Saturday, November 03, 2007
Dear Mr. Silliman:
You recently posted as having received The noulipian Analects, noting "author unknown." For 411 purposes, The noulipian Analects is a collection of contemporary constraint-based writing and writing about constraint-based writing – the publishers' synopsis:
The noulipian Analects is an alphabetical survey of constrained writing in modern English. The book gathers critical and creative pieces from some of the most prominent and influential writers using constraint and generative procedures – Caroline Bergvall, Christian Bök, Johanna Drucker, Paul Fournel, Jen Hofer, Tan Lin, Bernadette Mayer, Ian Monk, Joseph Mosconi, Harryette Mullen, Doug Nufer, Vanessa Place, Janet Sarbanes, Juliana Spahr, Brian Kim Stefans, Rodrigo Toscano, Matias Viegener, Christine Wertheim, Rob Wittig, Stephanie Young – adding the unknown variable n to the great legacy of Oulipo. The result: an excellent mix of introductory notes for those new to constraint-based writing, blended with in-depth exposition and critique for those already avid readers and writers.
or, as Charles Bernstein's blurb says:
An Alpha Bestiary of Exogenously Exotic Essays and Dazzlingly Delectable Design, Complexly Charismatic Constraints and Occasional Oulipian Outrages, Thoughtful Theoretical Threads and Ludicrously Ludic Limits, Gutsy Gender Gaiety and Dantesque destinies Detourned, Quixotic Queneau Quests and Cocky Combinatorial Collisions, Real Rubber Roses & Radiantly Removed R’s…What We Wanton Woeful Whimsical Wanderers Willingly Want. – Charles Bernstein
Thank you for your attention,
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Friday, November 02, 2007
If Polis is This: Charles Olson and The Persistence of Place isn’t the best motion picture ever made about an American poet – a claim attributed to Bill Corbett on the film’s website – it’s mostly because What Happened to Kerouac? the 1986 documentary made by Richard Lerner & Lewis Mac Adams (with major post-production editorial work from co-producer Nathaniel Dorsky) set the bar so very high. But perhaps because Kerouac in death as in life has long been an icon in the American popular imagination, while Olson remains primarily of interest to other poets, the task of these two films is fundamentally different.
In fact, one of the best sequences in Polis comes early on with the filmmaker wandering around
Most of the limits of the film are the consequence of attempting to pack so much into a one-hour time slot. Polis hardly touches the last decade of Olson’s life – particularly odd given his status as a late-starter & his death at 59 – which also means that the question of alcohol is never addressed. Nor the ways in which the death of his wife Betty in an auto accident in 1964 set him emotionally adrift. And there are themes within his work, places literally, that the film could have detailed far better for the reader who has not (yet) wandered the streets of
Perhaps the film’s main weakness, tho, is one that it shares with What Happened to Kerouac? The scarcity of women & women’s voices. There are just a handful, notably Susan Thackery, Anne Waldman & Diane DiPrima. The most glaring omission turns out to be Frances Boldereff, Olson’s mistress during the period in which he formulated “Projective Verse” and Maximus both. Even if it’s overblown to set Boldereff up as Olson’s muse, the “secret sauce” that makes possible these epoch-changing projects, her impact was nonetheless profound. Her absence, even if it was a condition of the family’s cooperation, doesn’t serve Olson well.
