling's novel *Kim*).

/ / / /

BTW, in my estimation, what someone like Rudyard Kipling was up to,
and what someone like Gary Snyder is up to, have a number of points of
difference.  As for their (respective) poetries, Dean's citation of those
lines (chosen "at random") from Snyder's collected poems, served to
remind how much I like this poet's work.  Again encountering those 8
lines in Amand Schwerner's summary-and-supplementary discussion --
the Snyder lines remain interesting / haunting / evocative / solid.

   We beach up at China Camp
   Between piles of stone
   Stacked there by black-haired miners,
         cook in the dark
         sleep all night long by the stream.

   These songs that are here and gone,
   Here and gone,
   To purify our ears.

That evocation of exploited Chinese miners in the California riverine
valley (fetched to mind for the poet by markless, plaqueless piles of
stone), and his evident sense of (some manner of human) kinship with
those long-gone laborers across a century's gulf --

  These songs that are here & gone
  here & gone

the poet imagines the miners perhaps did sing songs among themselves?
when finally, after 18-hour-per-day labor, they were alone & at leisure [is
this then the "exotic" image of Asians to which Dean Brink alludes?] --

image of unnamed, unknown, now forever gone lives filled w/ hard labor
(Snyder, whose livelihood in that period was likewise based on physical
labor, had some ground for this imaginal kinship, I think) --

miners whose remnant trace is an array of piled stone that the poet
notices -- nameless presences evoked economically ("black haired
miners") -- & did they sing? --

  These songs that are here & gone
  here & gone

the resumption of song here suggesting (one supposes) the poet's own
lyric, -- an act of recurrence, somewhat in the Eliadean sense --

btw, "to purify my ears" appears in the final line in an 8-line poem of
Han Shan's (I realized this, as I was about to zoom into the shower, a
couple mornings ago) -- circa 8th century a.d. recluse-poet; Snyder was
the first translator to render that poem into English (his translations from
Han Shan were, of course, memorialized by his buddy Keruoac in *The
Dharma Bums* -- Kerouac actually beat Snyder to the punch, in the
sense that one or two Han Shan poem in Snyder's translationappeared
JK's TDBs before Snyder had a chance to get his versions into print) --

but "to purify my ears" is an allusion by Han Shan to the tale from
Chuang Tse (as I've already mentioned), that fantastical & philosophical
circa 3rd cent. b.c. mystic story-maker -- the phrase evokes a story that
imaginatively recreated a then long-bygone era of many centuries earlier --
so that the historical distance covered by Snyder's line "to purify our
ears" hopscotches back to the deep antiquity of the original mythical sage
figure (one of the Chen Jen (zhen ren = realized men) held up as models
by CT, though I don't recall his name (a figure from e.g., 1,000 b.c.? --
Chuang Tse tended to better the Confucians by planting his mythical
exemplars even more remotely in antiquity than their were) . . .

a pebble-tale that skips across the history-waters up to Chuang Tse (3rd
cent. b.c.), then makes a further leap up way to Han Shan -- whose
affinity w/ Chuang Tse was shared by other Buddhist poets of his day --

then from Han Shan (8th cent. a.d.) the phrase leaps another millenium to
the Chinese immigrants (mid-19th century) as imagined by Gary Snyder
(mid-20th Century -- I assume this poem dates from the 1950s) -- and
now it drifts on lapping fiberoptics & lands at our computer-shores, here
on the cyberriver at century's end . . .

"to purify my ears" signified, for Han Shan, a disguest with the wrangling
world of petty ambitions that he runounced, when he sought silence &
solitude on Cold Mountain ("Han Shan") -- where (as he noted in a poem
I quoted here some months ago) he lingered for (more than) 30 years . . .

& thanks, Rebecca, for the words from *Ruins* . . .

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 12:32:40 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      Re: Salt 11

hi john kinsella

here are three poems for Salt.  let me know if you're interested in
having them.  "Family Grounds" and "Humor Institute" are fairly
straightforward, but in "Redecorating the House" i have left in
some html markings because they make formatting a little clearer.
where you see 
, it means start formatting as you would
for quotations, i.e. indent and italicize, and where you see

 it means end the special quotation formatting.

i realize this is all very baroque, and wouldn't be necessary if
i weren't such a lazy sot and would actually MAIL it snailmail with
realcopy, but for heaven's sake, by the time i get to the post office
and sort out overseas pricing for mail and a SASE, well, let's just
say i still have filing from a YEAR AGO that i haven't done!...

e

--------------
poems following
---------------------------------

The Humor Institute
  (from the fine poem of the same title by Andrew Hudgins)




It's funny and it's not.  They carry luggage
that bursts, spilling out caps with horns
and fart cushions.  Later the parents send
packages of chocolate and lard cookies, Doritos,
pictures -- the Dog, Mom and Dad and the House.
In class they are silent, poised shrikes
except when the teachers call them out with a joke
into packs of syncophantic Ralphs
ho-hoing like ex-husbands at the wedding.

The classrooms retch out pellets of nervous titter
as students fight over outlets for portable laugh tracks;
A grandmother's belching guffaw can break wind
across the becalmed victims of the oral report
as quickly as silence strands them on a shore
of drunk Mid-western Elvis impersonators
and moustached Europeans with poodle shows.
Everyone is waiting for the boy who hugs a cheetah
and sings in an Al Jolson voice so they can
blow into their rolled-up diplomas and go
home -- to their families, to a labor of humor.


E. McGrand

@copyright E. McGrand, 4/97


--------------------------------------

Family Grounds




The family, fists wavering, walks over
a busy street blindly, each foot chancing
passing tractor-trailors of catastrophe.
The hapless one hums counterpoint to beats
tapped by his brother's retarded, labyrinth feet.

What does each hear in the dolorous
outcast humming.  John, the retarded son,
(name begat to re-upholster worn crouches
of Oedipal gerrymandering) holds the hand
of his mother, their interlocking fingers,
a marbled gesture of incarnate tragedy.

Even with the named birth it was no use
to hope John wouldn't know, but recess jeers,
classroom disasters, and parents' gossip
multiply beyond the twelve apostolic
benchmen whose priest and prayerbook failed
to wash her nervous conscience clean.

The hapless, float-footed brother breaths
molten symphony, exhales sullen etudes.
His weed-blown sisters adulate and follow,
blossoming in whispers and hidden smoking,
their thin fingers pinching, sucking, and holding.
They gather remote, decorous boyfriends, sag
into a rear manouvre dented from kicks and hissing.
Mating rejection and drawing it inward, orgasms
of green and blue embroider their arms, eyes.

The parents, simultaneously following and herding --
        father phallically thrusting his frowns, critiques
        during dinner, pointedly cheating his wife;
        mother rustling broccoli and conversational
        robins' nests as she cringes at the sideboard
-- hate open pain.  Flourishing pain,
the children turn it into convention badges,
endless initiation chants in a ritual
of shattered safety.  The cars suck and hold
scarves, dresses, and draw the open-eyed
along the spattered traffic median.


E. McGrand

@copyright EMC, 1997


-------------------------------------------------

Redecorating the House
 

       How much can ornamentation conceal
        when structural renovation is unsustained




The front facade, supported by fluted
pilasters, wraps around a stable, sheltered
environment, a minimal number of staff
always watching the golden, burnished
marble resound with subtle notes
of Inigo Jones classicism.  Supervised
workshops facilitate on-site key signatures
of green marble intaglio, effortless support
in our campaign to build community ties


        he said I picked my nose
        unnhh what a Retard can I
        have an apple in my lunchbox
        we are learning to use big sewing
        machines with thick red thread


We will be placing clients in controlled
environments; the ludicrous Victorian brass
work providing humorous commentary on repeated
arguments about restraints, the place of legato,
and how much ornamentation can conceal
when structural renovation is unsustained


        teased me I don't like oranges
        my lunchbox got stolen the fourth
        graders are too small why can't
        Irene and I make babies
        in our rooms if we shut the door


At Christmas tiny points of light glitter in circles
on the trees and are taken down after New Years day


E. McGrand

@Copyright E. McGrand 1996

----------------------------------------------
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 12:35:59 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      HOW EMBARRASSING!!!!!  please ignore last message

i'm terribly sorry -- did the usual dopy "r" thing and instead of
sending reply to sender, it went to list.

nothing sallacious, but very tedious for everyone to wade through...

sorry!
e
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 12:37:14 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Alan * Sondheim 
Subject:      Re: Identity
In-Reply-To:  <199706281511.KAA13236@charlie.cns.iit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I think (re: Amato) that conferences should also have some monies set
aside for those people who can't afford to come otherwise; not everyone is
university affiliated. (I think this should be a _requirement_ of con-
ferences.)

This problem has happened to me a number of times recently. It's ugly. It
creates a real division between department-sanctioned writers/etc. and
those of us out on the street.

Alan



URL:     http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
MIRROR with other pages at:   http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/           TEL 718-857-3671
EXPERIMENTAL (on and off): http://166.84.250.149   Editor, BEING ON LINE
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 17:51:12 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Kinsella 
Subject:      Salt submissions
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Please send material to Salt c/- snailmail addresses - hard copy
plus disk if possible.

Thanks.

Johm Kinsella (Ed.)
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 13:14:42 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      Re: body-as-text discussion
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

transplantation appears to involve more than just the physical fragment.

At 12:53 AM 6/28/97 -0400, you wrote:
>is the body inherently a whole?
>does fragmentation occur naturally/unaturally
>  for instance the generally accepted practice
>  of surgery or amputation?
>can't "body" be a fluid concept?
>out-----
>peter ganick
>potepoet@home.com
>
>At 06:44 PM 6/27/97 -0400, you wrote:
>>Some quotes from _Utne's issue on the "real" as latest most in:
>>
>>"Cyberlife leads to disembodiment, the exact opposite of what the culture
>>needs," - Suzi Gablik
>>
>>"Ray [Paul] concludes 'cultural creatives' demand that all the pieces of
>>their lives fit together to create an authentic whole...one that merges the
>>best of modernism and traditionalism, embraces both East and West..."
>>
>>but "We need to mount a spirited defense of our right and power to seek our
>>own realities." Jon Spayde
>>tom bell
>>
>>At 05:26 AM 6/27/97 -0400, you wrote:
>>>hi buffalo-l-er's---------
>>>i don't think alan sondheim would mind if i
>>>forwarded this post of his to the fop-list
>>>made an hour ago--------
>>>it bears relevance to the "body-as-text' discussion
>>>proposed by kdawn earlier----
>>>out--------
>>>peter ganick
>>>
>>>>To: poetics@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu
>>>>From: Peter Ganick 
>>>>Subject: Re: E-Minds Discussion
>>>>
>>>>>Sender: FOP-L 
>>>>>From: Alan * Sondheim 
>>>>>Subject:      Re: E-Minds Discussion
>>>>>To: Multiple recipients of list FOP-L 
>>>>>
>>>>>I'm curious - with your computing skills and equipment - what are your
>>>>>ultimate goals - what do you want to do?
>>>>>
>>>>>I find myself constantly having to pare back, for example, ignoring C++ in
>>>>>order to concentrate on the languages I know to some extent, and can use.
>>>>>With essays, I try to read things that are sent me within three days; if
>>>>>not, I have to expunge them.
>>>>>
>>>>>I move from one operating system to another; I feel I have good knowledge
>>>>>of linux and Win95, poor still of Mac, but getting there. I'm getting
>>>>>close to 250 - 300 messages a day.
>>>>>
>>>>>I want to feel I'm within the internals of the machine, and understand the
>>>>>psychoanalytical and philosophical ramifications of technology. I want to
>>>>>do this without disregarding the body, or its splitting re: issues of em-
>>>>>bodiment and virtuality - and I don't want to go for simplistic answers
>>>>>(which usually carry the day). I try to keep up with "the literature" as
>>>>>best I can; much of it seems anecdotal (this is what a MUD does) or naive
>>>>>(cyber-relationships are/aren't "real").
>>>>>
>>>>>Since I'm not institutionalized, I can rarely go to the conferences I've
>>>>>applied to, to present a paper; there's no money. Since I can't go to the
>>>>>conferences, the feedback on my work is minimal, so I have to conduct im-
>>>>>aginary conversations - _here_ I'm naive, _there_ I've maybe made a point.
>>>>>Although I do get into print (off or online) often, there's no real com-
>>>>>munity of discussion surrounded my work, so these dialogs get increasingly
>>>>>psychotic.
>>>>>
>>>>>Beyond this, I remember when I began thinking through these issues in the
>>>>>70s (I did something called The Structure of Reality then, which I still
>>>>>refer to), I figured I wanted to work on the mediation of mind and world
>>>>>vis-a-vis formal and informal systems - and how this mediation constructed
>>>>>or was constructed by/for mind. And I've remained fastened on this to the
>>>>>present.
>>>>>
>>>>>With your work on your computers, adding programs (I remember you talked
>>>>>about all the Network monitoring addons for Win95 you downloaded), I won-
>>>>>der where your interest lies, what your goals are? And I'm sending this to
>>>>>the lists, since I'm curious about others' configurations as well.
>>>>>
>>>>>(For myself, I've stabilized linux and the Mac and Win95 configs, as well
>>>>>as my Win 3.+ stuff, so they're functional and somewhat interoperational;
>>>>>with the Mac, I've clumsily looked at Applescript, backed out a bit, and
>>>>>do most of my experimentation on linux, either RedHat or Slackware varie-
>>>>>ties. And I still feel that one needs at least some of this in order to
>>>>>understand TCP/IP or other protocols, to understand the Net in general,
>>>>>beyond the user interface. For the user interface is always a system, as
>>>>>Richard MacKinnon might say, of governance, and there's protocol and gov-
>>>>>ernance all the way down, and we had better look at it.)
>>>>>
>>>>>Alan, musing
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>URL:     http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
>>>>>MIRROR with other pages at:   http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
>>>>>IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/           TEL 718-857-3671
>>>>>EXPERIMENTAL (on and off): http://166.84.250.149   Editor, BEING ON LINE
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 13:30:10 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Lisa Samuels 
Subject:      name that Donne
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

in a bid to take advantage of the hundreds of minds
which might apply themselves to this question --

is this john donne?  whence comes it, then?


        For if one eat my meat, though it be known
        The meat was mine, the excrement is his own.


this is not a test, for i don't know the answer myself.
thanks for your superior information -- & for guesses.

lisa s.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 10:52:00 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tenney Nathanson 
Subject:      nomail in NY
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

not that I post much anyway but:

I'm switching to nomail for the next 4-5 weeks--will be working in NY for
July and checking email via cybercafes or somesuch.

however: if anyone has info about interesting poetry activities in NY during
July, I'd very much appreciate a backchannel.

sorry (for myself) to be departing poetics in the midst of so much heated
and interesting activity--esp the Identity thread and the Buddhist thread.

best to all (and I do mean all)

tenney

----------------------------------------------------------

tenney nathanson

tenney@azstarnet.com
nathanso@u.arizona.edu

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 14:44:26 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steve Shoemaker 
Subject:      buddha love
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

Awright, pardon a tyro's question here:  I've always been intrigued,
from a more or less uninformed distanced, by the Buddhist valuing of
"non-attachment," which has come up with some frequency in recent posts.
My question, then, is how exactly is "love" supposed to work in this
scheme of things.  Is love for another person really possible without
"attachment," in the sense of not wanting to do without?  I'm
probably approaching the question somewhat superficially, but cldn't
resist the chance to query what appears to be a rather large number of
people interested in buddhistic living...  steve
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 11:51:52 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics

>little boxes
>on
>the
>hillside

'scuze me, i think i might be missing your meaning here.  are you implying
(since there's nothing to your message but the subject line  "Re:
identity/poetics") that a) the critic who is interested in identity sees
poets/poems as nothing more than those pastel colored, indistinguishable
little square piled-up houses which line the hillsides of S. San Francisco?
Or that b) those who feel that their own identity matters (i.e., "identity
poets") live in those tacky little boxes?  or c) a third alternative i can't
puzzle out?

if a or b, malvina reynolds--mama lion--would be unhappy at the use to which
you've put her words since her identity was an explicit motivating force
behind her work.  the folks who lived in the little boxes were the people
whose identity had been *erased*--by capitalism and forced acculturation, in
the example of the song.

'course, if it is a or b, then you don't think an author's identity matters,
and so using her work in a cause which she would reject wouldn't bother you
overmuch.

wondering,
kali
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 16:51:57 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Peter Ganick 
Subject:      Re: body-as-text discussion
In-Reply-To:  <199706281714.NAA04845@use.usit.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

At 01:14 PM 6/28/97 -0400, tbell wrote:
>transplantation appears to involve more than just the physical fragment.\

translation might be a better approximation to transplantation
the body as a whole might be the text-entire
the body/text can change via translation
the fluids of the body/the fluidity of a text, for example,
     revising/cutting/embellishing/adding

how far does the body/text analogy go?
>>is the body inherently a whole?
>>does fragmentation occur naturally/unaturally
>>  for instance the generally accepted practice
>>  of surgery or amputation?
>>can't "body" be a fluid concept?
>>out-----
>>peter ganick
>>potepoet@home.com

>>>"Cyberlife leads to disembodiment, the exact opposite of what the culture
>>>needs," - Suzi Gablik
>>>
>>>"Ray [Paul] concludes 'cultural creatives' demand that all the pieces of
>>>their lives fit together to create an authentic whole...one that merges the
>>>best of modernism and traditionalism, embraces both East and West..."
>>>
>>>but "We need to mount a spirited defense of our right and power to seek our
>>>own realities." Jon Spayde
>>>tom bell

>>>>hi buffalo-l-er's---------
>>>>i don't think alan sondheim would mind if i
>>>>forwarded this post of his to the fop-list
>>>>made an hour ago--------
>>>>it bears relevance to the "body-as-text' discussion
>>>>proposed by kdawn earlier----
>>>>out--------
>>>>peter ganick
>>>>
>>>>>Subject: Re: E-Minds Discussion
>>>>>>Sender: FOP-L 
>>>>>>From: Alan * Sondheim 
>>>>>>Subject:      Re: E-Minds Discussion
>>>>>>To: Multiple recipients of list FOP-L 
>>>>>>I'm curious - with your computing skills and equipment - what are your
>>>>>>ultimate goals - what do you want to do?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I find myself constantly having to pare back, for example, ignoring
C++ in
>>>>>>order to concentrate on the languages I know to some extent, and can
use.
>>>>>>With essays, I try to read things that are sent me within three days; if
>>>>>>not, I have to expunge them.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I move from one operating system to another; I feel I have good
knowledge
>>>>>>of linux and Win95, poor still of Mac, but getting there. I'm getting
>>>>>>close to 250 - 300 messages a day.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I want to feel I'm within the internals of the machine, and
understand the
>>>>>>psychoanalytical and philosophical ramifications of technology. I
want to
>>>>>>do this without disregarding the body, or its splitting re: issues of
em-
>>>>>>bodiment and virtuality - and I don't want to go for simplistic answers
>>>>>>(which usually carry the day). I try to keep up with "the literature" as
>>>>>>best I can; much of it seems anecdotal (this is what a MUD does) or
naive
>>>>>>(cyber-relationships are/aren't "real").
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Since I'm not institutionalized, I can rarely go to the conferences I've
>>>>>>applied to, to present a paper; there's no money. Since I can't go to
the
>>>>>>conferences, the feedback on my work is minimal, so I have to conduct
im-
>>>>>>aginary conversations - _here_ I'm naive, _there_ I've maybe made a
point.
>>>>>>Although I do get into print (off or online) often, there's no real com-
>>>>>>munity of discussion surrounded my work, so these dialogs get
increasingly
>>>>>>psychotic.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Beyond this, I remember when I began thinking through these issues in
the
>>>>>>70s (I did something called The Structure of Reality then, which I still
>>>>>>refer to), I figured I wanted to work on the mediation of mind and world
>>>>>>vis-a-vis formal and informal systems - and how this mediation
constructed
>>>>>>or was constructed by/for mind. And I've remained fastened on this to
the
>>>>>>present.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>With your work on your computers, adding programs (I remember you talked
>>>>>>about all the Network monitoring addons for Win95 you downloaded), I
won-
>>>>>>der where your interest lies, what your goals are? And I'm sending
this to
>>>>>>the lists, since I'm curious about others' configurations as well.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>(For myself, I've stabilized linux and the Mac and Win95 configs, as
well
>>>>>>as my Win 3.+ stuff, so they're functional and somewhat
interoperational;
>>>>>>with the Mac, I've clumsily looked at Applescript, backed out a bit, and
>>>>>>do most of my experimentation on linux, either RedHat or Slackware
varie-
>>>>>>ties. And I still feel that one needs at least some of this in order to
>>>>>>understand TCP/IP or other protocols, to understand the Net in general,
>>>>>>beyond the user interface. For the user interface is always a system, as
>>>>>>Richard MacKinnon might say, of governance, and there's protocol and
gov-
>>>>>>ernance all the way down, and we had better look at it.)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Alan, musing
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>URL:     http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
>>>>>>MIRROR with other pages at:   http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
>>>>>>IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/           TEL 718-857-3671
>>>>>>EXPERIMENTAL (on and off): http://166.84.250.149   Editor, BEING ON LINE
>>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 15:55:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: identities
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

Just want to post a somewhat hurried note in response to Kali Tal's "close
read" of my two-cents on the identity/poetics issue.

