Silliman's Blog: 5/2/10

Saturday, May 08, 2010

William Carlos Williams
reading at the 92^nd Street Y
in 1954
(MP3)

Labels: William Carlos Williams

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Friday, May 07, 2010

Recently Received

Books (Poetry)

Laynie Browne, The Desire of Letters, Counterpath, Denver, 2010

Stephen Collis, On the Material, Talonbooks, Vancouver, BC, 2010

Mina Pam Dick, Delinquent, Futurepoem Books, New York, 2009

Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Pitch: Drafts 77 – 95, Salt Publishing, London, 2010

Peter C. Fernbach, The Blooming Void, BlazeVOX, Buffalo, 2010

Carrie Fountain, Burn Lake, Penguin, New York & London, 2010

Suzanne Frischkorn, Girl on a Bridge, Main Street Rag, Charlotte, NC, 2010

Carrie Hunter, A Musics, Arrow as Aarow, Chicago, 2010

Andrew Joron, Trance Archive: New and Selected Poems, City Lights, San Francisco, 2010

Jeffrey Jullich, Portrait of Colon Dash Parenthesis, Litmus Press, Brooklyn, 2010

Ayane Kawate, Time of Sky / Castles in the Air, translated by Sawako Nakayasu, Litmus Press, Brooklyn, 2010

Joanna Klink, Raptus, Penguin, New York & London, 2010

Srečko Kosovel, Look Back, Look Ahead, translated from the Slovene by Ana Jelnikar,& Barbara Siegel Carlson, with an introduction by Richard Jackson, Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2010

Nancy Kuhl, Suspend, Shearsman, Exeter, 2010

Jake Levine, The Threshold of Erasure, Spork Press, no location given, apparently 2010

Helen Lopez, Shift Perception, Shearsman, Exeter, 2009

Manuel Maples Arce, City: Bolshevik Super-Poem in 5 Cantos, translated by Brandon Holmquest, Ugly Duckling Press, Brooklyn, 2010

Garry Thomas Morse, After Jack, Talonbooks, Vancouver, 2010

Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Water the Moon, Marick Press, Grosse Pointe Farms, MI, 2010

Nguyen Trai, Beyond the Court Gate: Selected Poems, edited & translated by Nguyen Do & Paul Hoover, Counterpath, Denver, 2010

Brian Turner, Phantom Noise, Alice James Books, Farmington, ME, 2010

Kevin Varrone, G-Point Almanac: Passyunk Lost, Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2010

Alexander Vvedensky, The Gray Notebook, translated by Matvei Yankelvich, Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2009

Karen Weiser, To Light Out, Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2010

Books (Other)

Michael Connelly, The Poet, with an introduction by Stephen King, Warner Books, New York, 2004

Dorothea Lasky, Poetry is Not a Project, Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, 2010

Danzy Senna, Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History, FSG, New York, 2009

Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Poets on Teaching: A Sourcebook, University of Iowa, Iowa City, 2010. Includes Dan Beachy-Quick, Stephen Burt, Joshua Clover, Forrest Gander, Peter Gizzi, Kenneth Goldsmith, Sarah Gridley, Brenda Hillman, Jen Hofer, Lisa Jarnot, Ada Limón, Sabrina Orah Mark, Laura Mullen, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Jena Osman, D.A. Powell, Srikanth Reddy, Martha Ronk, Richard Siken, Ron Silliman, Juliana Spahr, Cole Swensen, Mark Yakich, Matthew Zapruder, more