But the larger problem isn’t so much the erasure of Boldereff – whose existence wasn’t widely known even to Olson’s friends at the time – as it is the whole question of the New American Poetry’s way of relating to women. The Allen anthology includes just four females among its 44 contributors: Denise Levertov, Barbara Guest, Madeline Gleason and Helen Adam. Only Levertov, who died in 1997, would have made sense in the context of this film, tho she never was a student at
Labels: Charles Olson, Film
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Thursday, November 01, 2007
§
Plus
talking with
Cynthia Hogue
& Elizabeth Frost
§
Adrienne Rich
reading
in
§
30 years of
Anglo-Québec
poetry
§
Orhan Pamuk:
Evoking the Other
is a
political act
§
A review of
Grand Piano 3
§
A poetry of muscle
§
Reading
Eric Mottram
on Robert Duncan
§
Robert Hass,
time traveler
§
Fear & loathing
& the
Poet Laureate
(No, not that one)
§
Bush poets
(No, not that Bush)
§
Curtis Faville
on
Robert Grenier
§
“Belles with Balls” –
Niama Leslie Williams
interviewed by
Tuck Self
§
Forrest
on
John Ashbery
§
Jon Anderson
has died
§
Fup,
the dean of bookstore cats,
has died
§
Talking with
Bob Arnold
§
Rumi’s
ambiguous legacy
in the west
§
Talking with
Shanxing Wang
§
Mark Strand,
alone at 73,
starting over
§
On Gael Turnbull’s
Collected Poems
§
Another poet
back from Iraq
§
Jennifer Moxley
on
John Wieners
& Arthur Rimbaud
Plus John Temple
on Wieners
§
The persistence of
the printed page
§
The
at 150 –
the senility
is complete
§
Save a magazine:
reverse
the postal rate hikes!
§
On Ted Berrigan’s
Collected Poems
§
Cut-Up
Poetry Scrabble
§
Saving a bookstore
in Park Slope,
§
Congressman Braley
opens
Pandora’s Box
§
A European
bookstore blog
§
“Pissed-Off Zombies” –
Linh Dinh
on the state of the nation
§
Another poet
who died too young
§
Zuckerman’s
(Roth’s)
aesthetic:
George Plimpton
as literary giant
§
A piece
on the letters
of Ted Hughes
with links
to large excerpts
§
More on
poetry & cricket
§
A.E. Stallings
here in
§
P.B. Shelley,
the poet as stud
§
Performa 07
is under way!
§
§
Schwabsky
on
Picabia
§
Schjeldahl
on
Frida Kahlo
§
The “new” Prado
§
Evaluating
Philip Glass
§
Aesthetics
&
information
§
Special thanks
to John Tranter
& Pam Brown
for making
Jacket
the best zine
on the web
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Recently Received
Books (Poetry)
Jennifer Bartlett, Derivative of the Moving Image,
Hugh Behm-Steinberg, Shy Green Fields, No Tell Books,
Peter Ciccariello, Uncommon Vision, foreword by Geof Huth, no press listed,
Jordan Davis, When I was the Subject, Subpoetics Self-Publish or Perish, no location given, 2007
Michel Devrient, Martini with a Splash of Dawn, translated by Robin Magown, Fras, Blair Atholl, Perthshire UK, 2004
Richard Froude, The Margaret Thatcher Trilogy, Catfish Press,
Michael Kelleher, Human Scale, BlazeVOX, Buffalo 2007
Matthew Langley, Letters Toward Jim, Catfish Press,
Robin Magowan, 100 Sentences Written on Fans, translated from the French of Paul Claudel in parallel text, Fras, Blair Atholl, Perthshire UK, 2004
Robin Magowan, At the Open Window Autumn, Feral Press,
Robin Magowan, Rim of Dawn, Pasdeloup Press,
Ryan Murphy, Down with the Ship, Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, Los Angeles 2006
Ryan Murphy, Poems for the American Revolution, Dutchess County Department of Occupational Training, no location given 2006
Laurel Snyder, The Myth of the Simple Machines, No Tell Books,
Kevin Varrone, g-point almanac : id est (9.22-12.21), Instance Press, Boulder, Co 2007
Nico Vassilakis, Text Loses Time, ManyPenny Press,
Books (Other)
Clayton Eshleman, Archaic Design, Black Widow Press, Boston 2007
Journals
American Poet: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, vol. 33, Fall 2007,
Phoebe: A Journal of Literature and Art, vol. 36, no. 2, Fall 2007,
Poems Against War: A Journal of Poetry And Action, vol. 6, 2007,
President’s Choice, no. 1, no location given, 2007. Includes Marie Buck, Rodrigo Toscano, Craig Dworkin, Laura Elrick, Bhanu Kapil, Paper Rad, Robert Fitterman
Rampike, vol. 14, no. 1, 2005,
Rampike, vol. 14, no. 2, 2006,
Rampike, vol. 15, no. 1, 2006-2007,
Rampike, vol. 15, no. 2, 2007,
Broadside
Rae Armantrout, Hey, Visiting Poets Broadside Series, vol. 3, no. 1, 15th Room Press of Kelly Writers House for Common Press, Philadelphia 2007, edition of 50.
