Saturday, October 04, 2003
How often
do you get to hear the significant poets in your region? Once
a year maybe? That number has always seemed about right to me, but it
varies considerably depending on how many active reading series there are, how
many poets & of course how many poets in whose work one is genuinely
interested. Writers in
I must have
heard
So I was
more than happy to hear her Thursday night at Temple’s central city extension
site, literally in an office building a half block from City Hall. It’s been a
few years since I last heard her read & it’s always an illuminating event.
Thursday was no exception.
Scalapino
read from four works: Zither, It’s go in
/ quiet illumined grass / land, The Tango and a new as yet unpublished
manuscript called Can’t is Night. At
the outset, she said that she had a musical structure in mind when picking
which works from which to read. & I could hear it, more so than I had in
the past, which made me wonder how much Leslie had changed since I moved east
in 1995, how much I had, or maybe how much the world of poetry had so that my
expectations were different. It was aurally the most fascinating reading I’ve
been to in years. So much so in fact as I drove west out to Paoli afterwards, I
tried to think of another reading that had struck me in just that fashion
&, in all honesty, the one that came to mind was a trio of Friday night
readings Robert Duncan gave in Berkeley around 1970 in which he read all the
sections of his long poem Passages that
had been written to that point.
Which made me think of how few poets – unless they’re explicitly doing
sound poetry, another kettle of fish altogether – foreground the syllable, the
grainy surfaces of consonants or the clear tones of vowels to the degree that
Scalapino does.
And I think that the answer really may be that since
But as I
said much more is always also going on. The one work I had in front of me as
Scalapino read from it was It’s go in / quiet illumined
grass / land, -- that’s the kind of complex, multi-line title one
normally associates with the late Larry Eigner. In it, the stanzas or passages
function as individual units, sometimes one to a page, more often two or three
separated by just enough space so that the eye instantly registers the
individuation. It’s the same sort of spatial separation that generally divides
sections in the booklength prose poem Sight the Scalapino did in
collaboration with Lyn Hejinian – flat out my favorite collaboration ever.
There I thought it had been a part of their strategy of keeping their individual
moments in the
wall standing rose
could just
‘place’
together
as evening in the middle of
people
speaking
and so no space even there
one?
freezing pale night at wild (only)
day
‘there’ only, no rose even so can
‘place’
the day there being no people
speaking
one
Only one place is a thought that I can’t quite
shake from a stanza like this, as tho solving a riddle by combining the key (or
at least reiterated) terms into what, for me, makes the most sense.
This is a
sense of stanzaic form I can’t recall ever having seen before. It’s not the kind
of interlinear textuality that might make one want to have two separate
readers, but rather a model that permits both one-words lines and longer ones
that tend toward six words (there’s one of five, another of seven). But how
account for the moments when there is only one one-word line between the longer
ones as distinct those where there are two?
Contrast
this sense of line & stanza with this sentence, which opens up Bob
Perelman’s “Driving to
the Philadelphia Poetry Festival by the Free Library,” which to my delight
I found on DC Poetry website the other day.
Emerging from the middle
of a donut-shaped dream, I rolled out of
yesterday like there was no tomorrow, turning left
onto Crittenden
with its consonants and trees,
right onto the not necessarily bitter irony of
Mt Pleasant, which goes both up and down,
like life they say
but maybe not.
Both
passages here are predicated on the tension of long vs. short line, but in
Scalapino’s there is an ambiguity as to how much “turn” the reader should here
in the
In
Perelman’s work, the line is visual & almost inaudible, the normative
syntax unfolding as though the text itself were perfectly ordinary, a register
of ironies not unlike Mt Pleasant, smooth as a ride on an elevator.
One source
for Scalapino’s form here must come from her collaboration with sculptor Petah Coyne (visible
in the book in only a single print).* Coyne’s drip wax sculptures are the upper
limit of sensual surfaces in contemporary three-dimensional art & I see
that relation in the shifts between lines, for example, in the sample of
Scalapino’s work above – it’s a feature that I think you can hear if you just read her work aloud
roughly the way she does, slightly faster than one syllable at a time.