Journals

Aufgabe, no. 9, Brooklyn, 2010. Includes Stefani Barber, Justyna Bargielska, Hannah Barrett, Kacper Bartczak, Ellen Baxt, Dodie Bellamy, Martine Bellen, Guy Bennett, Miron Białoszewski, Miłosz Biedrzycki, Julia Bloch, Taylor, Andrzej Busza, Ewa Chruściel, Norma Cole, CAConrad, Rob Cook, Craig Cotter, Michael Cross, Brent Cunningham, Bogdan Czaykowski, Mina Pam Dick, , Dolores Dorantes, , Patrick Durgin, Cathy Eisenhower, Laura Elrick, Cal Freeman, Rodrigo Flores, Karen Garthe, Nada Gordon, Noah Eli Gordon, Andy Gricevich, James Grinwis, Gabriel Gudding, Rob Halpern, Alan Halsey, Jen Hofer, Rick Hilles, Scott Inguito, Michael Ives, Katarzyna Jakubiak, Andrew Joron, Aneta Kamińska, Vincent Katz, Monika Kocot, Ela Kotkowska, Virginia Lucas, Krzysztof Majer, Filip Marinovich, C.J. Martin, Rod Mengham, Edric Mesmer, Monika Mosiewicz, Myung Mi Kim, Laura Moriarty, Eileen Myles, Lee Norton, Linnea Ogden, Geoffrey Olsen, Przemysław Owczarek, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Tomaz Šalamun, Leslie Scalapino, Standard Schaefer, Kate Schapira, Anne Shaw, Rick Snyder, Andrzej Sosnowski, Celina Su, Nathalie Stephens (Nathanaël), Katarzyna Szuster, Mark Tardi, Michael Thomas Taren, Alissa Valles, Michel van Schendel, Frank L. Vigoda, Jasmine Dreame Wagner, Craig Watson, Dustin Williamson, Stephanie Young, Ouyang Yu Ilona Zineczko, Elizabeth Zuba

Other Media & Formats

Eileen Myles, Pencil # 4, Fact-Simile Trading Cards, Santa-Fe NM 2010 (3.5-by-2.5 inch trading cards in the grand baseball card manner with photo horizontally on one side backed by the poem. The card is reminiscent of Topps’ cards circa 1960.)

Labels: Recently Received

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Thursday, May 06, 2010

I brought The City Real & Imagined by CAConrad & Frank Sherlock with me first because I was planning to spend the afternoon in Bartram’s Garden, one of those only-in-Philadelphia destinations on the order of the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, the Duchamps in the Philadelphia Art Museum or Kellys Writers House. Bartram’s Garden is the oldest surviving botanic garden in the United States, having been founded in 1728 and operated continuously since then. Driving down the entrance path onto its 46 acres, located in one of the poorest nabes of Philadelphia, is rather like entering a time machine. The garden includes the only surviving member of the three original gingko trees first sent to America in 1785, and it was the Bartram family that rescued and cultivated a tree they named for a local small press printer, Ben Franklin, Franklinia Alatamaha, having discovered it in the wild in Georgia in 1765. Franklinia has not been seen in the wild since 1803 and today all examples of this lovely flowering tree in America are descended from this garden.

I also brought with me the only book I have that actually refers by name to this place, Jonathan Williams’ An Ear in Bartram’s Tree: Selected Poems 1957-1967. I knew of course of Williams’ special importance to Conrad, as a gay man with a wicked wit & the publisher who initially had planned to bring out Conrad’s Frank before Williams’ failing health got the better of him. The garden was pretty empty that afternoon – the weather was still oscillating between spring & late winter – and I got to sit & read awhile. Sure enough, an echo of Williams, his use of epigrams & quotations, jumps right out at me in the first five lines of this collaborative poem:

“Or I’ll tune out and put a
‘MEAN DOG’ sign in front
of all my communications!”
– Ryan Trecartin,
Philadelphia filmmaker

As openings go, The Cantos this is not. If Pound, say, was a modernist symphony that ran into the buzzsaw of history, The City Real & Imagined lets you know instantly that it’s going to be more on the lines of Lady Gaga as heard through the ears of Spike Jones, or maybe Weird Al as filmed by John Waters (or Elvis as impersonated by the late Sylvester of the Cockettes with costumes by Chris March).