Still more books received since September 21
Labels: Recently Received
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Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Jordan Davis and Chris Edgar know the secret of editing a magazine that is ordered alphabetically. It helps to get work either from a Rae Armantrout – as they have done with the seventh issue of The Hat – a John Ashbery (who led off its fourth number), an Anselm Berrigan (issue number two). It’s those little touches – like knowing how best to title an untitled poem on the page – that shows their experience & intelligence. The result is a journal that is always worth reading. Still, I came away with questions after reading the current issue that made me wonder just where both poetry and the institution of the magazine might be headed.
I don’t think there is any publication more dedicated to the work it presents than The Hat. Like most if not all strengths in life, this is also its weakness. It’s not simply that there is no embellishment, no art work, no commentary, no contributors’ notes, a minimalist design that stretches from the cover to the idea of having only author’s names in a san seraph that contrasts with the roman type of these texts on the white, white page. Even to the alphabetical ordering, The Hat lets you know in every way possible that it is precisely – and only – a repository for texts. Each issue is a small archive. Tho, oddly perhaps, the journal’s website fails to pick up on this, simply replicating the minimalism of the print edition, listing names without actually posting work. This raises the question: would this work better online? Wouldn’t these poets even ultimately become more accessible if this were online? The first five issues would appear to be out of print & hence out of sight. Is this a way of distributing the work, or of limiting distribution? I think you can make a good argument in either direction.
Because of its deliberate plainness, the almost Mennonite severity of its approach, it can be hard to discern the very active editorial intelligence that is at play here. When you have 64 contributors with 99 poems and one story (or is it 98 and two if we place Anne Boyer’s prose suite on the side of narrativity, if not fiction as such?) dividing 152 pages, point of view can difficult to convey – that’s partly what is wrong with most campus literary magazines. Here The Hat excels – it offers work that mostly falls in such a distinct range that its personality as a publication is almost instantly apparent. If you like the writing of the folks whose poetry you already know – Armantrout, Jim Behrle, Aaron Belz, Anne Boyer, Jesse Crockett, Vincent Katz, Wayne Koestenbaum, Reb Livingston, Rachel Loden, Catherine Meng, Andrew Mister, Charles North, Ken Rumble, Gary Sullivan, Chris Vitiello – you are very apt to like the writing of the people who are completely new to you. Thus Jason Koo turns out to have one of the most exciting pieces in the entire issue, tho it’s remarkable just how close Koo’s recounting of lost loves feels, in practice, to Gary Sullivan’s broad satire of a help desk call center for poets or to Rev Livingston's more collage like list of “What There Wasn’t Time to Mention.” Since there is no contributor’s note, I can’t tell you anything about Koo that you can’t find out by googling.
Editorially, a project like this turns on three or four decisions: who goes first? is there to be a consistent tone, and if so, what? which contributors get the most space? In general, you might characterize this tone as post-NY school, although there are exceptions like an Armantrout or a Koestenbaum, Rumble or Vitiello who don’t quite fit that picture. Still, the poet who has the most work here is Gary Lenhart so that it is his work, and the long story by Dale Herd, that ultimately define the issue.