I’m not
quite sure what I make of it all, but this isn’t a statement of ambivalence in
the slightest. Rather, I’m going to need to absorb it, as I did Sight (and as I am doing her Autobiography), knowing that it will
come to almost in a generative fashion, in waves in the days & weeks ahead.
* My nephew
Dan & I saw a Coyne exhibition in
Ш Ш Ш
I want to
note something else that the Temple Writing Series does that I think makes
great sense. Before each “visiting” writer reads in their series, a student in
the writing program reads a short set of their own work. They almost always
pick somebody whose work has something simpatico with the visiting writer &
it’s often a very interesting balance. I first heard Pattie McCarthy “open” for
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Friday, October 03, 2003
Yesterday,
I characterized Fanny Howe’s booklength verse drama Tis of Thee as a “completely narrative work” that “focuses on parallel
stories of interracial love, a birth, and a male child given up to others, once
in the 1890s, once in the 1950s.” This is accurate enough so far as it goes,
but it hardly goes far enough. Narrative in the hands of Fanny Howe, who has
written more than a few works of fiction since publishing her first collection
of short stories, Forty Whacks, in
1969, is no more “ordinary” in her hands than in those of, say, Kathy Acker.
Tis of Thee entails
three voices, one of a white woman, two those of black men, describing, in Sherwood
Anderson-like soliloquies, twin tales of emotional devastation that result from
racist reactions to the question of “mixing.” Most if not all of the
philosophical, historical & social consequences of crossing this barrier
that exists, not biologically, but politically, between races are examined in a
way that is, on the one hand, quite methodical, & on the other driven first
of all by & through emotion. There are subplots as well, not simply giving
away the child & the inner death that must entail for the “abandoning”
parent, but a second one involving the female figure & the most important
unvoiced persona in the drama, that of her father. (At some point, a serious
critic is going to examine that “substitute the father” syndrome Howe suggests
might drive one to first transcend whatever social taboos one might
internalize. It’s a powerful force & one that is not resolved in this
text.)
If the
voices represent historic figures, they don’t quite exist as personas, as each
must inhabit two roles – that of the 19th century tale, the second
occurring in the middle of the 20th century.* Indeed, they have no
names & are merely identified as X, Y & Z. If, on the CD, for example,
it’s never necessarily clear which woman
Stephanie French is giving voice to in a particular stanza, it’s precisely
because Howe isn’t after that. What matters here is not how the voices are
individuated, so much as how they are not. For it precisely the trap of social
category, gender as well as race, that is being etched verbally:
Across
one century, and into the next, I became the mother of his child—
Twice
at least—but let each child be taken away from me.
Naturally
I grew nauseous from loneliness.
By
night-fits and shadow-language of the trees I tossed
my
knees this way and that—my bed a raft on a sea ill-lighted
and deep.
My
cries were dry.
The
leaves rattled the glass.
Outside
sirens would invent the whole city’s anthem,
a tune
of anonymous personal pain,
and trash cans smashed against teenage hands. Now I would see
reflections
like stains in a clear swamp . . . . White lilies cupped by greens.
Trees
twinned and echoes on a grassy pond.
It was
really a mirror for me. My birthright with its clear glass tables
in
livingrooms—except where the cocktail left a circle—or the peanut a shower
of
salt—was never to be mine again.
I had
stepped outside a magic circle.
And I
couldn’t take care of myself
even though I could talk eloquently about many liberating subjects in
1890.
And yet again in the middle of the 20th century.
It’s worth
noting, in the section above, which sentences are given their own lines for
emphasis & which are embedded into larger structures.
This
passage, I think, makes clear many of the strengths of the work, but also some
of its limitations. The writing itself is terrific, but the dramatic monolog as
a form confines the text, especially here when in fact it is more than one
woman speaking in a single voice. As the CD makes all too evident, this is
especially a problem for the two male roles in this play. Because their
multiplicity renders it impossible to individuate them linguistically (one
speaking more “correctly,” say, the other using slang), it becomes almost
impossible – and more than “almost” if one doesn’t have the text in front on
one when listening to the recording. After hearing the CD five times over three
days, I still cannot tell the two male voices apart at all. Only part of the
problem lies with the actors or the director – the real issue is textual:
“transpersonal” voices don’t so much articulate positionality (which is what I
think Howe is after) as they do dissolve “personality.” Yet there is an opacity in the latter that is utterly essential for the
question of positions.