Just the jackets of the two books gives you some sense of the difference, even against the poet of The Loco Logodaedalist in Situ (my favorite of Jonathan Williams’ titles & a brilliant book in itself). An Ear in Bartram’s Tree has as its cover image William Bartram’s drawing of the flower of the Franklinia, gray & white on a pale gray background, a classic instance of New Directions’ decades long fight against interesting book covers. The City Real & Imagined is navy blue beneath the black stripe of the Heretical Text series, with Zoe Strauss’ iconic photo of mattress sale – an imagine that screams or sings of the Philadelphia region every bit as clearly as the Liberty Bell. It’s deadpan, colorful & filled with humor, yet unmistakably communicating an orientation toward class that makes you realize how a photo of mattresses can be said to have a politics. It’s the perfect cover for this book.

In addition to Jonathan Williams, The City Real & Imagined has a couple of other patron saints hovering close by. One is Philip Whalen, especially of his riding around the city journal poems – more evident in On Bear’s Head than his other collections – whose death in June 2002 is marked in the composition of this book. The other is the collaborations of Ted Berrigan. This aspect is especially visible in the contributions of Frank Sherlock, whose lines step & dance across the page, making great use of white space.

But there is nothing faux New York School about this book. It could not have been written anywhere else, not just because of specific references – Thomas Eakins, Love Park, the Ben Franklin Bridge, Broad Street, City Hall, even (full disclosure)

We saw
Ron Silliman
on 17^th Street and
walked fast to catch up
but it wasn’t him

Rather, there is a tonal shift across the 96 pages of this book, one that only David Shapiro among the NY School poets might have been able to make, from the “I did this / I did that mode” so familiar to post-avant poetics over the past half century toward something much darker & more political. It’s not, as one might imagine for a text crafted largely (entirely?) in 2002, a reaction to September 11, but rather because both Sherlock & Conrad are deeply political creatures, tho not in any way that would have been recognized (or at least greeted with open arms), say, in a union hall in the 1950s. Some of it is sexual orientation, but more than anything its class. Conrad is quick to tell everyone exactly how hard his youth was, & Sherlock was certainly no Main Line scion. Which means that they bring a tone to an already familiar poetics that really comes across as quite different. Contrast this, say, with another Berrigan-inflected lefty, such as Louis Cabri. Cabri’s work is theory rich, where Sherlock & Conrad could not care less. Their politics of instanteous reaction to insult & discrimination is far closer to the observational immanence one associates with Berrigan & Whalen (two poets, mind you, who were also always painfully aware of just how few pennies they had in their pocket).

These come together in the most startling of combinations, say, the choice of a word like “trustafarians” or something whimsical, like

Ben Franklin
(sexy nerd)
though I Love
him so
did NOT
invent the
lolipop
alas

In a work where Robert Indiana’s Love sculpture (and its surrounding park), and the subject of blowjobs (including the cost of blowjobs) are continually reiterated themes, this simple passage actually is dense with other layers, but it’s that final word in this stanza that totally sells it.

I’ve been quoting Conrad here mostly because his stanzas, which tend to cling tighter to the left margin are easier to yoke into HTML than Sherlock’s airy field poetics. But it’s true also that readers will very quickly learn to recognize the two voices – there’s no attempt at ventriloquism here. Sherlock’s is lighter in tone – he’s the one who reminds you of Whalen. Conrad’s stanzas are more dense, and more apt to be angry than sad at the world’s injustices. Between these two poles, tho, is where the magic in this book really happens. It can be loud, joking, rude, quiet, alert, brassy, smart, tender all in the course of a couple of pages. It’s a terrific read.

Labels: CA Conrad, collaborations, Frank Sherlock, Philadelphia

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Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Rodrigo Toscano, “to become super-solid”
from the LaChiPo issue of Breach

Breach
is a new online journal
focusing on Latin@ poetry & poetics

Read
“LaChiPo: A Decolonial Poetics”
by J. Michael Martinez,
who edited this first issue

That editorial & the whole issue
might be read
as a direct response
to the recent racist legislation
enacted by the State of Arizona

While you are at it, read
Martinez’ “Praxis (II): Subjectivity” as well

Other contributors include:
Carmen Calatayud
Cynthia Cruz
Danielle Cadena Deulen
Blas Falconer
Carmen Gimenez Smith
Gabriel Gomez
Roberto Harrison
Juan Felipe Herrera
Sheryl Luna
Valerie Martinez
Paul Martinez Pompa
John-Michael Rivera
Roberto Tejada