Basically, I'm in agreement with her as far as her saying that my offhand
joke about white males not being able to get grants "rests on a bed of
identity politics" and I'd like to thank her for pointing out a blind spot
in my conceptual outlook. I could argue the joke was indeed offhand and
insist that she not read too much into it - but hey, it's waaay too late in
the century for that kind of evasive behavior. The reason I included the
joke was - as I see it -  as a way of expressing some anxiety about wading
into waters over my head. And as it turns out, I learned something thereby.
Enough psychoanalysis.

My concerns over the issue of identity vis-a-vis poetry still remain these:
to read a poem _exclusively_ in terms of the author's identity is not always
the best way to approach a text, since a line does exist, admittedly hazy
and shifting, between an author and her text (btwn intention and result).
Based on what Kali said re: my "straw man" argument, which was simply a
misreading of I thought were her operating assumptions, I guess this is not
her view altogether either.

It's interesting to me how so often critical approaches of any kind at all
seem determined to fill the amorphous interstices between writer and text
instantly, out of a kind of horror vacuii. I'm not saying this is what
Kali's trying to do. Her intent to understand seems honest and forthright,
albeit originating from a different set of vectors than my own and yes, some
of those vectors are indeed the product of identity. Bottom line: the
history of literature is also in some ways the history of repression and
exclusion, ergo: it's incumbent on serious readers to become cognizant of
the fact.

In haste,
Patrick Pritchett

Further reports on Naropa reading series upcoming...
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 19:07:46 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry g 
Subject:      Re: identities
In-Reply-To:  Message of Sat, 28 Jun 1997 15:55:00 -0500 from
              

Seems like the whole identity debate is a consequence of the doubleness of
artwork.  It represents itself on the one hand & it represents the "culture"
on the other.  It's only resolvable in a fusion of the two.  Every identity
we recognize in a poem is a "working" identity - either an expansion or
intensification or both of the self in the process of experiencing/making.
And every biography drawn from a work in art is of interest to us as an
example, an experience we "identify" with as an intensification (through
loss, through injustice, through authenticity?) of reality.  "What modern
art has to do in the service of culture is so to rearrange the details of
modern life, so to reflect it, that it may satisfy the spirit." (Walter
Pater)  Your tragedy is my tragedy.

THE STATUES

Pythagoras planned it.  Why did the people stare?
His numbers, though they moved or seemed to move
In marble or in bronze, lacked character.
But boys and girls, pale from imagined love
Of solitary beds, knew what they were,
That passion could bring character enough,
And pressed at midnight in some public place
Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.

No!  Greater than Pythagoras, for the men
That with a mallet or a chisel modelled these
Calculations that look but casual flesh, put down
All Asiatic vague immensities,
And not the banks of oars that swam upon
The many-headed foam at Salamis.
Europe put off that foam when Phidias
Gave women dreams and dreams their looking-glass.

One image crossed the many-headed, sat
Under the tropic shade, grew round and slow,
No Hamlet thin from eating flies, a fat
Dreamer of the Middle Ages.  Empty eyeballs knew
That knowledge increases unreality, that
Mirror on mirror mirrored is all the show.
When gong and conch declare the hour to bless
Grimalkin crawls to Buddha's emptiness.

When Pearse summoned Cuchulain to his side,
What stalked through the Post Office?  What intellect,
What calculation, number, measurement, replied?
We Irish, born into that ancient sect
But thrown upon this filthy modern tide
And by its formless spawning fury wrecked,
Climb to our proper dark, that we may trace
The lineaments of a plummet-measured face.

- W.B. Yeats

That's poetry. - H. O'G.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 17:00:32 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
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In the state in which I sometimes write poetry I occasionally neglect to
include information essential to the reader, who at such moments is the
least of my concerns. Usually what's happened is an unsupportable assumption
of common knowledge. Afterwards I sometimes realize that I have been
somewhat more opaque than is good for the poem, and I find a way to add the
missing information, whether it be about my status/class/ethnicity/location
or anything else that is both essential and of its nature impossible for
even the most enraptured reader to figure out. (Note that that hypothetical
enraptured reader may in some cases be able to find the information
elsewhere in my oeuvre, in which case I don't always feel the need to
repeat. Example: I don't endlessly repeat that "Margaret" equals "my wife"
or Carlos "my son/stepson." That goes for all the politically hotbutton
identifications that can be attached to me, as well) The elucidation of such
allows me to present myself and the reader with the truly complex and
otherwise not utterable.
If I fail to do this it's because I've screwed up, overestimated the reader,
don't feel that the information is essential, no matter how essential others
might find it, or speak in code so as to establish an in group-out group
dichotomy. On this last, I recently noticed that appreciation of one of my
early poems depended upon reader recognition of the first name of a poet I
admired who at the time was primarily famous among his friends.
What I'm saying is that to the extent possible I include the context, and I
think that most poets worth their salt do. But that contextualization also
involves areas of knowledge that I assume to be common. Snyder apparently
considered China Camp such an area--it was for me, but if it hadn't been the
information was readily available if my interest in the poem was sufficient
motivation. Another example: because I was fascinated by Spicer's The Heads
of the Town I rented Cocteau's Orphee, curiously the only one of his films
that I had not seen (source, by the way, of his radio transmission analogy).
Time and geography narrow the extent of assumable knowledge. I may no longer
know what Shakespeare assumed his audience would know. Hell, I no longer
know what WCW assumed I would. One of the jobs of critics is to do the
archaeology necessary to supply the assumed context. This context includes
the entire cultural matrix. The more I approach naturalizing that matrix
(the more Purcell sounds like music and not like history of music, Hobbes
like philosophy and not the history of philosophy, and Browne like prose and
not the history of prose) the more approachable the text becomes. This
includes the political. To the extent that I wish to understand what Dryden,
Marvell, Milton or Aphra Behn hoped/assumed I would understand I had better
learn what every literate Englishman knew about his or her own political
situation (among other things, this knowledge will free me from dividing the
distant past into good guys and bad guys as if they were all standing for
election--yesterday's radical may not be the father of today's [see The Whig
Interpretation of History, which ought to be on everyone's reading list]).
None of the foregoing in any way, I think, contradicts Bromige's
formulation. Whatever I know, I still meet the text halfway, and the
understanding/comprehension/ecstatic apprehension all result from that meeting.





At 11:51 AM 6/28/97 MDT, you wrote:
>>little boxes
>>on
>>the
>>hillside
>
>'scuze me, i think i might be missing your meaning here.  are you implying
>(since there's nothing to your message but the subject line  "Re:
>identity/poetics") that a) the critic who is interested in identity sees
>poets/poems as nothing more than those pastel colored, indistinguishable
>little square piled-up houses which line the hillsides of S. San Francisco?
>Or that b) those who feel that their own identity matters (i.e., "identity
>poets") live in those tacky little boxes?  or c) a third alternative i can't
>puzzle out?
>
>if a or b, malvina reynolds--mama lion--would be unhappy at the use to which
>you've put her words since her identity was an explicit motivating force
>behind her work.  the folks who lived in the little boxes were the people
>whose identity had been *erased*--by capitalism and forced acculturation, in
>the example of the song.
>
>'course, if it is a or b, then you don't think an author's identity matters,
>and so using her work in a cause which she would reject wouldn't bother you
>overmuch.
>
>wondering,
>kali
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 17:23:04 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
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Just a note on the real estate context. Those little boxes in San Francisco
go for $500,000 and up.

At 11:51 AM 6/28/97 MDT, you wrote:
>>little boxes
>>on
>>the
>>hillside
>
>'scuze me, i think i might be missing your meaning here.  are you implying
>(since there's nothing to your message but the subject line  "Re:
>identity/poetics") that a) the critic who is interested in identity sees
>poets/poems as nothing more than those pastel colored, indistinguishable
>little square piled-up houses which line the hillsides of S. San Francisco?
>Or that b) those who feel that their own identity matters (i.e., "identity
>poets") live in those tacky little boxes?  or c) a third alternative i can't
>puzzle out?
>
>if a or b, malvina reynolds--mama lion--would be unhappy at the use to which
>you've put her words since her identity was an explicit motivating force
>behind her work.  the folks who lived in the little boxes were the people
>whose identity had been *erased*--by capitalism and forced acculturation, in
>the example of the song.
>
>'course, if it is a or b, then you don't think an author's identity matters,
>and so using her work in a cause which she would reject wouldn't bother you
>overmuch.
>
>wondering,
>kali
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 02:16:31 +0100
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Karlien van den Beukel 
Subject:      Re: Poems/Identities
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Kali

Yes, of course I personified the thesis "alienated intellectual labour" by
reference to an indentity known as "Kali" in order to bring into play the
antithesis "otium". However, as extra-textual identities seem to concern
you more....

The only "extra-textual identity information" I have on you, is the speed
with which you responded. Your post was there so soon after mine had been
sent. So, apart from having the gift of fluency, you have constructed this
virtual space (the poetics list) as the theatre of intense agon. There is
the pleasure of the combative oratorial in your writing, Major Barbarella,
and I will deny you that pleasure only in so far as I have decided that I
won't be your sparring partner.

                        Karlien
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 21:34:59 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: name that Donne

Lisa --

Don't know much abt. Donne (as quoth Herman's Hermits) -- but thanks
for the couplet.  Seems variously (& maybe broadly) applicable --

       For if one eat my meat, though it be known
       The meat was mine, the excrement is his own.

A theme worthy of variation . . .



  Did you scarf my tofu?      Granted it
  was mine:  but yours remains the shit


d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 22:20:27 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      Re: name that Donne

doesn't remind me of any donne i've read.  moreover, he wasn't generally
scatological that i've seen... the fly is maybe gros, but not explicit...
check the oed on excrement.  i'm not sure that would be a pre-18th century
word...

if excrement current before 1780's, or 1850's, then my guess would be
good old ben jonson or possibly ever-scatological rochester...
e
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 22:42:34 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         hg 
Subject:      identity
Comments: To: "\" "@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

this just in:

"A poet writes always of his personal life... never speaks directly as to
someone at the breakfast table, there is always a phantasmagoria... he is
never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast;
he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.  A novelist
might describe his accidence, his incoherence, he must not; he is more type
than man, more passion than type."

"A poem is an elaboration of the rhythms of common speech and their assoc-
iation with profound feeling.  To read a poem like prose, that hearers
unaccustomed to poetry may find it easy to understand, is to turn it into
bad, florid prose.  If anybody reads or recites poetry as if it were prose
from some public platform, I ask you, speaking for poets, living, dead or
unborn, to protest in whatever way occurs to your perhaps youthful minds;
if they recite or read by wireless, I ask you to express your indignation
by letter."
- W.B. Yeats
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 20:04:41 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics

>Just a note on the real estate context. Those little boxes in San Francisco
>go for $500,000 and up.

Depends what context you mean.  When "Little Boxes" was written, they were
what they were build to be--cheap factory housing.  *Now* they are $500,000
and up.

K.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 23:23:27 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KIM DAWN BAKER 
Subject:      stone /d/ baby stone head like a   (,  (fwd)
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 1997 22:16:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: KIM DAWN  
To: POETICS@LISTSERV.ACSU.EDU
Subject: stone /d/ baby stone head like a   (,



the stone
                        also

was pink sore throbbing
the baby.s. ( '  ) head.s too soft too supple
i can insert my fingers too gently.
gently.now.

really
a stone is hard
a baby.s head is too soft
liquid almost
more jello than stone
he speaks of form not weight but how can my mouth understand the
difference
my teeth sink easily into one and break upon the other
baby.s. head = bowl of jello [porcelain candy really]
not stone
stone = fist [maybe even angry fist]

so really what has a stone to do with a baby.s head?
they shouldn't even live in the same line.
the stone crushes the head. they stoned him to death. the babies bled
before they were born. the sun burnt heir scalp because their mothers
didnt care enough to cover them. it was their delicious hidden form of
neglect. the babies bled. the babies cried. their mothers turned on their
walkmans and stepped upon little hands.
baby.s heads more like soccer balls loosing air.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 20:21:00 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: Poems/Identities

>The only "extra-textual identity information" I have on you, is the speed
>with which you responded. Your post was there so soon after mine had been
>sent. So, apart from having the gift of fluency, you have constructed this
>virtual space (the poetics list) as the theatre of intense agon. There is
>the pleasure of the combative oratorial in your writing, Major Barbarella,
>and I will deny you that pleasure only in so far as I have decided that I
>won't be your sparring partner.

S'okay with me if you don't want to respond to my posts.  But let me clear
up a common misapprehension.  I'm not engaged in any sort of combat or
contest for any sort of prize.  As I see it, I'm simply trying to create a
space within which my texts may be read, reflecting my struggle to be a
visible (as in "perceivable" rather than "prominent") person in the world of
f2f encounter.  The opening section of Ellison's _Invisible Man_ describes
my frustration about as eloquently as I imagine any writer could.

I sit in front of the computer and work all day (and sometimes all night),
so quick responses don't mean I'm waiting for posts to show up; they mean
that when I'm at my computer and a post *does* show up, I can respond to it
immediately if I've got the time.  Also, I type about as fast as I talk (and
I talk and type fast, but not as fast as Joe), so a response that might take
another person a couple of hours can take me 15-20 minutes. During these
days that we've been having the identity discussion, I've gotten a huge
amount of work done--I find that writing this way increases my productivity,
rather than reduces it.  Nothing to slow your work (and brain) speed down
like sitting there for eight uninterrupted hours trying to figure out just
how small you can compress *this* graphic, or whether *that* Web page needs
just a little more space between the header and the body text.  "Theatre of
Agon?"  I don't *think* so.  More like an exercise pen where I go to stretch
my brain with the other lit critters who've been locked up all day.

Peace,
Kali
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 23:28:52 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         "David Erben (Art)" 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
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One's interpretation of a particular text depends on the poetics of
narrative one is employing.  A structuralist/post-structuralist poetics of
a certain kind -- for example, Greimasian or de Manian -- would consider
questions about narrative self-fashioning to be irrelevant or invalid.  A
Greimasian reading would be interested in constructing a model of the text
in order to show how the various linguistic elements in it are
interarticulated.  A de Manian reading would show how the rhetoric of the
text consistently undoes the thematic/constative claims of the text.  But
a strictly Greimasian or a strictly de Manian reading would rigorously
exclude questions of agency or any question that, in the terms of their
theories, involves considering extra- or non-linguistic entities.

Questions of identity would, on the face of it, appear to be throwbacks to
the now discredited concerns of humanistic theories.  This is not
necessarily the case, however.  For, in raising issues like identity, I do
not think Kali is trying to relate the texts solely to the intentions of
the author, nor do I think she is concerned with explaining the textual
events by the biographical facts of the author.  Kali does seem, however,
to be interested in constructing a poetics which takes account of the
agency of the author not in order to reduce the narrative to the
intentions of the author, but to insert the text and the author into a
larger poesis of the culture itself.  This does not, it seems to me,
involve positing a unified subject, on the contrary, the purpose is to
explain the different subject positions and their cultural logics.  I do
not think that such a task is necessary for all texts.  Text is not a
homogeneous category.  There is, in any case, no a priori way of
discovering what questions it is useful to ask a given text or a cluster
of texts.  The Greimasian logics and pragmatics of narrative and the de
Manian insights into the rhetorics of literary and philosophical texts are
formal theories.  But they do not by themselves raise any substantive
questions regarding the socio historical semiosis and poesis of texts.
The post-structuralist attention to ecriture has certainly displaced the
metaphysical and humanistic approach to reading.  But it has not freed us
from the obligation to rethink and reformulate questions of identity and
power that are at the heart of cultural poesis and semiosis.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 28 Jun 1997 21:05:22 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
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>The post-structuralist attention to ecriture has certainly displaced the
>metaphysical and humanistic approach to reading.

The discussions on this list would seem to be ample evidence, if any were
needed, that the conquest of the world is not yet complete.
"Ecriture." That means "writing" in De Man's native language?
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 01:18:57 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Tom Orange 
Subject:      couplet-gram
In-Reply-To:  <199706290403.AAA05783@julian.uwo.ca>
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if tofu, yours, by name, 'tis known:  whose meat?
was not repast, hence! -- thru bowels shall retreat.

david israel penned:
>
>Did you scarf my tofu?   Granted it
>was mine: but yours remains the shit
>
>lisa samuels unearthed:
>>
>>For if one eat my meat, though it be known
>>The meat was mine, the excrement his own
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 13:07:44 +0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Rebecca Weldon 
Subject:      common knowlege
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I agree that one should not allow for unnecessary obscurity.   While
recognizing that personal symbology* should have integrity within the entire
body of one's work, I reject the hypothesis that global understanding is key
to good poetry.  Common knowlege can be a cross-cultural problem, giving
rise to studies and annotations of texts.  Such aids are key to publishing
and reading, not writing.  Translation, cross-cultural references, esoteric
allusion and archaeological texts belong to different categories of
understanding.   Far be it for me to deprive the academic world (students
and professors) of it's intellectual pursuits**.