But the
category, not the person, is the problem & the problem should not be underestimated.
When I was working in the prison movement in
But for all
of its power & sadness, Tis of Thee only
partly confronts the depths of this problem. That it event attempts it is a
testament of its power & of Howe’s fearlessness as an author. Yet rather
than articulating the three positions—male, female & offspring—that Howe
has written, what I hear instead is a different triad: black male, white
female, absent (but controlling) father.
Miles Anderson’s score, which ranges from Henry Cary’s 1740 Thesarus Musicus (from which both “America” & “God Save the Queen” are derived) & something I could only characterize as Phil Glass lite, is unobtrusive when it needs to be & in some places quite lovely.
* The text
implies, although it never really addresses, the question of how might these
dynamics all play out today, as far removed from that second tale as it is
historically from the first. Do younger people have more freedom in this
respect? I certainly hope so, although one sees the same dynamics worldwide
cast in a thousand different forms, Serb & Croat, Hindu & Muslim, Arab
& Jew.
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Thursday, October 02, 2003
There is a
motto that has stuck in my head for a quarter century that says “Aspire to read
more than what comes in the mail.” The source for this is a statement made by
my late friend Jim Gustafson in the anthology None of the Above. His version is wordier – typical enough for Jim
– but his point is exact. But then his mailbox isn’t my mailbox – and it’s not
1975 any more, either. When I went out to the end of the driveway, I came back with
three separate envelopes from greater
·
Carve, Issue 1, edited by Aaron Tieger,
with work from Gregory Ford, William Corbett, Joseph Torra, Dorothea Lasky, J. Kates, Sara Veglahn, Eric Baus, Noah Eli
Gordon, Nick Moudry, Travis Nichols, Michael Carr,
·
·
Mike County & Del Ray Cross, a chapbook from Pressed Wafer
composed of County’s Three Deckers & Cross’ Poems. I have no idea where County lives,
though I’m vaguely aware that Cross lived in the
There is
also a letter from Larry Fagin, suggesting (as have a few emails from others) a
correction to my piece on Paul Blackburn’s “Ritual XVII.” The idea that O’Hara
ever wrote any of his lunch poems on a department store typewriter (or anything
like that) is, in Fagin’s words, an “old wives’ tale”: “There was an Olivetti dealer in the MOMA
neighborhood, with a sample machine bolted to a stand out on the sidewalk, (I
tested it once, myself, being an inveterate Lettera 22 fan) and while it’s tempting to think
so, none of Frank’s poems issued from it.”
Finally in
the mailbox under several computing magazines is a thicker package from
·
Tis of Thee, by
Fanny Howe, a booklength verse play, complete with CD. This completely
narrative work focuses on parallel stories of interracial love, a birth, and a
male child given up to others, once in the 1890s, once in the 1950s. After
several years of teaching at UCSD, Howe has returned to
·
Poetical Dictionary, by Lohren
Green, actually (as I read it) a sequence of works written as dictionary
entries, a preface that is itself a meditation on the dictionary as form,
complete with some strange tables and great illustrations by Robert Hullinger. Currently a San Franciscan, the globe-trotting Green joins writers as diverse as Armand
Schwerner & Clark Coolidge in engaging the dictionary as discursive model.
So far as I
can tell, Green has no visible connection to the
This many
Boston-related items in one day’s mail, though, gets
my attention. In my own mental map, the
Some scenes
are more heavily identified with one side or the other of the Great Divide
betwixt post-avant & quietude. And I have to admit – having just seen the
most cloying preview of Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath in the forthcoming
biopic Sylvia –
Rather,
what might be said about
But as the
city of
Stinking, dreaming out loud
in balloons overhead
overheard.
Handle arcade change like
peep show quarters;
ate for years, but
wouldn’t
put lips to food.
