From JforJames at aol.com Sun Feb 11 00:59:50 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 00:59:50 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List Message-ID: <64.b2390e1.27b78456@aol.com> This message is to let you know that you're on a new list that will try to fill the void left when CAP-L fell silent. This list is called NewPoetry and it will focus on gathering information and sharing views related to Contemporary Poetry. The list has a digest option, for those who like their messages aggregated into a single email per day, and all the list posts will be archived. Here's where you go to change your list options or to unsubscribe: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry (The machine will provide you with the required password.) The list will be unmoderated. So we ask that all members avoid aggressive or derisive posting, name calling, etc. Those who are unable to stay within the bounds of civilized dialog & argument without malice, will be banned. We hope you will enjoy being a part of the NewPoetry List. The Contributing Correspondents: James Finnegan, David Graham, Gray Jacobik, Tad Richards ---- Welcome to... NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views The two purposes of this list will be Information and Discussion related to Contemporary Poetry The hope is that by keeping this list active with informational posts, the discussion will inevitably ensue. To this end, we want to recruit about a dozen "Contributing Correspondents." These will be listmembers who have agreed to do one thing for the good of the list-- To post "once per week" any of the following items.... Announcement of a New Publication (Poems, Essays, etc.) URL of a Poetry-Related Website Call for Submissions (Mss., Contests, Journals, etc.) A Poem (perhaps from a new book or journal) A Review, Essay, Critical Article (generally an excerpt) A Single Quote or Aphorism News Item: Award Winner, Obit, etc. Cross-post of Interest from Another List Report on a Reading/Lecture/Conference or... A View, Comment, Query or Contribution to an Ongoing Discussion If you are interested in making this modest commitment to be a Contributing Correspondent of the NewPoetry List, please respond backchannel to: JforJames at aol.com (James Finnegan). We thank the Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities (CATH) at Virginia Tech (host of the list); and to Len Hatfield for his technical support. A good starting point...to get List Information, to change your list options, set digest, or to unsubscribe, go to: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry (The machine will give you a password.) One can subscribe as well through this webpage...so pass it on to others who might be interested in NewPoetry. http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry Your suggestions are welcome. We look forward to your participation on this list. From finchar at muohio.edu Mon Feb 12 09:34:07 2001 From: finchar at muohio.edu (annie finch) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 09:34:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List In-Reply-To: <64.b2390e1.27b78456@aol.com> References: <64.b2390e1.27b78456@aol.com> Message-ID: I seem to need to subscribe with a passoword to get the digest, but it won't let me subscribe because it says I already am. Annie PLEASE NOTE THAT I'LL BE AWAY FROM EMAIL FROM FEB !4 to FEB 19. _________________________________________ Annie Finch Associate Professor English and Creative Writing Miami University of Ohio Invitation to Visit my Website : http://www.muohio.edu/~finchar/ (or http://miavx1.muohio.edu/~finchar/) From Hzinnes at aol.com Sun Feb 11 10:03:28 2001 From: Hzinnes at aol.com (Hzinnes at aol.com) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 10:03:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List Message-ID: DEar staff: When I went to your website, unfortunately, the message was that no results could be obtained! Harriet Zinnes HZinnes at aol.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Hzinnes at aol.com Sun Feb 11 10:17:26 2001 From: Hzinnes at aol.com (Hzinnes at aol.com) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 10:17:26 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List Message-ID: A messge from you was addressed to me but there was no message -- merely my own message to you was returned! Am I doing something wrong with these mysterious computers? Harriet -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ron.silliman at gte.net Sun Feb 11 12:41:53 2001 From: ron.silliman at gte.net (Ron Silliman) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 12:41:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] passwords and digest form Message-ID: <008701c09451$edd9a720$3353fea9@oemcomputer> I had some of the same problems that Annie suggested, but then I asked the system to remind me of my password. What arrived was something that I suspect the system itself invented as names were first entered. I had no trouble changing it and thus converting over to the Digest form. Here's to hoping that there's more to discuss than tech support! Ron From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Feb 11 12:56:00 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 12:56:00 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] New Book Message-ID: <26.111b6084.27b82c30@cs.com> No Word of Farewell: Selected Poems 1970-2000, by R. S. Gwynn Story Line Press, 2001 www.storylinepress.com or www.amazon.com From terran at sirius.com Sun Feb 11 12:57:03 2001 From: terran at sirius.com (shep) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 09:57:03 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List In-Reply-To: <64.b2390e1.27b78456@aol.com> References: <64.b2390e1.27b78456@aol.com> Message-ID: Hi - I tried to subscribe at the website referenced in the e-mail I received from you. It said I was already registered, but when I tried to access the subscriber list, I was told that authentication failed. From terran at sirius.com Sun Feb 11 13:50:45 2001 From: terran at sirius.com (shep) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 10:50:45 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] passwords and digest form In-Reply-To: <008701c09451$edd9a720$3353fea9@oemcomputer> References: <008701c09451$edd9a720$3353fea9@oemcomputer> Message-ID: >I had some of the same problems that Annie suggested, but then I asked the >system to remind me of my password. What arrived was something that I >suspect the system itself invented as names were first entered. I had no >trouble changing it and thus converting over to the Digest form. > >Here's to hoping that there's more to discuss than tech support! > >Ron Ron - thanks. that worked for me too shep >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From JforJames at aol.com Sun Feb 11 14:52:31 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 14:52:31 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] passwords and digest form Message-ID: I had some of the same problems that Annie suggested, but then I asked the system to remind me of my password. What arrived was something that I suspect the system itself invented as names were first entered. I had no trouble changing it and thus converting over to the Digest form. Here's to hoping that there's more to discuss than tech support! Ron >> Yes, Ron figured out the trick: You request a password (as if you forgot what you were never given in the first place) and the system will give you one...with it you can make your List option changes at the we....like getting messages in digest. Please bear with a bit a confusion until everyone (including me) gets up to speed on the ins & outs of using this listserv sofware. Len Hatfield at CATH/Virginia Tech., I'm hoping., will help us out if technical confusion reigns. Jim Finnegan From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sun Feb 11 15:02:27 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 14:02:27 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] passwords and digest form In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Another technical note: I too asked to be reminded of my password, and then I went back to try and manipulate my options with it. But when I went in as suggested and tried to change my robot-issued password, it failed the first time. Don't know why. So I asked to be reminded of my password *again*, and what came back was pure gibberish, a highly scrambled version of the new password I had tried to enter. (I'm not the world's best typist, but I'm not *that* bad.) So I did the whole process again, and it worked. So don't give up hope! Some bugs remain to be fixed, it seems. David Graham __________________________________ > I had some of the same problems that Annie suggested, but then I asked the > system to remind me of my password. What arrived was something that I > suspect the system itself invented as names were first entered. I had no > trouble changing it and thus converting over to the Digest form. > > Here's to hoping that there's more to discuss than tech support! > > Ron >> >Yes, Ron figured out the trick: You request a password (as if you >forgot what you were never given in the first place) and the system will >give you one...with it you can make your List option changes at >the we....like getting messages in digest. > >Please bear with a bit a confusion until everyone (including me) >gets up to speed on the ins & outs of using this listserv >sofware. Len Hatfield at CATH/Virginia Tech., I'm hoping., will help >us out if technical confusion reigns. >Jim Finnegan >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From JforJames at aol.com Sun Feb 11 15:00:20 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 15:00:20 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List Message-ID: In a message dated 2/11/01 1:13:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, terran at sirius.com writes: << From: terran at sirius.com (shep) Sender: new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu Reply-to: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Hi - I tried to subscribe at the website referenced in the e-mail I received from you. It said I was already registered, but when I tried to access the subscriber list, I was told that authentication failed. >> Your message from terran at sirius.com got out to the list...so that address is already subscribed. If you want subscribe with an alternate email account, I'll have to let you in/on...which I'll gladly do. To look at the subscriber list...you need the password (you never originally got)...so you ask the system to give you a new one and then with it you should be able to access all list options thru the website...like looking at the subscriber list. Jim F From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sun Feb 11 16:13:37 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 15:13:37 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Archive Message-ID: It's not *new* poetry, but I thought that this archive that I just discovered might be of interest to many: http://www.emule.com/poetry/ They say that there are currently 37000 poems by 144 authors archived here. Mostly public domain stuff, it seems. A quick look at "F," for instance, turned up works by Stephen Foster, Robert Frost, and Tu Fu. David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Sun Feb 11 07:40:59 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 06:40:59 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Getting on the list and making comments Message-ID: Email from a new poetry list appeared on my email today, full of familiar names from the old cap-l list. A cool development. This is just to a test to see if this message will show up on the list itself. Testing, Paul Lake From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Feb 11 19:01:07 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 19:01:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Memphis References: Message-ID: <029201c09486$e6730500$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> I've been bothered by my students' difficulties with scansion, and lately whenever I do an independent study, part of it is on scansion. I've started playing around with scanning songs, since they have that "back beat, you can 't lose it," but of course songs are different from poems - their line strategy is different. But not always. I recently scanned Chuck Berry's "Memphis." How good is Berry? Look at the control he has here. Long distance information, give me Memphis, Tennessee. Help me find the party tryin' to Get in touch with me. She would not leave her number, but I Know who made the call, Cause my uncle took the message, and he Wrote it on the wall. I won't quote the rest of the song for copyright reasons, although I will refer to words in the succeeding stanzas. It's in ballad meter, trochaic, with some lines beginning with an extra unstressed syllable (line 7 has two). The trochees are never substituted for. Every important two-syllable word begins with a stressed syllable (distance, number, uncle, etc.), except at the end of a trimeter line ("my Marie"). Every 4-syllable word is two trochees ("information," "Mississippi.") Every 3-syllable word ("Tennessee") ends a trimeter line. Berry wants to mute the ballad stanza - make the verses sound more like two 7-stress lines, so every tetrameter line ends in an enjambment. This is true throughout the song, with a couple of well-timed exceptions ("Her home is on the south side"). The last stanza, strikingly, violates almost all these rules, because the exception to the two-syllable trochee rule is the girl's name, Marie, and every time Marie is mentioned there's an increasing emotional wrench, and an increasing formal wrench. Last time I saw Marie, she's Wavin' me goodbye With hurry home drops on her cheek That trickle from her eye Marie is only six years old Information please Try to get me through to her In Memphis, Tennessee The first line begins with an imperfect (stressed) foot. The name, Marie, appears in the center of the line for the first time, so it can't be contained within a trochaic foot, or put into an imperfect foot at the end of the line, as in stanza two. Line 5 begins with "Marie," and Marie dominates the line, turning the whole line iambic. Also, for the first time, we have two consecutive end-stopped tetrameter lines. Then the last two lines of the song revert to complete regularity. From klvarnes at home.com Sun Feb 11 21:05:25 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 20:05:25 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] New Journal/Center Message-ID: Based on the welcome message, perhaps this won't be an inappropriate announcement. A new journal, Center, has started reading for its next issue. The editors are interested in submissions of unpublished poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and interviews from September to April. Please send with SASE to Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts University of Missouri-Columbia 107 Tate Hall Columbia, Missouri 65211 Here's a snippet from the editors' note on the first Fall/Winter 2000 issue, which was 6x9, perfect bound, 120+ pages: "Our goal at Center is to bring together the best work we can find, regardless of form or content, from a variety of aesthetic or political positions. We want work that challenges us, that provokes us, that changes us." I'm not an editor, but I can vouch for the staff's professionalism. Kathrine Varnes From griffinbaker at home.com Sun Feb 11 21:33:48 2001 From: griffinbaker at home.com (Mark Baker) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 18:33:48 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander's Grackles References: <029201c09486$e6730500$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: <3A874B8C.D57E66A1@home.com> I understand Chuck Berry. What, though, about this peculiar analysis in Forest Gander's poem on Poetry Daily today? The unstressed fourth and invented fifth foot of their long-voweled croaking inflames me. By the throatful. He's talking about grackles, it seems (pretty much the whole poem is in the it-seems category to me, at best). To claim to have spotted a grackle can do no harm, of course. Still, anyone make any better sense than me of anything in this poem? Poetry Daily's at this URL: http://www.poems.com/today.htm Mark Baker From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Feb 11 23:44:05 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 23:44:05 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Memphis Message-ID: In a message dated 2/11/2001 6:03:50 PM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > Long DIStance inforMAtion, give me > MEMphis, TennesSEE. > HELP me find the PARty tryin' to > GET in touch with ME. > She WOULD not leave her NUMber, but I > KNOW who made the CALL, > Cause my UNCle took the MESSage, and he > WROTE it on the WALL. This is actually a dipodic meter, very common to song lyrics. Gilbert uses it quite a bit in his "patter songs." Note that "tryin'" is compressed by elision into a one-syllable word. Dipodic meters may be superficially iambic or trochaic but they actually two feet (dipodic) into one unit of rhythm. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Feb 11 23:48:04 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 23:48:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander's Grackles Message-ID: In a message dated 2/11/2001 8:35:50 PM Central Standard Time, griffinbaker at home.com writes: > To claim to > have spotted a grackle can do no harm, of course. A witty reference to Richard Wilbur's poem "Lying," which I have always found pretty opaque too. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Feb 11 23:56:36 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 23:56:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Memphis References: Message-ID: <03bd01c094b0$3c86dc40$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Sam -- yes, but they generally break down when you try to scan them as poetry, the demands of the two forms being different. I thought it was interesting that this held up so well, and offered up other delights, when held up to this kind of scrutiny. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2001 11:44 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Memphis > In a message dated 2/11/2001 6:03:50 PM Central Standard Time, > tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > > > Long DIStance inforMAtion, give me > > MEMphis, TennesSEE. > > HELP me find the PARty tryin' to > > GET in touch with ME. > > She WOULD not leave her NUMber, but I > > KNOW who made the CALL, > > Cause my UNCle took the MESSage, and he > > WROTE it on the WALL. > > This is actually a dipodic meter, very common to song lyrics. Gilbert uses > it quite a bit in his "patter songs." Note that "tryin'" is compressed by > elision into a one-syllable word. Dipodic meters may be superficially iambic > or trochaic but they actually two feet (dipodic) into one unit of rhythm. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 12 00:48:29 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 00:48:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Memphis Message-ID: <11.fb0b02d.27b8d32d@cs.com> In a message dated 2/11/2001 10:59:40 PM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > Sam -- yes, but they generally break down when you try to scan them as > poetry, the demands of the two forms being different. I thought it was > interesting that this held up so well, and offered up other delights, when > held up to this kind of scrutiny. > The syncopation of dipodics really fits nicely with lots of music. Berry's music is really weird for rock and roll here. It would be hard to dance to. From DThomas at FAIR.org Mon Feb 12 09:16:17 2001 From: DThomas at FAIR.org (Deborah Thomas) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 09:16:17 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List Message-ID: <518B8516EDC0D011BE3F00C04FD4EE5A4CA11B@smtp.fair.org> Take me off your list. I did not ask to be put on here. I will not go to your website. This is an inconvenience. > ---------- > From: JforJames at aol.com[SMTP:JforJames at aol.com] > Reply To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2001 1:59 AM > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List > > This message is to let you know that you're on a new list > that will try to fill the void left when CAP-L fell silent. > This list is called NewPoetry and it will focus on gathering > information and sharing views related to Contemporary Poetry. > The list has a digest option, for those who like their messages > aggregated into a single email per day, and all the list posts > will be archived. > > Here's where you go to change your list options or to unsubscribe: > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > (The machine will provide you with the required password.) > > The list will be unmoderated. So we ask that all members > avoid aggressive or derisive posting, name calling, etc. > Those who are unable to stay within the bounds of civilized > dialog & argument without malice, will be banned. > > We hope you will enjoy being a part of the NewPoetry List. > > The Contributing Correspondents: > James Finnegan, David Graham, Gray Jacobik, Tad Richards > ---- > Welcome to... > NewPoetry: Contemporary Poetry News & Views > > The two purposes of this list will be Information > and Discussion related to Contemporary Poetry > > The hope is that by keeping this list active with informational > posts, the discussion will inevitably ensue. > > To this end, we want to recruit about a dozen "Contributing > Correspondents." These will be listmembers who have agreed > to do one thing for the good of the list-- > > To post "once per week" any of the following items.... > > Announcement of a New Publication (Poems, Essays, etc.) > URL of a Poetry-Related Website > Call for Submissions (Mss., Contests, Journals, etc.) > A Poem (perhaps from a new book or journal) > A Review, Essay, Critical Article (generally an excerpt) > A Single Quote or Aphorism > News Item: Award Winner, Obit, etc. > Cross-post of Interest from Another List > Report on a Reading/Lecture/Conference > or... > A View, Comment, Query or Contribution to an Ongoing Discussion > > If you are interested in making this modest commitment > to be a Contributing Correspondent of the NewPoetry List, > please respond backchannel to: JforJames at aol.com (James Finnegan). > > We thank the Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities (CATH) > at Virginia Tech (host of the list); and to Len Hatfield for his technical > > support. > > A good starting point...to get List Information, > to change your list options, set digest, or to unsubscribe, go to: > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > (The machine will give you a password.) > > One can subscribe as well through this webpage...so > pass it on to others who might be interested in NewPoetry. > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > Your suggestions are welcome. We look forward to > your participation on this list. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From DThomas at FAIR.org Mon Feb 12 09:18:24 2001 From: DThomas at FAIR.org (Deborah Thomas) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 09:18:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List Message-ID: <518B8516EDC0D011BE3F00C04FD4EE5A4CA11F@smtp.fair.org> Take me off your list. I did not ask to be put on it. > ---------- > From: annie finch[SMTP:finchar at muohio.edu] > Reply To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 10:34 AM > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List > > I seem to need to subscribe with a passoword to get the digest, but > it won't let me subscribe because it says I already am. > > Annie > > PLEASE NOTE THAT I'LL BE AWAY FROM EMAIL FROM FEB !4 to FEB 19. > > _________________________________________ > Annie Finch > Associate Professor > English and Creative Writing > Miami University of Ohio > > > Invitation to Visit my Website : http://www.muohio.edu/~finchar/ > (or http://miavx1.muohio.edu/~finchar/) > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From DThomas at FAIR.org Mon Feb 12 09:20:25 2001 From: DThomas at FAIR.org (Deborah Thomas) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 09:20:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Getting on the list and making comments Message-ID: <518B8516EDC0D011BE3F00C04FD4EE5A4CA121@smtp.fair.org> Take me off your list. I did not ask to be put on it. This is not how a list is created. Your're suppose to ask people IF they would like to be on the list. > ---------- > From: Paul Lake[SMTP:paul.lake at mail.atu.edu] > Reply To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2001 8:40 AM > To: New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: [New-Poetry] Getting on the list and making comments > > Email from a new poetry list appeared on my email today, full of familiar > names from the old cap-l list. A cool development. This is just to a > test > to see if this message will show up on the list itself. > > Testing, > > Paul Lake > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From DThomas at FAIR.org Mon Feb 12 09:24:32 2001 From: DThomas at FAIR.org (Deborah Thomas) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 09:24:32 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List Message-ID: <518B8516EDC0D011BE3F00C04FD4EE5A4CA123@smtp.fair.org> > Take me off your list. I did not ask to be put on it. This is not how a > list is created. You're suppose to ask people IF they would like to be on > the list. > > > ---------- > From: JforJames at aol.com[SMTP:JforJames at aol.com] > Reply To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2001 4:00 PM > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List > > In a message dated 2/11/01 1:13:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, > terran at sirius.com writes: > > << From: terran at sirius.com (shep) > Sender: new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Reply-to: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > Hi - I tried to subscribe at the website referenced in the e-mail I > received from you. It said I was already registered, but when I tried > to access the subscriber list, I was told that authentication failed. >> > > Your message from terran at sirius.com got out to the list...so that > address is already subscribed. If you want subscribe with an alternate > email account, I'll have to let you in/on...which I'll gladly do. > To look at the subscriber list...you need the password (you never > originally got)...so you ask the system to give you a new one and > then with it you should be able to access all list options thru the > website...like looking at the subscriber list. > Jim F > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From TerryP17 at aol.com Mon Feb 12 09:39:26 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 09:39:26 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] New Journal/Center Message-ID: <67.f9fd895.27b94f9e@aol.com> Kathrine-- Re: Center. Thanks for the info. Frequency of pub? Cost of sub? Website? Official University pub, or just located there? Thanx, Terry Ponick terryp17 at aol.com From JforJames at aol.com Mon Feb 12 09:51:57 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 09:51:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List Message-ID: In a message dated 2/12/01 9:21:36 AM Eastern Standard Time, DThomas at FAIR.org writes: << Take me off your list. I did not ask to be put on here. I will not go to your website. This is an inconvenience. >> Apologies to anyone who feels hijacked...but I figured those who were on CAP-L might be interested in trying out this new list. Deborah has been removed. If there are others who don't want to bother with unsubscribing thru the webpage, please backchannel me: JforJames at aol.com Thanks, JimF From JforJames at aol.com Mon Feb 12 10:36:43 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 10:36:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry House 2001 Showcase Message-ID: The deadline is very near, but for those with new books, you might be interested in being a part of this... Subj: Poets House 2001 Showcase Date: 1/18/01 4:41:28 PM Eastern Standard Time From: betsy at poetshouse.org Reply-to: betsy at poetshouse.org To: info at poetshouse.org Dear Publisher/Author: I am pleased to invite you to participate in the 2001 Poetry Publication Showcase. The Poets House Showcase is an annual exhibit and festival of events celebrating the year's new poetry books. Last year, 1,320 books were included from 488 publishers. This year, the Showcase will open on March 24, 2001 and run throughout the month of April. Now is the time to submit all poetry books published during 2000. Inclusion in the Showcase is absolutely free. Just send two review copies of all poetry books published since January 2000 to Poets House 72 Spring Street 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10012 by February 14, 2001. Submission forms are available online at www.poetshouse.org/submissionform.htm For more information about the Showcase and to browse books that have been included in the Directory over the last three years, please see the Showcase and Directory sections of our website. If you have any questions, you can contact me by phone at 212-431-7920 or by email at betsy at poetshouse.org. Regards, Betsy Fagin Showcase Coordinator Poets House From DICK at watson.ibm.com Mon Feb 12 10:37:04 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 01 10:37:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Thanks, and a query Message-ID: <200102121541.KAA26538@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Thanks James, David, Gray et al for "picking up the ball" with the new list. It fills a "much needed gap." I'm looking forward to it. It's getting to be time to plan summer conference attendance. Can anyone recommend a source for descriptions, ads, etc., for them? Can anyone recommend a particularly excellent one? Thanks. Richard From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 12 11:52:35 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 07:52:35 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wasanthony at yahoo.com Mon Feb 12 14:52:21 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 11:52:21 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] for poets, mainly Message-ID: <20010212195221.26418.qmail@web12108.mail.yahoo.com> Can someone tell me how to get on this list? . . . Just kidding. But I would like to announce to this list the debut of poetserv.com, and especially the "Links" page, which awaits your, and other poets' input. poetserv.com includes poetserv.net and poetserv.org, with the "Ripples" project being the first entry in the .net version, and The Salt River Review the first in the .org version. As each entity grows, they will take their discrete place on the web, though all will be connected under the .com version. I don't know what will come of all this, but I'm hoping for something good. The url for poetserv.com is in my sig. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 12 16:20:14 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 16:20:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List References: Message-ID: <3A88538E.789F@nut-n-but.net> You mean the whole purpose of the new list was not to harass Deborah Thomas? Bob G. From wer at cstone.net Mon Feb 12 17:33:00 2001 From: wer at cstone.net (William E. Reid) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 17:33:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List References: Message-ID: <3A88649C.B6F6BE86@cstone.net> I would like off the list. -=Bill JforJames at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/12/01 9:21:36 AM Eastern Standard Time, DThomas at FAIR.org > writes: > > << > Take me off your list. I did not ask to be put on here. I will not go to > your website. This is an inconvenience. > >> > Apologies to anyone who feels hijacked...but I figured those who > were on CAP-L might be interested in trying out this new list. > Deborah has been removed. If there are others who don't want to > bother with unsubscribing thru the webpage, please backchannel me: > JforJames at aol.com > Thanks, > JimF > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry -- "These errors have disappeared. And the mailq is back to a normal size. And this spam book is right that spam wastes an admins time." -=Bill -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From klvarnes at home.com Mon Feb 12 17:53:31 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 16:53:31 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] New Journal/Center In-Reply-To: <67.f9fd895.27b94f9e@aol.com> Message-ID: Hi Terry, Center comes out twice yearly. A subscription is $6 for a single issue and $10 for a full year. The website was at web.missouri.edu/~cwp, but I think it's fairly barebones at the moment. Someone was just volunteering to put flesh on it the other day. As for how official it is, I'm not entirely sure how to gauge this. UMC has a Center for Literary Arts that sponsors readings (Susan Sontag and Tony Kushner so far this year), this new journal and other things. It's affiliated with the creative writing program, of course, and housed in the English Department, but I think the vision is more outward toward the public. As a newcomer here, at least, that's my understanding. The editors, advanced PhD grads, have free range to do whatever works best. The first issue had 2 interviews (Richard Howard and Charles Baxter), 3 pieces of fiction, 2 nonfiction, 15 or so poems (one of which I remember was a nice poem by Allison Joseph). At least one of the editors works consistently in accentual-syllabics. Hope that info helps. Kathrine > Kathrine-- > > Re: Center. Thanks for the info. Frequency of pub? Cost of sub? Website? > Official University pub, or just located there? > > Thanx, > > Terry Ponick > terryp17 at aol.com > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From katenexile at yahoo.com Tue Feb 13 08:38:07 2001 From: katenexile at yahoo.com (kate thorn) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 05:38:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] cannot read Message-ID: <20010213133807.10494.qmail@web12214.mail.yahoo.com> is this list only for those using HTML? Kate __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Feb 13 00:30:57 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 23:30:57 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] West Chester panel Message-ID: I'm putting together a panel on Postmodernism and New Formalism for the West Chester Poetry conference in June. So far, the panel will be composed of Alex Argyros and me. I'd like a third panelist, preferably a woman critic or poet-critic, who is not as skeptical of postmodern poetics as I am, to help balance the panel. Anybody interested or have suggestions? Panelists will present a short paper of from 10 to 12 minutes and then respond to questions from the audience. Paul Lake From JDB at OUP-USA.ORG Tue Feb 13 11:32:04 2001 From: JDB at OUP-USA.ORG (John Brehm) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 11:32:04 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List -Reply Message-ID: An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Feb 13 00:36:18 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2001 23:36:18 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry conferences Message-ID: Richard, I highly recommend the West Chester Poetry conference, and I'm sure others on the list like Kathrine Varnes and Sam Gwynn will second that. West Chester has a web page with info. Paul Lake From Cadaly at aol.com Tue Feb 13 12:02:27 2001 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 12:02:27 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Rachel Loden are you on this list? Message-ID: Well, she was on Cap-L. I came across Fawn McKay Brodie in some heretic research and saw she'd written RICHARD NIXON: THE SHAPING OF HIS CHARACTER. Rgds, Catherine Daly cadaly at pacbell.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 13 12:03:45 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 12:03:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] West Chester panel Message-ID: <5f.10d97f44.27bac2f1@cs.com> In a message dated 2/13/01 10:39:16 AM Central Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu writes: > Anybody interested or have suggestions? > Meg Schoerke would be good. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Feb 13 12:08:06 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 11:08:06 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry conferences In-Reply-To: Message-ID: A highly unusual conference that I have been involved with is the Frost Festival in Franconia NH--last week of July each year. It's unusual in a number of respects: fairly small, relatively inexpensive, very much no-frills in tone and accommodations, and extremely student-centered. Above all, it's the most generous-spirited conference I've ever attended--a credit to the vision of long-time director Don Sheehan and other mainstays. Though it regularly features big name guest faculty (e.g. Komunyakaa, Simic, Voigt, Peacock), it's not the sort of gathering where the students huddle in one corner, and the bigwigs in another. It's very much a working conference, devoted to the nuts and bolts of revision and craft, with plenty of opportunity to rub elbows (literally and figuratively) with the staff. It should be said that this festival does not attract the hottest of the MFA student crowd, and is very definitely not a place to profitably schmooze or advance your career. Franconia is not exactly Club Med, either, so this is not the conference for you if you're addicted to your cell phone, need easy access to tennis courts, or have trouble sitting on a lawn. But people who attend often speak of it in suspiciously reverent terms afterward, and there are a lot of repeat customers. And it's in one of the most beautiful spots in the country--the view of the White Mountains from Frost's porch is essentially the same as it was in 1915. Further info at the Frost Place home page: http://www.frostplace.com/home.html David Graham ____________________ >Richard, > >I highly recommend the West Chester Poetry conference, and I'm sure others >on the list like Kathrine Varnes and Sam Gwynn will second that. West >Chester has a web page with info. > >Paul Lake > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 13 12:25:32 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 08:25:32 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Rachel Loden are you on this list? Message-ID: >I came across Fawn McKay Brodie in some heretic research and saw she'd >written RICHARD NIXON: THE SHAPING OF HIS CHARACTER. Fawn Brodie also wrote what at the time was a groundbreaking controversial biography of Joseph Smith, "No Man Knows My History" (which the Mormons still disown, I think). Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 13 12:35:10 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 12:35:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] LIST ADMIN & HELP Message-ID: <20.11fa6798.27baca4e@aol.com> Dear NewPoetry Listees: If you need to subscribe; unsubscribe, change to digest, or suspend mail, please go to: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry Remember, if you don't have a password, and many of you don't since you were signed on en masse, then you'll have to ask the Mailman system for a password (as tho you forgot yours). If you're having problems with the website, frustrated, or need help unsubscribing, etc...please contact me directly backchannel at: JforJames at aol.com & I'll be happy to help you out. The posting address that sends messages out to all members is: New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu It's best not to use this address for individual email account maintenance & help requests. Thanks, Jim Finnegan From Cadaly at aol.com Tue Feb 13 12:38:27 2001 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 12:38:27 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry conferences Message-ID: <17.118d0742.27bacb13@aol.com> although I've never been there, I would like to mention that some of the "hottest of the MFA crowd" of my generation did speak very highly of frost place Catherine -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Cadaly at aol.com Tue Feb 13 12:40:49 2001 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 12:40:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Rachel Loden are you on this list? Message-ID: <3a.10c3e2e2.27bacba1@aol.com> Yup, that was the book they "exfellowshipped" her over. I had only heard of Sonia Johnson before (Mormon heretic / writer). Rgds, Catherine Daly cadaly at pacbell.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From languagethief at yahoo.com Tue Feb 13 13:43:15 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 10:43:15 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Rachel Loden are you on this list? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010213184315.41803.qmail@web12213.mail.yahoo.com> I'm in touch with Rachel, and can give her a message. Tad --- Cadaly at aol.com wrote: > Well, she was on Cap-L. > > I came across Fawn McKay Brodie in some heretic > research and saw she'd > written RICHARD NIXON: THE SHAPING OF HIS > CHARACTER. > > Rgds, > Catherine Daly > cadaly at pacbell.net > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From klvarnes at home.com Tue Feb 13 14:14:56 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 13:14:56 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry conferences In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Yes, I do second that, although the jury's still out on whether I'll be able to make it this year. Last year hit a new zenith, I thought, for all-around fun and community. I too have heard wonderful things about the Frost conference. Someone who goes every year told me that they have a preference for repeat folks & that helps with maintaining the community in a consistent way. I don't know what that means for the uninitiated, but have thought wistfully of it nevertheless. Paul, if you need Meg's email, let me know & I'll back channel (but surely you've met her; she was on Cap-L, too, & might be here). You could also think about someone like Jena Osman or Lisa Sewell, if you really want a person steeped in postmodern, one who lives and breathes it on --and with --purpose. I'd think you'd want someone who can shift from avant garde to accentual-syllabic with a blink of an eye and knows how to see the beauty in both. So many poets and critics are either/or, which strikes me as unnecessary (Annie Finch, Eric Selinger the exceptions that spring quickly to mind, although there are more). I sometimes tell myself this comes from limited time rather than antipathy, but that people create the latter to justify the former. Anyway, sounds like a swell panel. Kathrine Varnes > Richard, > > I highly recommend the West Chester Poetry conference, and I'm sure others > on the list like Kathrine Varnes and Sam Gwynn will second that. West > Chester has a web page with info. > > Paul Lake > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Feb 13 04:50:59 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 03:50:59 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meg S Message-ID: Thanks, Kathrine. I could use Meg's email address. You can backchannel it to me. Let me know if you need my email address. Paul From barr at mail.rochester.edu Tue Feb 13 16:30:34 2001 From: barr at mail.rochester.edu (Brandon Barr) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 16:30:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Memphis In-Reply-To: <029201c09486$e6730500$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> References: <029201c09486$e6730500$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: I've had similar problems. I have found a similar concern with meter in many of Sting's songs; "Desert Rose," for example is written in alternating lines of iambic pentameter and iambic dimeter. I usually introduce a discussion of meter with several Sting songs. I wonder if Sting's fairly controlled use of meter stems from his time as a literature teacher, or if his instrument of choice (the bass) results in a greater concern for accentual beats within the melodic line. Brandon Barr >I've been bothered by my students' difficulties with scansion, and lately >whenever I do an independent study, part of it is on scansion. I've started >playing around with scanning songs, since they have that "back beat, you can >'t lose it," but of course songs are different from poems - their line >strategy is different. > >But not always. I recently scanned Chuck Berry's "Memphis." How good is >Berry? Look at the control he has here. > >Long distance information, give me >Memphis, Tennessee. >Help me find the party tryin' to >Get in touch with me. >She would not leave her number, but I >Know who made the call, >Cause my uncle took the message, and he >Wrote it on the wall. > >I won't quote the rest of the song for copyright reasons, although I will >refer to words in the succeeding stanzas. > >It's in ballad meter, trochaic, with some lines beginning with an extra >unstressed syllable (line 7 has two). The trochees are never substituted >for. > >Every important two-syllable word begins with a stressed syllable (distance, >number, uncle, etc.), except at the end of a trimeter line ("my Marie"). > >Every 4-syllable word is two trochees ("information," "Mississippi.") > >Every 3-syllable word ("Tennessee") ends a trimeter line. > >Berry wants to mute the ballad stanza - make the verses sound more like two >7-stress lines, so every tetrameter line ends in an enjambment. This is true >throughout the song, with a couple of well-timed exceptions ("Her home is on >the south side"). > >The last stanza, strikingly, violates almost all these rules, because the >exception to the two-syllable trochee rule is the girl's name, Marie, and >every time Marie is mentioned there's an increasing emotional wrench, and an >increasing formal wrench. > >Last time I saw Marie, she's >Wavin' me goodbye >With hurry home drops on her cheek >That trickle from her eye >Marie is only six years old >Information please >Try to get me through to her >In Memphis, Tennessee > >The first line begins with an imperfect (stressed) foot. The name, Marie, >appears in the center of the line for the first time, so it can't be >contained within a trochaic foot, or put into an imperfect foot at the end >of the line, as in stanza two. > >Line 5 begins with "Marie," and Marie dominates the line, turning the whole >line iambic. > >Also, for the first time, we have two consecutive end-stopped tetrameter >lines. > >Then the last two lines of the song revert to complete regularity. > > > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From languagethief at yahoo.com Tue Feb 13 17:15:58 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 14:15:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Memphis In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010213221558.47152.qmail@web12212.mail.yahoo.com> Brandon -- yeah, it's far from a sine qua non for song rhythms, but sometimes you do find a writer who is metrically regular on the printed page (and I bow to Sam Gwynn, who knows a whole lot more about this stuff than I do, for his correction...but I think when you do put a lyric on the printed page, then it either will or won't scan using conventional methods of scansion). And when you do, you can get your students to hear the meter a little more easily. --- Brandon Barr wrote: > I've had similar problems. I have found a similar > concern with meter > in many of Sting's songs; "Desert Rose," for example > is written in > alternating lines of iambic pentameter and iambic > dimeter. I usually > introduce a discussion of meter with several Sting > songs. > > I wonder if Sting's fairly controlled use of meter > stems from his > time as a literature teacher, or if his instrument > of choice (the > bass) results in a greater concern for accentual > beats within the > melodic line. > > Brandon Barr > > >I've been bothered by my students' difficulties > with scansion, and lately > >whenever I do an independent study, part of it is > on scansion. I've started > >playing around with scanning songs, since they have > that "back beat, you can > >'t lose it," but of course songs are different from > poems - their line > >strategy is different. > > > >But not always. I recently scanned Chuck Berry's > "Memphis." How good is > >Berry? Look at the control he has here. > > > >Long distance information, give me > >Memphis, Tennessee. > >Help me find the party tryin' to > >Get in touch with me. > >She would not leave her number, but I > >Know who made the call, > >Cause my uncle took the message, and he > >Wrote it on the wall. > > > >I won't quote the rest of the song for copyright > reasons, although I will > >refer to words in the succeeding stanzas. > > > >It's in ballad meter, trochaic, with some lines > beginning with an extra > >unstressed syllable (line 7 has two). The trochees > are never substituted > >for. > > > >Every important two-syllable word begins with a > stressed syllable (distance, > >number, uncle, etc.), except at the end of a > trimeter line ("my Marie"). > > > >Every 4-syllable word is two trochees > ("information," "Mississippi.") > > > >Every 3-syllable word ("Tennessee") ends a trimeter > line. > > > >Berry wants to mute the ballad stanza - make the > verses sound more like two > >7-stress lines, so every tetrameter line ends in an > enjambment. This is true > >throughout the song, with a couple of well-timed > exceptions ("Her home is on > >the south side"). > > > >The last stanza, strikingly, violates almost all > these rules, because the > >exception to the two-syllable trochee rule is the > girl's name, Marie, and > >every time Marie is mentioned there's an increasing > emotional wrench, and an > >increasing formal wrench. > > > >Last time I saw Marie, she's > >Wavin' me goodbye > >With hurry home drops on her cheek > >That trickle from her eye > >Marie is only six years old > >Information please > >Try to get me through to her > >In Memphis, Tennessee > > > >The first line begins with an imperfect (stressed) > foot. The name, Marie, > >appears in the center of the line for the first > time, so it can't be > >contained within a trochaic foot, or put into an > imperfect foot at the end > >of the line, as in stanza two. > > > >Line 5 begins with "Marie," and Marie dominates the > line, turning the whole > >line iambic. > > > >Also, for the first time, we have two consecutive > end-stopped tetrameter > >lines. > > > >Then the last two lines of the song revert to > complete regularity. > > > > > > > > > >_______________________________________________ > >New-Poetry mailing list > >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From DICK at watson.ibm.com Tue Feb 13 18:33:50 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 01 18:33:50 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Mark Baker's question about Gander's poem Message-ID: <200102132346.SAA13412@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Here's another vote that there's nothing - or nothing worth the effort - in it. Occasional pleasant phrases - "riot of birdsong" - "fruit stand open late" - but a whole lot of inaccessible (to me anyway) stuff "resin sequence", "pornography is inexhaustible" (ho-hum.) BTW - does "skin the color of cantaloupe rind" strike anyone else as extremely odd? The color of the outside of a cantaloupe is hard to describe - and not at all skin-like. The amusing note is that David Baker - poetry editor of Kenyon Review, that published this thing - was at a conference I was at last summer, and _stressed_ the need for clarity in writing, and complimented me on my command of syntax, bemoaning how rare it was in the poems submitted to him. It would be wonderful if he were on this list, and could share a few of his thoughts in choosing the subject thing. Or am I hopelessly out of it. Does anyone care to enlighten me on the merit of the subject? Best to all, Richard Richard From wasanthony at yahoo.com Tue Feb 13 18:55:38 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 15:55:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Mark Baker's question about Gander's poem In-Reply-To: <200102132346.SAA13412@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: <20010213235538.43765.