Labels: LaChiPo

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Tuesday, May 04, 2010

One value of Sarah Rosenthal’s sumptuous collection of interviews, A Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Bay Area Authors, just out from Dalkey Archive, is Rosenthal’s introduction to the collection, which offers a solid history of Bay Area poetry. Like the interviews themselves – a dozen in all, averaging maybe 25 pages in length – Rosenthal’s intro shows a depth of homework on her part that may come as a sobering reminder to the Facebook generation that this is how it’s done when executed properly. The book contains discussions with Michael Palmer, Nathaniel Mackey, Leslie Scalapino, Brenda Hillman, Kathleen Fraser, Stephen Ratclife, Robert Glück, Barbara Guest, Truong Tran, Camille Roy, Juliana Spahr & Elizabeth Robinson.

Not that the introduction is perfect. Whether it’s an emphasis here¹, or a detail there², one could argue the minutiae because the larger structures are basically right on. Rosenthal is careful to document her sources & qualify her approach, noting that Stephanie Young’s Bay Poetics includes 110 poets, dozens of whom could just as easily have been interviewed here. Personally I hope Rosenthal continues her work here. Future volumes beckon. Some writers I would love to see Rosenthal devote this same attention to would include Judy Grahn, Lyn Hejinian, Al Young, Kit Robinson, Etel Adnan, Bob Grenier, Bill Berkson, Bev Dahlen, Dodie Bellamy, Mark Linenthal, Norma Cole, Joanne Kyger, Kevin Killian, Barbara Jane Reyes, Aaron Shurin, Robert Hass, Pat Nolan, Alice Jones, Stephen Vincent, Eileen Tabios, Bill Luoma, Laura Moriarty, Alli Warren, Stephanie Young, Jack Hirschman, Curtis Faville, Diane di Prima, David Melnick, Michael McClure, Norman Fischer, Adam Cornford, Mark Linenthal, Jack Marshall & Jack Foley. That’s just off the top of my head. I’m sure I’m forgetting as many others just as worthy.

The one thread I don’t feel Rosenthal’s introduction does sufficient justice toward is the relationship between post-avant writing & literary traditions that consciously understood themselves as working class &/or even lumpen in their orientation. One is that post-Beat aspect of street poetics that has roots in the New American Poetry, from the late Bob Kaufman to Jack Hirschman to many of the poets particularly around North Beach. A second is a similar approach to LGBT poetries. Paul Mariah & Steve Abbott are gone, as are Pat Parker & Paula Gunn Allen, but it would be really useful to note how the interactions of these writers informed & impacted much that is covered here. Mariah, for example, was as instrumental in keeping Jack Spicer’s memory & work alive in the first ten years after his death as anyone. I was surprised to see Claudia Rankine note the Left/Write Unity Conference spearheaded by Abbott & Bruce Boone in her blurb on the book’s back cover, but not to see it mentioned in the introduction. The important role Actualism – explicitly a Bay Area literary movement – played in the poetries of the 1970s (especially in the “poetry wars”) is entirely invisible here. Given Rosenthal’s own engaged approach to poetics, these little blindspots seem surprising.

All of which is to say that Rosenthal’s introductory history is superb, tho the reality was still a dimension or two more complex than even a first-rate telling can suggest.

¹ Barbara Guest, to my reading, didn’t just continue “to produce important work” once she moved to Berkeley in her seventies, she really blossomed, becoming one of the most influential poets of the past 30 years & offering a model for “late work” that may yet prove transformational for poetry going forward.

² e.g., “Spicer … spent much of his adult life moving within a few blocks in San Francisco’s North Beach” ignores Spicer’s soujourns to Minneapolis & Boston, his day jobs – when he had them – in Berkeley, and the simple fact that his home at Polk & Sutter, an address made famous for poetry by John Wiener’s Hotel Wentley Poems, is a considerable distance from North Beach. The same holds true for Spicer’s favored afternoon hangout of Aquatic Park.

Labels: anthologies, history, Interviews, Schools of poetry

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