Nowadays he reads from
the Collected Charles Whitman,
spray
paints his own poems
to a canvas stretched
with
old cinema screens.
Holes enough
to
drive both parents through.
That’s a
complex, intense little poem, one that expects readers well-read enough to
recognize the name of the Texas tower sniper of 1966.* It exists in a world rich
with meaning & intention, a
* One of
whose victims, 18-year-old Thomas Eckman, was the son of poet Frederick Eckman.
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Wednesday, October 01, 2003
In
recounting his visit with collagist Wendy Kramer on the Philly Sound website, CA Conrad mentioned
of Jonathan Williams that
“so many writers my age and younger seem to be ignorant of the man and his
press.” This may well be true, but, if so, the loss belongs to these younger
writers. Williams has been, from the beginning, a one-of-a-kind renaissance
tucked down there in the western mountains of
Among other
things, Williams is not only a master punster, but the first of the Black
Mountain poets – and him you can legitimately call such, since he not only went
to that august but dishabille institution, but has lived nearby most if not all
of his life – to understand that Projectivism’s rigorous scoring of the line
for sound could be used with a much sharper sense of satire than, say, Pound’s
mere mocking of southern accents in The
Cantos. Williams ear, as well as his wit, turns out to be far sharper.
Here, almost at random from the earliest book of Williams I have, Amen / Huzzah / Selah, published as Jargon 13 in 1960, is “Hojoki”
If you can keep straight you will have no friends
but catgut and blossom in seasons.
— Basil
Bunting, from Chomei at
no loot, no
lust to string a catgut
in a banjo
to hoot
or holler into
Nawth Jawja
too effete to
chant “
in trochaic feet
all’s quiet at
It’s hard
to imagine a poem in English more organized around the regional possibilities
of h, u & t, not to mention ch, as this. That
last line echoes long after – indeed the whole poem has stuck in my head for at
least 35 years.** Conrad or someone is sure to point
out that the word “straight” in Bunting’s poem here is heard as a binary pair
to the unspoken “gay” by Williams’ own text & that this poem invokes the
particular problems of cruising in the rural south of the 1950s, a circumstance
I can’t even fathom in that era of institutionalized homophobia.
Within a
decade, Williams’ work would appear to be everywhere – a selected poems, of
sorts, from New Directions, An Ear in
Bartram’s Tree, a booklength long poem, Mahler,
from Cape Goliard/Grossman & a large, fabulously daffy collection, The Loco Logo-Daedalist in Situ, as from
Cape Goliard/Grossman** & then another, Blues
& Roots, Rue and Bluets: A Garland from the
Appalachians. But as Projectivism itself receded in the 1970s after the
death of Olson & divergences by Creeley, Dorn, Baraka, Levertov & then
Duncan’s long hiatus, the context in which Williams work had first been
received itself seemed to dissolve. Since then, Williams has been one of
poetry’s great secrets, central to almost anyone familiar with the work, but
apt to be bypassed by less careful students of the form’s heritage.
Fortunately,
he seems to keep writing and his press, Jargon, has proven critical over the
years – giving us Lorine Niedecker’s work, for example, at a time when it could
be found nowhere else. Williams is himself also a master photographer. I’ve had
the Gnomon edition of Portrait
Photographs since Jonathan Greene first published it in 1979 &
Williams’ photos of a young Robert Duncan & Louis Zukofsky, torn from a
Poetry Society of America publication, stare down at now as I type. Check out
this history of the
press and, while you’re at the site, marvel at the galleries of photographs.
Back in
1999, Sylvester Pollet published Amuse-Gueules for Bemused Ghouls in his Backwoods
Broadsides Chaplet series. It’s the most recent Williams I have on hand. As I
read “La Grande Cuisine Corniche,” I’m happy to
report that, as that one line poem aptly attests, Williams
unique combination of ear & wit is as vigorous as ever:
soggy ratty tatty oggy
* Indeed, it
was recognizing the Jonathan Williams’
influence that first made it possible for me to really get into Coolidge’s
work, realizing that it was not, as
** In my mind,
I inevitably pair it with Grenier’s famous ”Wintry,”
which ends
oh vell
I, oh well, I
well I don’t know
oh, vell,
I don’t know
Ah yah
ah, yah
ja
a sod hut
*** Check
out the options for Daedalist in
Microsoft Word’s spell check!