N.B.With respect to boxes...I prefer the 500,000 dollar on the hill variety.

**David, perhaps Chou Kung of the Western Chou circa 1100 BC, the "inventor"
of rites and music?
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 00:11:22 -0600
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Hugh Steinberg 
Subject:      epithalamium
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My brother has just announced to my family that he is getting married, and
he has asked me to write a poem to celebrate the occasion.  Fortunately, I
have a year to get started.

I'm looking for contemporary epithalamiums to get an idea as to how to
proceed:  any suggestions?

Thanks!

Hugh Steinberg
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 19:16:03 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
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It was late at night & i was really just thinking of what i had always
considered one of the major ironies of identity politics - the use of terms
related to and including culture that are borrowed from a culture of
'orientalism' in a wider sense - ie. when applied to the non-w.hegemony
words that have a geneology in 19th (&18th  & 20th) century 'racist'
nomenclature. I was thinking about labels and their uses and complicit
simplifying of everything. I am not anti-identity (or even with relation to
a recent question somebody asked about buddhism - ante-identity) politics -
in fact i think there is much of value in much identity theory (but then i'm
sort of a pantheist in relation to a lot of theory - also at times an
ignoramist). There were many threads going on that i have trashed (in the
little trashcan in the corner of the screen sense) so i am not completely
clear about what i was 'inspired' by. There have been many ironies and vague
implicit hypocrisies and allegations recently - (isn't it great) My post was
inexcusable late night facetiousness.

As for the song. Well whatever mama lion may be happy or unhappy with - i
felt it haunted me unfairly for a long part of my developing life, (kind of
like andrew lloyd webber would for many kids now-adays) and i just relished
the chance to finally use it for my own purposes - however unsavoury that
may appear. Luckily now i can only remember the first verse (or is it the
chorus) which from memory was about 7 years long.

Dan

the derth for the daughter this berth bother need her

At 11:51 AM 6/28/97 MDT, you wrote:
>>little boxes
>>on
>>the
>>hillside
>
>'scuze me, i think i might be missing your meaning here.  are you implying
>(since there's nothing to your message but the subject line  "Re:
>identity/poetics") that a) the critic who is interested in identity sees
>poets/poems as nothing more than those pastel colored, indistinguishable
>little square piled-up houses which line the hillsides of S. San Francisco?
>Or that b) those who feel that their own identity matters (i.e., "identity
>poets") live in those tacky little boxes?  or c) a third alternative i can't
>puzzle out?
>
>if a or b, malvina reynolds--mama lion--would be unhappy at the use to which
>you've put her words since her identity was an explicit motivating force
>behind her work.  the folks who lived in the little boxes were the people
>whose identity had been *erased*--by capitalism and forced acculturation, in
>the example of the song.
>
>'course, if it is a or b, then you don't think an author's identity matters,
>and so using her work in a cause which she would reject wouldn't bother you
>overmuch.
>
>wondering,
>kali
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 03:17:53 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KIM DAWN BAKER 
Subject:      Re: POETICS Digest - 27 Jun 1997 to 28 Jun 1997
Comments: To: Automatic digest processor 
In-Reply-To:  <199706290403.AAA05784@julian.uwo.ca>
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is the body inherently a whole?
-peter ganick

the body is full of  h  o  l  e  s

asshole         mouth           nostrils        eyes            nipples

belly button     [which breathes]

cock            vagina          ears
wounds scars tattoos earring holes memory gaps

[the throat is the internal limb between pain and pleasure]

moans screams sighs cries chokes roars gasps mumbles whistles yelps slurps
groans chortles snorts pops clicks wheezes babbles hisses hums whimpers
whines puffs drones stutters lisps rattles
[thanks to allen weiss' text upon  christof migone's cd
'hole in the head'

he  spit into a long  clear wine bottle for months.
i made him wrap it up.
it made me gag to think of that bottle.

she [halona hilbertz /performance artist from germany currently residing
in new york city/] shat in baby bottles and lined them up in her studio.
a brilliant tribute to /the pleasures of defecation/. [any threads to be
played with here? for selfish reasons. i am currently working on a paper
on this topic. in relation. to. deleuze + guattari's body without organs]
pull from teeth  .here.
 the presence/absence/refusal [evidence] of the body
as a mechanical producing consuming bulimic machine.

the skin is softer than metal

this is the length of a breath____________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________

[sharon gannon from  :open your mouth and let the air out]

please insert fingers here.             /mouth]
[               ]
and.            pull.
my face over my eyes so i'm no longer scared.

sometimes i want to cover all my body openings. they seem obsene and
beautiful.
they share. open. shit. blood. cum. piss. water. food. puke.
alcohol.tears.
lips.
i want to. cover.
and then.
i want to cover your mouth with my mouth with yours.

/tears/
the eyes are tears are torn are two black holes are torn stretched skin
they never wanted to see they constantly try to roll back. inside. where
they belong. midnight.

i think i hurt mom s belly
and she hasn t forgiven me

i used to ask him to pinch me so hard to slap my face and leave a red hand
mark upon its surface i wanted to feel something bodily i sat beside my
body


-thanks for your mail alan-am so intrigued by your work-could you send
some more?-to the list or just me-and maybe talk about your process
somewhat?  [sorry i'm not sure how to send to individuals and not the
whole list now that i get it in digest format)-
-in appreciation of kali's provocative insightful considered posts

oh another thing, in relation to the identity poet/artist :
1. knowing the gender of the individual may [likely will] alter the
reading of the work.i find it interesting that my gender is in question
even though i claim to be a woman.
how does this alter my work. voice. power.
[tell them i m woman baby]

2. this discussion has made me think of the trials and tribulation of the
eli langer case. canadian artist based in toronto. remember the
controversy of his drawings and paintings deemed pornographic. the work
taken. the court case. the outrage. because he was male. because these
were portrayals of the sexul play between/of children.
she walked through thinking these works were done by a woman.
she felt sorry for the incest experience of the artist.
she realized on her way out that they were done by a male artist.
she felt sick.
she walked back through the gallery afresh.
it had changed.
it became inflicted violence. it became sickness and perversion and she
wanted to protect her children from this man.
she no longer felt compassion for the artist.
it was no longer done by a victim. but by a child molester.

3. between the          space of the body and the page

'what the state can do to a piece of paper, it can do to a human body.

-pat califia _ janine fuller  from the intro to 'forbidden passages
/writings banned in canada'. 1995.

4. there is more to the identity of an artwork than the identity of the
artist. there is more to the identity of the artist than the artwork.
as i write this i think of the entanglement of art + life and the constant
occurrence of this in my art and in the work of many.
but i'm not so self important to think people will care who i am. how my
life has been. though it bleeds through the brewing seeping leakage
staining of the teabag of the inscription of my body / though this changes
and becomes something someone else s once the work breathes on it s own
within the presence/ansence of my body with other [s] bodies/  i have no
desire to control or predict the interaction of other bodies to my work.
you bring you and take what you want all or nothing or fragments

5. i am thinking of what it means to me and others to read my work as
though it were made / written / performed by a man
could someone name some artists who have worked under pseudenom [sp.?]
of gender contradiction. have men done this also?
george sand. anais nin? [when she wrote pornography?]



kim dawn
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 05:41:11 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 

Hugh --

<< My brother has just announced to my family that he is getting
married, and he has asked me to write a poem to celebrate the occasion.
Fortunately, I have a year to get started.

I'm looking for contemporary epithalamiums to get an idea as to how to
proceed:  any suggestions? >>

congrats!

a couple of American poets -- Robert Hass and another fellow (forget
who, but I think both are writers for whom I have some respect) have
edited an anthology of poetry that is celebratory of marriage.  I've not, as
yet, much looked at the book, but I suspect it might be an interesting (&
likely a good) place to start . . . (looking under Robert Hass's name -- e.g.,
in Books In Print -- shd. prob. suffice to locate the volume in question).

Have fun!
d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 07:24:34 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: common knowlege / wash yer ears / sinology

Rebecca --

<< **David, perhaps Chou Kung of the Western Chou circa 1100 BC,
the "inventor" of rites and music? >>

I somewhat doubt it (though not sure).  The figure I mention was mainly
noted (at least in the Chuang Tse anecdote) for his love of wilderness &
solitude & his abhorrence of getting roped into government service (or
even much prolonged social interaction).  More specifically I seem to
recall that he was approached w/ the suggestion of serving as the ruler of
a state then in chaos -- & his response (as mentioned in an earlier post --
perhaps I shd. have repeated this, for sake of clarity) was to hasten down
to the river and wash out his ears! --

(kind of an ear equivalent of "now go wash out your mouth with soap,
you filthy rascal you")

the expression "wash ears" (or "[to] purify [one's / his / my / our] ears"),
in the original Chuang Tse tale, was apparently intended to epitomize
succinctly the man's abhorrence of worldly ambition -- of the "spiritual
dangers" thereof.  Certain figures in Chinese lore could be characterized as
"famous hermits" -- including those renowned for reluctance to join in the
sullying temptation of governing; -- and this chap is certainly one of 'em.

A few such figures were as noted for their privacy (in this sense) as, say,
J.D. Salinger among our contemp. sages.  (Esquire lately did a cover story
abt. the experience of not-quite-meeting Salinger -- the act of hanging out
at the end of his driveway being adequate grounds for national reportage.)

The tale highlights a distinction between the outlook of Confucius (that
it's the primary obligation of a cultivated man to serve the social nexus)
and the view of the Taoists (that one's purpose is to attain oneness with
universal existence -- and that getting messed up with politics / conflict /
ambition / fame -- these would tend to distract from & hamper that
needfully quietistic quest).

/ / / / /

BTW, regarding the Han Shan line (that makes allusion to the Chuang Tse
story), I wrote that Gary Snyder was the 1st to translate the poem.  This
may or may not be quite accurate.  Prior to Snyder's Han Shan sequence
being published in the late '50s (he rendered maybe 27 verses), there was
a smaller sequence that appeared (in a journal) translated by the estimable
Sinologist [doesn't that sound more P.C. than Orientalist?] Arthur Waley.
 There was some overlap of (original) verses rendered by the two.  (I'd
not assume that Snyder nec. got his interest in Han Shan from the Waley
translations -- they might've been drawn to Han Shan independently.)
Prior to the Waley & Snyder translations, Han Shan was not a familiar
name in Orientalist circles (apparently, Han Shan's memory was kept
alive among Japanese Zen poets & painters [where he's an iconic figure]
more than it was kept alive in Chinese literary tradition -- traditionally
he's not approached as a "major poet" in the same way that some other
famous T'ang dynasty figures are; a little booklet, "Han Shan in English,"
published by White Pine Press some years ago, gives a good discussion
of all this).

Burton Watson's subsequent translation of 100 poems from Han Shan
(Columbia University Press, prob. late 1970s) is my fave.  I likely get
my background on the "washing ears" allusion from a Watson footnote.
I'd not, anyway, been aware of Snyder's borrowing of that expression
(utilizing that allusion) in his own poetry till Dean Brink brought the
lines to collective attention.  In light of Snyder's interest in Han Shan, it
seems safe to presume he had both the Han Shan poem & Han Shan's
allusion back to Chuang Tse, in mind (since the former makes no sense
w/o the latter).  This annotatable "to purify our ears" isn't so bad an
example of what can be involved in poetic allusion, don't you think?

On the whole, Snyder doesn't seem to depend on allusion in the way
that, say, Ezra Pound evidently does -- but this instance does make me
wonder what other Asian literary references might be scattered in some
of Snyder's lines.  I'm still not quite clear on Dean Brink's point, when
denigrating what he described (I believe he said a in "technical" sense) as
"winking" in Snyder's poetry -- or how the above-discussed allusion may
or may not be an example of such "winking," -- or, further, why it's okay
for anyone to wink at Shakespeare & is okay for some of us to wink at
Gertrude Stein, but is pretty frown-on-able or suspicious for a westerner
to presume to wink at Chuang Tse or Han Shan or Dogen.  Probably I
need to develop my wink literacy (if not to say my overall grasp of irony
& its uses). ;-)

note:  as for Chou K'ung -- my mention of a "1,000 b.c." date was
scattershot -- I prob. should have left it as at "some time prior to Chuang
Tse" -- (I merely gave that dubious annular tag for sake of a touch-earth
effect w.r.t. the hopscotch-across-history trope).

You know, Chinese tend to place their pre-Confucian mythical figures a
good deal farther back in time than modern historiographers would be
likely to credit (of course this is true of ancient figures in Indian lore, too)
-- for instance Huang Ti -- the Yellow Emperor -- isn't he supposed to
have lived something like 5,000 years ago (or maybe even, 5,000 b.c. ?) --
just as, in India, Krishna & the Mahabharata war are located something
like 5,000 years ago, and the reign of Ramachandra (hero of the ancient
Ramayana epic) is sometimes tagged at something like 7,000 years ago.
Personally I believe these far-antiquitous datings for the Indian figures
(western scholars have an irksome habit of saying anyone & everyone --
Krishna, Zarathustra, whoever -- lived [if they really lived at all] in a
little swatch of time between (e.g.) 300 - 600 b.c.); -- but I feel much less
certain abt. the far-far-antiquity the Chinese ancients . . .
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 09:15:12 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: buddha love

Steve Shoemaker writes:

<< . . . I've always been intrigued  . . . by the Buddhist valuing of
"non-attachment," which has come up with some frequency in recent
posts.  My question, then, is how exactly is "love" supposed to work in
this scheme of things.  Is love for another person really possible without
"attachment," in the sense of not wanting to do without? >>

not presuming to answer this important (& problematical) question in
any sort of authoritative fashion (& my views anyway aren't informed
by any adequately thorough knowledge of Buddhism), -- but rather, just
to reply conversationally & in the manner of a thought-exercise, I'd say:

there can be many forms & degrees of both attachment & love, but the
two are not synonymous.  A deep level of love can be combined with a
profound degree of detachment; -- indeed, that very combination seems
to be encouraged as an ideal in many spiritual traditions.  In one poem,
the mediaeval Hindu/Sufi poet Kabir says something like:

  What is this mystery
  allowing me to unite
  love with detachment
  in life?

thus suggesting both the rarity & high value of such a combination.

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 11:34:38 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Matt Kirschenbaum 
Subject:      well donne
In-Reply-To:   from "David Israel" at Jun 29,
              97 05:41:11 am
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Hi Lisa,

For if one eate my meate, though it be knowne
The meate was mine, th'excrement is his owne:

It's Donne, from "Sir; though (I thanke God for it) I do hate."

--Matt

===================================================================
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum                    University of Virginia
mgk3k@virginia.edu                         Department of English
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~mgk3k/       The Blake Archive | IATH
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 11:53:15 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU
Subject:      meat well donne
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII

Lisa,

Although the couplet does sound more like something Jonson or the
Scriblerians would write, it is by Donne, in Satire 2:

which begins,

Sir; though (I thank God for it) I do hate
Perfectly all this town, yet there's one state
In all ill things so excellently best,
That hate, towards them, breeds pity towards the rest.

and goes on to attack poetic imitation (and plagiarism way before there was
even a notion of copywrite protection) done for $$$:

And they who write to lords, rewards to get,
Are they not like singers at doors for meat?
And they who write, because all write, have still
That excuse for writing, and for writing ill.
But he is worst, who (beggarly) doth chaw
Others' wits' fruits, and in his ravenous maw
Rankly digested, doth those things out spew,
As his own things; and they are his own, 'tis true,
For if one eat my meat, though it be known
The meat was mine, th' excrement is his own.

I don't know what Donne's personal beef is here, since his own poetry
was not published in his lifetime, but was circulated widely in manuscipt.
Ideas about the meaning of authorship were up for grabs, as they always
are more or less; but seems interting to me here is that "hate" and
an ethos of blistering anger are the starting points for deploying
a representation of the economics of writing, and that the angry poet relishes
the blasphemy suggested by his consumption metaphor in which words are
transformed by passing into and out of the body (see other poetics threads).

Gary R
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 11:02:39 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         GrahamD 
Subject:      Re: epithalamium
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Not to everyone's taste (what anthology is?), but worth a look:

     *To Woo & to Wed:  Contemporary Poets on Love & Marriage*, ed. Michael
Blumenthal.  Poseidon Press, 1992.  Some contributors:  Creeley, Levertov,
Gregg, Heaney, Bishop, Dugan, Gluck, Muldoon, Justice, Ostriker.

David Graham
grahamd@mac.ripon.edu
_______________________________________________________________________________


My brother has just announced to my family that he is getting married, and
he has asked me to write a poem to celebrate the occasion.  Fortunately, I
have a year to get started.

I'm looking for contemporary epithalamiums to get an idea as to how to
proceed:  any suggestions?

Thanks!