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com> --- DICK at watson.ibm.com wrote: > Here's another vote that there's nothing - or nothing > worth the effort - in it. > > Occasional pleasant phrases - "riot of birdsong" - > "fruit stand open late" - but a whole lot of inaccessible > (to me anyway) stuff "resin sequence", "pornography is > inexhaustible" (ho-hum.) > > BTW - does "skin the color of cantaloupe rind" strike anyone > else as extremely odd? The color of the outside of a cantaloupe > is hard to describe - and not at all skin-like. > Well, I think he was trying to evoke the color and not the material, but the first thing that occurs to me with that line is texture, not color. And, to make a tangential jump: When I see the name Forrest Gander, I see a duck with feathers like bark. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From DICK at watson.ibm.com Tue Feb 13 19:01:36 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 01 19:01:36 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Mark Baker's question about Gander's poem Message-ID: <200102140003.TAA28184@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> ***** Reply to your file: NEW-POET NOTE of: 02/13 18:55:16 *************** ... it makes me think of peeking at the woods.... Richard From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 13 21:16:46 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 21:16:46 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: CHARLES SIMIC Message-ID: In a message dated 2/12/01 7:52:28 PM Eastern Standard Time, mbryant at english.ufl.edu writes: << From: mbryant at english.ufl.edu (Marsha Bryant) Sender: owner-MODERN_POETS-L at lists.missouri.edu Reply-to: MODERN_POETS-L at lists.missouri.edu To: MODERN_POETS-L at lists.missouri.edu Hello valued cybercolleagues. This week I'll have the honor of hearing CHARLES SIMIC read at the University of Florida's annual Writers Festival and at an informal colloquium I'll be co-hosting with my colleague Michael Hofmann. Since this list has been one of the most valuable cyber-discussions I'm in, I thought I'd ask those interested to share their favorite Simic poem(s) and a "dream" question you'd like to ask him. I'd really appreciate your insights, as I don't know Simic's work as well as that of poets I've taught. >> From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 13 21:21:55 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 21:21:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: [exedra] Recorded Poetry Message-ID: <61.b6575a5.27bb45c3@aol.com> Since they're shutting down Napster, you may have pony up for this CD... << got a great recording of Elizabeth Bishop reading selections from her work in a series called "The Voice of the Poet" (series editor J.D. McClatchy). Have you seen the series, heard the recordings? One pleasant surprise was that the selections were mostly the poems I really wanted to hear: "The Moose", "In the Waiting Room", "Crusoe in England", "Filling Station". Among other surprises, the tape demonstrated how much Richard Wilbur owes to Bishop >> From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 13 21:48:12 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 21:48:12 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Remembering Corso Message-ID: <9a.100ed92b.27bb4bec@aol.com> Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 17:59:20 -0500 From: Robert Creeley Subject: Gregory Corso Gregory Corso died last night (January 17), happily in his sleep in Minnesota. He had been ill for much of the past year but had recovered from time to time, saying that he'd got to the classic river but lacked the coin for Charon to carry him over. So he just dipped his toes in the water. In this time his daughter Sherry, a nurse, had been a godsend to him, securing him, steadying the ambiance, just minding the store with great love and clarity. He thought she should get Nurse of the Year recognition at the very least. There's no simple generalization to make of Gregory's life or poetry. There are all too many ways to displace the extraordinary presence and authority he was fact of. Last time we talked, he made the useful point that only a poet could say he or she was a poet -- only they knew. Whereas a philosopher, for instance, needed some other to say that that was what he or she was -- un(e) philosophe! -- poets themselves had to recognize and initiate their own condition. There are several quick websites that help recall him now. One gives a brief biography and discussion of a few of his poems: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/corso/corso.htm Another, more usefully affectionate, is taken from Ed Sanders' The Woodstock Journal. It was Lawrence Ferlinghetti who had suggested last summer that a spate of respects might help cheer Gregory in his illness -- and that they were certainly well merited: http://www.woodstockjournal.com/corso.html A third, which includes some previously noted, is The Museum of American Poetics. There's a 'streamable' video available there of Gregory reading at Naropa , if you can get the sound clearly: http://www.poetspath.com/corso.html Lots of us propose to be poets but who finally stakes all, or just takes all, as being that way? In my life time only Robert Duncan could be his equal in this way. It was honor indeed to have had his company. RC, Buffalo, January 18, 2001 *** The Whole Mess ... Almost I ran up six flights of stairs to my small furnished room opened the window and began throwing out those things most important in life First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink: "Don't! I'll tell awful things about you!" "Oh yeah? Well, I've nothing to hide ... OUT!" Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement: "It's not my fault! I'm not the cause of it all!" "OUT!" Then Love, cooing bribes: "You'll never know impotency! All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!" I pushed her fat ass out and screamed: "You always end up a bummer!" I picked up Faith Hope Charity all three clinging together: "Without us you'll surely die!" "With you I'm going nuts! Goodbye!" Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty -- As I led her to the window I told her: "You I loved best in life ... but you're a killer; Beauty kills!" Not really meaning to drop her I immediately ran downstairs getting there just in time to catch her "You saved me!" she cried I put her down and told her: "Move on." Went back up those six flights went to the money there was no money to throw out. The only thing left in the room was Death hiding beneath the kitchen sink: "I'm not real!" It cried "I'm just a rumor spread by life ..." Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all and suddenly realized Humor was all that was left -- All I could do with Humor was to say: "Out the window with the window!" ---From the Buffalo Poetics List From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 13 23:10:13 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 23:10:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Memphis Message-ID: <52.7375ec2.27bb5f25@cs.com> In a message dated 2/13/2001 3:31:41 PM Central Standard Time, barr at mail.rochester.edu writes: > 've had similar problems. I have found a similar concern with meter > in many of Sting's songs; "Desert Rose," for example is written in > alternating lines of iambic pentameter and iambic dimeter. I usually > introduce a discussion of meter with several Sting songs. > "Every Move You Make" is absolutely rigid trochaic trimeter catalectic. But it doesn't sound so rigid with the music added. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 13 23:11:54 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 23:11:54 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Memphis Message-ID: <9a.100ad17e.27bb5f8a@cs.com> In a message dated 2/13/2001 4:17:15 PM Central Standard Time, languagethief at yahoo.com writes: > > Brandon -- yeah, it's far from a sine qua non for song > rhythms, but sometimes you do find a writer who is > metrically regular on the printed page (and I bow to > Sam Gwynn, who knows a whole lot more about this stuff > than I do, for his correction...but I think when you > do put a lyric on the printed page, then it either > will or won't scan using conventional methods of > scansion). And when you do, you can get your students > to hear the meter a little more easily. > Setting poems to songs in the same meter is fun. Everybody knows that Emily Dickinson fits the Yellow Rose of Texas. How about Byron's "The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold" to "The Star-Spangled Banner'? From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 13 23:13:15 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 23:13:15 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Mark Baker's question about Gander's poem Message-ID: In a message dated 2/13/2001 5:57:12 PM Central Standard Time, wasanthony at yahoo.com writes: > BTW - does "skin the color of cantaloupe rind" strike anyone > > else as extremely odd? The color of the outside of a cantaloupe > > is hard to describe - and not at all skin-like. > > Doesn't he mean the inside, not the outside? That orange-yellow-green color? From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Feb 13 23:23:07 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 22:23:07 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Recorded Poetry In-Reply-To: <61.b6575a5.27bb45c3@aol.com> Message-ID: Thanks for this: the "Voice of the Poet" series is news to me. I'd love to hear more about what you or others think of Bishop reading. The only time I heard her was in the early 1970s, and I remember it as probably the worst, dullest poetry reading I'd ever attended. No eye contact, lots of mumbling and hesitation, absolutely no banter, commentary, or attempt to charm, a voice tentative to the point of fading out altogether. It almost put me off her work for good. Of course, I was a mere pup then, and it's possible that I didn't have ears for her nuance. But by all reports she was never an electrifying reader. In the past 30 years my admiration for Bishop's poetry has only grown. But I wonder if she's one of those poets who are better when read aloud by others? And in a more general sense, I'm wondering what are some particular favorite recordings of poets reading? I see from Amazon that this recording and others in the VOP series are available on cassette. Are they also out on CD? David Graham >Since they're shutting down Napster, you may have pony up >for this CD... ><< got a great recording of Elizabeth Bishop reading selections from her work >in a series called "The Voice of the Poet" (series editor J.D. McClatchy). >Have you seen the series, heard the recordings? One pleasant surprise was >that the selections were mostly the poems I really wanted to hear: "The >Moose", "In the Waiting Room", "Crusoe in England", "Filling Station". Among >other surprises, the tape demonstrated how much Richard Wilbur owes to Bishop >>> __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From griffinbaker at home.com Wed Feb 14 00:57:00 2001 From: griffinbaker at home.com (Mark Baker) Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 21:57:00 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander again Message-ID: <3A8A1E2C.EBD4C870@home.com> Since I got some response, I tried again. There's certainly not nothing, but I'm also uncertain the something is worth the effort. Gander's poem requires so much work on my part that I exhaust my ability to distinguish the labor from any aesthetic pleasure (probably irrelevant to his poetry anyway). Those who still want to read the poem can find it here (or HERE, as Forest would put it): http://www.poems.com/carrigan.htm The title--"Carried Across"--is a pun: a bus ride (to Mayan ruins?), metaphor, and, I guess, spiritual transport. A desperate pun because it really only works in Greek (where, we've many times wearingly learned, one can hop a metaphor). Much of the poem is only open form scene-setting, with some pretty crass technique (a dropped line and visual gap separates "a mortar wagon crosses" from--wait for it, we might open-formally say--"tile patio"). Interspersed are little meditations on, and enactments of, the speaker's "extended moments of cloud" (probably allusion here to clouds of unknowing or some such) about "human language" (I hate myself for having had to type that). It seems he gets into the clouds because of all the noisy languageless birds--grackles to swallows-- in the poem. A few more explicit sermons about language help orient this lost bus rider: "What if," he asks (I won't reproduce the staggered lines) "'we' did not presuppose national, ethnic, linguistic affiliation? What word, then, throw at the yapping dog?" This dog sounds like a creature hungry for "meaning," something "I" am extremely partial to. The "inexhaustible" "pornography" is the speaker's itch for scribbling words, which he then indulges in a little Spanish dada about "nada." Eventually I find that "Vocables unloose/from their reference" (as if I needed reminding at this point). I can apparently put a coin in a "coin slot" to get a "translation" of various symbols, but "I am" will become "crumbled dust" anyway. I, sans scare quotes, begin to flag. I don't know who she is who said "of her own work that sincerity and veracity are distinct" (wild guess--Sor Juana). Does it matter? After all, the bus rider discovers (maybe with the help of Wittgenstein or Stein or Sassure or Sor Juana or someone else not on speaking terms with the English language) that "Words ripen my difference/from the world." Let's get back to "_things_" and "restore silence". Finally the bus rider arrives at the ruins, "HERE" (language "incarnate"), meditates on the hand that 2000 years ago scribbled, considers "graffitti," and wants to "read the script" of swallows. He gets a haircut, face to the wall, preparing for the execution of the sentences of his own language. My yapping dog continues to yap. I just changed my mind about uncertainty. I think I'd rather have seen a moose. Mark Baker From tadrichards at prodigy.net Wed Feb 14 01:24:45 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 01:24:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Goosey Goosey References: <200102132346.SAA13412@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: <012001c0964e$d41782e0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> I have another question, this one vis-a-vis Richard's: The amusing note is that David Baker - poetry editor of Kenyon Review, that published this thing - was at a conference I was at last summer, and _stressed_ the need for clarity in writing What, exactly, IS "clarity in writing"? From thebeardedpoet at hotmail.com Wed Feb 14 06:13:12 2001 From: thebeardedpoet at hotmail.com (thebeardedpoet) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 06:13:12 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Recorded Poetry References: Message-ID: From: "David Graham" > But I wonder if she's one of those poets who are better when read aloud by > others? And in a more general sense, I'm wondering what are some > particular favorite recordings of poets reading? My favorite poetry recordings are Ted Hughes reading Eliot's Four Quartets. And Coleman Barks reading his translations of Rumi. Peace, Keith From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Wed Feb 14 11:05:20 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 10:05:20 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Recorded Poetry In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I also saw Elizabeth Bishop read in the early 1970s in New York City. Perhaps we were at the same event? I was an undergraduate studying with Mark Strand and he introduced Bishop at the reading. My memory of her performance is exactly as you state it. Luckily, I had already learned through my own readings of Bishop's poems to value them highly. It is unfortunate when poets we admire disappoint us with their performances of the works (I can think of a few others); likewise, it is deceptive sometimes when a poet is an excellent performer, but the poems do not come across as well when simply read in a book (I can think of examples here, as well). Bishop serves as a good example for the primary importance of the words on a page. I have in the past used Bishop as a model for my classes when I remind my students, who admire and give great weight (often, too much) to performance of poetry, of the reading I once saw her deliver. --Ed > Thanks for this: the "Voice of the Poet" series is news to me. I'd > love to hear more about what you or others think of Bishop reading. > The only time I heard her was in the early 1970s, and I remember it as > probably the worst, dullest poetry reading I'd ever attended. No eye > contact, lots of mumbling and hesitation, absolutely no banter, > commentary, or attempt to charm, a voice tentative to the point of > fading out altogether. It almost put me off her work for good. > > Of course, I was a mere pup then, and it's possible that I didn't have > ears for her nuance. But by all reports she was never an electrifying > reader. > > In the past 30 years my admiration for Bishop's poetry has only grown. > But I wonder if she's one of those poets who are better when read aloud > by others? And in a more general sense, I'm wondering what are some > particular favorite recordings of poets reading? > > I see from Amazon that this recording and others in the VOP series are > available on cassette. Are they also out on CD? > > > David Graham -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 14 11:17:18 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 11:17:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander again Message-ID: <66.c29058c.27bc098e@cs.com> In a message dated 2/13/2001 11:59:31 PM Central Standard Time, griffinbaker at home.com writes: > > The title--"Carried Across"--is a pun: a bus ride (to Mayan ruins?), > metaphor, and, I guess, spiritual transport. A desperate > pun because it really only works in Greek (where, we've > many times wearingly learned, one can hop a metaphor). > Much of the poem is only open form scene-setting, with > some pretty crass technique (a dropped line and visual > gap separates "a mortar wagon crosses" from--wait for > it, we might open-formally say--"tile patio"). Interspersed > are little meditations on, and enactments of, the speaker's > "extended moments of cloud" (probably allusion here to > clouds of unknowing or some such) about "human language" > (I hate myself for having had to type that). It seems he gets into > the clouds because of all the noisy languageless birds--grackles to > swallows-- > in the poem. A few more explicit sermons about language help orient this > lost > bus rider: "What if," he asks (I won't reproduce the staggered > lines) "'we' did not presuppose national, ethnic, linguistic > affiliation? What word, then, throw at the yapping dog?" This > dog sounds like a creature hungry for "meaning," something "I" am > extremely > partial to. The "inexhaustible" "pornography" is the speaker's itch for > scribbling words, which he then indulges in a little Spanish dada > about "nada." Eventually I find that "Vocables unloose/from > their reference" (as if I needed reminding at this point). I can > apparently put a coin in a "coin slot" to get a "translation" of > various symbols, but "I am" will become "crumbled dust" > anyway. I, sans scare quotes, begin to flag. I don't know > who she is who said "of her own work that sincerity and veracity > are distinct" (wild guess--Sor Juana). Does it matter? After > all, the bus rider discovers (maybe with the help of Wittgenstein or > Stein or Sassure or Sor Juana or someone else not on speaking terms > with the English language) that "Words ripen my difference/from the > world." > Let's get back to "_things_" and "restore silence". Finally the bus > rider arrives at the ruins, "HERE" (language "incarnate"), meditates > on the hand that 2000 years ago scribbled, considers "graffitti," > and wants to "read the script" of swallows. He gets a haircut, face > to the wall, preparing for the execution of the sentences of his own > language. > My yapping dog continues to yap. > > I just changed my mind about uncertainty. I think I'd rather have seen a > moose. > > Mark Baker > It didn't give me a lot of problems--"Translation" works both linguistically and culturally, and the speaker is lost in a second world in two senses. I like the descriptive parts; think, on the other hand, that some of its linguistic musings are a bit pretentious and are better left unsaid, or said concretely. It's Jorie Graham-style stuff, though much clearer than much J.G. I was kind of mystified by "The cast of her torso-- / corset de yeso-- sits upright on the bed like a kettle . . ." Say what? Is he talking about a literal corset sitting on a bed? Like a kettle? From Cadaly at aol.com Wed Feb 14 12:36:45 2001 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 12:36:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Goosey Goosey Message-ID: <2f.10fa0d33.27bc1c2d@aol.com> I am reading David Baker's HERESY AND THE IDEAL right now. He seems to ignore the lasting influence of Lorca and Thomas on T.R. Hummer. He redefines the "American project" once or twice an essay. He also redefines American clarity after the Puritans, "clarity" with a moral weight, several times. He mentions that of course since Puritan religious difference was based on direct communication with god (for men, not for Anne Hutchinson or Mary Dyer, but that's why I'm reading this thing), clarity in everything -- writing, ex. -- was important since anything not "plain" wasn't "direct communication" ("direct communication" becoming the fundamental purpose of "everything"). Poetry was particularly suspect. Mary Karr uses the language of food and commerce when she describes what's not decorated in her essay. So Gander also uses food (what else is on the tongue besides language) before moving outward -- cantaloupe RIND -- raw to cooked. Rgds, Catherine Daly cadaly at pacbell.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Feb 14 12:58:40 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 08:58:40 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: [exedra] Recorded Poetry Message-ID: I don't believe any of the poetry in this series is available on CD. >Since they're shutting down Napster, you may have pony up >for this CD... ><< got a great recording of Elizabeth Bishop reading selections from her >work Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 14 13:28:15 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 13:28:15 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Bishop Reading Message-ID: <7e.10e3f483.27bc283f@cs.com> I ditto the Voice of the Poet series. I have Bishop, Merrill, Plath, and Auden. Wish they were on cd for easier access for class presentation. I wish all those great Caedmon recordings from the 50s were available. I have several that are in pretty good shape. HarperCollins audio owns the list, but they haven't re-issued all of them. I also have a terribly scratchy version of Everyman with Burgess Meredith--the only recording of the play that I've been able to locate. I have heard that Bishop was painfully shy in front of audiences and that she never gave readings until very late in her career. Maybe the 1970 reading was one of the first? I have also read that her early mentor, Marianne Moore, was also a very poor reader. I recently purchased a tape of Wendy Cope reading from Amazon.com UK. I haven't searched very thoroughly through their stocks, but they might have some good stuff. McGraw-Hill has issued Poetry to My Ear, which is an interactive cd on poetry and contains a goodly number of readings. Also, the Norton Anthology of British Literature now has a 2 cd set which has some great stuff on it, including Tennyson reading "The Charge of the Light Brigade." I play a recording of some type at the beginning of class every day in creative writing. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Feb 14 13:36:25 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 09:36:25 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Bishop Reading Message-ID: Playing recordings at the beginning of every class sounds like a wonderful idea, especially if it could be a recording by the poet of whatever poem is to be studied....as far as I can tell, not even Dylan Thomas has a CD of his work at Amazon.com, which really surprises me. Is anyone else aware of an internet resource where CDs of poets reading their own works can be bought? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From boisseaum at umkc.edu Wed Feb 14 13:54:05 2001 From: boisseaum at umkc.edu (Michelle Boisseau) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 12:54:05 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Bishop Reading In-Reply-To: <7e.10e3f483.27bc283f@cs.com> Message-ID: <4.1.20010214124921.00a91ea0@imap4.exchange.umkc.edu> RE: Gwynn: "I have heard that Bishop was painfully shy in front of audiences and that she >never gave readings until very late in her career. Maybe the 1970 reading >was one of the first?" I believe that one of the first Bishop recorded readings was one she did during her Library of Congress stint--in the 50s. I believe she makes mention of it in her letters--not that she was happy doing it. And I remember getting the impression that Dylan Thomas' reading popularity at the time spurred on the interest in making recordings of poets. Michelle Boisseau boisseaum at umkc.eud At 01:28 PM 02/14/2001 -0500, you wrote: >I ditto the Voice of the Poet series. I have Bishop, Merrill, Plath, and >Auden. Wish they were on cd for easier access for class presentation. I >wish all those great Caedmon recordings from the 50s were available. I have >several that are in pretty good shape. HarperCollins audio owns the list, >but they haven't re-issued all of them. I also have a terribly scratchy >version of Everyman with Burgess Meredith--the only recording of the play >that I've been able to locate. > >I have heard that Bishop was painfully shy in front of audiences and that she >never gave readings until very late in her career. Maybe the 1970 reading >was one of the first? I have also read that her early mentor, Marianne >Moore, was also a very poor reader. > >I recently purchased a tape of Wendy Cope reading from Amazon.com UK. I >haven't searched very thoroughly through their stocks, but they might have >some good stuff. > >McGraw-Hill has issued Poetry to My Ear, which is an interactive cd on poetry >and contains a goodly number of readings. Also, the Norton Anthology of >British Literature now has a 2 cd set which has some great stuff on it, >including Tennyson reading "The Charge of the Light Brigade." > >I play a recording of some type at the beginning of class every day in >creative writing. >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 14 13:49:28 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 13:49:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Bishop Reading Message-ID: In a message dated 2/14/01 12:37:31 PM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > Is anyone else aware of an > internet resource where CDs of poets reading their own works can be bought? > I haven't checked thoroughly, but I have found some things on amazon.com UK. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 14 13:53:24 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 13:53:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Bishop Reading Message-ID: <65.fe1bf98.27bc2e24@cs.com> A tape of Dylan Thomas reading is available from amazon.com UK. From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 14 13:52:53 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 13:52:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Goosey Goosey In-Reply-To: <2f.10fa0d33.27bc1c2d@aol.com> Message-ID: >Mary Karr uses the language of food and commerce when she describes what's >not decorated in her essay. So Gander also uses food (what else is on the >tongue besides language) Funny you should ask. Hal Colourless green ideas sleep furiously. --Noam Chomsky Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Feb 14 15:09:00 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 14:09:00 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Bishop Reading In-Reply-To: <7e.10e3f483.27bc283f@cs.com> Message-ID: I also play a lot of recorded poetry to my classes. Some of my favorites include the Gwendolyn Brooks tape from the "Poets in Person" series; an Ossie Davis/Ruby Dee performance of Langston Hughes, probably long out of print; and a whole lot of the old Watershed tapes, including performances from Philip Levine, Lucille Clifton, Richard Hugo, Russell Edson, Carolyn Forche, Etheridge Knight, and others. Does anyone know if the Watershed series is still available anywhere, on tape or CD? I cherish a 33 rpm mini-record that came packaged decades ago with a Robert Frost booklet, containing a live recording of Frost in particularly fine form--one that I've not heard anywhere else, on the Caedmon or other available recordings. Invaluable, I think is the 4 CD set, *In Their Own Voices: A Century of Recorded Poetry*, which ranges from an alleged Walt Whitman fragment to Li-Young Lee. I'm away from my office, and unfortunately can't recall title or publisher, but one of my favorites is a 2 cassette collection from Seamus Heaney, in which he reads and discusses canonical poems on one tape, and his own on the other. Another is a 2 CD set of African Americans, from Harlem Renaissance to the present. Many gems here. Listen to Robert Hayden and you'll understand where Michael Harper got his reading style from. . . . David Graham ________________ >I play a recording of some type at the beginning of class every day in >creative writing. >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Feb 14 15:57:49 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 14:57:49 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] African American Poetry Message-ID: I remembered the title of that 2 CD set of African American poetry: *Our Souls Have Grown Deep Like The Rivers*, from Rhino Records. Highly recommended. Here's the Amazon blurb: __________ A very smartly assembled two-disc compilation of African American poetry, Our Souls Have Grown Deep Like the Rivers digs deep to unearth a wealth of unheard and rare material spanning almost the entire 20th century. The collection features some of the greatest names in black literature, and--as Al Young points out in the liner notes--it can be a revelation to hear, for instance, Harlem Renaissance leader Langston Hughes pronounce the word "Harlem" with utter pride and joy. Other notables include Ishmael Reed, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gil Scott-Heron, Maya Angelou, Rita Dove, W.E.B. DuBois, the Last Poets, Public Enemy, Wanda Coleman... You get the picture--it's sort of a greatest-hits of black spoken word. But it's too scattershot a set to be called definitive--anyone can bemoan the absence of this or that poet--but it is also a tremendously interesting document of hope and loss and rage and joy and perseverance--and, above all, remarkable poetry, works that each gain from the original authors' reading of their poem. Amiri Baraka's sonorous recitation of "Bang, Bang Outishly," a beat-era work dedicated to Thelonious Monk, is worth the price of admission by itself. --Mike McGonigal ____________ David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From JforJames at aol.com Wed Feb 14 16:49:48 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 16:49:48 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Bishop Reading Message-ID: <6e.7c1f67f.27bc577c@aol.com> > Does anyone know if the Watershed series is still available anywhere, on > tape or CD? David, It took me a while to track down this series after Watershed folded, but here it is... Writer's Center (Bethesda MD) Poetry Tapes (the former Watershed Foundation archive): http://www.writer.org/poettapes/pac02.htm However, I don't know if they've transferred these recordings to CD or MP3 format...if not, someone ought to write a grant and do it. The Academy of American Poets website has some recordings on it that you can play...but I'm not certain if you can download them. Finnegan From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Feb 14 16:44:24 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 16:44:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander again References: <66.c29058c.27bc098e@cs.com> Message-ID: <3A8AFC38.215D@nut-n-but.net> > It didn't give me a lot of problems--"Translation" works both > linguistically and culturally, and the speaker is lost in a > second world in two senses. Glad someone said this. Reading this thread, I felt like I was among 90-year-olds trying to make heads or tail of a painting by Monet. Gander's piece seemed a nice middle-of-the-road descriptive poem to me. Not transparent, by any means, but certainly not opaque. --Bob G. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Feb 14 18:02:39 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 17:02:39 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander again In-Reply-To: <3A8AFC38.215D@nut-n-but.net> References: <66.c29058c.27bc098e@cs.com> Message-ID: The "middle of the road" looks quite different from different vantage points, I guess. If you judge by readership alone (which isn't a measure of quality, obviously), the middle of the American poetry road is solidly occupied by poets such as Robert Bly, Maya Angelou, Lucille Clifton, Naomi Shihab Nye, Dorianne Laux, Billy Collins, Rita Dove, Robert Pinsky, and Mary Oliver. Gander's piece, whatever its virtues or flaws, is pretty far distant from all the above, seems to me. Not as difficult as Mina Loy or even Jorie Graham, certainly, but fairly resistant to a common reader. I have no real agenda to push here; I just think it's useful to remind ourselves once in a while how truly difficult poetry remains to most Americans, many of whom (literate and educated folk, including some I work with at an institution of higher education) can actually find Robert Pinsky challenging. David Graham, more than halfway to 90 myself. . . . ________________________ >> It didn't give me a lot of problems--"Translation" works both >> linguistically and culturally, and the speaker is lost in a >> second world in two senses. > >Glad someone said this. Reading this thread, I felt like >I was among 90-year-olds trying to make heads or tail of >a painting by Monet. Gander's piece seemed a nice >middle-of-the-road descriptive poem to me. Not >transparent, by any means, but certainly not opaque. > > --Bob G. > > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From ron.silliman at gte.net Wed Feb 14 18:01:52 2001 From: ron.silliman at gte.net (Ron Silliman) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 18:01:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander's ear Message-ID: <000901c096da$21548cc0$3353fea9@oemcomputer> There are two aspects of Forrest's work that always draw me. Although I don't think of him as heavily influenced by Zukofsky (as compared, say, to John Taggart or Ronald Johnson), they are both essentially Zukofskian qualities. The first is his vocabulary -- it is vast and always specific, with an enormous care for the individual (and individuated) word. The other is his ear and the degree to which it leads the poem forward, as in this passage: Blotting out vision, breathable air, a carbonized foulness mushrooms behind the bus. Her dress fades into distance as color blown onto a resin sequence. Now are grackles hooked by the sol's aigrette, disturbed and stern and enormous. The unstressed fourth and invented fifth foot of their long-voweled croaking inflames me. By the throatful. But in this human language, the world is full of voices, I experience extended moments of cloud. Will does not limit what I feel. The pornography is inexhaustible. I don't know how Forrest would read this aloud, but on the page, those are very forcible end stops and so many of those lines have hard stops or a clattering of consonants to generate remarkably noisy (and lush) caesurae. So I think of him as in some way a poet of the ear, rather as I do Rod Smith (very similar tonal qualities to some of his poems, frankly) or to the more vowel-centric lines of a Kenneth Irby. But if you can give me "Now / are grackles hooked / by the sol's aigrette" (that midline rime!), you can rest assured that I will happily read book after book looking (listening) for more of the same. This is the real deal and I find I respond absolutely directly to it. Ron Silliman From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Feb 14 19:21:52 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 19:21:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander again References: <66.c29058c.27bc098e@cs.com> Message-ID: <3A8B2120.6279@nut-n-but.net> David Graham wrote: > > The "middle of the road" looks quite different from > different vantage points, I guess. Yes. (It would also be defined differently by different people--middle of what, etc.) My middle-of-the road would be between the poets like Rita Dove that you mention as middle-of-the-road and poets like John M. Bennett, Jake Berry and Jim Leftwich. Gander would be on it, but so would Graham and Ashbery; Gander'd be closer to the Dove-side of the road, though, Ashbery closer to the other side. But my remark wasn't all that reflective; my only real point is that Gander seems straight-forward compared to almost any language poet, and to a lot of Vendler-certified poets, too. And he's all words, so much easier for many than poets who mix expressive modalities (pluraesthetic poets, in my terminology). --Bob G. From griffinbaker at home.com Wed Feb 14 20:06:01 2001 From: griffinbaker at home.com (Mark Baker) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 17:06:01 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander's ear References: <000901c096da$21548cc0$3353fea9@oemcomputer> Message-ID: <3A8B2B79.D16689EF@home.com> What rime, Ron? Hooked and aigrette? That calls for exclamation? Read some Van Duyn, a poet untouched by Zukofsky. And what does "sol's aigrette" mean, however lush it is or irrelevant the meaning is? I happily read book after book when I understand what I look at or listen to. Mark Baker Ron Silliman wrote: > > > But if you can give me "Now / are grackles hooked / by the sol's aigrette" > (that midline rime!), you can rest assured that I will happily read book > after book looking (listening) for more of the same. > > This is the real deal and I find I respond absolutely directly to it. > > Ron Silliman > From griffinbaker at home.com Wed Feb 14 20:14:36 2001 From: griffinbaker at home.com (Mark Baker) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 17:14:36 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Bishop Reading References: Message-ID: <3A8B2D7C.734DC6AE@home.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From barr at mail.rochester.edu Wed Feb 14 23:13:20 2001 From: barr at mail.rochester.edu (Brandon Barr) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 23:13:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander's ear In-Reply-To: <3A8B2B79.D16689EF@home.com> References: <000901c096da$21548cc0$3353fea9@oemcomputer> <3A8B2B79.D16689EF@home.com> Message-ID: I feel a rhyme of "grackles" and "sol's" too. And many other lines in the poem are, as unscholastically as possible, really nice to chew. Brandon Barr >What rime, Ron? Hooked and aigrette? That calls for >exclamation? Read some Van Duyn, a poet untouched by >Zukofsky. > >And what does "sol's aigrette" mean, however lush it is >or irrelevant the meaning is? I happily read book after >book when I understand what I look at or listen to. > >Mark Baker > > >Ron Silliman wrote: > >> >> >> But if you can give me "Now / are grackles hooked / by the sol's aigrette" >> (that midline rime!), you can rest assured that I will happily read book >> after book looking (listening) for more of the same. >> >> This is the real deal and I find I respond absolutely directly to it. >> >> Ron Silliman >> > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From HntrRos at aol.com Thu Feb 15 00:27:38 2001 From: HntrRos at aol.com (HntrRos at aol.com) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 00:27:38 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gander's Goosesynapseflutteraeryardentjabberwocky Message-ID: <99.10ae34f1.27bcc2cb@aol.com> "Bob G" wrote: >Gander's piece seemed a nice middle-of-the-road >descriptive poem to me. Not transparent, by any >means, but certainly not opaque. Surely you have to admit it frequently borders on gibberish, as far as the phrases have (or disavow) semantic meaning as commonly understood. There's a difference between the poetics of transcendent logic ("How can we tell the dancer from the dance?") and the poetics of insane random gibberish ("inane" could substitute for its rhyming partner), though the two can intersect (as in Swinburne, Eliot, Pound, maybe some Deep Image poets, arguably language, lots of others). What virtues can gibberish-esque poetry have, now that its novelty's completely dry? "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" is remembered, while countless lines of Stein's lush blather simply gather metaphoric dust. I guess purely nonsensical lines can pierce -- lines that reorder reason, penetrate its ultimate unsure roots in intuition, expose its phoneyness, even somehow seem intuitively right and thereby explode the lie of "logic" or ordinary notions of world as absolute, or based on more than necessary lies or trusts, insincerities.... . From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Thu Feb 15 00:40:34 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 00:40:34 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gander's Goosesynapseflutteraeryardentjabberwocky Message-ID: <38.12085fc0.27bcc5d2@cs.com> In a message dated 2/14/2001 11:28:41 PM Central Standard Time, HntrRos at aol.com writes: > > What virtues can gibberish-esque poetry have, now that its novelty's > completely dry? "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" is remembered, while > countless lines of Stein's lush blather simply gather metaphoric dust. > I guess purely nonsensical lines can pierce -- lines that reorder reason, > penetrate its ultimate unsure roots in intuition, expose its phoneyness, even > somehow seem intuitively right and thereby explode the lie of "logic" or > ordinary notions of world as absolute, or based on more than necessary lies > or trusts, insincerities.... at you rather than tell you the truth as it tells me>. There's a difference between bad lines and nonsensical lines. I find the Gander piece replete with some pretty bad lines but also with some good images and observations. It seems a rather innocuous poem to have stimulated a rant like this. From HntrRos at aol.com Thu Feb 15 00:50:57 2001 From: HntrRos at aol.com (HntrRos at aol.com) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 00:50:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander again Message-ID: Bob Grumman wrote: >And he's all words, so much easier for many than poets >who mix expressive modalities (pluraesthetic poets, in >my terminology). Are you including performance poets in this (not counting music and costume)? -- what are words (voices, gestures, morphemes?)? (Any poet who writes for the ear depends on performance and performance conventions, whether of the solitary reader, or through his own voice, or through some actor/singer/reciter: always intermediaries, always performance, even inside his own mind over time, or under). From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Feb 15 05:27:13 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 05:27:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gander's Goosesynapseflutteraeryardentjabberwocky References: <99.10ae34f1.27bcc2cb@aol.com> Message-ID: <3A8BAF01.696E@nut-n-but.net> > >Gander's piece seemed a nice middle-of-the-road >descriptive poem to me. Not transparent, by any >means, but certainly not opaque. > > Surely you have to admit it frequently borders on gibberish, as far as the phrases have (or disavow) semantic meaning as commonly understood. That was not my impression--except in the sense that just about all good poetry does. No time for a full-scale explication of the poem to demonstrate this, though. There ARE a few sections I don't more than fuzzily get. Since I don't speak Spanish, the Spanish is hard for me, though I do get something from it. There's a difference between the poetics of transcendent logic ("How can we tell the dancer from the dance?") and the poetics of insane random gibberish ("inane" could substitute for its rhyming partner), though the two can intersect (as in Swinburne, Eliot, Pound, maybe some Deep Image poets, arguably language, lots of others). The problem is whether a text is gibberish or not. If no one presents a clear explication of the Gander poem over the next fifty years, I'll accept that it is gibberish. > What virtues can gibberish-esque poetry have, now that its novelty's completely dry? "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" is remembered, while countless lines of Stein's lush blather simply gather metaphoric dust. Stein's "Tender Buttons," seems gibberish, for the most part, to me. It is certainly much less coherent than the Gander poem. > I guess purely nonsensical lines can pierce -- lines that reorder reason, penetrate its ultimate unsure roots in intuition, expose its phoneyness, even somehow seem intuitively right and thereby explode the lie of "logic" or ordinary notions of world as absolute, or based on more than necessary lies or trusts, insincerities.... . Incoherence can have those uses, and also represent incoherence; for instance, in some Roethke poems that (for me) are, in part, celebrations of darkness overcome, with incoherences representing darkness. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Feb 15 05:31:41 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 05:31:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander again References: Message-ID: <3A8BB00D.6430@nut-n-but.net> HntrRos at aol.com wrote: > > Bob Grumman wrote: > > >And he's all words, so much easier for many than poets >who mix expressive modalities (pluraesthetic poets, in >my terminology). > > Are you including performance poets in this (not counting music and costume)? -- what are words (voices, gestures, morphemes?)