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Tuesday, September 30, 2003
I got one
complaint yesterday from a color-blind reader who had trouble with my coding of
Ш Ш Ш
According
to The Simpson Archive, Thomas Pynchon
will appear as himself on a show later this season. The premise being that
Marge has written a novel. Tom Clancy also appears. No sign on the Archive site
if they have any idea (a) what an odd combination that is, or (b) how many
Pynchon fans will be wondering if “that” is really what he looks like these
days.
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The DC Poetry web site is one of the smartest
ideas I’ve seen in terms of both documenting a community & making poetry
more widely available. The site includes schedules for (& a few poems from
pretty much everyone who in recent years has read in) the Ruthless Grip, in
your ear & Bridge Street Books reading series, plus some historical
documents, such Joan Retallack’s 1988 essay, “Mass Transit: The Dupont Circle Circle” [not a typo], chronicling the early history of
post-avant poetics in the nation’s capitol.
Rae
Armantrout asked me if I’d read any poetry by Richard
Roundy, a writer whose work she has found interesting of late, and – though
I’ve got “Occupation of Green,” a longish poem that appeared in Sal Mimeo 3 awhile back, my first
impulse wasn’t to plough through my mags, but to Google the man – and by far
the best sampling of work
I’ve found comes from the DC site, a trio of lovely & funny poems that seem
fairly different from his work in Sal
& even that which appeared back in 1995 in RIF/T
5.
While I’m
there, it’s impossible not to take a look-see at all the other great poetry
this site has been gathering. In addition to Bob Perelman, Alice Notley,
Some of the
link sites have gone dark (where are you now, Shawn Walker?), especially for
poets listed in the site’s first season, but on the whole this is a terrific
resource – not just for poets in DC, but anywhere at all. Jennifer Coleman,
Allison Cobb, the reading coordinators and whoever else has taken part in this
project have done – and are still doing – a wonderful job connecting community
& poetry in the best possible ways.
* Degentesh
also has a homophonic translation from the Bhagavad-Gita
that I sure wish I’d known about when I was thinking about such things a few
weeks ago: “this samizdat should have a child.”
** Which as
a collective blog is becoming a serious resource of its own these days.
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Monday, September 29, 2003
Thank You for Saying Thank You
This
is a totally
accessible poem.
There
is nothing
in
this poem
that
is in any
way
difficult
to understand.
All
the words
are
simple &
to the point.
There
are no new
concepts,
no
theories,
no
ideas
to confuse
you.
This poem
has
no intellectual
pretensions. It is
purely emotional.
It
fully expresses
the
feelings of the
author:
my feelings,
the
person speaking
to you now.
It
is all about
communication.
Heart to heart.
This
poem appreciates
&
values you as
a reader. It
celebrates
the
triumph
of the
human
imagination
amidst
pitfalls &
calamities. This poem
has
90 lines,
269
words, and
more
syllables than
I
have time to
count.
Each line,
word,
& syllable
have
been chosen
to
convey only the
intended
meaning
& nothing more.
This
poem abjures
obscurity & enigma.
There
is nothing
hidden.
A hundred
readers
would each
read
the poem
in
an identical
manner
& derive
the
same message
from it. This
poem,
like all
good
poems, tells
a
story in a direct
style
that never
leaves
the reader
guessing. While
at
times expressing
bitterness,
anger,
resentment,
xenophobia,
&
hints of racism, its
ultimate
mood is
affirmative. It finds
joy
even in
those
spiteful moments
of
life that
it
shares with
you.
This poem
represents
the hope
for
a poetry
that
doesn't turn
its
back on
the
audience, that
doesn't
think it's
better
than the reader,
that
is committed
to
poetry as a
popular
form, like kite
flying
and fly
fishing. This poem
belongs
to no
school,
has no
dogma.
It follows
no
fashion. It
says
just what
it
says. It's
real.