Hugh Steinberg
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 13:02:05 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      Re: buddha love
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Odd though it may seem, psychologically speaking secure attachment is good
enough
rather than not wanting to do without.
tom bell

At 02:44 PM 6/28/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Awright, pardon a tyro's question here:  I've always been intrigued,
>from a more or less uninformed distanced, by the Buddhist valuing of
>"non-attachment," which has come up with some frequency in recent posts.
>My question, then, is how exactly is "love" supposed to work in this
>scheme of things.  Is love for another person really possible without
>"attachment," in the sense of not wanting to do without?  I'm
>probably approaching the question somewhat superficially, but cldn't
>resist the chance to query what appears to be a rather large number of
>people interested in buddhistic living...  steve
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 13:02:07 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Thomas Bell 
Subject:      Re: body-as-text discussion
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I was thinking more of the neurophysiology, buy I like your point

At 04:51 PM 6/28/97 -0400, you wrote:
>At 01:14 PM 6/28/97 -0400, tbell wrote:
>>transplantation appears to involve more than just the physical fragment.\
>
>translation might be a better approximation to transplantation
>the body as a whole might be the text-entire
>the body/text can change via translation
>the fluids of the body/the fluidity of a text, for example,
>     revising/cutting/embellishing/adding
>
>how far does the body/text analogy go?
>>>is the body inherently a whole?
>>>does fragmentation occur naturally/unaturally
>>>  for instance the generally accepted practice
>>>  of surgery or amputation?
>>>can't "body" be a fluid concept?
>>>out-----
>>>peter ganick
>>>potepoet@home.com
>
>>>>"Cyberlife leads to disembodiment, the exact opposite of what the culture
>>>>needs," - Suzi Gablik
>>>>
>>>>"Ray [Paul] concludes 'cultural creatives' demand that all the pieces of
>>>>their lives fit together to create an authentic whole...one that merges the
>>>>best of modernism and traditionalism, embraces both East and West..."
>>>>
>>>>but "We need to mount a spirited defense of our right and power to seek our
>>>>own realities." Jon Spayde
>>>>tom bell
>
>>>>>hi buffalo-l-er's---------
>>>>>i don't think alan sondheim would mind if i
>>>>>forwarded this post of his to the fop-list
>>>>>made an hour ago--------
>>>>>it bears relevance to the "body-as-text' discussion
>>>>>proposed by kdawn earlier----
>>>>>out--------
>>>>>peter ganick
>>>>>
>>>>>>Subject: Re: E-Minds Discussion
>>>>>>>Sender: FOP-L 
>>>>>>>From: Alan * Sondheim 
>>>>>>>Subject:      Re: E-Minds Discussion
>>>>>>>To: Multiple recipients of list FOP-L 
>>>>>>>I'm curious - with your computing skills and equipment - what are your
>>>>>>>ultimate goals - what do you want to do?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I find myself constantly having to pare back, for example, ignoring
>C++ in
>>>>>>>order to concentrate on the languages I know to some extent, and can
>use.
>>>>>>>With essays, I try to read things that are sent me within three days; if
>>>>>>>not, I have to expunge them.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I move from one operating system to another; I feel I have good
>knowledge
>>>>>>>of linux and Win95, poor still of Mac, but getting there. I'm getting
>>>>>>>close to 250 - 300 messages a day.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I want to feel I'm within the internals of the machine, and
>understand the
>>>>>>>psychoanalytical and philosophical ramifications of technology. I
>want to
>>>>>>>do this without disregarding the body, or its splitting re: issues of
>em-
>>>>>>>bodiment and virtuality - and I don't want to go for simplistic answers
>>>>>>>(which usually carry the day). I try to keep up with "the literature" as
>>>>>>>best I can; much of it seems anecdotal (this is what a MUD does) or
>naive
>>>>>>>(cyber-relationships are/aren't "real").
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Since I'm not institutionalized, I can rarely go to the conferences I've
>>>>>>>applied to, to present a paper; there's no money. Since I can't go to
>the
>>>>>>>conferences, the feedback on my work is minimal, so I have to conduct
>im-
>>>>>>>aginary conversations - _here_ I'm naive, _there_ I've maybe made a
>point.
>>>>>>>Although I do get into print (off or online) often, there's no real com-
>>>>>>>munity of discussion surrounded my work, so these dialogs get
>increasingly
>>>>>>>psychotic.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Beyond this, I remember when I began thinking through these issues in
>the
>>>>>>>70s (I did something called The Structure of Reality then, which I still
>>>>>>>refer to), I figured I wanted to work on the mediation of mind and world
>>>>>>>vis-a-vis formal and informal systems - and how this mediation
>constructed
>>>>>>>or was constructed by/for mind. And I've remained fastened on this to
>the
>>>>>>>present.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>With your work on your computers, adding programs (I remember you talked
>>>>>>>about all the Network monitoring addons for Win95 you downloaded), I
>won-
>>>>>>>der where your interest lies, what your goals are? And I'm sending
>this to
>>>>>>>the lists, since I'm curious about others' configurations as well.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>(For myself, I've stabilized linux and the Mac and Win95 configs, as
>well
>>>>>>>as my Win 3.+ stuff, so they're functional and somewhat
>interoperational;
>>>>>>>with the Mac, I've clumsily looked at Applescript, backed out a bit, and
>>>>>>>do most of my experimentation on linux, either RedHat or Slackware
>varie-
>>>>>>>ties. And I still feel that one needs at least some of this in order to
>>>>>>>understand TCP/IP or other protocols, to understand the Net in general,
>>>>>>>beyond the user interface. For the user interface is always a system, as
>>>>>>>Richard MacKinnon might say, of governance, and there's protocol and
>gov-
>>>>>>>ernance all the way down, and we had better look at it.)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Alan, musing
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>URL:     http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html
>>>>>>>MIRROR with other pages at:   http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
>>>>>>>IMAGES: http://www.cs.unca.edu/~davidson/pix/           TEL 718-857-3671
>>>>>>>EXPERIMENTAL (on and off): http://166.84.250.149   Editor, BEING ON LINE
>>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 13:06:59 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Lisa Samuels 
Subject:      Re: meat well donne
In-Reply-To:  <01IKN5TE3MYE045MVZ@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU> from
              "GROBERTS@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU" at Jun 29, 97 11:53:15 am
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matt k and gary r,

thanks much for the citation, and gary for your analysizing.
hmm.

of donne and wedding poems -- i recommended 'the good morrow'
as a wedding poem for a friend, and he said it went over
gorgeously.

lisa s.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 13:13:13 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: meat well donne

Gary explores Donne's inventive invective --

<< . . . the angry poet relishes the blasphemy suggested by his
consumption metaphor in which words are transformed by passing into
and out of the body (see other poetics threads). >>

Yes -- also interesting if, rather than taking the concluding couplet in
isolation, it's consider closely, in context:

  But he is worst, who (beggarly) doth chaw
  Others' wits' fruits, and in his ravenous maw
  Rankly digested, doth those things out spew,
  As his own things; and they are his own, 'tis true,
  For if one eat my meat, though it be known
  The meat was mine, th' excrement is his own.

the phrasing in lines 2-3 (above) can suggest an idea that's alternative to
one's (else) immediate assumption that the food passes in through the
body, is digested in the gut,  and is then excreted (in traditional fashion)
from the anus --

here, he gets more baroque w/ the metaphor, suggesting that it's both
chewed *and* rankly [stinkily] digested in the hateful fellow's ravenous
maw [a term presumably more typically suited to a dog's mouth than a
man's?], then spewed out again.  So it's digested in the mouth [and therein
turned rank, stinky, shit-like], and straightaway spewed out again from
the mouth itself, as words [for words indeed come out of the mouth,
though in this case, the words are esteemed tantamount to shit] --

thus, we have the basic idea that the rank fellow has taken my words and
turned 'em into shit and then spewed 'em out from his shitful mouth --

yeah, says the poet, the words he stole had been mine mine alright (had
been the fruits of my wit) -- but he's now passing them off as his own
stinkin' shit. (& btw, isn't it the case that "meat" in Donne's day could
signify any sort of food -- not nec. restricted to animal flesh? -- as in nut
meats, etc.?)

There's also, seems, the (scandalous) implication of the purloiner "eating
shit" (and "talking shit") -- upping the rhetorical ante. Not so delicate.

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 13:21:13 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steve Shoemaker 
Subject:      Re: buddha love
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

David--Thanks for the Kabir quote--glad to hear the combination is at
least a "mystery"!  Any other refs to recommend on this point?  steve

Steve Shoemaker
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 13:52:17 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: buddha love

>Thanks for the Kabir quote--glad to hear the combination is at least a
>"mystery"!  Any other refs to recommend on this point?  steve

here's one source treating this subject matter with much skill:

Meher Baba, DISCOURSES (1967; 7th Edition, 1987, Sheriar Press,
Myrtle Beach, SC); I'm pretty sure it's obtainable via the Searchlight
Books website -- http://www.slbooks.com

(See, e.g., "Love," "The Nature of the Ego and its Termination," "The
Dynamics of Spiritual Advancement," "Qualifications of the Aspirant,"
"Maya," "The Conditions of Happiness," and "God as Infinite Love.")

One might also look at -- an almost random (but worthwhile) citation --
Lex Hixon's recent biographical meditation on the life of Ramakrishna,
*Great Swan* (published by Shambhala), for a sense of the feel of a life
wherein the union of love & detatchment are demonstrated at the highest
possible level.

For Buddhism -- & an interesting road of intellectual delight in its "depth
psychology" dimensions (not to mention a snapping, crackling, creative
reformulation of English-language discourse) -- I've always felt Chogyam
Trungpa's writing to be good stuff.  Shambhala has, in recent years, been
issuing a slow, steady stream of new books drawn from his seminars.  I'm
not sure where specifically to point for the subject matter immediately in
question (except to note that the principle tersely covered in Kabir's
verse seems close to the root of everything Trungpa wrote or said; but
one could say the same of Ramakrishna or Meher Baba, for that matter).

There are at least a few personal faves.

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 11:07:02 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: meat well donne
Mime-Version: 1.0
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David--Check the OED. Maw=stomach, except in rare cases, until fairly recently.

At 01:13 PM 6/29/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Gary explores Donne's inventive invective --
>
><< . . . the angry poet relishes the blasphemy suggested by his
>consumption metaphor in which words are transformed by passing into
>and out of the body (see other poetics threads). >>
>
>Yes -- also interesting if, rather than taking the concluding couplet in
>isolation, it's consider closely, in context:
>
>  But he is worst, who (beggarly) doth chaw
>  Others' wits' fruits, and in his ravenous maw
>  Rankly digested, doth those things out spew,
>  As his own things; and they are his own, 'tis true,
>  For if one eat my meat, though it be known
>  The meat was mine, th' excrement is his own.
>
>the phrasing in lines 2-3 (above) can suggest an idea that's alternative to
>one's (else) immediate assumption that the food passes in through the
>body, is digested in the gut,  and is then excreted (in traditional fashion)
>from the anus --
>
>here, he gets more baroque w/ the metaphor, suggesting that it's both
>chewed *and* rankly [stinkily] digested in the hateful fellow's ravenous
>maw [a term presumably more typically suited to a dog's mouth than a
>man's?], then spewed out again.  So it's digested in the mouth [and therein
>turned rank, stinky, shit-like], and straightaway spewed out again from
>the mouth itself, as words [for words indeed come out of the mouth,
>though in this case, the words are esteemed tantamount to shit] --
>
>thus, we have the basic idea that the rank fellow has taken my words and
>turned 'em into shit and then spewed 'em out from his shitful mouth --
>
>yeah, says the poet, the words he stole had been mine mine alright (had
>been the fruits of my wit) -- but he's now passing them off as his own
>stinkin' shit. (& btw, isn't it the case that "meat" in Donne's day could
>signify any sort of food -- not nec. restricted to animal flesh? -- as in nut
>meats, etc.?)
>
>There's also, seems, the (scandalous) implication of the purloiner "eating
>shit" (and "talking shit") -- upping the rhetorical ante. Not so delicate.
>
>d.i.
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 14:30:02 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: meat well donne

> Check the OED. Maw=stomach, except in rare cases, until fairly
> recently.

oops, thanks for the bellies-up;  (so much for my theory?)

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 11:37:56 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: meat well donne
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Happens to the best of us. In this case, to tie two threads together, I
remembered the proper meaning because of my orientalist interest in food.

At 02:30 PM 6/29/97 -0400, you wrote:
>> Check the OED. Maw=stomach, except in rare cases, until fairly
>> recently.
>
>oops, thanks for the bellies-up;  (so much for my theory?)
>
>d.i.
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 14:51:36 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: meat well donne / Pillow Book

Speaking of tying threads together -- in this case Orientalism plus the
Writing-and-the-Body thread -- just saw Peter Greenaway's postmod
orientalist bodywriting tour de force, THE PILLOW BOOK yesterday.
am speechless.  Most amazing were some of the formal accomplishments
& innovations -- e.g., how well the filmological techniques (w/ inset
screens & scenes, etc., appearing & disappearing, scrolling, . . . ) felt in
accord w/ (one's sense of) narrative technique & escrutive [was that the
word? hey I'm not a Frenchist] aesthetics -- the narrative framings of the
original Pillow Book, the visual framings of Japanese writing & printing
& illustration etc. etc. . . .  The central tale of abuse & revenge seems in
some respects a mere scaffold on which to string up a wide array of
conceptual ponderings & formal ponderousness, all of which is pulled off
so well -- notwithstanding the lavish horridness (which is beginning to
feel like a Greenaway trademark).  It's hard to think that this film would
not prove of some interest to your average Poetics denizen . . . [I'll leave
it to someone else to do a theory-laden sendup of how Joe Bob Briggs
might review the movie . . .]

d.i.

>>> Mark Weiss  06/29/97 02:37pm
>>>
Happens to the best of us. In this case, to tie two threads together, I
remembered the proper meaning because of my orientalist interest in
food.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 15:35:46 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics

David Erben (Art) observes,

<< The post-structuralist attention to ecriture has certainly displaced the
metaphysical and humanistic approach to reading.  But it has not freed us
from the obligation to rethink and reformulate questions of identity and
power that are at the heart of cultural poesis and semiosis. >>

besides questions of ecriture, wonder if you might trouble to define
semiosis? (is it the semiotic equivalent of narcosis?) --

I've been operating under the premise that poesis (as in mythopoesis)
involves the "creation" of something (as in, a myth) -- is poesis being put
here on a parallel plane w/ semiosis -- where (presumably) the one deals
w/ words, the other w/ signs? -- is it your own invention [maybe, your
own logopoesis?], -- or is it now a current term of art? just curious

d.i.

this reminds, I'm a bit behind on my logocentrism (a phrase appearing
hereon lately) -- does that simply signify word-centered, I suppose? (and
with what implications, one wonders?) -- sorry, I never got the theory
syllabus, so must inter-theorocate on the fly . . . (which happens to be
located on the wall) . . .
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 14:16:27 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
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I waxed ironic at David Erben's expense because of a long-standing gripe
aginst not theory but its expression. As a writer I operate under a rule
analogous to Occam's Razor: the least complex or jargon-laden formulation
that accurately conveys the material at hand to the interested audience is
the best way to do so. I define the audience in this case as those
interested in literature or literary theory.
It goes almost without saying that there are plenty of ideas that are for
various reasons not expressible in language familiar to the audience,
however defined. In such cases if the audience is truly interested it will
have to make the stretch and learn the new lingo. But this is not particle
physice, and none of the ideas in Erben's post are that complex. Plainer
speech would be appropriate.
Unless, of course, what is being conveyed is that knowledge of the lingo is
necessary for inclusion in the club and that the writer is a member in good
standing. Sort of a magic handshake.

At 03:35 PM 6/29/97 -0400, you wrote:
>David Erben (Art) observes,
>
><< The post-structuralist attention to ecriture has certainly displaced the
>metaphysical and humanistic approach to reading.  But it has not freed us
>from the obligation to rethink and reformulate questions of identity and
>power that are at the heart of cultural poesis and semiosis. >>
>
>besides questions of ecriture, wonder if you might trouble to define
>semiosis? (is it the semiotic equivalent of narcosis?) --
>
>I've been operating under the premise that poesis (as in mythopoesis)
>involves the "creation" of something (as in, a myth) -- is poesis being put
>here on a parallel plane w/ semiosis -- where (presumably) the one deals
>w/ words, the other w/ signs? -- is it your own invention [maybe, your
>own logopoesis?], -- or is it now a current term of art? just curious
>
>d.i.
>
>this reminds, I'm a bit behind on my logocentrism (a phrase appearing
>hereon lately) -- does that simply signify word-centered, I suppose? (and
>with what implications, one wonders?) -- sorry, I never got the theory
>syllabus, so must inter-theorocate on the fly . . . (which happens to be
>located on the wall) . . .
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 14:23:53 -0700
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From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      continuation of previous post
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semiosis--a place in the desert with half a well.
        --a stress-disorder common among drivers of large trucks.
        --franglais for the small rodents beloved of cats
        --the Greeks had seven of them
        --a half a bone is better than none
        --with emphasis on the last syllable, a philosophical concept, as
in,                 "semios_is_, therefore I aint."
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 14:35:28 -0700
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From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      American Language
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The luncheonette at the Balboa Park pro shop in Balboa Park here in what the
locals unblushingly call "America's Finest City" is a good place for brunch
with a view and an earful of choice dialect. Here's a new one on me.

To add to "badly wrapped," "a few screws loose," "hit in the head once too
often," etc., "a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic," as a description
of Mike Tyson's mental state, altho it occurs to me as I type that this
might also be meant as a motive for his recent behavior.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 17:36:12 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: continuation of previous post

Mark Weiss now waxes definitional:

> semiosis--a place in the desert with half a well. . . .
   [et seq.]

or:
  ~a semiphore w/ halitosis?
  ~a theorist who's semi-comatose?
  ~a obsessive interest in semi-automatic weapons?
  ~a pathological tendancy to do everything precisely halfway?

(my questions were of course, if naieve, yet straightforward.  I'd simply
never encountered the collocation "poesis & semiosis" & wondered); and
for that matter, I'm way behind in my ecriture, too . . . & must admit, it's
a keen-soundin' word --

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 14:59:09 -0700
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From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      poet/identity/re :David Erben's post
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An informative posting, for which, my thanks...It does give rise to two
questions (so far) in my reading of it, David : when you write "the
poststructuralist attention to ecriture has certainly displaced the
metaphysical and humanistic approach to reading," for whom has it displaced
these approaches? For yourself? For the Academy? For Greimas & DeMan? For
those who pay "poststructrualist attention to ecriture"? These are not
disingenuous questions, although I realize they may have that ring. But the
passive construction of your sentence makes this displacement sound like a
done deal--exceptions to the rule being "throwbacks", then--& yet a number
of voices on this List have found agreement in the idea of an imagined
(from whatever indications) poet on the other side of the poem from the
reader. Which makes it look like the approach you speak of is not a done
deal, not on this List.

A cognate question : Are you--or not to personalize this; do these persons
towards whose thinking you gesture--findn it possible to read in multipile
ways, using multiple methods? Would such an approach be intellectual
dishonorable or indefensible? Wouldnt it be possible to read as text of
interacting linguistic bits, a poem whose meanings one had, and I use the
figure deliberately, by heart? (As it would be possible to 'step back" &
see a loved one as a unit in one of many systems, and the loved body as
consisting in all its dissectible elements?) Curiously, David
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 15:10:56 -0700
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From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      Donne couplet
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consider, then, apportioning this feast :
the which, though human, each devours like beast:
The food before you comes from Master Donne :
The portion all your own comes out as dung.






(not a bit Donnelike; sounds like a century later)
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 15:51:57 -0700
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From:         David Bromige 
Subject:      american language
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Mark, yes, I too like the "two sandwiches short of a picnic." Theres also
"One brick shy of a chimney," and "His elevator doesnt go all the way to
the penthouse," In another context, I've always liked "He was tripping his
doors off." Be good to see additions to this little list. David
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 15:46:36 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: american language
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Collected at a rest stop in Western Nebraska: watering his weasel=pissing
colected in Rocky Ntn Nat Park: Summer House=bathroom (explanation: "summer
girls 'n summer boys")

At 03:51 PM 6/29/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Mark, yes, I too like the "two sandwiches short of a picnic." Theres also
>"One brick shy of a chimney," and "His elevator doesnt go all the way to
>the penthouse," In another context, I've always liked "He was tripping his
>doors off." Be good to see additions to this little list. David
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 19:01:27 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Alan * Sondheim 
Subject:      Ekstasy
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-


Ekstasy


Travis looked around her. "This is the being that banged drums," she said,
"much." She said, "Nothing's ever," quietly, "changed." Truly amazing!
"They were banged at nearly equal," she added, "intervals." "They have a
natural habit of," he murmured, "doubling."

She was surprised. "Doubling, up and down the recursive" she asked,
"tree?"  Suzie smiled back. "Yes, as if there were a," he said, "root."
"It gives them," she said, "ideas." "Ideas is all they," he added, "have."

Unbelievable! "They still think songs start," she asked again, "some-
where?" "They have that," Suzie replied, "yes." "A species gets a drum,
and there is literally no accounting for," he added, "it." "I," Travis
replied, "see." She looked as lovely looking as Suzie, both standing near
the streaming waters gurgling across moss, stone, sandy loam, snow in the
air there.

"Travis, they can," he said, "speak." "Let it," she whispered, "be."
"Just," with the rhythm picking up, mewling in the distance, "now." "The
skein begins with the ending of the legend of the leaf and the twig and
the branch and the trunk and the root and the," she continued, "tree."
"The," Suzie said, "skein." Travis, "Yes."