? (Any poet who writes for the ear depends on performance and performance conventions, whether of the solitary reader, or through his own voice, or through some actor/singer/reciter: always intermediaries, always performance, even inside his own mind over time, or under). For me, words are what they look like on the page and how they sound when spoken--plus punctuation (as pointers toward the way they sound). So performance poetry does not, for me, mix expressive modalities inasmuch as it is only recitation. What is most commonly called performance poetry, which is much more than recitation, does mix expressive modalities, for me. --Bob G. From bardo at optonline.net Wed Feb 14 23:19:59 2001 From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman) Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 23:19:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander's ear References: <000901c096da$21548cc0$3353fea9@oemcomputer> <3A8B2B79.D16689EF@home.com> Message-ID: <00c301c09706$93815ae0$c530be18@win98> -ackle- / sol, eh? Dan Zimmerman ----- Original Message ----- From: Mark Baker To: Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 8:06 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Gander's ear > > > What rime, Ron? Hooked and aigrette? That calls for > exclamation? Read some Van Duyn, a poet untouched by > Zukofsky. > > And what does "sol's aigrette" mean, however lush it is > or irrelevant the meaning is? I happily read book after > book when I understand what I look at or listen to. > > Mark Baker > > > Ron Silliman wrote: > > > > > > > But if you can give me "Now / are grackles hooked / by the sol's aigrette" > > (that midline rime!), you can rest assured that I will happily read book > > after book looking (listening) for more of the same. > > > > This is the real deal and I find I respond absolutely directly to it. > > > > Ron Silliman > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From DICK at watson.ibm.com Thu Feb 15 10:05:11 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 01 10:05:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] internal rhymes Message-ID: <200102151508.KAA19064@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> ***** Reply to your file: NEW-POET NOTE of: 02/15 08:32:29 *************** > Ron Silliman wrote: > > > > > > > But if you can give me "Now / are grackles hooked / by the sol's aigrette" > > (that midline rime!), you can rest assured that I will happily read book > > after book looking (listening) for more of the same. > > > > This is the real deal and I find I respond Some more internal rhymes: ..midline rime...book looking listening... real deal....I find I respond Richard From schro047 at tc.umn.edu Thu Feb 15 14:25:55 2001 From: schro047 at tc.umn.edu (Steve Schroer) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 13:25:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] sauce for the gander Message-ID: <3A8C2D43.B4420256@tc.umn.edu> "Rhyme" is a word that dissolves when you look closely at it. Like all other words. So there's no reason not to fling it around at random. Party time! In the traditional sense, however, "grackle" cannot be said to rhyme with "sol." The -le in "grackle" is an unaccented syllable, almost swallowed in the pronunciation, and the O in "sol" is a prolonged one. Now if Gander had written "wax solution," you might persuade me that it was some kind of slant rhyme. Steve Schroer From tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Feb 15 12:28:49 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 12:28:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander's ear References: <000901c096da$21548cc0$3353fea9@oemcomputer><3A8B2B79.D16689EF@home.com> <00c301c09706$93815ae0$c530be18@win98> Message-ID: <000401c0979a$267910c0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> I like "Now / are grackles hooked / by the sol's aigrette" -- it's almost a palindrome of consonance, with the G's bracketing the hooky K's. > -ackle- / sol, eh? > > Dan Zimmerman > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Mark Baker > To: > Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 8:06 PM > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Gander's ear > > > > > > > > What rime, Ron? Hooked and aigrette? That calls > for > > exclamation? Read some Van Duyn, a poet untouched > by > > Zukofsky. > > > > And what does "sol's aigrette" mean, however lush > it is > > or irrelevant the meaning is? I happily read book > after > > book when I understand what I look at or listen > to. > > > > Mark Baker > > > > > > Ron Silliman wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > But if you can give me "Now / are grackles > hooked / by the sol's aigrette" > > > (that midline rime!), you can rest assured that > I will happily read book > > > after book looking (listening) for more of the > same. > > > > > > This is the real deal and I find I respond > absolutely directly to it. > > > > > > Ron Silliman > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From bardo at optonline.net Thu Feb 15 17:34:41 2001 From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 17:34:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander's ear References: <000901c096da$21548cc0$3353fea9@oemcomputer> <3A8B2B79.D16689EF@home.com> <00c301c09706$93815ae0$c530be18@win98> <000401c0979a$267910c0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: <00ec01c0979f$93d9e9a0$c530be18@win98> Forrest Gander surely wrote a chiasmus some say caterwaulers rid no jester of. Dan ----- Original Message ----- From: theoldmole To: Sent: Thursday, February 15, 2001 12:28 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Gander's ear > I like "Now / are grackles hooked / by the sol's aigrette" -- it's almost a > palindrome of consonance, with the G's bracketing the hooky K's. > > > > -ackle- / sol, eh? > > > > Dan Zimmerman > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: Mark Baker > > To: > > Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 8:06 PM > > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Gander's ear > > > > > > > > > > > > > What rime, Ron? Hooked and aigrette? That calls > > for > > > exclamation? Read some Van Duyn, a poet untouched > > by > > > Zukofsky. > > > > > > And what does "sol's aigrette" mean, however lush > > it is > > > or irrelevant the meaning is? I happily read book > > after > > > book when I understand what I look at or listen > > to. > > > > > > Mark Baker > > > > > > > > > Ron Silliman wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > But if you can give me "Now / are grackles > > hooked / by the sol's aigrette" > > > > (that midline rime!), you can rest assured that > > I will happily read book > > > > after book looking (listening) for more of the > > same. > > > > > > > > This is the real deal and I find I respond > > absolutely directly to it. > > > > > > > > Ron Silliman > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > New-Poetry mailing list > > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Feb 16 00:16:23 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2001 23:16:23 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wm. Logan's America Message-ID: [The role of "Contributing Correspondent" on this list has been left usefully vague, so we're making this up as we go. We are to provide information and opinion on some regular basis. The following contains both, I hope. In any event, I promise not to impose this heavily on your time very often, but I thought that the following lengthy posting (from the Modern Poets list) might be of interest and serve to keep discussion simmering, lest this list go the way of the late lamented CAP-L.] ----------------------------- This just in. The inimitable William Logan has struck again, this time casting his jaundiced eye not on recent poetry but on the entire modern American project, as gathered in the Library of America's first two volumes of their projected multi-volume series of 20th Century poetry. (With time out for a brief blistering denunciation of Cary Nelson's recent Oxford anthology.) His lengthy review, "Twentieth-Century American Poetry, Abbreviated" appears in the current issue of *Parnassus*, and I find it weirdly fascinating. No doubt, given the reputations of both journal and reviewer, this will be a piece to contend with for anyone interested in this period of American poetry. I can't say that Logan's mandarin opinions or his acid prose are surprising, but it is nonetheless interesting to see him expand a bit on some roots of an aesthetic which causes him to be such a predictable scourge of just about every new slim volume that crosses his path. What's "abbreviated" here is certainly not the essay, which runs to nearly forty pages of glibness, sneering, aerial-view dismissal, and very occasional if invariably grudging admiration for some poems by the fit few modernists admitted into Logan's uncrowded pantheon. In fairness, the essay also includes quite a lot of useful provocation, intelligent synthesis, and perceptive argument. Logan's an unapologetic snob and wears his numerous bigotries as proudly as Frost ever did, but, as with Frost, that doesn't mean his ideas are to be lightly dismissed. No, as the ghost of Dorothy Parker would say, they are to be thrown with great force. Logan's writing is ever-entertaining. His prose is often Jarrellian in its clever and high-spirited cruelty, if rarely as convincing in its pronouncements, and never displaying Jarrell's saving gift for passionate appreciation. The connection to Jarrell is more than vague; Logan's prose has clearly been to school in *Poetry and The Age*, even down to some heavy echoes. For example: Jarrell on Frost: "Ordinary readers think Frost the greatest poet alive, and love some of his best poems almost as much as they love some of his worst ones. Logan on Frost: ". . .beloved for many of his best poems and some of his worst." More obviously Jarrellian is Logan's proclivity for baroque tropes, as when, after quoting the famous quip about a camel being an animal designed by committee, he remarks, "The Library of America anthology is an animal with one lung and five livers, cauliflower ears and bandy legs-it may have looked like a predator in the blueprints, but on the savannah it looks like prey." And so it does: Logan pounces on his hapless prey with glee. But he remains unlike Jarrell in his near complete lack of generosity, which I think is a substantial defect of taste. Though Jarrell, too, could be wickedly hard on mediocre books, of course, it was always in the service of a generous, open-hearted vision, and even his more outlandish metaphoric flights somehow never sound as preening and smug as Logan always does. I think this is because, whatever his limitations as critic, Jarrell was irrepressibly in love with and in service of poetry more than he was in love with his own superiority. He was guilty of being entertaining and even at times glib, but seldom self-satisfied. The fact that I sometimes agree with Logan's harsh judgments is enough to give me pause, I must say, even if I would not endorse his bloodthirsty relish in making them. One minor oddity: Logan seems not to have understood (or accepted) the nature of this project, for he wastes ink complaining that the anthology ignores writers born after 1913, as of course it does by clear design. My understanding is that future volumes in the series will in fact cover Lowell, Berryman, et al. But don't get the impression that Logan would have had even these "abbreviated" volumes any longer. For his main complaint against Volumes I and II (his *main* complaint, mind you, among dozens of magisterial thunderbolts) is that it includes too much bad and/or minor poetry. It also does not include (surprise!) the poems by major poets that Logan himself would have preferred. Logan would have wished for a different anthology (one which included nothing but certified Major Poets, evidently, with perhaps a smattering of minor work for "range-finding"), but that does not seem a very weighty critique, frankly. For every anthology concerned with doing justice to an historical period must include the lesser with the greater. The reasonable purpose of the present anthology, it seems to me, is precisely *not* to give us only (and yet again) what we already have by heart-chestnuts by Eliot and other indisputably great poets. It is to give us a sharpened sense of the whole period, in all its variety and complexity, which necessarily means that the lesser talents of MacLeish and Cummings must take up space that in a different world, yes, could have been spent on adding another of the "Four Quartets." In any case, it's worth noting that Logan mentions no worthy poets who should have been, but were not, included, and offers little but cavils for every single poet who is, most definitely including the Majors. And many poets who have their intelligent admirers-Gertrude Stein, Theodore Roethke, Robert Penn Warren, and Kenneth Rexroth, for example-are simply dismissed with airy omniscience and a withering phrase or two. In case you're wondering, there exist six Major Poets of the period, and they are: Frost, Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Moore, and Bishop. Williams and Crane are "nearly major," suffering from "depths of crippling embarrassment" despite their "occasional graces" and "moments of brilliance." It would have been "heartless not to include them," Logan concedes-a rare moment of charity from this remarkably bilious critic. On the other hand, the editors have unfortunately failed to anticipate Logan's preferences among the poems of Frost, Stevens, and so forth, so really the entire book is an amusing hash, even before one notices that it gathers so many bad poems by the minors (I almost typed "minorities" there, and might have been justified, too, given typical Logan sentences such as "the Harlem Renaissance has received far more critical attention than its achievements deserve."). It's breathtaking, really, to spend time in the company of someone so fearlessly and utterly sure that his own taste is simply right-though, to be sure, Logan occasionally glances up from his pronouncements long enough to remember that the taste of every age comes to seem strange to future ages. This insight doesn't seem to give him more than momentary pause about his own lofty edicts, or give rise to any suspicion that he might, just might, be throwing out a baby or two with the bathwater of multiculturalism, political correctness, and other efforts toward inclusiveness for which he has such sharp disdain. Given the critical upheavals of recent decades, the re-examinations and rediscoveries which The Library of America volumes assuredly do reflect, there is something cozy about finding a critic whose taste has been unaffected by any of it, and whose surety remains absolute. In the past Logan has been charged with seldom having much good to say about women poets, and this review does little to counter that sense of things. Even among his two favored Major Women, Moore is, among other things, saddled with descriptors like "fussy, old-maidish," while Bishop is-you guessed it-"a tender and unsentimental maiden-aunt (a maiden-aunt of genius)." Is that parenthesis supposed to be charming, I wonder? When we move to "minor" poets the gender-charged rhetoric only increases: Millay was "a hedonist with a prissy streak and tended to gush unpleasantly"; Wylie a "minor talent for summer tea parties. . . who "can be prim and proud in a way that makes you cringe, more teary than Millay"; Lorine Neidecker's poems are "babyish and tinted with sentiment". And so forth: these women are occasionally talented, but they do gush so. Logan has plenty of unpleasant remarks to make about male poets, to be sure, but still, his rhetoric is telling. Muriel Rukeyser is dismissed, predictably enough, via quotation of her famous lines, "Whoever despises the clitoris despises the penis. . . ." Logan's only comment on these lines is "such are the mysteries of taste." So I suppose it won't surprise anyone to learn who was, in Logan's view, "the greatest woman poet of the century." That'd be Robert Frost. Yes, I know that Logan is half-joking in that remark, but it's the other half that makes me queasy. As do any number of offhand comments directed, Harold Bloom fashion, against the current climate of cultural inclusiveness. It is their very offhandedness, of course, that is bothersome. About Vachel Lindsey, for instance, Logan mentions without further comment that "To their credit, the editors have not excluded the hilariously naive racist vision of 'The Congo,' with sections titled 'Their Basic Savagery' and 'Their Irrepressible High Spirits.'" Logan's own irrepressible high spirits apparently prevent him from explaining why such an inclusion reflects credit on the editors, or why, in a volume being excoriated for including too much bad poetry, it is good to have this naive and racist poem, whatever hilarity it brings along. It is a truism that all anthologies fail, reflect period prejudice, and will soon be swept away by the different taste of the future-a truism Logan does not fail to acknowledge even though his whole thrust denies it. Yet I think the imaginary anthology that would evidently suit Logan's taste does exist, really-in the textbooks and college curricula of, say, the early 1960s, before Williams and his followers had made their final breach of the academic walls. With the possible exception of Bishop, the poets considered major in the academy then are the ones Logan considers major now. Needless to say, perhaps, he reserves special scorn for any poetry deemed "experimental," and that net is cast rather wide. Everyone will no doubt find something to complain of in the LOA anthologies. I have my own quibbles, but in general have found these volumes fascinating and full of eye-opening moments. I would love to hear what others think about them. David Graham ---------------------------------- __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Feb 16 08:18:05 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 08:18:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wm. Logan's America References: Message-ID: <010f01c0981a$e6291e80$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Thank you, David. What a wonderful gift to this list. Does the Library of America volume include that bad-by-any-definition, but oddly magnificent poet, Joseph Moncure March? Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Friday, February 16, 2001 12:16 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Wm. Logan's America > [The role of "Contributing Correspondent" on this list has been left > usefully vague, so we're making this up as we go. We are to provide > information and opinion on some regular basis. The following contains > both, I hope. In any event, I promise not to impose this heavily on your > time very often, but I thought that the following lengthy posting (from the > Modern Poets list) might be of interest and serve to keep discussion > simmering, lest this list go the way of the late lamented CAP-L.] > > ----------------------------- > This just in. The inimitable William Logan has struck again, this time > casting his jaundiced eye not on recent poetry but on the entire modern > American project, as gathered in the Library of America's first two volumes > of their projected multi-volume series of 20th Century poetry. (With time > out for a brief blistering denunciation of Cary Nelson's recent Oxford > anthology.) His lengthy review, "Twentieth-Century American Poetry, > Abbreviated" appears in the current issue of *Parnassus*, and I find it > weirdly fascinating. No doubt, given the reputations of both journal and > reviewer, this will be a piece to contend with for anyone interested in > this period of American poetry. I can't say that Logan's mandarin opinions > or his acid prose are surprising, but it is nonetheless interesting to see > him expand a bit on some roots of an aesthetic which causes him to be such > a predictable scourge of just about every new slim volume that crosses his > path. > > What's "abbreviated" here is certainly not the essay, which runs to nearly > forty pages of glibness, sneering, aerial-view dismissal, and very > occasional if invariably grudging admiration for some poems by the fit few > modernists admitted into Logan's uncrowded pantheon. In fairness, the essay > also includes quite a lot of useful provocation, intelligent synthesis, and > perceptive argument. Logan's an unapologetic snob and wears his numerous > bigotries as proudly as Frost ever did, but, as with Frost, that doesn't > mean his ideas are to be lightly dismissed. No, as the ghost of Dorothy > Parker would say, they are to be thrown with great force. > > Logan's writing is ever-entertaining. His prose is often Jarrellian in its > clever and high-spirited cruelty, if rarely as convincing in its > pronouncements, and never displaying Jarrell's saving gift for passionate > appreciation. The connection to Jarrell is more than vague; Logan's prose > has clearly been to school in *Poetry and The Age*, even down to some heavy > echoes. For example: > > Jarrell on Frost: "Ordinary readers think Frost the greatest poet > alive, and love some of his best poems almost as much as they love some of > his worst ones. > > Logan on Frost: ". . .beloved for many of his best poems and some of > his worst." > > More obviously Jarrellian is Logan's proclivity for baroque tropes, as > when, after quoting the famous quip about a camel being an animal designed > by committee, he remarks, "The Library of America anthology is an animal > with one lung and five livers, cauliflower ears and bandy legs-it may have > looked like a predator in the blueprints, but on the savannah it looks like > prey." > > And so it does: Logan pounces on his hapless prey with glee. But he > remains unlike Jarrell in his near complete lack of generosity, which I > think is a substantial defect of taste. Though Jarrell, too, could be > wickedly hard on mediocre books, of course, it was always in the service of > a generous, open-hearted vision, and even his more outlandish metaphoric > flights somehow never sound as preening and smug as Logan always does. I > think this is because, whatever his limitations as critic, Jarrell was > irrepressibly in love with and in service of poetry more than he was in > love with his own superiority. He was guilty of being entertaining and > even at times glib, but seldom self-satisfied. The fact that I sometimes > agree with Logan's harsh judgments is enough to give me pause, I must say, > even if I would not endorse his bloodthirsty relish in making them. > > One minor oddity: Logan seems not to have understood (or accepted) the > nature of this project, for he wastes ink complaining that the anthology > ignores writers born after 1913, as of course it does by clear design. My > understanding is that future volumes in the series will in fact cover > Lowell, Berryman, et al. But don't get the impression that Logan would > have had even these "abbreviated" volumes any longer. For his main > complaint against Volumes I and II (his *main* complaint, mind you, among > dozens of magisterial thunderbolts) is that it includes too much bad and/or > minor poetry. It also does not include (surprise!) the poems by major poets > that Logan himself would have preferred. > > Logan would have wished for a different anthology (one which included > nothing but certified Major Poets, evidently, with perhaps a smattering of > minor work for "range-finding"), but that does not seem a very weighty > critique, frankly. For every anthology concerned with doing justice to an > historical period must include the lesser with the greater. The reasonable > purpose of the present anthology, it seems to me, is precisely *not* to > give us only (and yet again) what we already have by heart-chestnuts by > Eliot and other indisputably great poets. It is to give us a sharpened > sense of the whole period, in all its variety and complexity, which > necessarily means that the lesser talents of MacLeish and Cummings must > take up space that in a different world, yes, could have been spent on > adding another of the "Four Quartets." In any case, it's worth noting that > Logan mentions no worthy poets who should have been, but were not, > included, and offers little but cavils for every single poet who is, most > definitely including the Majors. And many poets who have their intelligent > admirers-Gertrude Stein, Theodore Roethke, Robert Penn Warren, and Kenneth > Rexroth, for example-are simply dismissed with airy omniscience and a > withering phrase or two. > > In case you're wondering, there exist six Major Poets of the period, and > they are: Frost, Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Moore, and Bishop. Williams and > Crane are "nearly major," suffering from "depths of crippling > embarrassment" despite their "occasional graces" and "moments of > brilliance." It would have been "heartless not to include them," Logan > concedes-a rare moment of charity from this remarkably bilious critic. On > the other hand, the editors have unfortunately failed to anticipate Logan's > preferences among the poems of Frost, Stevens, and so forth, so really the > entire book is an amusing hash, even before one notices that it gathers so > many bad poems by the minors (I almost typed "minorities" there, and might > have been justified, too, given typical Logan sentences such as "the Harlem > Renaissance has received far more critical attention than its achievements > deserve."). > > It's breathtaking, really, to spend time in the company of someone so > fearlessly and utterly sure that his own taste is simply right-though, to > be sure, Logan occasionally glances up from his pronouncements long enough > to remember that the taste of every age comes to seem strange to future > ages. This insight doesn't seem to give him more than momentary pause > about his own lofty edicts, or give rise to any suspicion that he might, > just might, be throwing out a baby or two with the bathwater of > multiculturalism, political correctness, and other efforts toward > inclusiveness for which he has such sharp disdain. Given the critical > upheavals of recent decades, the re-examinations and rediscoveries which > The Library of America volumes assuredly do reflect, there is something > cozy about finding a critic whose taste has been unaffected by any of it, > and whose surety remains absolute. > > In the past Logan has been charged with seldom having much good to say > about women poets, and this review does little to counter that sense of > things. Even among his two favored Major Women, Moore is, among other > things, saddled with descriptors like "fussy, old-maidish," while Bishop > is-you guessed it-"a tender and unsentimental maiden-aunt (a maiden-aunt of > genius)." Is that parenthesis supposed to be charming, I wonder? > > When we move to "minor" poets the gender-charged rhetoric only increases: > Millay was "a hedonist with a prissy streak and tended to gush > unpleasantly"; Wylie a "minor talent for summer tea parties. . . who "can > be prim and proud in a way that makes you cringe, more teary than Millay"; > Lorine Neidecker's poems are "babyish and tinted with sentiment". And so > forth: these women are occasionally talented, but they do gush so. Logan > has plenty of unpleasant remarks to make about male poets, to be sure, but > still, his rhetoric is telling. Muriel Rukeyser is dismissed, predictably > enough, via quotation of her famous lines, "Whoever despises the clitoris > despises the penis. . . ." Logan's only comment on these lines is "such > are the mysteries of taste." > > So I suppose it won't surprise anyone to learn who was, in Logan's view, > "the greatest woman poet of the century." That'd be Robert Frost. Yes, I > know that Logan is half-joking in that remark, but it's the other half that > makes me queasy. As do any number of offhand comments directed, Harold > Bloom fashion, against the current climate of cultural inclusiveness. It > is their very offhandedness, of course, that is bothersome. About Vachel > Lindsey, for instance, Logan mentions without further comment that "To > their credit, the editors have not excluded the hilariously naive racist > vision of 'The Congo,' with sections titled 'Their Basic Savagery' and > 'Their Irrepressible High Spirits.'" Logan's own irrepressible high > spirits apparently prevent him from explaining why such an inclusion > reflects credit on the editors, or why, in a volume being excoriated for > including too much bad poetry, it is good to have this naive and racist > poem, whatever hilarity it brings along. > > It is a truism that all anthologies fail, reflect period prejudice, and > will soon be swept away by the different taste of the future-a truism Logan > does not fail to acknowledge even though his whole thrust denies it. Yet I > think the imaginary anthology that would evidently suit Logan's taste does > exist, really-in the textbooks and college curricula of, say, the early > 1960s, before Williams and his followers had made their final breach of the > academic walls. With the possible exception of Bishop, the poets > considered major in the academy then are the ones Logan considers major > now. Needless to say, perhaps, he reserves special scorn for any poetry > deemed "experimental," and that net is cast rather wide. > > Everyone will no doubt find something