© 2003
Last
Friday, wading in some of the bathos that is
Bernstein’s
poem raises the question of how one reads or believes a text in interesting
ways – and it’s not the only poem of his to raise that issue. Nor do I think
the question is nearly so simple as it might first look.
The first
question here might be posed as when does the reader “know” that at some level
this plainspoken
Seeing this work in print fails to capture Charles’ reading style,
deliberately employing “inappropriate” pauses & the most awkward imaginable
pauses for linebreaks. What stands out is the degree to which “plain speech” is anything but
transparent, but rather is something much more like a membrane, a surface
controlled in large part (although not exclusively) by the speaker. For the
listener to “get to” he- (or she-) who-speaks represents an almost
language-shattering task.* To expect transparency of a language object, however
well intentioned, is inevitably to court disappointment if not outright
disaster.
At one
level, this poem might be read as a joke, the verbal equivalent of a Magritte
painting. Yet on another, also like a Magritte painting, this poem no less
conscious of its process, that it needs to govern the rhythm of the reading –
it is no accident that the longest sentence comes close to the end. Only four
short sentences follow with the last sentence the shortest of all.
But like
the painting of the not pipe,
Bernstein’s “plain speech” depends on a shifting set of referents – contexts in
which we might understand each sentence, both separately & in conjunction
with all these others. Much of what makes this poem work is that not every
sentence here is a lie. In fact, I think one could go through the text
assigning “levels of confidence” to each sentence, lets say green
for those that can be taken at “face value,” red for those that are patently
false and – just because of the color scheme of the blog – blue for statements that fall into
some ambiguous space in between:
This is a totally
accessible poem.
There is nothing
in this poem
that is in any
way difficult
to understand.
All the words
are simple &
to the point.
There are no new
concepts, no
theories, no
ideas to confuse
you. This poem
has no intellectual
pretensions. It is
purely emotional.
It fully expresses
the feelings of the
author: my feelings,
the person speaking
to you now.
It is all about
communication.
Heart to heart.
This poem appreciates
& values you as
a reader. It
celebrates the
triumph of the
human imagination
amidst pitfalls &
calamities. This poem
has 90 lines,
269 words, and
more syllables than
I have time to
count. Each line,
word, & syllable
have been chosen
to convey only the
intended meaning
& nothing more.
This poem abjures
obscurity & enigma.
There is nothing
hidden. A hundred
readers would each
read the poem
in an identical
manner & derive
the same message
from it. This
poem, like all
good poems, tells
a story in a direct
style that never
leaves the reader
guessing. While
at times expressing
bitterness, anger,
resentment, xenophobia,
& hints of racism, its
ultimate mood is
affirmative. It finds
joy even in
those spiteful moments
of life that
it shares with
you. This poem
represents the hope
for a poetry
that doesn't turn
its back on
the audience, that
doesn't think it's
better than the reader,
that is committed
to poetry as a
popular form, like kite
flying and fly
fishing. This poem
belongs to no
school, has no
dogma. It follows
no fashion. It
says just what
it says. It's
real.
I read the
poem has having eleven red or “false” statements, seven “green” or true ones,
four “blue” or ambiguous ones. Thus half false, but
also half something else. It’s possible of course to argue with any one of
these designations – and in fact several of the sentences, within each color
set, are entertaining to think of as fitting into a different color. There is,
I would argue, a valuable reading to be had here precisely by taking the
statement about the author’s feelings as
true. & I think Bernstein both feels & appreciates exactly these
tensions. It is because this poem can be read just as it claims to want that we
can feel all the complex tugs & strains at its various divergences, the
result of all the complex social relations we’ve experienced in our lives,
making it impossible at least here for us to proceed
as naïve readers.
Thus the
level at which this poem’s claim to be “purely emotional” can be understood as
true is important. Bernstein here is not mocking emotion but rather the mask of
sincerity – consider that title – that serves as an elaborate filter between
our lives & the social world in which we must live.
* Indeed,
getting beyond language represents
one of the true thrills of sexual intercourse, at least until one realizes that
this too is another “discursive” mode, filled with all the positionality &
power of anything else.
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