"Thus it was that the surface garnered the depths, and the depths," Honey
intervened, "responded."

Ah, all three of them, so beautiful by mountain brook, drums and waters
merging, stormy wonder sky and lovely weather!



__________________________________________________________________________
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 19:07:52 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Lisa Samuels 
Subject:      Re: american language
In-Reply-To:   from "David Bromige" at
              Jun 29, 97 03:51:57 pm
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According to David Bromige:
>
> Mark, yes, I too like the "two sandwiches short of a picnic." Theres also
> "One brick shy of a chimney," and "His elevator doesnt go all the way to
> the penthouse," In another context, I've always liked "He was tripping his
> doors off." Be good to see additions to this little list. David
>

 one brick shy of a full load
 lights on, nobody home
 a boy of unreliable enthusiasms
 one card short of a full deck
 brighter than the average bear
 one foot shy of the dock
 one straw short of a camel's back
 one art short of a long life
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 16:25:32 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
In-Reply-To:  <01IKJ5BZS6W2A8CD0T@iix.com>
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>But any discussion of identity & poetry begs the question: when we talk
>about identity do we mean merely personality and the personal experiences
>that stand behind or under the shaping of the text? Or do we mean the
>formation of cultural and political constructs at large - distinct codes
>imposed on us or written by ourselves -  by which we read each other in the
>world and the ways in which these read themselves into the text's creation?

I dont see any begging the question here. I think that begging the question
is an unfair bit if argument in which one posits an unagreed-upon agreement
and then extrapolates from there? Isnt that what it is?




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 16:40:30 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Identity of the poet Bromige
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I have just flown in a 1954 Beaver from Nanaimo to Vancouver. While on
Protection Island off Nanaimo, I had an all-night argument (over South
African wine) with Mike Matthews about details of Bromige's life.

Matthews contends that Bromige was for a decade a cowboy on the prairies. I
said he was not, he was a nurse on the prairies. Matthews said I could not
have any more wine. I said okay a cowboy. But not for a decade. We did
agree on one thing, that Bromige had been heterosexual when he was first in
Vancouver. But then our memories clashed. I said that Bromige usually wore
white buck shoes on campus at UBC. Mike said that was not Bromige--it was
me. I am still an outed jury on that one.

Our main argument was about all the pen names that Bromige used in the
period 1957-1997. We agreed on Robert Zend. But then we parted ways. I will
not, not not, ever, believe that Bromige was once Tracy Thompson. I mean I
think I met Tracy Thompson in a hotel lobby in North Beach in 1962. I
cannot believe that that person was not Tracy Thompson, nor that he was
Bromige--that's for sure.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 16:54:50 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
In-Reply-To:  
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Bromige said
>Perhaps your equating of a way of reading with a specifically male interest
>>in pornography

Tal said
>No.  You don't seem to read very well.  Please note the line in the
>paragraph you quoted:
>
>>And it doesn't
>>matter who the woman (or the guy) in the photo is--their bio is completely
>>and wholly irrelevant because the reader is in it for *himself* (or herself,
>>as the case may be).

From this exchange it appears to me that Bromige reads very well indeed,
and that perhaps his correspondent here requires further training in
reading. Bromige is subtle, but that subtlety is probably partly gift and
partly experience.





George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 17:15:53 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics

>Bromige said
>>Perhaps your equating of a way of reading with a specifically male interest
>>>in pornography
>
>Tal said
>>No.  You don't seem to read very well.  Please note the line in the
>>paragraph you quoted:
>>
>>>And it doesn't
>>>matter who the woman (or the guy) in the photo is--their bio is completely
>>>and wholly irrelevant because the reader is in it for *himself* (or herself,
>>>as the case may be).
>
>>From this exchange it appears to me that Bromige reads very well indeed,
>and that perhaps his correspondent here requires further training in
>reading. Bromige is subtle, but that subtlety is probably partly gift and
>partly experience.

Uh, George, are you being funny?  Bromige suggests I equate a way of reading
with a *specifically male* interest in porn; I respond by quoting the
segment of my argument that clearly points out that either men or women can
engage in this kind of reading--that it is the *kind* of reading that
matters, and *not* the "maleness" of it.  And you answer by simply quoting
the whole exchange and reaffirming Bromige's assertion with reference to his
*subtlety*?  You *must* be joking.

I feel like I'm trapped in a Borges essay--a nice thing to read, but I
wouldn't want to live there.

Kali
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 17:35:07 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
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I remember that when I was at university in the late fifties, it was always
trendy to talk about finding one;s identity. This was, usually, on an
individual basis, and often under a cloud of existentialism as understood
by whitebread college students. I always said that if i wanted to check my
identity I would just open my wallet. Look at birth certificate, etc.
Identity, I figured, was what other people laid on you for their purposes,
as in identifying the enemy or the criminal.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 17:33:49 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
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Hey, not that it's a big deal, but none of you guys can read--it was me, not
Bromige, who said "Perhaps," etc., and any brickbats ought to be aimed this way.

At 05:15 PM 6/29/97 MDT, you wrote:
>>Bromige said
>>>Perhaps your equating of a way of reading with a specifically male interest
>>>>in pornography
>>
>>Tal said
>>>No.  You don't seem to read very well.  Please note the line in the
>>>paragraph you quoted:
>>>
>>>>And it doesn't
>>>>matter who the woman (or the guy) in the photo is--their bio is completely
>>>>and wholly irrelevant because the reader is in it for *himself* (or herself,
>>>>as the case may be).
>>
>>>From this exchange it appears to me that Bromige reads very well indeed,
>>and that perhaps his correspondent here requires further training in
>>reading. Bromige is subtle, but that subtlety is probably partly gift and
>>partly experience.
>
>Uh, George, are you being funny?  Bromige suggests I equate a way of reading
>with a *specifically male* interest in porn; I respond by quoting the
>segment of my argument that clearly points out that either men or women can
>engage in this kind of reading--that it is the *kind* of reading that
>matters, and *not* the "maleness" of it.  And you answer by simply quoting
>the whole exchange and reaffirming Bromige's assertion with reference to his
>*subtlety*?  You *must* be joking.
>
>I feel like I'm trapped in a Borges essay--a nice thing to read, but I
>wouldn't want to live there.
>
>Kali
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 17:40:10 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Poems/Identities
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I just came back from a trip to Eden, and now turn on e-mail, and encounter
thousands of lines from Ms Tal. Why do you always want to be fighting, why
always defending yourself against imagined attacks, Ms Tal?




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 21:49:16 -0500
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From:         robert drake 
Subject:      Re: american language
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>>Mark, yes, I too like the "two sandwiches short of a picnic." Theres also
>>"One brick shy of a chimney," and "His elevator doesnt go all the way to
>>the penthouse," In another context, I've always liked "He was tripping his
>>doors off." Be good to see additions to this little list. David

  one tine short of a fork
  2 squares short of a checkerboard
  all his cups are not in th cupboard (a literal translation frm the German,
                                       i'm told, so maybe that one dont count)
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 21:56:28 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      Re: american language

i've heard

she was a few fries short of a happy meal

but maybe that just betrays my common origins...!
e
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 19:01:29 -0700
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From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: american language
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Those of us raised in the manor know how indecorous it is to refer to fries
in public. Or any food for that matter--reference to bodily functions, don't
you know.

We especially don't talk about lamb fries, a euphemism for testicles (yum
yum good).

At 09:56 PM 6/29/97 -0400, you wrote:
>i've heard
>
>she was a few fries short of a happy meal
>
>but maybe that just betrays my common origins...!
>e
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 19:10:09 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: Poems/Identities

>I just came back from a trip to Eden, and now turn on e-mail, and encounter
>thousands of lines from Ms Tal. Why do you always want to be fighting, why
>always defending yourself against imagined attacks, Ms Tal?

Quadruple sheesh.

*Dr.* Tal

"Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than
once." -- Thomas Henry Huxley
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 22:22:15 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      Re: american language

i beg your pardon....

i was, perhaps, referring to "friesz," perhaps, the ancient baldic for
light, in that the love-object, in anticipation of the deification, or
perhaps annunciation, has stopped just before a supper, perhaps last,
certainly radiant, in anticipation of the happier food to be found
through divine, yes, light, urr, friesz, urr, the baldic you know...

yes, baldic friesz, that's the ticket


e
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 19:32:28 -0700
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From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: american language
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Interesting coincidence--the lamb friesz were also bald!

At 10:22 PM 6/29/97 -0400, you wrote:
>i beg your pardon....
>
>i was, perhaps, referring to "friesz," perhaps, the ancient baldic for
>light, in that the love-object, in anticipation of the deification, or
>perhaps annunciation, has stopped just before a supper, perhaps last,
>certainly radiant, in anticipation of the happier food to be found
>through divine, yes, light, urr, friesz, urr, the baldic you know...
>
>yes, baldic friesz, that's the ticket
>
>
>e
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 23:24:42 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
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From:         Steve Shoemaker 
Subject:      Re: american language
In-Reply-To:  <199706292246.PAA08949@germany.it.earthlink.net>
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Recently i was surprised to find myself saying that something was
"about yea [pronounced w/ long "a" vowel sound, not sure really how you
spell it] big," something that can pretty much only be said, i guess,
if you also hold up your hands to indicate measurement, so "yea" means
something like "so" or "this," but i don't know where it comes from
and there's nothing about it in my "American Heritage" dictionary...

steve
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 23:30:08 -0400
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From:         "David R. Israel" 
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quoth Lisa Samuels:

> According to David Bromige:
> >
> > Mark, yes, I too like the "two sandwiches short of a picnic."
> > Theres also "One brick shy of a chimney," and "His elevator doesnt
> > go all the way to the penthouse," In another context, I've always
> > liked "He was tripping his doors off." Be good to see additions to
> > this little list. David
> >
>
>  one brick shy of a full load
>  lights on, nobody home
>  a boy of unreliable enthusiasms
>  one card short of a full deck
>  brighter than the average bear
>  one foot shy of the dock
>  one straw short of a camel's back
>  one art short of a long life

on the other side of the ledger, there's the Chinese-painting
reference (don't recall exact wording) -- being "like legs on a
snake" (i.e., where you've painted a snake but then feel you've gotta
embelish it & add more . . . ) so one could look for pleasantries on
this end of the scale, too -- here's trying some:

like a fish with wings
like a woman with several breasts
that's a cat with 10 lives
the Seven-10 (for a closed convenience store?)

the right word said twice
he was laconic and then some
she was so far out one feared if she'd ever make it back
a wonderful nonsense of proportion

also:

been where, done what?
i see inexactly what you mean [in response to a muddled explanation]
that's the ticket-stub
by the same tolkenism
by the same Tolkein

absolutely so-so-ulous
an obtuse observation
that's so perspicuous I forgot to laugh
so serious I forgot to frown
rudimentary my dear Crick

if you get my driftwood
I grasp at your meaning
you're the best thing that never happened to me
easy as sitting on a frog
simple as pi r squared over the differential of horsefeathers
as American as Appelachean Spring
a stich nearly in time
the more things change, the more they change

paved with good pretentions
the joker is mild
that's a horse of an identical color
he gets at the very periphery of the matter
deep as a sidewalk puddle on a summer's day
as animated as a frozen screen
brilliant! just shy of brilliant!

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 01:03:05 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      Re: american language
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

From EMcG --

> she was a few fries short of a happy meal

hmm -- good; how about:

he was like fifteen cents for a phone call
he had the vibrancy of week-old carrot juice
lucid as the L.A. skyline
all the convenience of a slurpy w/o the straw

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 17:45:55 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: american language
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

How bout - from the antipodes

one beer short of a six pack
a few sheep short in the top paddock

Dan

At 03:51 PM 6/29/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Mark, yes, I too like the "two sandwiches short of a picnic." Theres also
>"One brick shy of a chimney," and "His elevator doesnt go all the way to
>the penthouse," In another context, I've always liked "He was tripping his
>doors off." Be good to see additions to this little list. David
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 17:49:28 +1200
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         DS 
Subject:      Re: american language
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

surely that's "smarter than the average bear"

> brighter than the average bear
> one foot shy of the dock
> one straw short of a camel's back
> one art short of a long life
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 05:57:45 -0400
Reply-To:     daniel7@IDT.NET
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Zimmerman 
Organization: Bard-O
Subject:      Re: american language
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Steve Shoemaker wrote:
>
> Recently i was surprised to find myself saying that something was
> "about yea [pronounced w/ long "a" vowel sound, not sure really how you
> spell it] big," something that can pretty much only be said, i guess,
> if you also hold up your hands to indicate measurement, so "yea" means
> something like "so" or "this," but i don't know where it comes from
> and there's nothing about it in my "American Heritage" dictionary...
>
> steve

        Just up, I thumb through Partridge's _Origins_ & find under "yea" Ger.
_je_, "indeed." Wildhagen's _New German Dictionary_ offers a dilated
view of the word in its idiomatic contexts: e.g., "je länger, je lieber"
[the longer (sooner) the better]; "je nachdem" [as the case may be]; "je
nachdem, wie" [in proportion as]; "je nud je" [on and on forever;
always].
        Yo.
Dan Zimmerman
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 04:05:29 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Rachel Loden 
Subject:      Re: american language
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

David Bromige wrote:
>
> Mark, yes, I too like the "two sandwiches short of a picnic." Theres also
> "One brick shy of a chimney," and "His elevator doesnt go all the way to
> the penthouse," In another context, I've always liked "He was tripping his
> doors off." Be good to see additions to this little list. David

This is reminding me of something I noticed when poring over a thesaurus
long ago--that (in my books anyway) there are thick columns of synonyms
for "moron," say, and tiny little entries for "genius."  Kind of makes
you feel for the human race and the sorts of frustrations that have
driven us to expression (even before e-lists).  Anyway:

Half a bubble off plumb

Two tacos short of a combination plate

One Froot Loop shy of a full bowl

Source code is missing a few lines

A few guppies short of an aquarium

Blew his O-rings

Has his solar panels aimed at the moon

Swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool


Rachel L.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 07:55:05 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      Re: american language / Pooh
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

> surely that's "smarter than the average bear"
>
> > brighter than the average bear

hmm - where are our Pooh scholars?
(that wd. seem to be the locus classicus)

one fellow has this quote (if I recall aright) as an email tagline:

For I am a bear of but little brain
and long words frighten me

(question is, how to Latinize "the fear of long words"? --
something along the lines of: mega-logo-phobia?)

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 08:09:46 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David McAleavey 
Subject:      Re: american language
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Steve Shoemaker wrote:
>
> Recently i was surprised to find myself saying that something was
> "about yea [pronounced w/ long "a" vowel sound, not sure really how you
> spell it] big," something that can pretty much only be said, i guess,
> if you also hold up your hands to indicate measurement, so "yea" means
> something like "so" or "this," but i don't know where it comes from
> and there's nothing about it in my "American Heritage" dictionary...
>
> steveSteve, and hello --
The Collins-World 2nd ed. Webster's unabridged beside me suggests 3 adverbial uses for
"yea"  -- "1. yes; used to express affirmation or assent
           2. not this alone; not only so but also; furthermore; moreover
           3. indeed, verily, truly; used to introduce a question or statement" -- with
citations for each (two King James New Testament, one Shakespeare).

Seems the American (if only that?) usage of "it should be yea big" -- meaning that it
should, furthermore, verily, and of course be just _so_ big, where _so_ is accompanied
by a hand gesture, must be related to these other usages.

By the way, I've been back lurking only the past month after most of a year away, and
will alas be switching today or tomorrow to "nomail" again for much of the rest of the
summer.  Please direct any personal messages to me directly at dmca@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu.
 Thanks -- David McAleavey
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 08:08:31 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      Re: american language
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

Rachel Loden contributed . . .

> Source code is missing a few lines
>
> A few guppies short of an aquarium
>
> Has his solar panels aimed at the moon

there are the "just shy of" expressions --

  he's like a distillery that heats to 97  Celsius

& there are the expressions of "totally out of it" ness:

  has all the solar power of a night in January

all this reminds of the simile-fest that Raymond Chandler indulges
in, page after page.  Chandler was as agile with a simile as a
ballerina on rollerblades delivering a message to a Mafioso who is,
at the moment, surrounded by a bunch of seals on LSD receiving
transmissions from Jupiter . . .  hmm, that one needs some work

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 08:23:26 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         "David R. Israel" 
Subject:      Re: american language
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT

David McAleavey notes,

> Seems the American (if only that?) usage of "it should be yea big"
> -- meaning that it should, furthermore, verily, and of course be
> just _so_ big, where _so_ is accompanied by a hand gesture, must be
> related to these other usages.

my sense of the usage is that "about yea high" (with a hand gesture
indicating a certain vertical plane) antedates "about yea big" --
i.e., that "about yea high" is probably the original expression on
which a few variants (such as "about yea big") are based, their being
tolerated only because "about yea high" was well established.  Maybe
I'm wrong, but that's my hunch in the matter.  Of course, I have all
the evidence of a Pentacostal trying to discuss theory with a
post-structuralist on an academic panel convened by the NEA.  (Hey,
it was a try.)

In vernacular Chinese, the expression cha-bu-duo is common -- it
means something like "wrong by not too much."  In 1st year Chinese,
we were given a story to read about Chabudou Xiansheng -- i.e., Mr.
Cha-bu-duo.  You can pretty well imagine how things went for him.

> By the way, I've been back lurking only the past month after most of
> a year away, and will alas be switching today or tomorrow to
> "nomail" again for much of the rest of the summer.

That elicits all the sense of leisure-for-an-amiable-response as one
might expect in the utterances of a Apocalyptic Millenialist on
December 30, 1999 -- but hey, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.  ;-)

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 09:05:50 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Lisa Samuels 
Subject:      Re: american language / Pooh
In-Reply-To:  <199706301155.HAA28214@radagast.wizard.net> from "David R.
              Israel" at Jun 30, 97 07:55:05 am
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

>
> > surely that's "smarter than the average bear"
> >
> > > brighter than the average bear
>
> hmm - where are our Pooh scholars?
> (that wd. seem to be the locus classicus)

actually, i think DS references yogi bear, the cartoon
character, and yes it is 'smarter than the average bear' in his
tv show -- but i say 'brighter than the average bear' because
i think of stellar formations

>
> one fellow has this quote (if I recall aright) as an email tagline:
>
> For I am a bear of but little brain
> and long words frighten me
>

actually it goes 'i am a bear of very little brain and long
words bother me' -- which i only know because, well, it's one
of my favorite sayings, reminds me to be true to my list of
forbidden words when i am writing 'critically'

ls.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 09:33:41 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         robert drake 
Subject:      Re: american language / Pooh
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

>> surely that's "smarter than the average bear"
>>
>> > brighter than the average bear
>
>hmm - where are our Pooh scholars?
>(that wd. seem to be the locus classicus)
>

 Hanna-Barbara scholars, actually; & Yogi Bear sayeth "smarter..."


lbd
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 09:28:35 EST5EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         LYNES- KATHERINE 
Organization: Rutgers University English Dept.
Subject:      Re: american language

there is of course:

she's a bubble off center.

kl

> From EMcG --
>
> > she was a few fries short of a happy meal
>
> hmm -- good; how about:
>
> he was like fifteen cents for a phone call
> he had the vibrancy of week-old carrot juice
> lucid as the L.A. skyline
> all the convenience of a slurpy w/o the straw
>
> d.i.
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 08:44:47 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Joe Amato 
Subject:      outta town...
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

just to say that i'll be set to nomail for three weeks or so, will miss
the back & forth... but it's time for me to vacate the premises!...

best to all///

joe
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 10:05:26 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Bouchard 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

What does it mean to undermine one's authority? Is it necessarily a bad
          thing? There are bad people in positions of power
 in the world. Wouldn't you like to undermine their authority?