Herd is a prose writer who, some 35 years ago, was loosely associated with the poetics of the Bolinas mesa, which brought together Creeley and Bobbie Louise Hawkins with Joanne Kyger, Richard Brautigan, and such NY School exiles as Lewis Mac Adams, Bill Berkson & Tom Clark. Herd’s prose in those days was part of the broader tradition of fiction for poets that Creeley, Hawkins & Brautigan all practiced, along with the likes of Douglas Woolf, Fielding Dawson, Michael Rumaker & Jim Dodge. Herd had three books (Early Morning Wind, Diamonds and Wild Cherries) in eight years, two of them published in Bolinas, the third in
Lenhart has always been one of the more affable members of the
It’s the contrast that Koestenbaum creates, coming as he does deep in the issue, makes me worry about the future of what I think of as
This is where the personality of the journal, one of its best features, is a weakness – there is no visual poetry here, and no poetry that would suggest anything on the order of a broader aesthetic perspective. You can’t imagine Lyn Hejinian here, nor Barrett Watten, nor Nate Mackey, nor Will Alexander. David Antin would be as much of a shock as Richard Wilbur, Kenny Goldsmith as much as C.D. Wright. In reaching out to other aesthetics that don’t disrupt its tight frame – Armantrout, Herd, Koestenbaum, Rumble, etc. – The Hat ultimately feels timid. Disruption is precisely what it needs.
Labels: magazines
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Monday, October 29, 2007
Rumi
as the object
of cultural struggle
§
A primer on
Afzaladin Khaghani Shervani
& Persian poetry
§
Kurdish poet nominated
for UK Forward award
§
“Terror trial poet”
compared to Owens
§
Bookstores in Iran
ordered to stop
selling coffee
§
The insider’s outsider
§
Why the NEA
is like Jell-O
§
20 poems by Bill Deemer
(plus new work by
Joanne Kyger)
§
Of Jayne Cortez,
Ornette Coleman
& their son Denardo
§
§
Umberto Eco’s
latest essays
§
How to talk about books
you haven’t read
§
Remembering
Richard Hugo
§
The problem of pricing
Canadian books
§
Dan Gerber:
”What is your work about?”
§
A conservative look
at the state of poetry
§
Translating Russian poets
into English and Bangla
§
Eliot’s heirs
§
Two new versions
of Dante’s
Paradiso
§
A review of
Dog Medicine
§
A memorial
for
Len Roberts
§
More on
poet laureate
§
Offbeat bookshops
in the
§
Write what you
don’t know
§
From blogger
to publisher
§
Papers from
the Scholarly Publishing Conference
§
A new bookstore chain
hits
§
Profile of a
Malaysian poet
§
A taste of
the Marathi Book Festival
§
Poetry & nation
(& a very strange
idea of nation,
at that)
§
Pinsky on Bridges
§
The sage of
§
§
Housman
as correspondent
§
As fawning a review
as I’ve ever read
§
Larry McMurtry
on
Diane Keaton
on
photography
§
Hal Foster on
Baudelaire’s museum today
§
Fisk must sell
stake in O’Keeffe
in order to survive
§
to distribute
Pluto Press
§
The ballad of
Gram Parsons
§
“The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide
to Capitalism and Socialism
with a Key to the Scriptures”
§
Nightmare on Broad Street
§
The right-wing
smear machine
in cyberspace
§
Labels: links
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Sunday, October 28, 2007
True tales of poetry & surveillance. In 1976, I rode the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART), then just four years old, writing down everything I saw into a single, run-on sentence as I traversed the entire system. Having grown up in the Bay Area, as had my mother & my maternal grandparents, this was to some degree a work about not being to look out a window without seeing through an overlay of personal & oral histories – I can still tell you something about virtually every block in Berkeley west of College, every block in Albany. My grandmother was born roughly kitty corner from the West Oakland BART station, tho that blasted urban ghetto was a different world in the 1890s. Much later, for a sentence that appears in Ketjak2:Caravan of Affect, I replicated the process with MARTA, the
In
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