This interjective post is a defense for Dodie, not because she is not
          capable of defending herself (her exchanges with Kim
Dawn prove otherwise), but because I don't think she's reading the list
          while she's in Colorado and the excerpt written about
her below I think is misguided and written with an authority I believe
          needs undermining (under mind).

The exchanges between Dodie and Kim Dawn a couple of weeks back were many
things, but in them I did not hear "Dodie's concommitant criticisms of Kim
Dawn's lack of proper ladylike demeanor." I did hear Dodies criticisms of
someone shooting their mouth off without being very informed.  I heard
Dodie offering insight, and for that she got flamed.  Also, I didn't read
Dodie post

"undermin(ing) Kim Dawn's "femininity" first by criticizing her actions as
improper, and then--having established the unladylike nature of Kim Dawn's
speech/acts--delivering a double-whammy by questioning whether a person so
unladylike could indeed *be* a lady or even a woman" (as Kali Tal has
written of the subject).

What was said in those posts were very direct-- WHY IS IT NECESSARY TO
ABSTRACT THEM?

Kim Dawn's posts, on the other hand, were 1) pretty obnoxious, 2) pretty
stupid, and 3) pretty obnoxious and pretty stupid. Am I undermining her
"authority" or "femininity" by saying so?

The Weinberger post forwarded to the List by Kent Johnson (and what more of
a "self-promotional card" could be played than forwarding a private letter
to two listservs, at least two, maybe more for all I know, to defend one's
interest?) pointed out that the "Left" historically bickers while the Right
triumphs, or whatever, and Johnson (& others) continue to prove this
insightful point by doing it ad nauseum. What's worse is that it's
bickering is theoretical.

For example:

>> How would we revise our >interpretation if she were a he?)<<

>> how the knowledge that "she" was actually a "he" would change our
interpretation of the textual events which we'd read/witnessed.<<

>> What I was doing (attempting to do) was pointing out the way Dodie's
inquiry functioned as a rhetorical tactic in this particular argument.  As
I noted in one of my previous posts,<<

But the most treasured retort, I thought, was:

>>> Dodie's was, I thought, a tactic which reinforced/reinscribed power
hierarchies of a dominant over an oppressed group. <<<


This is a way of saying that Dodie is sharp. I never really understand when
people start bouncing around "reinscription, reinforced, reify" and see
individuals interact in terms of "power hierarchies."  These three "R's"
are poor word choices considering the issues that they are used to talk
about. They never clarify anything.

Anyway, I'm only using Kali's post as an example because it was handy. I
disagree with the characterizations made about Dodie and want to register
that.


daniel_bouchard@hmco.com


also:

>>> Note, please, that I consider Dodie, a female person, to be a fully
able participant in the business of reinforcing hegemony.  Identity is a
process, not a fixed position, which is why women can find themselves
allied with men against other women (not, mind you, always a bad thing),>>>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 11:14:19 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Poetics List 
Subject:      Welcome Message (July)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

                                                      Rev. 6-3-97

____________________________________________________________________



                     Welcome to the Poetics List


                                &


                    The Electronic Poetry Center


sponsored by  The Poetics Program, Department of English, Faculty of Art
&

Letters, of the State University of New York, Buffalo


____________________________________________________________________


                    http://writing.upenn.edu/epc

____________________________________________________________________


                     _______Contents___________


                     1. About the Poetics List

                     2. Subscriptions

                     3. Cautions

                     4. Digest Option

                     5. Temporarily turning off Poetics mail

                     6. Who's Subscribed

                     7. The Electronic Poetry Center (EPC)

                     8. Poetics Archives at EPC

                     9. Publishers & Editors Read This!




[This document was prepared by Charles Bernstein (bernstei@bway.net),
Loss Peque=F1oGlazier (glazier@acsu.buffalo.edu), and in cooperation with
Joel Kuszai (poetics@acsu.buffalo.edu).

____________________________________________________________________



                                Above the world-weary horizons

                                New obstacles for exchange arise

                                Or unfold, O ye postmasters!



1. About the Poetics List


The Poetics List was founded in late 1993 with the epigraph above.


There are presently about 500 subscribers.


Please note that this is a private list and information about the list

should not be posted to other lists or directories of lists. The idea=20
is

to keep the list to those with specific rather than general interests,
and

also to keep the scale of the list small and the volume manageable.


The Poetics List, while committed to openness, is moderated. While
individual posts of participants are sent directly to all subscribers, we
continue to work to promote the editorial function of this project. The
definition of that project, while provisional, and while open to
continual redefinition by list participants, is nonetheless aversive to a
generalized discussion of poetry. Rather, our aim is  to support, inform,
and extend those directions in poetry that are committed to innovations,
renovations, and investigations of form and/or/as content, to the
questioning of received forms and styles, and to the creation of the
otherwise unimagined, untried, unexpected, improbable, and impossible. =20


Please keep in mind that all posts go out immediately to all subscribers,
and become part of an on-line archive. *Posting to Poetics is a
form of publication, not personal communication.* Participants
are asked to exercise caution before posting messages! While spontaneity
of response may seem the very heart of the list at its best, it also has
the darker side of circulating ideas that have not been well considered
(or considered by another reader -- editor or friend). Given the nature
of the medium, subscribers do well to maintain some skepticism when
reading the list and, where possible, to try to avoid taking what may be
something close to a spontaneous comment made in the heat of exchange as
if it were a revised or edited essay ("Let the Reader Beware!").=20


The "list owner" of Poetics is Charles Bernstein: contact him for
further

information. Joel Kuszai is list manager.  For subscription information
contact us at POETICS@acsu.buffalo.edu.=20



____________________________________________________________________


2. Subscriptions


The list has open subscriptions.  You can subscribe (sub) or

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____________________________________________________________________


3.  Cautions


Please do not send attachments or include extremely long documents in a
post, since this may make it difficult for those who get the list via
"digest" or who cannot always decode attached or specially formatted
files.=20


In addition to being archived at the EPC, some posts to Poetics
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If you want someone to send out information to the list as a whole, or
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____________________________________________________________________


4. Digest Option


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set poetics digest


NOTE:!! Send this message to "listserv" not to Poetics or as a reply

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You can switch back to individual messages by sending this message:


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____________________________________________________________________


5. Temporarily turning off Poetics mail


Do not leave your Poetics subscription "active" if you are going to be
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set poetics nomail


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archive. (See 8 below.)


____________________________________________________________________


6. Who's Subscribed


To see who is subscribed to Poetics, send an e-mail message to

listserv@listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu; leave the "Subject" line of the
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You will be sent within a reasonable amount of time (by return e-mail)=20
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subscribers.  This list is alphabetized by server not name.


 or try:


 review POETICS by name

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*Please do not send a message to the list asking for the address of a
specific subscriber.*

____________________________________________________________________


7. What is the Electronic Poetry Center?


our URL is


http://writing.upenn.edu/epc


The mission of this World-Wide Web based electronic poetry center is to

serve as a hypertextual gateway to the extraordinary range of activity
in

formally innovative writing in the United States and the world.  The
Center

provides access to the burgeoning number of electronic resources in the
new

poetries including RIF/T and other electronic poetry journals, the
POETICS

List archives, an AUTHOR library of electronic poetic texts, and direct

connections to numerous related electronic RESOURCES. The Center also
provides information about contemporary print little magazines and SMALL
PRESSES engaged in poetry and poetics. And we have an extensive
collection of soundfiles of poets' reading their work, as

well as the archive of LINEbreak, the radio interview series.


The EPC is directed by Loss Peque=F1o Glazier.

____________________________________________________________________


8. Poetics Archives via EPC


Go to the EPC and select Poetics from the opening screen. Follow the

links to Poetics Archives. You may browse the archives by month and

year or search them for specific information. Your interface will

allow you to print or download any of these files.


Or set your browser to go directly to:

http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/poetics/archive


____________________________________________________________________


9. Publishers & Editors Read This!


PUBLISHERS & EDITORS: Our listings of poetry and poetics information is
open and available to you. We are trying to make access to printed
publications

as easy as possible to our users and ENCOURAGE you to participate! Send
a

list of your press/publications to glazier@acsu.buffalo.edu with the
words EPC Press Listing in the subject line. You may also send materials
on disk. (Write file name, word processing program, and Mac or PC on
disk.) Send an e-mail message to the address above to obtain a mailing
address to which to send your disk. Though files marked up with html are
our goal, ascii files are perfectly acceptable. If yourword processor ill
save files in Rich Text Format (.rtf) this is also highly desirable


Send us extended information on new publications (including any back
cover copy and sample poems) as well as complete catalogs/backlists
(including excerpts from reviews, sample poems, etc.).  Be sure to
include full information for ordering--including prices and addresses and
phone numbers both of the press and any distributors.


Initially, you might want to send short anouncements of new=20
publications

directly to the Poetics list as subscribers do not always (or ever) check
the

EPC; in your message please include full information for ordering.  If
you have

a fuller listing at EPC, you might also mention that in any Poetics
posts.


Some announcements circulated through Poetics and the EPC have received
a

noticeable responses; it may be an effective way to promote your
publication

and we are glad to facilitate information about interesting
publications.

____________________________________________________________________


END OF POETICS LIST WELCOME
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 11:30:32 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Don Cheney 
Subject:      Re: american language
In-Reply-To:  <199706300330.XAA19577@radagast.wizard.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

just the other day i was watching the tv show here in the states called
"Night Stand With Dick Dietrick" (the show is a parody of the Jerry
Springer type, sensationalist talk shows) and the guests were supposed to
be stereotypes of white trash america. and the guests kept coming up with
funny similes, so dick dietrick (the host) wanted to get in on all the
simile action. the only phrase i remember him trying was:

that's as funny as a german puppeteer at a microsoft word convention.

don cheney


===================================
Don Cheney  San Diego, CA, USA
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5791
doncheney@geocities.com
===================================
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 11:44:24 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Sylvester Pollet 
Subject:      Call for Papers/Eliot (fwd)
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Nancy Gish asked me to post this to the list, and it seems relevant to
recent threads. Please respond to the names at the bottom, not to me--not
my show. Thanks, sp.

>CALL FOR PAPERS
>
>Eliot and desire, gender, sexuality
>
>Essays are sought for a collection on T.S. Eliot's complex relations to
>and engagements with desire, gender, sexuality. For a decade Eliot's
>reputation declined despite continued studies of his work; in postmodern
>reassessments of modernism he has often functioned as a stock figure for
>the masculinism, elitism, and logocentrism of mainstream modernism. But
>Eliot studies has become a renewed site of controversy and interest with
>the appearance of in-depth critiques such as Anthony Julius's T.S. Eliot:
>Anti-Semitism and Literary Form, the recent publication of formerly
>unpublished poems in Inventions of the March Hare, and the publication of
>other new studies reassessing Eliot's contributions to revisionist
>modernisms. In this context a full examination of issues of desire,
>gender, sexuality is overdue. We welcome all theoretical and critical
>approaches. Essays that engage queer theory, feminist theory, gender
>studies, structures of desire, approaches to the body and the
>performative, intertextuality, are welcome. Topics such as spirituality
>and eroticism, the occult, etc., are also of interest.
>
>Send inquiries, proposals, essays to Cassandra Laity, Dept. of English,
>Drew University, Madison, NJ 07940 (claity@drew.edu) or Nancy K. Gish,
>Women's Studies, University of Southern Maine, Portland ME 04104-9300
>(ngish@usm.maine.edu).
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 11:51:23 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         James Finnegan 
Subject:      Re: American Language

In a message dated 97-06-29 17:56:42 EDT, you write:

>
>To add to "badly wrapped," "a few screws loose," "hit in the head once too
>often," etc., "a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic," as a description
>of Mike Tyson's mental state, altho it occurs to me as I type that this
>might also be meant as a motive for his recent behavior.

Aaw, Tyson was just earritable. Next up: Iron Mike vs. Vinnie Van Gogh,
an obscure Dutch pugilist known to lead with his left.

Finnegan
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Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 12:23:05 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: american language / c&w version

further on the "two sandwiches" trail --

>  I too like the "two sandwiches short of a picnic"

perchance one could venture into country & western territory --

 I was hopin' to find her at the forum
    but fear ran ahead of anticipation:
 we were two senators shy of a quorum --
    and one hallelujah short of salvation . . .

 O runnin' on empty, the engine died-away
     (merde! the Fates -- their behavior is always vile!)
 we were three thimblesful shy of a clean getaway
     like a lawyer struck mute amid an easy trial

 as the officer approached, I got an eye of
    his conceited mein -- & yep, he waxed laconic:
 "Sorry, son, but yer a kilo of sugar shy of
    a Twinkie Defense" -- (was that ironic?)

d.i.
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Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 09:45:51 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
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When I was a kid in Brooklyn my small gang of preadolescents was frequently
riven by undying hatreds that were usually forgotten within the week. Maybe
if we refrain from fanning them these flames, too, will die on their own.

At 10:05 AM 6/30/97 -0400, you wrote:
>What does it mean to undermine one's authority? Is it necessarily a bad
>          thing? There are bad people in positions of power
> in the world. Wouldn't you like to undermine their authority?
>
>This interjective post is a defense for Dodie, not because she is not
>          capable of defending herself (her exchanges with Kim
>Dawn prove otherwise), but because I don't think she's reading the list
>          while she's in Colorado and the excerpt written about
>her below I think is misguided and written with an authority I believe
>          needs undermining (under mind).
>
>The exchanges between Dodie and Kim Dawn a couple of weeks back were many
>things, but in them I did not hear "Dodie's concommitant criticisms of Kim
>Dawn's lack of proper ladylike demeanor." I did hear Dodies criticisms of
>someone shooting their mouth off without being very informed.  I heard
>Dodie offering insight, and for that she got flamed.  Also, I didn't read
>Dodie post
>
>"undermin(ing) Kim Dawn's "femininity" first by criticizing her actions as
>improper, and then--having established the unladylike nature of Kim Dawn's
>speech/acts--delivering a double-whammy by questioning whether a person so
>unladylike could indeed *be* a lady or even a woman" (as Kali Tal has
>written of the subject).
>
>What was said in those posts were very direct-- WHY IS IT NECESSARY TO
>ABSTRACT THEM?
>
>Kim Dawn's posts, on the other hand, were 1) pretty obnoxious, 2) pretty
>stupid, and 3) pretty obnoxious and pretty stupid. Am I undermining her
>"authority" or "femininity" by saying so?
>
>The Weinberger post forwarded to the List by Kent Johnson (and what more of
>a "self-promotional card" could be played than forwarding a private letter
>to two listservs, at least two, maybe more for all I know, to defend one's
>interest?) pointed out that the "Left" historically bickers while the Right
>triumphs, or whatever, and Johnson (& others) continue to prove this
>insightful point by doing it ad nauseum. What's worse is that it's
>bickering is theoretical.
>
>For example:
>
>>> How would we revise our >interpretation if she were a he?)<<
>
>>> how the knowledge that "she" was actually a "he" would change our
>interpretation of the textual events which we'd read/witnessed.<<
>
>>> What I was doing (attempting to do) was pointing out the way Dodie's
>inquiry functioned as a rhetorical tactic in this particular argument.  As
>I noted in one of my previous posts,<<
>
>But the most treasured retort, I thought, was:
>
>>>> Dodie's was, I thought, a tactic which reinforced/reinscribed power
>hierarchies of a dominant over an oppressed group. <<<
>
>
>This is a way of saying that Dodie is sharp. I never really understand when
>people start bouncing around "reinscription, reinforced, reify" and see
>individuals interact in terms of "power hierarchies."  These three "R's"
>are poor word choices considering the issues that they are used to talk
>about. They never clarify anything.
>
>Anyway, I'm only using Kali's post as an example because it was handy. I
>disagree with the characterizations made about Dodie and want to register
>that.
>
>
>daniel_bouchard@hmco.com
>
>
>also:
>
>>>> Note, please, that I consider Dodie, a female person, to be a fully
>able participant in the business of reinforcing hegemony.  Identity is a
>process, not a fixed position, which is why women can find themselves
>allied with men against other women (not, mind you, always a bad thing),>>>
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 09:47:25 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         dbkk@SIRIUS.COM
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
In-Reply-To:  <199706301600.JAA27553@mail2.sirius.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

From Daniel Bouchard:

>This interjective post is a defense for Dodie, not because she is not
>          capable of defending herself (her exchanges with Kim
>Dawn prove otherwise), but because I don't think she's reading the list
>          while she's in Colorado and the excerpt written about
>her below I think is misguided and written with an authority I believe
>          needs undermining (under mind).

Daniel, thank you for your support.  We switched to Digest when we were
gone, but I've only skimmed the list hijinx of last week.  I have a grant
to write, so Life will, for me, continue to be on hold for a bit.

I'm more perplexed than anything in Kali Tan's repeated jabbing at me on
this issue as my being some kind of Authority figure with Power (I truly
wish I were this, I could use some Authority and Power right now, I truly
wish my life could support KTan's claims).  I assume there is some subtext
of personal issues she has with Authority and female Power figures that are
being projected onto me.  I certainly haven't acted this way to her or any
other women on the list.  Okay, in the ancient past I was bitchy to Maria
Damon, but I apologized and now we're quite huggy and kissy, which makes me
appreciate what a big heart Maria has.

And I am not here going to defend myself against charges of misogeny and
staunchly maintaining the status quo of female suppression.  My whole
project has been working against this.  I feel KTan's doing a similar thing
to what I found particularly problematic in Kim Dawn's original
posts--she's pressure one to stand up and defend one's LIBERALNESS.
Liberalness is a bourgeois invention.  Perhaps one cannot be radical and
bourgeois at the same time.  I think even Kim Dawn, at this point, is tired
of the discussion of her eruption into this list.  As a performance it
would have been more palatable if she didn't begin it by attacking a list
member who is a friend of mine.  I'm curious why there hasn't been more
discussion of Emily Vey Duke, who was was working in the Kim Dawn motif,
and whom I feel is a talented writer, and whose performances I could read
with pleasure. Of course, Kim Dawn paved the way for this, so I guess I'm
now all for her as Ur-progenitor of transgressive poetics list performances.

I've been writing backchannel to Emily VD, whomever she/he is.  See I *am*
a liberal!  I can feel the walls of hegemony crumbling around me.

Dodie (Bellamy)

p.s.  I do have one request here, though.  And that is, if people want to
challenge me here, please don't call me Dodie in those posts. People say,
"David Bromidge is wrong!"  They don't demean him with a mere, "David is
wrong."  David is reserved for sweet talk, as it should be (something, of
course, that he deserves constantly, and relentlessly).

db
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Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 09:52:57 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         dbkk@SIRIUS.COM
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
Mime-Version: 1.0
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My last message was Typo City.

>Liberalness is a bourgeois invention.  Perhaps one cannot be radical and
>bourgeois at the same time.

I meant to write:  Liberalness is a bourgeois invention.  Perhaps one
cannot be radical and *liberal* at the same time.

Dodie (Bellamy)
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Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 12:57:06 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Steve Shoemaker 
Subject:      Re: american language
In-Reply-To:  <199706300330.XAA19577@radagast.wizard.net>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

In the spirit of David B.'s "other context" (e.g. "tripping his doors
off"), a friend of mine wld often confess to being "stoned as a bat."
We also spent a good bit of time feeling nice & "toasty."

And something i've been wondering about: the color "chartreuse."  I've
looked it up in several dictionaries now and they all say it indicates
a kind of greenish yellow.  That wld be fine, except that i've now
scientifically interviewd numerous (well, at least 5 or 6) people on
this question and *everyone*, myself included, thinks, or had thought,
of it as a kind of bright pinkish red.  And for a topper, it was used
in just this latter sense the other night *on TV*! (fashion show episode
of Xena: Warrior Princess)...  So, like the stand-up comix say, "What's
up with that?"

Steve Shoemaker
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Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 10:18:29 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: american language
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Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

It's the color of the delicious-but-deadly liqueur produced at the monastery
of La Grande Chartreuse (chartreuse=carthusian, or charter-house, as in _The
Charterhouse of Parma_), from wence the name. They've been making it for
centuries, and it's always been green. My own scientific survey (I asked my
wife) confirms this.
Xena predates Christianity--maybe in her day the word was used differently?
Where's a sanskritist when you need one?

>And something i've been wondering about: the color "chartreuse."  I've
>looked it up in several dictionaries now and they all say it indicates
>a kind of greenish yellow.  That wld be fine, except that i've now
>scientifically interviewd numerous (well, at least 5 or 6) people on
>this question and *everyone*, myself included, thinks, or had thought,
>of it as a kind of bright pinkish red.  And for a topper, it was used
>in just this latter sense the other night *on TV*! (fashion show episode
>of Xena: Warrior Princess)...  So, like the stand-up comix say, "What's
>up with that?"
>
>Steve Shoemaker
>
>
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Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 21:51:50 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      Re: poet/identity/re :David Erben's post
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

forwarded to me from the LISTOSIS chat room:

Antony Lamont:  I thought it was Charles Olson who displaced humanistic
approaches -- !

Mauberly: That was no ecriture; that was my life.
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Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 18:43:42 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         John Kinsella 
Subject:      on those who might erase an identity?
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

I originally posted this to another list as part of an
"off-topic" dialogue.


Amnesty Echidna Manifesto


Among fostered overtones
they skip the elegy
and wonder if the Wet is written
down like sinusoidal spirals
in the cosmology of specimens--
pages vigorous with nostalgic yearnings,
as the question is asked--that Amnesty
need make commentary
on a "civilized" Australia?
From the fat of denial
secreted milk oozes
onto the membrane
of the pouch, like Frank Thring joking
that he'd make a tobacco sac
out of the bush ranger's scrotum,
as spines erupt and the music
of weaponry is struck
by musing policemen, as there's
no way out of borrowed text
and the fossil record
is but a single external opening
focussing sex and excreta,
this the profit, the artefact
and its market, depositing eggs
and suckling progeny
on milk; and this a dialogue
of singing and witnessing
over the poem's anatomy,
as if other factors have crept
into a consideration
of an echidna opening
Meat Ant mounds
with inspirational claws,
deeply snouting and colluding
and outing cases of fixed-format
languages, conferring heritage
only after the fact,
as if it matters, as if subentries
to an apparently neutral hibernation
are of the place, like naming
names and collecting data
from "I've lived amongst them"
observations: in the lock-up
they observe "primitive" objections,
knowing better in their justice,
making comparisons, saying
"like an echidna" she bristled
against the "apparent" rape--
the Ombudsman declaring
as bold as Achilles
that he'd take the day,
forgetting always
that the murky water of the Styx
hadn't covered his glowing skin
entirely, and that in those parts
no-one had heard
of that river
=========================================================================
Date:         Sun, 29 Jun 1997 13:09:04 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Aldon L. Nielsen" 
Subject:      industial-strength hoaxes at 'cine16' this week (fwd)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE

lo and behold, this appears in this of all weeks!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 28 Jun 1997 13:53:57 -0700
From: Geoff Alexander 
To: geoff@cine16.com
Subject: industial-strength hoaxes at 'cine16' this week

July 3: 'Hoaxes near and far --- the New World Order and the Tasaday'

Today=92s Independence Day program delves with the most American of
institutions, the hoax. Our first film describes a hoax originating in
1963 that in many ways continues to this day; the second is of a film
that in itself is a hoax, and part of a mystery that hasn=92t yet been
completely solved.

=91Case History of a Rumor=92 1963, p. Gene DePoris w/Roger Mudd. Right-win=
g
paranoia of the supposed takeover of the US by the United Nations is
nothing new, as evidenced by this hard-hitting CBS News documentary
about =91Operation Water Moccasin=92, US Army maneuvers scheduled to take
place in the deep south in the early 60=92s. Fueled by a rumor that
African troops were massing in the state of Georgia, thousands of
individuals flooded political mailbags with letters and telegrams of
concern. Mudd and DePoris, interested in discovering the origins of the
rumor, traced it back over several states to its surprising source. Of
particular interest was the role of radio evangelist C.W. Burpo, to whom
I used to listen throughout the 60=92s and 70=92s (=91you know, god loves
you... and I love you too=92), who, along with Brother Al, Reverend Ike,
and Sister E.G. Jamerson, provided tremendous comic relief during the
otherwise scary Vietnam years. In =91Case History=92, we can see Burpo
during an actual broadcast, a bank of ten tape recorders in the
background copying the show for radio stations nationwide.

=91Cave People of the Philippines=92 1972, d. Gerald Green, w/Jack Reynolds=
=2E
In 1966, word appeared from the Philippines that a stone-age tribe had
been discovered, interesting anthropologists worldwide, who applied en
mass for permission to travel to Mindanao to conduct formal research on
the group. The Tasaday had no notion of agriculture, wore few clothes,
and subsisted mainly on stream animals and deer. A Filipino official,
Manuel Elizalde, was the nominal discoverer of the group, and he closely
guarded access to the Tasaday, allowing few news agencies and
educational institutions to visit the group, always under the
supervision of Elizalde and a hand-picked translator. =91Cave People=92 was
made during this time of interest and discovery. Subsequently, rumors
began surfacing that Elizalde had paid the tribespeople to remove their
clothes for journalists, and the official was considered by many people
to be nothing more than a master hoaxer. His death last month at the age
of 60 prompted an obituary which sent us back to review the laudatory
=91Cave People=92 film, and we at =91cine16=92 have come to our own conclus=
ion
about what Elizalde may have really been up to.

During the 1960s, international corporate interests began a policy of
moving Mindanao indigenous groups off their ancestral lands in order to
obtain logging, mineral, or agricultural rights. This was typically
accomplished by a vanguard of Christian missionaries, followed in close
order by hired thugs who would kill, burn villages, and otherwise
subjugate the people, who would then flock to the new churches where,
washed in the blood of Christ, they would find food, clothing, and an
understanding that rewards were better in heaven than they were in this
world, and that ancestral land rights were nothing compared with the
love of the eternal father. Elizalde had a known compassion for
indigenous peoples, fought the church, and actually succeeded in having
large tracts of land designated native areas, with little or no
commercial activity allowed. Could it be that this master hoaxer, in
drawing the world=92s attention to =91stone-agers=92, had crafted a master
plan to use world opinion to salvage the native cultures of Mindanao? We
invite you to see the film and form your own opinion. You might enjoy
visiting the following sites for interesting background info:=20

Read Elizalde=92s fascinating obituary:
Manuel Elizalde:
http://152.52.2.50/newsroom/ntn/health/050597/health5_11494.html

Consider some of the controversy surrounding the hoax:
http://www.nomadmedia.com/CULTURE/TASADAY_HOME/tasaday.home.html
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 14:13:35 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         KIM DAWN BAKER 
Subject:      Output of your job "kdawn" (fwd)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 1997 03:18:02 -0400
From: "L-Soft list server at University at Buffalo (1.8c)"
     
To: Kim Dawn 
Subject: Output of your job "kdawn"

> is the body inherently a whole?
Unknown command - "IS". Try HELP.

> -peter ganick
Unknown command - "-PETER". Try HELP.

> the body is full of  h  o  l  e  s
Unknown command - "THE". Try HELP.

> asshole  mouth  nostrils eyes  nipples
Unknown command - "ASSHOLE". Try HELP.

> belly button  [which breathes]
Unknown command - "BELLY". Try HELP.

> cock  vagina  ears
Unknown command - "COCK". Try HELP.

> wounds scars tattoos earring holes memory gaps
Unknown command - "WOUNDS". Try HELP.

> [the throat is the internal limb between pain and pleasure]
Unknown command - "[THE". Try HELP.

> moans screams sighs cries chokes roars gasps mumbles whistles yelps slurps
Unknown command - "MOANS". Try HELP.

> groans chortles snorts pops clicks wheezes babbles hisses hums whimpers
Unknown command - "GROANS". Try HELP.

All subsequent commands have been flushed.

Summary of resource utilization
-------------------------------
 CPU time:        0.020 sec
 Overhead CPU:    0.000 sec
 CPU model:         SPARCstation-20 (384M)
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 15:07:06 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Eliza McGrand- CVA Guest 
Subject:      Re: american language

YEAH!!! i am not the only one with chartreuse paranoia!!!  i remember it
having some connection to soem french liquor which is a bright bright
green, but i hear it in connection with fuschia-ish raspberryish pink
as well...  so what is the deal here?  are we talking color blind
emperor without clothes?
e
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 14:33:48 EST
Reply-To:     rreynold@rci.rutgers.edu
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
Comments:     Authenticated sender is 
From:         Rebecca Reynolds 
Organization: Rutgers University
Subject:      Re: epithalamium

> My brother has just announced to my family that he is getting married, and
> he has asked me to write a poem to celebrate the occasion.  Fortunately, I
> have a year to get started.
>
> I'm looking for contemporary epithalamiums to get an idea as to how to
> proceed:  any suggestions?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Hugh Steinberg
>

I just wanted to share this with you, but I don't know that it would
be particularly helpful . . .

I also was asked to write a poem for a wedding, but this was a
lesbian wedding, so I was determined to write a contemporary-
aternative-lifestyle-epithalamium.  (No, make that THE
alternative-livestyle-epithalamium.)

First, I could not find contemporary epithalamiums--though I am sure
that there are some--I simply do not have an exhaustive knowledge
of contemporary poetry, and I'm sure someone else on this list can
supply you with some examples.  I'd be interested, myself, having
done this.   One challenge, I think, is that contemporary poetry (or
the contemporary ear for poetry)  is not
often so directly "occasional"  (though I suppose all poems are
occasional).   At any rate, I had to figure out a way to be
"occasional" and reader/listener friendly (since it is a public
event).  I had to write something that would be appropriate for a
group of people who did not read poetry at all.  Not only were there
no other poets in the place, there were no graduate students  or
anything.  A lot of social workers  (seems to be an occupational
hazard among lesbians).  Also, there had to be some ref. to the fact
that this was not your average wedding --  I think in any case, it is
difficult to write poems that need to refer to so many particulars.
Ultimately, I gave up on re-writing the epithalamium  (especially
since my sense of poetic convention is pretty inexact).  I got inspiration
from a Charles Olson poem, "Love I" --which is too long to print out
here--and used a similar repetitive structure, writing instead of an
epithilamium, a blessing of sorts, though I suppose the poem is an
epithalamium too, since it is pretty clearly a "wedding" poem.  (Or
perhaps not?  Will someone clarify?)  The happy ending is that the poem
is going to be in the Lesbian Review of Books this coming year sometime.  I
don't suppose you subscribe.  I would shamelessly reprint it here,
but my e-mail  is at work and my poems are at home.

The Olson poem itself  is too much about love to be about marriage, I'm
afraid.  And I don't mean this in a pessimistic sense--it's just that
one may want to be restrained.  However, the Olson poem is very amenable
to being read aloud to a general audience--and that was what I was
after, so it proved a useful template, or perhaps, diving board.

Hope this in some indirect way is useful!

Rebecca Reynolds
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 15:40:19 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Sylvester Pollet 
Subject:      new lit site (fwd)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I haven't had time to check this one yet, but thought it might be of
interest. sp

>Date: Mon, 30 Jun 1997 14:13:58 -0500
>From: Jim Eggeling 
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>To: pollet@maine.maine.edu
>Subject: ANTINUOUS Literary Web Site
>X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
>
>Do you link with oither sites?
>
>Hadrian House Publishers announces the opening of its web site,
>Antinuous, , e-mail
>.
>
>The site features poems by the poet J.L.S.E. that have been published in
>
>anthologies and journals over the past twenty-seven years. It was
>uploaded to the Netscorp server on June 25, 1997 around 1 p.m. on the
>occasion of the poet's sixty-third birthday and as an event celebrating
>Stonewall Week Gay Pride.
>
>The "Home Page" opens with a .jpg of a painting by Degas.  The
>"Foreword" opens with a gif. of a photograph of the Castel de
>Sant'Angelo (Hadrian's Tomb.) ( The site is named after the Emperor
>Hadrian's young love, Antinuous.) The "Acknowledgments" opens
>with a memorial to the late Allen Ginsberg.
>
>The poems are mostly homoerotic or verse translations or both. The
>tone and content of the page is Hellenistic.
>
>Please visit Antinuous,  and post this invitation wherever it might be
>welcome.
>
>CONTACT:
>Jim Eggeling  
>
>(210)791-9069 or (210)723-3978
>625 Honeysuckle Ct.
>Laredo, TX78041
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 13:32:23 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: american language
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Come to think, I dimly remember that the good monks make a less-deadly
liqueur as well. Perhaps it's a drink of a different color.

At 03:07 PM 6/30/97 -0400, you wrote:
>YEAH!!! i am not the only one with chartreuse paranoia!!!  i remember it
>having some connection to soem french liquor which is a bright bright
>green, but i hear it in connection with fuschia-ish raspberryish pink
>as well...  so what is the deal here?  are we talking color blind
>emperor without clothes?
>e
>
>
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 15:30:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: Naropa, the mini-series
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

Friday night at Naropa the featured readings began with...

... a performance by proxy of a poem by Clifford Burke, the legendary letter
press printer, who'd taken gravely ill (no news on his current status). His
serpentine hymn to natural life for three voices was ably performed by a
trio of students: one male as reader and two females as acapella chanters
and antiphonal chorus.

Next up the initimable Jack Collom, who read with great verve  and vigor his
sonic tour de force, "Quintana Roo Beach 6AM," also a kind of ode to the
natural world's ceaselessly Protean movement, a mosaic of cubistic piled up
images read/sung/hummed with a breathless staccato rhythm ("wind licking
land as boom la-la"), achieving a vertiginous morphing of "shimmering
morphologies." This was followed by an "Eco-Haibun:" a witty, syncopated
meditation on certain themes from Simon Schama's _Landscape & Memory_.

Lee Christopher then gave us her playful, colloquial "Nawlins" take on
passion, an amusing mix of homespun observations and erotic joie de vivre:
"Married men are like freight train boxcars -if you miss one you can catch
the next - and the ride's always the same."

Anne Waldman closed the evening with a powerful reading from _Iovis, Part
2_. Evoking Sappho and Dante in an effort to raise language - commit it - to
a new level of engagement, she ranged from a panoramic view of the history
of the feminine psyche (all via multi-vocal narrative & pitch) to a vignette
of an encounter with a Balinese masseuse calling herself "Marlene Dietrich,"
who plaintively mused: "Is a man all there is to a woman?" This was followed
by a section exploring the dialectical contrast between tantric phallic
practices and the pornographic gun culture.

Coda: Anne was joined by Steven Taylor for the performance of an anon. 13th
Century motet for Allen Ginsberg and "Verses for the New Amazing Grace."
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 13:31:38 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics

>Kim Dawn's posts, on the other hand, were 1) pretty obnoxious, 2) pretty
>stupid, and 3) pretty obnoxious and pretty stupid. Am I undermining her
>"authority" or "femininity" by saying so?

The above statements are matters of opinion, and quite loaded opinion at
that.  You say them as if they are self-evident, and create a situation in
which you frame everyone who does not agree with you as also "stupid" (for
not recognizing stupidity) and possibly "obnoxious."

The issue of authority is an interesting one.  There's "authority" as
"power" (the power to issue [author] *orders*) and there's "authority" as
"authenticity" (the certification of an author's *identity* and "expert"
status on a particular subject). The kind of "authority" I reference when I
criticize rhetorical tactics which work to undermine the authority of those
who belong to traditionally disempowered groups is the "authority to speak
as if expecting to be heard, and to have one's arguments or artworks taken
seriously on their own terms, *as* arguments or artworks."  The
"undermining" I refer to is a result of tactics which seek to dismiss
arguments or artworks based on the idea that certain people are not *worth*
listening to for [insert_your_reason_here]. It is my observation that
particularly in responses to the public speech of women, the topic quickly
and frequently turns from the points raised by the woman in question to a
discussion focusing on the character and motivation of the woman in question.

>But the most treasured retort, I thought, was:
>
>>>> Dodie's was, I thought, a tactic which reinforced/reinscribed power
>hierarchies of a dominant over an oppressed group. <<<
>
>
>This is a way of saying that Dodie is sharp. I never really understand when
>people start bouncing around "reinscription, reinforced, reify" and see
>individuals interact in terms of "power hierarchies."  These three "R's"
>are poor word choices considering the issues that they are used to talk
>about. They never clarify anything.

This wasn't *my* way of saying Bellamy is sharp.  And I disagree about the
lack of clarity here.  Seems to me that what I said was pretty plain.
Interesting that you resist it. I didn't use the word "reify" (I rarely do).
"Inscription" and its "did-it-again" form, "reinscription" are fairly
graphic (I tend to think of tattooing when I read it), and "reinforced",
well, that's about as concrete as a pile of sandbags around a foxhole.
Pretty clear, I think.

As for Bellamy's rejection of my reading of her posts about Kim Dawn, all I
can do/have done is point to the words and the rhetorical constructions she
offered POETICS readers in that instance.  Whatever an author's
*intentions*, it is the words on the screen that readers see.  Those who
know Bellamy can add their deeper understanding to the interpretation of her
words, but those who don't are forced to work with the texts at hand.  This
is, perhaps, another illustration that identity *matters*.

"Being read" is the risk that writers take and--one assumes--the goal for
which they strive.  *How* a reader reads is out of the author's control,
though understanding how (different) readers read might provide one a
certain amount of useful information.  At least that's how I see/read it.

Kali
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 13:47:04 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Mark Weiss 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
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>well, that's about as concrete as a pile of sandbags around a foxhole.
>Pretty clear, I think.
>

Sandbags, wherever found, are only concrete if cement and water are added,
but the military metaphor, albeit defensive, will doubtless be experienced
as a stance of attack. I can't see what would be lost to discussion if there
were a metaphoric standdown by all parties.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 16:46:12 -0400
Reply-To:     daniel7@IDT.NET
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Daniel Zimmerman 
Organization: Bard-O
Subject:      Re: american language
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Mark Weiss wrote:
>
> Come to think, I dimly remember that the good monks make a less-deadly
> liqueur as well. Perhaps it's a drink of a different color.
>
> At 03:07 PM 6/30/97 -0400, you wrote:
> >YEAH!!! i am not the only one with chartreuse paranoia!!!  i remember it
> >having some connection to soem french liquor which is a bright bright
> >green, but i hear it in connection with fuschia-ish raspberryish pink
> >as well...  so what is the deal here?  are we talking color blind
> >emperor without clothes?
> >e
> >
> >
Yes, Mark:
        They make yellow Chartreuse, too [only about 80 proof; green weighs in
around 110, if I remember correctly--made from 101 different herbs, too,
I believe]. I've never heard of chartreuse refering to any color than a
sort of dayglo-neon yellowish green, something for capri pants or
Caribbean busses or, lately, firetrucks.
"When I hear a Siren, I reach for an apéritif."
--Dan
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 17:07:43 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics / standdown (or even lounge?)

Mark --

<< Sandbags, wherever found, are only concrete if cement and water are
added, but the military metaphor, albeit defensive, will doubtless be
experienced as a stance of attack. I can't see what would be lost to
discussion if there were a metaphoric standdown by all parties. >>

that proposition is about as pacific as a Hawaiian seabreeze.  Where do
you think you are, anyway?  Is this what they taught you in Brooklyn?
(Maybe the hippies got to you?)

For what worth, I'd like to commend the good clarity & (relative)
even-toned-ness of Kali T.'s latest ecritural item (*not* to salvo) --

I suspect this is part of the mutual adjustment that happens in dialogue
& other forms of group living.  One might note a certain amount (or
certain areas) of possible misperception on various sides, no doubt; --
talk ain't so easy sometimes . . .  still, the waves are lapping.

Comrades, your mai tais are waiting.
d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 14:16:43 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: Poems/Identities
In-Reply-To:  
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>
>*Dr.* Tal

Oops, sorry. Up here we dont call each other Dr. unless we are being formal
in order to be agressive. Is that necessity of using "Dr." a US thing. or
an Ivy League thing?




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 17:01:49 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
In-Reply-To:  Message of Mon, 30 Jun 1997 13:31:38 MDT from 

Kali, have you thought about Dan Bouchard's question re: does it matter
whether it's a man or a woman who's making the issue?  I think you thought
David Bromige's metaphors were also so-to-speak pretty stupid, but they were
very similar to Kim Dawn's; i.e. bring everything to a pornography level.
As if pornography has the power to shock in an interesting way.  I myself
don't think "power to shock" is interesting, period.  But we live in a
place when there is no general, relatively stable middle audience for
"literature", so it's convenient to relate everything to bio-sexual relations
because they're universal.  Trouble is, they get real boring.  They also
remind me a lot of pre-Hitler & Hitler Germany. Shocking reference, I know.
It's not that sexual relations are boring, far from it, it's when they become
an isolatable "topic" that they start to lose me.  Because there's no
"center" we also , we "writers", have trouble communicating.  We all have
a different concept of the audience.  We're in an in-between time between
the mass literature of the 19th century (when they did shakespeare in hotel
lobbies) & the mass culture of the 1st half of the century (when movies
had dialogue) & the fusion of the 60-70's (when Lowell & Ginsberg were not
that different from Sexton) to the discontinuous PRESENT much like the
turn of the last century...  & there are very few poets with an idiom
that energizes & unites (I know the youngsters among us will disagree...)
& the Youth Culture is now the Yup-Yeah Club (see TV) & the Youth are
gathering frustrated momentum... learning how to forget what they never
knew...  - Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 14:23:21 -0700
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Bowering 
Subject:      Re: american language / Pooh
In-Reply-To:  <199706301155.HAA28214@radagast.wizard.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

"Smarter than yr average bear" was Yogi, not Pooh.




George Bowering.
                                       ,
2499 West 37th Ave.,
Vancouver, B.C.,
Canada  V6M 1P4

fax: 1-604-266-9000
e-mail: bowering@sfu.ca
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 17:20:27 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "P.Standard Schaefer" 
Subject:      STEVE CARL

Could someone please send me the current address of Mr. Steve Carl, back
channel if that is best.

Thanks,

Standard Schaefer
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 17:30:58 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Andrew D Epstein 
Subject:      Re: epithalamium
In-Reply-To:  
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Sun, 29 Jun 1997, Hugh Steinberg wrote:

> My brother has just announced to my family that he is getting married, and
> he has asked me to write a poem to celebrate the occasion.  Fortunately, I
> have a year to get started.
>
> I'm looking for contemporary epithalamiums to get an idea as to how to
> proceed:  any suggestions?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Hugh Steinberg
>
>

I thought I'd just throw out a contemporary epithalamium by Frank O'Hara.
It's "Poem Read at Joan Mitchell's" and it ends:

"but ideas are obscure and nothing should be obscure tonight
you will live half the year in a house by the sea and half the year in a
        house in our arms
we peer into the future and see you happy and hope it is a sign that we
        will be happy too, something to cling to, happiness
the least and best of human attainments"

It's in O'Hara's Selected Poems.

 Also, someone mentioned an anthology edited by Robert Hass, but couldn't
remember what it was called.  It's co-edited by Stephen Mitchell, and is
called _Into the Garden: A Wedding Anthology_ (Harper, 1993).

Hope that helps!

Andrew Epstein
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 17:30:29 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Henry Gould 
Subject:      recommended reading

Have started to read Michael Heller's new book, WORDFLOW, recently
published by Talisman House.  Maybe can review at some point.  Enjoy the
balance of elegant simplicity & moving eloquence, not that easy to find
in poetry these days.  - Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 16:41:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: frank identities
Comments: To: Maria Damon 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

Backing up a bit to address what Maria wrote last Friday. I have to take
exception and/or amplify from my own POV some conclusions you draw from your
example about Anne Frank.  What makes her valuable to readers is not her
Jewishness at all which factor was obviously the immediate cause of her
oppression and death, but rather the fact that she was oppressed and dealt
with it with such extraordinary composure and grace. That the Jews have been
historically oppressed from the get-go makes it all the more poignant, to be
sure (though as Norman Cantor points out in _The Sacred Chain_ there is
_zero_  historical evidence to back up the Biblical story of the Egyptian
bondage - in fact what scant evidence of the Jewish presence that's been
found so far looks contra-indicative). Reducing Frank's story to "identity
politics" is a rather cynical way to look at it, I think.  "Hope & courage"
make no difference you say? We all die - the only choice given us is how we
face it. How much better then to face it with hope & courage rather than
bitterness.

I'm not sure what you mean by "she did what everyone did then." There's
nothing like war to separate real human beings from the rats among us, by
which I refer to the collaborationists in France & Switzerland and god knows
where else. To me - not that I'm really very fond of it  -  her book is
about much more than her "identity" - it seems rather like a refusal to be
bound by identity.  But surely dear Maria you aren't saying that? Tell me it
ain't so! Tell me I'm an incredible idiot who has no idea what the hell he's
talking about! Or maybe it's just the wind off the Cape...

Patrick Pritchett
 ----------
From: Maria Damon
To: POETICS
Subject: Re: Idenity of the poet/Hey! other mind here
Date: Friday, June 27, 1997 7:25PM


i point out the obvious example of ann frank (have i sd this before on this
list?).  though
she's a bright, gifted teenage girl under any circumstances, the fact that
she wrote while concealed for 2 years in an attic because she was jewish,
and was eventually captured and died of disease on the eve of liberation,
does make a difference in our reading.  it does bug me when she's held up
as an example of "hope and courage" and people quote that old "in spite of
everything i still believe that people are good at heart" --look where that
got her. she did what everyone did then.  but it can't be denied that her
work is valuable as a document of identity politics of the most dramatic
sort.  not because she writes "i'm jewish i'm jewish," but because her
identity has everything to do with her fate, and the reception of her work.
should it? why not?
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 17:47:48 EDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         henry g 
Subject:      question

If it's easier to alienate a possible audience
than win over a real one,
who are the exploratory writers,
& who the conventional?

I submit all my own work
to a certain standard:
would I be able to read this
at a Thanskgiving dinner?

& the measure of value remains:

ARS EST CELARE ARTEM
(art is to hide art).

- Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 17:53:04 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         George Thompson 
Subject:      Re: american language
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Mark Weiss asked:

>It's the color of the delicious-but-deadly liqueur produced at the monastery
>of La Grande Chartreuse (chartreuse=carthusian, or charter-house, as in _The
>Charterhouse of Parma_), from wence the name. They've been making it for
>centuries, and it's always been green. My own scientific survey (I asked my
>wife) confirms this.
>Xena predates Christianity--maybe in her day the word was used differently?
>Where's a sanskritist when you need one?
>

I know that the ones I know are good for nothing. And they don't drink
enough [in general] to know what the true color of chartreuse [or anything
else] is. Monks on the other hand were *real* scholars, combining knowledge
of books with knowledge of god,and quite a good knowledge of spirits too.
The question is: where's a monk when you need one?

George T.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 14:49:07 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: Poems/Identities

>>*Dr.* Tal
>
>Oops, sorry. Up here we dont call each other Dr. unless we are being formal
>in order to be agressive. Is that necessity of using "Dr." a US thing. or
>an Ivy League thing?

I experienced your decision to label me "Ms." in your previous post as both
distancing and patronizing.  I sign my posts "Kali" and expect to be
addressed in the same name.  I *never* sign myself "Ms. Tal."  I'm either on
a first-name basis (which is my choice as a default) or I'm "Dr." I find
that there is no formal address for a female person which is not devalued
("Ms." is used snidely as often as it is used respectfully), and so I use
the gender-neutral honorific when I *must* use one.  Dodie Bellamy requested
that she *not* be referred to by her first name alone by those who don't
know her.  I think that's reasonable.  I prefer to be referred to by my
first name as a general rule, but if you're not comfortable with that, I
prefer "Dr." to "Ms."  Two rules of civility I try always to observe:  don't
call people outta their names; don't insult their parents.

The "Ivy League" presumption is, in fact, hilarious.  Yes, I went to Yale as
a grad student.  Yes, I received a Ph.D. from that institution.  But I hate
the place, dissed it in the preface of my thesis and my book, slam it on the
Internet whenever I have the opportunity, and would sooner cut off my right
arm than send a good student there.  I earned my "Ivy League" degree in
spite of all the obstacles an extremely hostile American Studies department
threw in my path, and could not care less about the "prestige" supposedly
conferred by a degree from an institution ruled by folks whose politics and
ethics I consider egregious.  I *do* value the good opinions of my
dissertation advisor and the members of my orals and dissertation committee,
but that's only because I got to pick 'em out myself, and I chose them on
the basis of their intelligence *and* decency.

Kali
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 16:55:00 -0500
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         "Pritchett,Pat @Silverplume" 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics
Comments: To: henry 
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN

I think it was Arthur Symons who once said: "Nothing is more bourgeois than
the desire to shock the bourgeoisie."

But it was definitely Cioran who said: "One always perishes by the self one
assumes: to bear a name is to claim an exact mode of collapse."

And it may or may not have been David Carradine who uttered: "It is easy to
shoot past the mark. Hard to stand firm in the middle" (sic).

Patrick Pritchett
 ----------
From: henry
To: POETICS
Subject: Re: identity/poetics
Date: Monday, June 30, 1997 4:28PM


Kali, have you thought about Dan Bouchard's question re: does it matter
whether it's a man or a woman who's making the issue?  I think you thought
David Bromige's metaphors were also so-to-speak pretty stupid, but they were
very similar to Kim Dawn's; i.e. bring everything to a pornography level.
As if pornography has the power to shock in an interesting way.  I myself
don't think "power to shock" is interesting, period.  But we live in a
place when there is no general, relatively stable middle audience for
"literature", so it's convenient to relate everything to bio-sexual
relations
because they're universal.  Trouble is, they get real boring.  They also
remind me a lot of pre-Hitler & Hitler Germany. Shocking reference, I know.
It's not that sexual relations are boring, far from it, it's when they
become
an isolatable "topic" that they start to lose me.  Because there's no
"center" we also , we "writers", have trouble communicating.  We all have
a different concept of the audience.  We're in an in-between time between
the mass literature of the 19th century (when they did shakespeare in hotel
lobbies) & the mass culture of the 1st half of the century (when movies
had dialogue) & the fusion of the 60-70's (when Lowell & Ginsberg were not
that different from Sexton) to the discontinuous PRESENT much like the
turn of the last century...  & there are very few poets with an idiom
that energizes & unites (I know the youngsters among us will disagree...)
& the Youth Culture is now the Yup-Yeah Club (see TV) & the Youth are
gathering frustrated momentum... learning how to forget what they never
knew...  - Henry Gould
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 18:25:23 -0400
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         David Israel 
Subject:      Re: american language

Dan Salmon contributed --

> one beer short of a six pack

on this model:

    one egg short of a baker's dozen

(characterizing a gesture intended to look [or be] generous but which, in
the instance, proves the imagined extra benefit)

also:

    two speakers shy of a sound system
(i.e., totally out of it)

    one slice shy of a sandwich
(lack of collaborative spirit?)
relatedly:
    one partner shy of a relationship

then,
     one voice shy of an opera
(As in:  "Now this script reads okay, the plot moves, characters cohere,
the lines of motivation seem credible.  But jeez, there's something missing
here -- what it is?  Slaving away at this baby six months -- whatever I do,
we're still one voice shy of an opera.")

also:
    hey, just three bases shy of a home-run!

&
    "well, let me put it this way:
     we're still 75 trombones shy of the big parade . . . "

d.i.
=========================================================================
Date:         Mon, 30 Jun 1997 15:31:16 MDT
Reply-To:     UB Poetics discussion group 
Sender:       UB Poetics discussion group 
From:         Kali Tal 
Subject:      Re: identity/poetics

>Kali, have you thought about Dan Bouchard's question re: does it matter
>whether it's a man or a woman who's making the issue?

Yes, it matters.  But that doesn't mean I "prefer" one to the other.

I have thought about it, and I think I answered that question (thought
Dan's particular framing of the question) a few days ago in response to Ken
Wolfe.  I wrote:

"In my experience, authors tend not to hide their identities unless they have
a specific purpose in mind.  Most authors *like* being known, and those who
don't are anomolous enough so that we know them for *not* wanting to be
known (Pynchon, Salinger).  In cases of deliberately concealed or withheld
identity, I am interested in both the author's intent and in the general
impact of the work.  Some identity-concealing tactics are quite easy to
understand--George Sand, George Eliot, James Tiptree, Jr., etc. wrote under
masculine pen names because it brought them (a limited number of) masculine
privileges.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to analyze that sort of
passing.  Frank Yerby, however, is more interesting.  For those of you who
aren't into romance novels, Frank Yerby is one of the pillars of the genre;
he's black but has constructed his ouevre quite carefully to give no sign of
this.  He made a mint on his writing.  What do I think of this?  I think
it's complicated, and contemplating Yerby always sends me back to James
Weldon Johnson's _Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man_.  (The latter is also
fascinating in terms of the identity question because so many folks mistake
the novel for an autobiography when the "real" JWJ couldn't have been
farther from his protagonist.)  And then there are the well-known "fakes" by
white authors, like "Danny Santiago's" _Famous All Over Town_ or, to bring
class into it, Rebecca Harding Davis' _Life in the Iron Mills_. How about
gender crossing within races, like Ernest Gaines' _Autobiography of Miss
Jane Pittman_, which almost everyone who reads it takes *as* an
autobiography? Or, even within a single "identity," what about the multiple
and self-contradictory autobiographies of Lillian Hellman or Mary McCarthy?
Each one of these works (and their authors) can be read and understood in
context, with identity factored into the mix.

"There is no single answer, no prescription, for how and when identity
matters, no formula that will let you know for sure if identity is of
primary importance in *this* case or *that* one.  So I always factor it in,
using as much information as I've got available, asking around for more, and
depending upon the one constant in all of this, which is that no matter how
much I know about a writer, my grasp of his or identity will never be
complete.  Like identity itself, for me understanding is a process rather
than an end to be reached."

>I think you thought
>David Bromige's metaphors were also so-to-speak pretty stupid, but they were
>very similar to Kim Dawn's;

I did *not* think Bromige's metaphors were "stupid."  I don't usually like
the word, and use it only as a slang superlative--as in "stupid fine".  I
didn't agree with them, but they were plenty smart.  Stupid/smart don't
usually seem useful distinctions to me though--about as useful as good/bad.
And it seems to me that Kim Dawn and David Bromige were engaged in very
different practices.  Kim Dawn seemed to me to be (in her first post to Jay
Schwartz) amplifying his stated fears/dislikes and pumping up the volume.
Since he expressed his distaste for the S&M play and the personal chat, she
aggressively responded with more S&M play and more personal chat.  Whatever
you think of the skill or "appropriate" nature of what she was doing, she
*was* doing something quite clear.  Bromige wasn't taking my responses and
pumping up the volume.  He took offense at a metaphor I used, and tried to
appropriate it, turn it to his own *use*.  There was no "play" involved
there, as I do think there was play in Kim Dawn's response.  For example, if
Schwartz *had* wanted to play with Kim Dawn (and, granted, not everyone
wants to play the same games), he could have responded with an even more
outrageous post--embracing the S&M theme and making his point by excess.
*Or* he could have *played* the part of sputtering, pompous, outraged fool
quite beautifully and thus stolen Kim Dawn's thunder.  But Bromige's
response simply shoved me, and my interpretation, out of the way, leaving
little rhetorical room except for me to either vanish or shove back.

As for your thoughts on porn, well, I did explain that I thought porn was a
process and not a set of pictures to which one could point.  I'm a little
unclear about the pre-Hitler & Hitler Germany reference.  Pre-Hitler Germany
included some interesting sexual cultures, but those were clearly at odds
with (and often literally murdered by) Hitler's Germany.  My understanding
of fascist sexuality is drawn primarily from Klaus Theweleit's work, so
perhaps you have some other perspective that would help me make the
connection you're suggesting.

>Because there's no
>"center" we also , we "writers", have trouble communicating.  We all have
>a different concept of the audience.  We're in an in-between time between
>the mass literature of the 19th century (when they did shakespeare in hotel
>lobbies) & the mass culture of the 1st half of the century (when movies
>had dialogue) & the fusion of the 60-70's (when Lowell & Ginsberg were not
>that different from Sexton) to the discontinuous PRESENT much like the
>turn of the last century...  & there are very few poets with an idiom
>that energizes & unites (I know the youngsters among us will disagree...)
>& the Youth Culture is now the Yup-Yeah Club (see TV) & the Youth are
>gathering frustrated momentum... learning how to forget what they never
>knew...

Well, this is a whole new topic, and one I'd be very interested in reading
about if you'd care to expand....

Kali