to complain of in the LOA > anthologies. I have my own quibbles, but in general have found these > volumes fascinating and full of eye-opening moments. I would love to hear > what others think about them. > > David Graham > ---------------------------------- > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From KaeseWoche at aol.com Fri Feb 16 09:36:17 2001 From: KaeseWoche at aol.com (KaeseWoche at aol.com) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 09:36:17 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Wm. Logan's America Message-ID: <5a.11339d24.27be94e1@aol.com> tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > Does the Library of America volume include that bad-by-any-definition, but > oddly magnificent poet, Joseph Moncure March? Yep. A six-page excerpt from "The Wild Party". Bruce Tindall From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Fri Feb 16 11:30:19 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 11:30:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Wm. Logan's America Message-ID: <7b.105de894.27beaf9b@cs.com> In a message dated 2/16/01 7:21:08 AM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > In the past Logan has been charged with seldom having much good to say > > about women poets, and this review does little to counter that sense of > > things. Even among his two favored Major Women, Moore is, among other > > things, saddled with descriptors like "fussy, old-maidish," while Bishop > > is-you guessed it-"a tender and unsentimental maiden-aunt (a maiden-aunt > of > > genius)." Is that parenthesis supposed to be charming, I wonder? Among women poets Logan has consistently championed are Clampitt and Gregg. He seems to go overboard on both counts, as far as I'm concerned, though Clampitt's first book was pretty wonderful stuff (just too much of the same in later volumes). I'll try to find Logan's review. I generally find him more fun to read than most critics. There was a pretty good piece on him as the "most hated man in American poetry" in the fall issue of Poets and Writers. From JforJames at aol.com Fri Feb 16 11:41:41 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 11:41:41 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Wm. Logan's America Message-ID: David, thanks for your review of the reviewer/review. Would it grossly unfair to Winters to call Wm. Logan the Yvor Winters of our time? > his *main* complaint, mind you, among dozens of magisterial thunderbolts) is that it includes too much bad and/or > minor poetry. It also does not include (surprise!) the poems by major poets > that Logan himself would have preferred. > Logan would have wished for a different anthology (one which included > nothing but certified Major Poets, evidently, with perhaps a smattering of > minor work for "range-finding"), Yes, it's the minor poetry/poets that make anthologies like this worthwhile. Presumably many an individual/public library will have a Collected/Selected Eliot, Stevens, Moore, et al...but maybe not a Roethke or Neidecker. What a thin & boring project it would be to print only the few of generally accepted standards/standbys. Sometimes there's that exceptional poem by a poet whose ouevre would put him a rung or two down the ladder. In a critique of Robert Graves's work (tho an example from British poetry), Jarrell talks about "To Juan at the Winter Solstice" as a great poem by a minor poet. > It's breathtaking, really, to spend time in the company of someone so > fearlessly and utterly sure that his own taste is simply right-though, to > So I suppose it won't surprise anyone to learn who was, in Logan's view, > "the greatest woman poet of the century." That'd be Robert Frost. Yes, I > know that Logan is half-joking in that remark, but it's the other half that > makes me queasy. It's a guilty pleasure at times to watch such a spectacle of taste unfold before one's eyes...He didn't really say that did he? But like reading "beach" fiction, if a friend approaches you might feel the urge to tuck that paperback under your towel. About Vachel > Lindsey, for instance, Logan mentions without further comment that "To > their credit, the editors have not excluded the hilariously naive racist > vision of 'The Congo,' with sections titled 'Their Basic Savagery' and > 'Their Irrepressible High Spirits.'" Logan's own irrepressible high > spirits apparently prevent him from explaining why such an inclusion > reflects credit on the editors, or why, in a volume being excoriated for > including too much bad poetry, it is good to have this naive and racist > poem, whatever hilarity it brings along. David, I disagree with you on this point. Such an anthology project, it seems to me, has to offer a "true" historical panorama ...and Vachel Lindsay's immense popularity performing The Congo (& other poems) during the early 20thC reminds us of our naive & racist side (which has not entirely "passed" out of our cultural system). A similar compilation of American music would have to include minstrel shows (no matter how much they make us squirm & cringe), for example. (An interesting & ironic sidebar here is that Lindsay is credited with discovering Langston Hughes when he was a bussing tables at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington DC.) With the possible exception of Bishop, the poets > considered major in the academy then are the ones Logan considers major > now. Needless to say, perhaps, he reserves special scorn for any poetry > deemed "experimental," and that net is cast rather wide. As you say, for all his fuss-n-bluster, Logan's choices are quite safely entombed, or "entomed," if you will, in the canonical crypt. He's unearthed no forgotten genius covered in a heap of yellowed bookpaper dust. Finnegan From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Feb 16 11:45:12 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 07:45:12 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wm. Logan's America Message-ID: Thank you for the piece. I didn't mind its length at all, and it was fascinating to read. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Feb 16 12:05:47 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 11:05:47 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wm. Logan's America In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Yes, Logan did actually call Robert Frost the greatest woman poet of the century. I'm not making it up. I'm aware that it was a joke, at least in part, but I thought it a revealing one. Actually, I would agree that Frost is a remarkably sensitive and powerful poet in terms of rendering female experience from a male perspective. But in the context of Logan's treatment of actual woman poets, this kind of remark struck me as condescending at best--and I was looking at his rhetoric more than his substance there, anyway. About Vachel Lindsey I could have been clearer. I also agree that the poem (which I've always hated, as much for its bluster and tedium as for its casual or naive racism) belongs in such an historical anthology. But Logan, who has no truck with including a poem merely for historical reasons, seemed to be revealing one of his many blind spots, when he congratulates the editors for their courage on including a poem which, by his standards, reeks. Evidently it's OK to include a naive racist poem by a white poet, but not OK to include mediocre poems by Harlem Renaissance figures, equally important historically. David Graham ______________________ >About Vachel >> Lindsey, for instance, Logan mentions without further comment that "To >> their credit, the editors have not excluded the hilariously naive racist >> vision of 'The Congo,' with sections titled 'Their Basic Savagery' and >> 'Their Irrepressible High Spirits.'" Logan's own irrepressible high >> spirits apparently prevent him from explaining why such an inclusion >> reflects credit on the editors, or why, in a volume being excoriated for >> including too much bad poetry, it is good to have this naive and racist >> poem, whatever hilarity it brings along. > >David, I disagree with you on this point. Such an anthology project, >it seems to me, has to offer a "true" historical panorama ...and Vachel >Lindsay's immense popularity performing The Congo (& other poems) during >the early 20thC reminds us of our naive & racist side (which has not entirely >"passed" out of our cultural system). A similar compilation of American >music would have to include minstrel shows (no matter how much they make >us squirm & cringe), for example. __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Feb 16 12:40:09 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 12:40:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wm. Logan's America References: Message-ID: <3A8D65F9.391F@nut-n-but.net> I've made the John Logan/ William Logan error, too. So, who is John Logan? I read William Logan in The New Criterion and am always upset not that his tastes differ from mine but that he refuses even to recognize the existence of the various schools of poetry that use post-1950's techniques, and that I am most interested in. But he's not as much a philistine as John Simon, who sometimes weighs off against poetry in the New Criterion. Or John Derbyshire, whose idiocy in the New Criterion I discuss at my Text-Assessment Website, http://www.text-assessment.com (a site, by the way, that could use others' reviews and letters-to-the-editors and should be fun, I should think, but seems to have been stillborn). --Bob G. From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Feb 16 13:19:04 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 13:19:04 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wm. Logan's America In-Reply-To: <3A8D65F9.391F@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: > So, who is John Logan? b. 1923 "I want my own lit candle lamp buried in my skull like the Lighthouse Man of Chungking, who could lead the travelers home. Well, I am still a traveler and I don't know where I live. If my house is here, inside my breast, light it up! and I will invite you in as my first guest." --from "Believe It" Hal "Flotsam, please, and a side order of jetsam." Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From JforJames at aol.com Fri Feb 16 13:42:41 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 13:42:41 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: KNOPF POETRY NEWS: FEBRUARY 2001 Message-ID: <33.10c74129.27becea1@aol.com> -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: knopfpoetry Subject: KNOPF POETRY NEWS: FEBRUARY 2001 Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 08:58:21 -0800 Size: 4780 URL: From Waldrop at LIBRARY.Vanderbilt.edu Fri Feb 16 13:50:34 2001 From: Waldrop at LIBRARY.Vanderbilt.edu (Christopher Waldrop) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 12:50:34 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Bishop Reading In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3A8D2219.6279.11D0061@localhost> On 14 Feb 2001, at 9:36, Moira Russell wrote: > to be studied....as far as I can tell, not even Dylan Thomas has a CD of his > work at Amazon.com, which really surprises me. Is anyone else aware of an > internet resource where CDs of poets reading their own works can be bought? Hi Moira, Amazon (US) does have a CD of Dylan Thomas reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and five poems ("Fern Hill", "Do Not Go Gentle", "In the White Giant's Thigh","A Refusal To Mourn", and one other). I know I'm entering the recorded poetry discussion late, so I hope you'll forgive me for mentioning that I love the Voice of the Poet series, although I'm a little surprised sometimes that the texts don't match the readings. Part of the Plath recording was made shortly before her suicide, so I'm left wondering whether the lines in "Fever 103 degrees" that I'd never heard before were lines she wanted to include in the final version. The library where I work also has several of the Caedmon tapes, but the explanatory booklets that the tapes originally came with have been lost. This leaves listeners to determine what poem it is they're listening to, since most of the poets don't mention what title they're about to read. We also have, among others, Seamus Heaney's reading at Harvard, and a recorded version of Elizabeth Hardwick's essay on Sylvia Plath. The latter is really worth it if you can find it, not so much for the essay but the readings of Plath's work are wonderful. Christopher Waldrop Serials Coordinator Vanderbilt University Library Order Services Department Tel: 615-343-3831 Fax: 615-343-8834 From moira_russell at hotmail.com Fri Feb 16 15:11:09 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 11:11:09 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Bishop Reading Message-ID: Plath's "Collected Poems" indicates she revised poems after the readings, and this is why they are different from the published texts -- she usually omitted lines and stanzas, I believe. This is why the recordings include material not in the poems usually taken as canon. Interestingly enough in the tape of Plath I have from the series (with a horrible introductory essay by Sandy McClatchy ((sp?)) incidentally) the printed texts are given, not transcriptions of the spoken poems. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From tadrichards at prodigy.net Fri Feb 16 11:23:56 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 11:23:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Cummings as Influence Message-ID: <000201c09870$9909f6a0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> I just had the following e-mail exchange with a student. Me: I generally tell people to stay away from cummings as an influence, because he can be kind of a dead end. But I think you're really getting into the heart of cummings, and doing valuable stuff. I'd stay with it as long as it feels like a challenge, and you're learning from it. Student: I'd like to hear a little more about your advising people to stay away from cummings. Why do you think he's a dead end? I'd be very interested to hear more of your thoughts on this subject. Very generally, I think he's a dead end because so much of the things he does (not all) are tricks, and for the most part if you use him as a model, all you can do is imitate those tricks. I remember some discussions of cummings on CAP-L, and I believe there were people who felt more sanguine about cummings as an influence than I do. Any thoughts on this? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Fri Feb 16 19:20:58 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 19:20:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Cummings as Influence References: <000201c09870$9909f6a0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: <3A8DC3EA.419D@nut-n-but.net> No,nonononono, not now!!! I'm the Chief Defender of Cummings in these here parts, as far as I know, and I just don't have time to defend him, again, right now. I consider him one of the three best American poets ever. His tricks are no more tricks than rhyme is, but he DID write a lot of stuff that didn't work, as far as I can see. I wrote a short essay on him for possible inclusion in a Cummings Encyclopedia that Norman Friedman was to edit. Don't know what's going on with my submission or the encyclopedia. Hmmm, since the following section of it was originally a note in Poetic Briefs, I don't see that it'd be wrong to quote it here. In fact, I think it was already posted, and ignored, at the Modern Poetry discussion group. Cummings's best infraverbal poem occurs near the end of XAIPE (1950): (fea therr ain :dreamin g field o ver forest &; wh o could be so !f! te r?n oo ne) C. K. Stead, quoting this in a review for London Review of Books points out the value of the poem's typographical arrangement for slowing a reader, and allowing him to experience the poem's words the way a carpenter does the wood of something he's carefully building. This is a sound enough observation but is as far as our reviewer gets, unfortunately, for he finds no further value in what the poem does, and writes it and all of Cummings's similar pieces off as mere "puzzle poems" much below the level of the poet's best compositions. But just LOOK at the poem! Note, first of all, what results from its "infra-syllabic line- breaks" (which Cummings was almost surely the first poet in our country, and perhaps the world, to use for consequentially increased aesthetic expressiveness): a field arrested idyllically in a "go"--under a dream-in. . . . And such small but charming visual rhymes as the one that "ne," "te" and "be" make, to bring together their hugely different sounds. Trivial? But isn't that kind of re-uttering of a single color in different shapes one of the chief ornaments of non-representational painting? And as central to music as anything? Note, too, the infra-verbal rightness of Cummings's use of parentheses to put his rain inside the louder, harsher world of overt-est reality. The parallel between very slowly falling rain and the fall of the poem is worth noting as well. Better, though, is the doubly exclamationed f, to infraverbally introduce the idea of a rain as soft as the pronunciation of an f--as well as to hearken back to the feather that begins the poem (with one extra letter's worth of slowed presence). Then, finally, there is the (surprising) return of "rain" as "r?n" (or something so soft it is hardly identifiable) to bring the poem to its peak. --Bob G. From ron.silliman at gte.net Sat Feb 17 12:42:16 2001 From: ron.silliman at gte.net (Ron Silliman) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 12:42:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] John Logan Message-ID: <001a01c09908$fbd062e0$3353fea9@oemcomputer> John Logan was an interesting poet and a very generous human being. Coming out of Chicago, he taught at SF State for many years before deciding that he was, in fact, gay, which was problematic given his Catholic upbringing and nine children. Already living in San Francisco (or actually, if I recall correctly, Sausalito), it occurred to him thus to move to ... Buffalo. He taught there until he retired and later returned to SF where he passed away a number of years ago. Logan came out of a particular branch of academic poetry in the 1950s that stood somewhat aloof from its forebears. Thus his friendships with, say, Bly and Jame Wright. Two poets who grew directly out of his influence and mentorship were (are) Galway Kinnell and Bob Hass. I wouldn't blame him for the excesses of the former, but I actually think that some of the strengths of the latter grow directly from the relationship. I had occasion to see some of Logan's work with Hass directly. When I moved to Buffalo to attend school there in 1970, Logan was the only person at SUNY I knew, though just barely -- I'd never studied with him at SF State, but we knew people in common, such as Jack Gilbert and Robert Duncan. Logan very graciously got my wife and I an apartment to rent right near the zoo and helped with arrangements for me to attend school there (my wife had gotten a graduate scholarship, but I was still technically a junior), got us invited to parties at Leslie Fielder's home and otherwise took it upon himself to orient me to the city. At the time, Hass was in town and traveling constantly with John and John's current partner (a fellow whose name I've forgotten, perhaps because he always referred to himself as the "summer replacement"). Bob would show John manuscripts and Logan would literally blue pencil in "corrections." I have no idea whether or not Bob adopted them or not, but I admit to having been shocked at the time since I'd always resisted the few volunteer attempts that others had made to do same for me. [For reasons having nought to do with Logan, my marriage was disintegrating at just that moment and neither Shelley or I ever did attend school there.] Logan's best work is in long multi-line sentences that bend back and forth quite wonderfully. I'd recommend Zigzag Walk and am appalled to notice that I don't seem to own it any more. Ron Silliman From DICK at watson.ibm.com Sat Feb 17 15:43:48 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 01 15:43:48 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: <200102172051.PAA12504@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> I heard him give a poetry reading at the 92nd St. Y at least 1 1/2 years ago. Karl Kirchwey introduced him even then as "the most hated man in poetry." Afterwards, at the reception, he seemed perfectly affable. OK, he was selling books, but still. In any case, I admire that he's willing to put his own poetry out for target practice or whatever, at the same time as practicing his ... direct criticism. I've always thought that critics should also be practitioners, in contrast to the comparatively free ride that critics-only such as Vendler and Bloom get. Does anyone have thoughts on that proposition? Richard From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sat Feb 17 16:00:17 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 16:00:17 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: In a message dated 2/17/2001 2:55:30 PM Central Standard Time, DICK at watson.ibm.com writes: > > I've always thought that critics should also be practitioners, > in contrast to the comparatively free ride that critics-only > such as Vendler and Bloom get. > > Does anyone have thoughts on that proposition? > As a poet-critic who reviewed Mr. Logan's last book of poetry (not entirely favorably) some months before my own book came out, I think I should get some kind of medal for courage, or foolhardiness. From HntrRos at aol.com Sat Feb 17 16:32:56 2001 From: HntrRos at aol.com (HntrRos at aol.com) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 16:32:56 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander's Normalcy Message-ID: <99.10c8b2fc.27c04808@aol.com> Bob Grumman wrote: >For me, words are what they look like on the page and >how they sound when spoken--plus punctuation (as >pointers toward the way they sound). "The way they sound" varies greatly, not only because "normal speech" is (functionally moreso than many words) a myth, but also because the language of most poetry diverges from "normal speech", either approaching (or becoming) song or chant, or else distortion of one type or another relative to "normal speech", if not on the level of individual phrases then often in their combination, which affects recitation (particularly inflection, rhythm, etc.). So the sound of poetry and performance / performance conventions are inextricable in practical terms. (Less so for prose, though if you reduce verse to "prose with linebreaks that should be ignored when reciting", the problem's only simplified.) >So performance poetry does not, for me, >mix expressive modalities inasmuch as it is only >recitation. Agreeable, but the boundary seems vague: diferent recitations can make the same poem seem wildly different, not just in tone, speed, volume and pauses but in rhythm, cadence, pitch, etc., all of which are interrelated. Taken to extremes, a poem can be intentionally distorted, or parodied, or musicalized, or flattened, etc., and these can sometimes be effective, in some cases and according to some traditional conventions even warranted or intended. (For instance, classical French theatre, which Auden called "opera for the unmusical". Most traditional poetry in many (if not most) cultures relies on stylized rhythms and recitation conventions.) >What is most commonly called performance poetry, which >is much more than recitation, Do you mean body language, possibly costume, setting, music, etc.? Or also voice? From JforJames at aol.com Sat Feb 17 17:39:54 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 17:39:54 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: <5d.75776f9.27c057ba@aol.com> In a message dated 2/17/01 3:55:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, DICK at watson.ibm.com writes: << I admire that he's willing to put his own poetry out for target practice or whatever, at the same time as practicing his ... direct criticism. I've always thought that critics should also be practitioners, in contrast to the comparatively free ride that critics-only such as Vendler and Bloom get. >> Richard, I don't know the man, but I suspect from the criticism I've read, Wm. Logan must have a fairly high opinion of his own work to be able to dish it out like that. (I've read his book Difficulty; and there are some fine pieces in it. I bought Night Battle a while back but haven't cracked it yet.) Anyway, certainly he should be steeled by now for a what-comes-around-goes-around backlash or be the kind of person who is just oblivious or impervious to it. But that's just idle speculation....fierce criticism of his own work might melt the man into a pool of warm tears for all I know. The general complaint against reviewing is that it's become nothing more than a form of advertising (look closely beneath the review copy to make certain there's no fineprint stating "Paid for by Farrar, Strauss & Giroux); or elaborated blurbing, in other words. Logan, with his bloodsport tendencies, & despite his blindspots, certainly gets exempted from criticism directed at don't-say-anything-unless-you-can-say-something-nice reviewing. Mostly I wanted to respond that a writer-critic, we would assume, has some sympathies and insights the academic-critic isn't privy to. And those sympathies and insights might inform the reviews in ways that help both readers and practitioners alike. But I certainly think we need good criticism from all fronts...it would even be grand if poetry got more reviews from general book reviewers. (Now I'm sounding like Dana Gioia.) From those who neither practice the art nor make a livelihood studying and teaching poetry. I mean, our art is insular enough as it is....thank god we have at least some folks in the academic community paying it attention, talking about poetry like it really matters (because it does), even if they've "no skin in the game." Finnegan From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sat Feb 17 17:39:36 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 17:39:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: <200102172051.PAA12504@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: <028901c09932$81ca30a0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> I think it's healthy to have critics who are not poets themselves. For one thing, it helps dispel the notion that the only people who read poetry are other poets. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2001 3:43 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan > I heard him give a poetry reading at the 92nd St. Y > at least 1 1/2 years ago. Karl Kirchwey introduced > him even then as "the most hated man in poetry." > > Afterwards, at the reception, he seemed perfectly > affable. OK, he was selling books, but still. > > In any case, I admire that he's willing to put his > own poetry out for target practice or whatever, at > the same time as practicing his ... direct criticism. > > I've always thought that critics should also be practitioners, > in contrast to the comparatively free ride that critics-only > such as Vendler and Bloom get. > > Does anyone have thoughts on that proposition? > > Richard > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From kozaitis at earthlink.net Sat Feb 17 17:54:39 2001 From: kozaitis at earthlink.net (Anastasios Kozaitis) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 17:54:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: <200102172051.PAA12504@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> <028901c09932$81ca30a0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: <000601c09934$a021e960$c5a59840@kozaitis> 1) I recommend Eliot's essay, "The Function of Criticism." TSE admits that he too held the opinion that critics should do work in the field in which they critique, but he grows out of that position, claiming that "creativity" and "criticism" are not mutually exclusive. 2) As for Mr. Logan's criticism, it is biting, but his essays are some of the most holistic contemporary essays on poetry that I read. They take in the breadth of the poetry and the tradition of the poetry (to harken back to Eliot). 3) As for poets' sensitivities, Logan may be too offensive. 4) We need more critics. Ak > ----- Original Message ----- > From: > To: > Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2001 3:43 PM > Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan > > > > I heard him give a poetry reading at the 92nd St. Y > > at least 1 1/2 years ago. Karl Kirchwey introduced > > him even then as "the most hated man in poetry." > > > > Afterwards, at the reception, he seemed perfectly > > affable. OK, he was selling books, but still. > > > > In any case, I admire that he's willing to put his > > own poetry out for target practice or whatever, at > > the same time as practicing his ... direct criticism. > > > > I've always thought that critics should also be practitioners, > > in contrast to the comparatively free ride that critics-only > > such as Vendler and Bloom get. > > > > Does anyone have thoughts on that proposition? > > > > Richard > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Feb 17 19:03:03 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 19:03:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: <200102172051.PAA12504@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> <028901c09932$81ca30a0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> <000601c09934$a021e960$c5a59840@kozaitis> Message-ID: <3A8F1136.6771@nut-n-but.net> Anastasios Kozaitis wrote: > > 1) I recommend Eliot's essay, "The Function > of Criticism." TSE admits that he too held > the opinion that critics should do work in > the field in which they critique, but he > grows out of that position, claiming that > "creativity" and "criticism" are not > mutually exclusive. I would go so far as to claim that the value of a critic depends on his intelligence only (assuming some very minimal lay knowledge of the field that he's analyzing). > 2) As for Mr. Logan's criticism, it is biting, > but his essays are some of the most holistic > contemporary essays on poetry that I read. They > take in the breadth of the poetry and the > tradition of the poetry (to harken back to > Eliot). I completely disagree. Logan barely acknowledges the existence of language poetry, and seems unaware of the five or six schools of poetry I know of that are less established than it. He covers the usual range that academics boast of as being "broad"--from Wilbur to Ashbery. (At least, according to what I've read of his stuff in The New Criterion.) > 3) As for poets' sensitivities, Logan may be too offensive. > 4) We need more critics. Possibly not; possibly all we need is the PUBLICATION of more critics. I suspect we have enough critics. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Feb 17 20:37:23 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 20:37:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gander's Normalcy References: <99.10c8b2fc.27c04808@aol.com> Message-ID: <3A8F2753.7719@nut-n-but.net> > >For me, words are what they look like on the page and >how they sound when spoken--plus punctuation (as >pointers toward the way they sound). > "The way they sound" varies greatly Right, but not expressively, or significantly expressively--except as they do so verbally-- that is, as sounds indicate punctuation, etc. >, not only because "normal speech" is (functionally moreso than many >words) a myth, but also because the language of most poetry diverges >from "normal speech", either approaching (or becoming) song or chant, >or else distortion of one type or another relative to "normal speech", >if not on the level of individual phrases then often in their >combination, which affects recitation (particularly inflection, rhythm, >etc.). So the sound of poetry and performance / perf > > (Less so for prose, though if you reduce verse to "prose with >linebreaks that should be ignored when reciting", the problem's only >simplified.) > > >So performance poetry does not, for me, > >mix expressive modalities inasmuch (sb so long) > >as it is only recitation. > > Agreeable, but the boundary seems vague: different recitations can make the same poem seem wildly different, Okay but then all poetry is performance poetry since even read poetry is recited into a reader in sometimes wildly varying ways >not just in tone, speed, volume and pauses but in rhythm, cadence, pitch, etc., all of which are interrelated. Taken to extremes, a poem can be intentionally distorted, or parodied, or musicalized, or flattened, etc., and these can sometimes be effective, in some cases and according to some traditional conventions even warranted or intended. (For instance, classical French theatre, which A > > >What is most commonly called performance poetry, which > >is much more than recitation, > > Do you mean body language, possibly costume, setting, > music, etc.? Or also voice? All that stuff--but not voice. If sung or going beyond what most people would consider normal speaking or normal declamation or normal acting, the poetry is, for me, Sound Poetry. I think of Textual Poetry as conventional poetry on the page or "normally" spoken; Visual Poetry is poetry whose visual aspect does significantly more than identify letters and punctuation marks; Sound Poetry's is recited in a way that goes beyond normal speech AND song (the latter to distinguish it from poetry that's set to music which is to sound poetry what poetry rendered by a calligrapher is to visual poetry). I think of performance poetry as words and physicality integrated in some way. I want to distinguish it from dramatic poetry. Or dramatics. It's tough, and I have been exposed to very little in the way of performance poetry so can't give examples. Any variety of pluraesthetic art must, I feel, significantly yield something that is of neither or none of its expressive modalities--e.g., a visual poem must have something that neither its words alone nor its visual appearance alone have. (Please don't ask for examples--I'm just not up to hunting up good ones and then trying to explain them, right now). --Bob G. From kozaitis at earthlink.net Sun Feb 18 09:34:10 2001 From: kozaitis at earthlink.net (Anastasios Kozaitis) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 09:34:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: <200102172051.PAA12504@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> <028901c09932$81ca30a0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> <000601c09934$a021e960$c5a59840@kozaitis> <3A8F1136.6771@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <001a01c099b7$dc68e260$cbac9840@kozaitis> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Grumman" To: Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2001 7:03 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan > Anastasios Kozaitis wrote: > > > > 1) I recommend Eliot's essay, "The Function > > of Criticism." TSE admits that he too held > > the opinion that critics should do work in > > the field in which they critique, but he > > grows out of that position, claiming that > > "creativity" and "criticism" are not > > mutually exclusive. > > I would go so far as to claim that the value > of a critic depends on his intelligence only > (assuming some very minimal lay knowledge of > the field that he's analyzing). > > > 2) As for Mr. Logan's criticism, it is biting, > > but his essays are some of the most holistic > > contemporary essays on poetry that I read. They > > take in the breadth of the poetry and the > > tradition of the poetry (to harken back to > > Eliot). > > I completely disagree. Logan barely acknowledges > the existence of language poetry, and seems unaware > of the five or six schools of poetry I know of that > are less established than it. He covers the usual range > that academics boast of as being "broad"--from Wilbur > to Ashbery. (At least, according to what I've read > of his stuff in The New Criterion.) Logan does have a narrow definition for his subject matter. He reviews mainstream American poetry, and the farthest he strays off his path is towards the likes of Charles Wright, who he critiques as a poet with excellent technique but with nothing to say. (I'm paraphrasing, but it's close to what he has said about Wright in the past.) That said, however, with the poets he does review he'll locate their work in their tradition with accuity and good degree of intelligence, but he is conservative. Consider the source: The New Criterion. > > 3) As for poets' sensitivities, Logan may be too offensive. > > > 4) We need more critics. > > Possibly not; possibly all we need is the PUBLICATION > of more critics. I suspect we have enough critics. Yes, it's true; we need more more publication. But, my previous statement and your rebuttal are also not mutually exclusive. More critics might lead to more publication. Enough critics? I'm not sure. We need younger critics, too. I think this has something to do with the fellowship/granting culture in which we live. People do not want to negatively criticise another because they might find the person on a board down the road or on an application committee, etc. That's one way to look at it. The other is to think that many American poets have gotten so self-indulgent that they do not bother to think about other's poems; this is a small segment (I hope). And we also have a culture where reviewers are chosen by publishers knowing beforehand that the book will be reviewed favorably. Many conditions exist in our rather banal poetry-criticism culture. --Ak > --Bob G. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 18 10:11:36 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 10:11:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: <200102172051.PAA12504@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> <028901c09932$81ca30a0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> <000601c09934$a021e960$c5a59840@kozaitis> <3A8F1136.6771@nut-n-but.net> <001a01c099b7$dc68e260$cbac9840@kozaitis> Message-ID: <3A8FE628.771F@nut-n-but.net> > > > 4) We need more critics. > > > > Possibly not; possibly all we need is the PUBLICATION > > of more critics. I suspect we have enough critics. > > Yes, it's true; we need more more publication. > But, my previous statement and your rebuttal are > also not mutually exclusive. More critics might lead > to more publication. Enough critics? I'm not sure. > We need younger critics, too. I think this has > something to do with the fellowship/granting culture > in which we live. People do not want to > negatively criticise another because they > might find the person on a board down the road > or on an application committee, etc. That's > one way to look at it. The other is to > think that many American poets have gotten > so self-indulgent that they do > not bother to think about other's poems; > this is a small segment (I hope). > And we also have a culture where > reviewers are chosen by publishers knowing > beforehand that the book will be reviewed favorably. > Many conditions exist in our rather banal > poetry-criticism culture. Good points. I've long given up trying to figure out why there's so little intelligent discussion of poetry in this country. The poets themselves (often) don't seem to care about poetry, just the publication of their own poetry. By the way, let me repeat that ANONYMOUS REVIEWS are welcome at http://www.text-assessment.com, my new so-far nearly invisible site. It's just the place to say what you think about some terrible poet who edits a magazine you'd like to get your work into, or is a friend of the head of the English Department you teach in, or may head a grants board you may want to appear before, or whatever, without getting in trouble (unless your style is too recognizable). --Bob G. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sun Feb 18 12:39:33 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 11:39:33 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/more Logan In-Reply-To: <5d.75776f9.27c057ba@aol.com> Message-ID: More and better poetry reviewing and criticism would be nice. But how to achieve this often-yearned-for goal? Though fairly infrequently, I've done some poetry reviewing. And what I'd like to toss into the conversation is just this: reviewing poetry is for the most part hard, underpaid, and thankless work. Many of my poet friends don't do it at all, and I can't really blame them. It's not at all surprising that so many reviews are mainly puffery--for all the reasons noted, but for one more, too. Given the difficulties of reviewing, I tend not to accept for review many books that I don't already wish to spend some time with, which of course tend to be books I'm already favorably disposed toward. There are exceptions, but since I am not a professional journalist, have a fairly consuming job already, and don't possess unlimited amounts of energy, reviewing remains always one of those low-priority items in a given day. Reviewing just doesn't pay enough, either in money or in other benefits, for me to spend much of my writing time trashing what I think of as mediocre work. (List available upon request!) So I suspect that my situation is not atypical: a fairly high proportion of the limited reviewing I've done has consisted of books I have proposed to review. For the rest, when given a book not of my selection, I try to be honest and fair (as William Logan would probably say about himself, too), but I don't see my role as scourge of the culture. I'm more trying to be informative, especially given the usually ridiculous length limits that editors have to set. So I do admire the energy and dedication Logan has shown as a reviewer, though I have little use for his rigidities and what seems to me a lack of generosity that at times clouds his formidible intelligence. I suspect that, unlike me, Logan receives tons of free books in the mail. Perhaps his "bloodsport" inclincations spring in part from fatigue. But since I started the Logan pile-on in the first place, let me say that when he gets ahold of work from someone on his aesthetic team, he can be a wonderful critic, penetrating, subtle, and, if not actually generous, at least betraying glimmers of passionate attachment. I am thinking, for instance, of his lengthy re-evaluation of Robert Frost, "The Other Other Frost," published in *The New Criterion* and available in their archives: http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/archivetoc.htm David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Sun Feb 18 14:13:25 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 14:13:25 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/more Logan Message-ID: In a message dated 2/18/2001 11:42:00 AM Central Standard Time, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > I am thinking, for > instance, of his lengthy re-evaluation of Robert Frost, "The Other Other > Frost," published in *The New Criterion* and available in their archives: > http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/archivetoc.htm What issue, please? From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sun Feb 18 14:26:36 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 13:26:36 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/more Logan In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It's in the June 95 issue (Vol. 13, No. 10). I thought the URL I provided would take you there directly, but now I see it just takes you to the general archives. Sorry. In any case, the search function at their site would be a quick way to look up any articles (by Logan or whomever) that folks are interested in finding. David Graham >In a message dated 2/18/2001 11:42:00 AM Central Standard Time, >grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > >> I am thinking, for >> instance, of his lengthy re-evaluation of Robert Frost, "The Other Other >> Frost," published in *The New Criterion* and available in their archives: >> http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/archivetoc.htm >What issue, please? >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 18 14:39:13 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 14:39:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/more Logan References: Message-ID: <3A9024E0.7D66@nut-n-but.net> Then there are people like me who would love to review ANY collection of poetry VISIBLY for nothing but are rarely given the opportunity to. I have a columns in Small Press Review, circulation, a few thousand; and Lost & Found Times, circulation a few hundred; and get asked to do something for American Book Review, circulation a few thousand (I guess), about once a year. The last-named is the only one that pays--though not much, and they prefer that you accept copies of the magazine instead of cash. Maybe that's because I'm a lousy critic, but I naturally prefer to believe it's because I lack the proper credentials. Supporting the latter is the fact that no one in my areas of interest reviews any more visibly than I. No reason people with credentials shouldn't be asked to review, but they shouldn't be the only ones. --Bob G. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Feb 18 15:24:02 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 15:24:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/more Logan References: Message-ID: <005101c099e8$bbc842e0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> David - For reasons not worth mentioning, I was searching through the old CAP-L archives, and I came across your review of Donald Justice's Collected Poems. And it was a perfect example of how a review of a book toward which one is favorable disposed can be thoughtful and thought-provoking, not just puffery. There was only that one go-round of book reviews on CAP-L, and it's too bad that it didn't become more regular event. This format, with its instant interactivity, is an excellent one for reviewing of books. I've suggested the idea to Jim, and I believe he's looking into it. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2001 12:39 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/more Logan > More and better poetry reviewing and criticism would be nice. But how to > achieve this often-yearned-for goal? > > Though fairly infrequently, I've done some poetry reviewing. And what I'd > like to toss into the conversation is just this: reviewing poetry is for > the most part hard, underpaid, and thankless work. Many of my poet friends > don't do it at all, and I can't really blame them. > > It's not at all surprising that so many reviews are mainly puffery--for all > the reasons noted, but for one more, too. Given the difficulties of > reviewing, I tend not to accept for review many books that I don't already > wish to spend some time with, which of course tend to be books I'm already > favorably disposed toward. There are exceptions, but since I am not a > professional journalist, have a fairly consuming job already, and don't > possess unlimited amounts of energy, reviewing remains always one of those > low-priority items in a given day. > > Reviewing just doesn't pay enough, either in money or in other benefits, > for me to spend much of my writing time trashing what I think of as > mediocre work. (List available upon request!) > > So I suspect that my situation is not atypical: a fairly high proportion > of the limited reviewing I've done has consisted of books I have proposed > to review. For the rest, when given a book not of my selection, I try to > be honest and fair (as William Logan would probably say about himself, > too), but I don't see my role as scourge of the culture. I'm more trying > to be informative, especially given the usually ridiculous length limits > that editors have to set. > > So I do admire the energy and dedication Logan has shown as a reviewer, > though I have little use for his rigidities and what seems to me a lack of > generosity that at times clouds his formidible intelligence. > > I suspect that, unlike me, Logan receives tons of free books in the mail. > Perhaps his "bloodsport" inclincations spring in part from fatigue. But > since I started the Logan pile-on in the first place, let me say that when > he gets ahold of work from someone on his aesthetic team, he can be a > wonderful critic, penetrating, subtle, and, if not actually generous, at > least betraying glimmers of passionate attachment. I am thinking, for > instance, of his lengthy re-evaluation of Robert Frost, "The Other Other > Frost," published in *The New Criterion* and available in their archives: > http://www.newcriterion.com/archive/archivetoc.htm > > David Graham > > > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Cadaly at aol.com Sun Feb 18 19:15:17 2001 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 19:15:17 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Reviewers Message-ID: I will review any book of poetry sent to me, or, alternately, if you know of journals taking reviews, let me know. I will review for web sites, but I do not have the luxury of time that would allow me to write formal reviews for a listserv. Rgds, Catherine Daly cadaly at pacbell.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Sun Feb 18 19:25:19 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 15:25:19 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/more Logan Message-ID: I think there is a confusion here as to what "non-poet" might actually mean. While I think it would be interesting to have the reaction of someone "ordinary" who doesn't have a background in academic poetry, these people are not the ones writing poetry reviews. And, let's face it -- they will probably never write a poetry review, unless our culture undergoes a great sea-change. Most often the reviews I see are in academic journals by academics (when was the last time the "New Yorker" had a poetry review? And Louise Bogan was the verse critic there for decades!). And, sad to say, I consider these pretty much worthless. The extremely rarefied atmosphere of academic-poets-reviewing-each-other's-poetry does lead to mediocrity, puffery, and overpraising. One reviewer who seems outside the academic world, and who is somewhat in the so-nasty-it's-good-Jarrell-criticism tradition, is Thomas Disch; I just bought his "The Castle of Indolence" and greatly enjoyed it. I also liked Dana Gioa's "Can Poetry Matter," but that might be too controversial for some here -- Disch's tastes seem to be a little more free-ranging than Gioa's. I must admit I look on Eliot's criticism and ideas about criticism with a fairly jaundiced eye, as I think a lot of his more subjective pronouncements were taken as _objective_ truths for far too long by far too many people, sort of like D. H. Lawrence's pronouncements on the proper role of women and what sex really is during the 50s and 60s. What about considering Pope's idea of what criticism is? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Sun Feb 18 19:36:38 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 15:36:38 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/more Logan Message-ID: I don't mean to sound overly jaundiced, but after reading Logan's essay "The Other Other Frost," it seems more an appendix to Jarrell's essay than anything else -- and Jarrell's essay was so necessary, so right, and revolutionary in its time, that it makes Logan's just look worse in comparison. Although Logan grudgingly admits Jarrell got some darker Frost pieces into the anthologies (and I liked his line about the schizophrenic Frost who is now like "the old man of the mountains we can invite home to dinner"), his motivation seems to be, "I don't like the Frost Jarrell put forward -- I hate 'Provide, Provide' -- here's _my_ Frost." And for all Jarrell's reputation as a terrible harrier, I think he treats Frost with more genuine sympathy, affection and respect, as well as more knowledge of Frosts's actual artistry, than Logan does. Logan's essay unfortunately seems like much of the poetic criticism about nowadays: an example of the critic's taste. Jarrell's essay was about the Frost he thought deserved to be recovered from the swamp of syrup, the old-silver-fox image Frost consciously cultivated. Logan's essay seems not much more than a list of Frost poems Logan likes to read. But when Michiko Kakutani is the tastemaker for no less an organ than the "New York Times Book Review" I think the state of popular criticism in the US is in fairly bad shape. This is probably obvious by now, but I definitely don't think we need _more_ critics. God help us, no. Jarrell's essay on criticism -- written decades and decades before the mania for postmodernism and deconstruction and the idea that the critic, in interpreting the text, is somehow superior to the creator who _wrote_ it -- comes instantly to mind. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From trbell at home.com Sun Feb 18 19:15:58 2001 From: trbell at home.com (trbell at home.com) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 18:15:58 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/more Logan References: Message-ID: <00a001c09a09$22543120$737c0218@ruthfd1.tn.home.com> for those of us outside here with little library access, can you wuggest a good source of reviewing by Disch? tom bell From moira_russell at hotmail.com Sun Feb 18 19:43:53 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 15:43:53 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Yvor Winters and Spouse Message-ID: Thoughts of William Logan stirred up thoughts of Yvor Winters (I think someone on this list already referred to him). Does anyone else remember when Yvor Winters declared his wife (Janet something) one of the top 5 poets of the twentieth century, or a Great Poet (and he had named about 3 as worthy of the honor)? Has anyone ever read any of her work? I've never been able to find a copy of it. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Sun Feb 18 19:52:50 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 15:52:50 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: The old mole wrote: >I think it's healthy to have critics who are not poets themselves. For one >thing, it helps dispel the notion that the only people who read poetry are >other poets. I see at least two problems here: 1) Nonpoets could probably profitably criticize typical free verse fairly well, because it really demands no more skill other than realizing what good images are, and so on. In fact most modern poetry reviews I have seen concentrate exclusively on images or turns of phrase -- not that much different from reviewing prose. But if someone were reviewing, for example, Marilyn Hacker, and didn't have much knowledge of what a "crown of sonnets" is beyond looking it up quickly in a poetry dictionary, how qualified are they to judge what she is trying to do? 2) Aside from the poems people are forced to read in high school and perhaps college, I think the poetry most people read is more represented by Maya Angelou than Jorie Graham or even Louise Gluck. I seem to remember the collection "A Working Girl Can't Win" doing fairly well recently, but that was heavily promoted in the "New Yorker" (not coincidentally she is a "New Yorker" writer) and is far more accessible than Jorie Graham. It might be helpful to specify what kind of poetry we are talking about when considering what nonpoets or non-academics might read. Moira Russell _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From MillB at aol.com Sun Feb 18 20:11:10 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 20:11:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Cummings as Influence Message-ID: <47.797ed77.27c1ccae@aol.com> Greetings all: Interesting topic I guess that I can say that there are folks who learn so-called "tricks," and then innovate their own, or make lines magical rather than mechanical. One question is this--is it valuable to be influenced by cummings or is it a detriment? I think that Merwin has been and was influenced in many ways by cummings. Of course, he took things to a different level. I think another point I would like to make is that does it matter what the influence IS? I mean, does the quality of the influence matter--or does the outcome of the inspiration matter? For example, I've read bad poems influenced by lofty ideals (Leda and Zeus, the Bible, mythology), and I've read great poems influenced by mundane things like MacDonalds, roses or a gum wrapper. It is in the action that the sublime occurs. Cheers, Mill From Cadaly at aol.com Sun Feb 18 20:19:24 2001 From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 20:19:24 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Yvor Winters and Spouse Message-ID: Janet Lewis is better known as a novelist (The Wife of Martin Guerre, etc.) But she has a selected poems. Rgds, Catherine Daly cadaly at pacbell.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 18 20:54:37 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 20:54:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: Message-ID: <3A907CDD.1DC1@nut-n-but.net> > . . . if someone were reviewing, for example, Marilyn > Hacker, and didn't have much knowledge of what a "crown > of sonnets" is beyond looking it up quickly in a > poetry dictionary, how qualified are > they to judge what she is trying to do? Who cares? If they are intelligent, they can use what they do know to tell us what they get out of her poems. Sure, they'll miss things a "qualified" critic would find, but they'll find things he wouldn't. Furthermore, what "qualified" critic necessarily knows all there is to know about poetry? I think I may be slightly qualified and I don't know what a "crown of sonnets" is. I still think I could do an acceptable job with Hacker's poetry. Certainly better, I suspect, than most of those who know what a "crown of sonnets" is could do with the poetry of John M. Bennett, for example, or with mine. --Bob G. From klvarnes at home.com Sun Feb 18 22:34:33 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 21:34:33 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] crown of sonnets In-Reply-To: <3A907CDD.1DC1@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: A crown of sonnets, usually a series of seven or fourteen, repeats lines like a daisy chain. Line 14 of sonnet one becomes line 1 of sonnet two, line 14 of sonnet two becomes line 1 of sonnet three, until the crown ends -- the last sonnet ending full circle with line 1 of sonnet one. Some poets will change the repeating lines a bit, as with villanelle refrains, and blues. I've seen them both with and without titles for the individual sonnets. Now you're one of us, Bob G. Hope it doesn't ruin you for Bennett. Marilyn Nelson also has a wonderful crown in Fields of Praise. Kathrine Varnes >> . . . if someone were reviewing, for example, Marilyn >> Hacker, and didn't have much knowledge of what a "crown >> of sonnets" is beyond looking it up quickly in a >> poetry dictionary, how qualified are >> they to judge what she is trying to do? > > Who cares? If they are intelligent, they > can use what they do know to tell us what > they get out of her poems. Sure, they'll > miss things a "qualified" critic would find, > but they'll find things he wouldn't. Furthermore, > what "qualified" critic necessarily knows all there > is to know about poetry? I think I may be > slightly qualified and I don't know what a > "crown of sonnets" is. I still think I > could do an acceptable job with Hacker's poetry. > Certainly better, I suspect, than most of > those who know what a "crown of sonnets" is > could do with the poetry of John M. Bennett, for > example, or with mine. > > --Bob G. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Feb 18 23:50:45 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 23:50:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: Message-ID: <016c01c09a2f$867922c0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> I don't know what a crown of sonnets is, either. But I wouldn't assume that the only people who know anything about form or prosody are practicing poets. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Moira Russell" To: Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2001 7:52 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan > The old mole wrote: > > >I think it's healthy to have critics who are not poets themselves. For one > >thing, it helps dispel the notion that the only people who read poetry are > >other poets. > > I see at least two problems here: > > 1) Nonpoets could probably profitably criticize typical free verse fairly > well, because it really demands no more skill other than realizing what good > images are, and so on. In fact most modern poetry reviews I have seen > concentrate exclusively on images or turns of phrase -- not that much > different from reviewing prose. But if someone were reviewing, for example, > Marilyn Hacker, and didn't have much knowledge of what a "crown of sonnets" > is beyond looking it up quickly in a poetry dictionary, how qualified are > they to judge what she is trying to do? > > 2) Aside from the poems people are forced to read in high school and > perhaps college, I think the poetry most people read is more represented by > Maya Angelou than Jorie Graham or even Louise Gluck. I seem to remember the > collection "A Working Girl Can't Win" doing fairly well recently, but that > was heavily promoted in the "New Yorker" (not coincidentally she is a "New > Yorker" writer) and is far more accessible than Jorie Graham. It might be > helpful to specify what kind of poetry we are talking about when considering > what nonpoets or non-academics might read. > > Moira Russell > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Feb 19 00:43:36 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 23:43:36 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Yvor Winters and Spouse In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Janet Lewis (wife of Yvor Winters) was a fine novelist (her *Wife of Martin Guerre* is a true modern classic), but her poetry also very much deserves to be read. She just died 3 few years ago, having missed age 100 by a few months. A small sampling of her work is available in the Library of America 20th Century volumes. (Hey, did I mention those?) Her *Poems Old and New : 1918-1978* also remains in print, and I seem to recall a selected came out recently. David Graham >Thoughts of William Logan stirred up thoughts of Yvor Winters (I think >someone on this list already referred to him). Does anyone else remember >when Yvor Winters declared his wife (Janet something) one of the top 5 poets >of the twentieth century, or a Great Poet (and he had named about 3 as >worthy of the honor)? Has anyone ever read any of her work? I've never >been able to find a copy of it. > >Moira Russell >Seattle, WA __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 19 01:06:55 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 01:06:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Yvor Winters and Spouse Message-ID: In a message dated 2/18/2001 6:45:16 PM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > > Thoughts of William Logan stirred up thoughts of Yvor Winters (I think > someone on this list already referred to him). Does anyone else remember > when Yvor Winters declared his wife (Janet something) one of the top 5 poets > > of the twentieth century, or a Great Poet (and he had named about 3 as > worthy of the honor)? Has anyone ever read any of her work? I've never > been able to find a copy of it. I wonder if there's anything in print--will check. She won the LA Times poetry award about 15 years ago for one of her books. Janet Lewis just died three or four years ago--nearly 100. I've only read a few short poems which were o.k. but surely not great. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 19 01:10:06 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 01:10:06 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: <9d.116c031c.27c212be@cs.com> In a message dated 2/18/2001 7:54:17 PM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > Furthermore, > what "qualified" critic necessarily knows all there > is to know about poetry? As a restaurant critic, I'd be hesitant to review an Italian restaurant if I didn't know what pasta was. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Feb 19 03:42:32 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 03:42:32 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: <9d.116c031c.27c212be@cs.com> Message-ID: <01c601c09a4f$e6db4ec0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Are we possibly setting up straw men here? Is there really no middle ground between poets and guys who don't know what pasta is? I write about music, and I'm not a musician. And I know, humbly I hope, there's a lot I don't know...and I try not to be afraid to ask. Reviewing a Marian McPartland concert, I had the good fortune to be sitting next to Warren Bernhardt, and every time I didn't recognize a tune (about half the time) I was able to turn and ask him. I didn't know what a crown of sonnets was. Now I do (thank you, Kathrine). But if I'd given Marilyn Hacker's or Marilyn Nelson's book to my plumber to review, not that I would (though I might to my electrician), I suspect that by the fourth or fifth poem he would have called me and said, "Hey, there's something funny going on here. Each poem starts with...whaddya call that, exactly?" Which, of course, I wouldn't have been able to tell him. And if a restaurant critic wrote, "That stringy while stuff was too mushy and mealy, and the red stuff they poured on it was too acidic," I'd think it was a little odd. But I'd have a fairly good impression of the meal. Tad Richards ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Monday, February 19, 2001 1:10 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan > In a message dated 2/18/2001 7:54:17 PM Central Standard Time, > BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > > > Furthermore, > > what "qualified" critic necessarily knows all there > > is to know about poetry? > > As a restaurant critic, I'd be hesitant to review an Italian restaurant if I > didn't know what pasta was. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 19 04:16:54 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 04:16:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] crown of sonnets References: Message-ID: <3A90E486.68B7@nut-n-but.net> Great to know what a crown of sonnets is, Katherine! I just finished a sonnet I've been working on for almost two decades. Now for a crown of sonnets! --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 19 04:20:08 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 04:20:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: <9d.116c031c.27c212be@cs.com> Message-ID: <3A90E548.4269@nut-n-but.net> >Furthermore, as a restaurant critic, I'd be >hesitant to review an Italian restaurant >if I didn't know what pasta was. As someone who eats, I wouldn't hesitate at all. --Bob G. From dbarone at sjc.edu Mon Feb 19 07:56:15 2001 From: dbarone at sjc.edu (dbarone) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 07:56:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] William - John - James Message-ID: One more Logan to add. James Logan published the first book of poetry translated by an "American", Cato's Moral Distichs, and printed in "America." The printer for this book was, of course, B. Franklin. Logan came to Pennsylvania as William Penn's assistant and he stayed on to become very wealthly and powerful in early Pennsylvania. He had the second largest library in the colonial America. (No copy of Chaucer.) He worked for years on a massive philosophical treatise (before Edwards) called "Of the Duties of Man as They May be Deduced from Nature." The former book editor of our local paper, The Hartford Courant, once told me that it is their policy not to review books of poetry. This is the same newspaper that supports and promotes the large cult of poetry event, the Sunken Garden summer reading series. The policy seems to be changing a little bit. Recently I've seen reviews of books about poets, but still not yet reviews of books of poetry. For years editors like Douglas Messerli and John O'Brien (Sun & Moon and Dalkey) talked about establishing a large circulation review publication, but it never materialized. Messerli published one issue of something called El-e-phant. The best thing at present seems to be Rain Taxi. American Book Review seems to have stopped publication. Dennis Barone From kozaitis at earthlink.net Mon Feb 19 08:32:28 2001 From: kozaitis at earthlink.net (Anastasios Kozaitis) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 08:32:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] William - John - James References: Message-ID: <003901c09a78$6a7ffe60$3b6df6d1@kozaitis> ABR is on-line. URL is: http://www.litline.org/abr/abr.html Re/ Rain Taxi. I second that... ----- Original Message ----- From: "dbarone" To: Sent: Monday, February 19, 2001 7:56 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] William - John - James > One more Logan to add. James Logan published the first book of poetry > translated by an "American", Cato's Moral Distichs, and printed in > "America." The printer for this book was, of course, B. Franklin. Logan > came to Pennsylvania as William Penn's assistant and he stayed on to become > very wealthly and powerful in early Pennsylvania. He had the second largest > library in the colonial America. (No copy of Chaucer.) He worked for years > on a massive philosophical treatise (before Edwards) called "Of the Duties > of Man as They May be Deduced from Nature." > > The former book editor of our local paper, The Hartford Courant, once told > me that it is their policy not to review books of poetry. This is the same > newspaper that supports and promotes the large cult of poetry event, the > Sunken Garden summer reading series. The policy seems to > be changing a little bit. Recently I've seen reviews of books about poets, > but still not yet reviews of books of poetry. For years editors like > Douglas Messerli and John O'Brien (Sun & Moon and Dalkey) talked about > establishing a large circulation review publication, but it never > materialized. Messerli published one issue of something called El-e-phant. > The best thing at present seems to be Rain Taxi. American Book Review seems > to have stopped publication. > > Dennis Barone > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From fmm1 at cornell.edu Mon Feb 19 08:33:59 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 08:33:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] ABR In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010219083115.00a4ab90@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Re: >The best thing at present seems to be Rain Taxi. American Book Review seems >to have stopped publication. > >Dennis Barone American Book Review is very much alive and continues to review quite a bit of poetry; I believe it hasn't missed an issue since its inception. Current issue is dated Jan/Feb 2001. In fact, I'm working on a review for ABR right now. -- Fred Muratori From fmm1 at cornell.edu Mon Feb 19 09:49:51 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 09:49:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry In-Reply-To: <3A9024E0.7D66@nut-n-but.net> References: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010219093154.00a4cc00@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> At 02:39 PM 2/18/01 -0500, you wrote: >Maybe that's because I'm a lousy critic, but I >naturally prefer to believe it's because I lack >the proper credentials. Supporting the latter >is the fact that no one in my areas of interest >reviews any more visibly than I. No reason >people with credentials shouldn't be asked to review, >but they shouldn't be the only ones. > > --Bob G. Well, there's part of the problem -- waiting to be "asked." Believe me, the reviews you've already published are credentials enough. I've been reviewing poetry regularly for 20 years now, and while my first one or two reviews may have been solicited though the usual somebody-at-a-little-magazine-knew-somebody-who-knew-I'd-review-a-particular -book-gratis, since then I've usually had to make the first move before being taken on, and despite publishing about 10-12 reviews a year I still have to beat the bushes now and then. What I normally do is target a publication I think I'd like to write for (or one that might be open enough to consider an outsider), decide on a few new books that interest me, and send a proposal along with some past clippings. Sometimes the mag says yes, I write a review and they take it; sometimes they say yes, I write a review and they reject it; sometimes they just say no; sometimes they don't reply at all (generally, publications that pay fall into this last category). Occasionally an editor says "what a coincidence: I've seen your reviews and was thinking about contacting you...," but I know they never would have had I not contacted them first. Eventually, maybe a publication or two will take you on as a regular reviewer, but there's always some spec work involved first, and with it the risk of wasting your time writing something that will never see print. But then, that's a risk all writers take all the time... --- Fred M. ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important." - John Ashbery From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 19 10:03:22 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:03:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] William - John - James References: Message-ID: <3A9135BA.7874@nut-n-but.net> I get Rain Taxi. It's pretty good. As far as I know, American Book Review is still being published--more regularly than it had been. I had a review taken just a month or so ago, and the last issue arrived on time. It comes out every other month. --Bob G. From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Mon Feb 19 10:10:54 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:10:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] crown of sonnets References: Message-ID: <3A91377E.FAB4AFEE@lehigh.edu> > > Marilyn Nelson also has a wonderful crown in Fields of Praise. > > Kathrine Varnes There's also a nice one by David Trinidad ("A Poet's Death") in the Jan/Feb 2000 _APR_. I can't believe I just plugged an APR poem. In any case, you can read it at the URL below: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Mon Feb 19 10:25:03 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:25:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Qualifications References: Message-ID: <3A913ACE.1B3434C1@providence.edu> Moira Russell wrote: > Nonpoets could probably profitably criticize typical free verse fairly > well, because it really demands no more skill other than realizing what good > images are, and so on. In fact most modern poetry reviews I have seen > concentrate exclusively on images or turns of phrase -- not that much > different from reviewing prose. But if someone were reviewing, for example, > Marilyn Hacker, and didn't have much knowledge of what a "crown of sonnets" > is beyond looking it up quickly in a poetry dictionary, how qualified are > they to judge what she is trying to do? It's interesting that much of the discussion of qualifications have concentrated on "knowledge," i.e., you have to "know" what a crown of sonnets is, or (in another example) "know" what pasta is. Leaving aside the very pertinent question of whether it now makes any sense to write sonnets at all, I think there's a much more important issue: will the reviewer be subtle and generous enough to talk about really *new* poetry? Anyone can buy a copy of Turco's book of forms, but how many people can talk about innovative poetry -- especially now, when manstream poetry is probably more safe and unchallenging as it has been in any time in history? That's why I almost spit out my coffee when I read "nonpoets could probably profitably criticize typical free verse fairly well, because it really demands no more skill other than realizing what good images are, and so on." That's so demonstrably untrue I don't even know where to start, but the scores of imperceptive reviews of Rimbaud, Pound, Eliot, Stein, Riding, etc. might be as good a place as any. Bill Freind From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 19 10:28:13 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:28:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: In a message dated 2/19/2001 5:01:04 AM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: > >Furthermore, as a restaurant critic, I'd be > >hesitant to review an Italian restaurant > >if I didn't know what pasta was. > > As someone who eats, I wouldn't hesitate at all. > > --Bob G. > That's why everyone wants to be a critic. From JforJames at aol.com Mon Feb 19 10:30:44 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:30:44 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: Moira, I agree with your earlier post when you said a cultural sea-change would be required before generalist reviewers began to address books of poetry...but I don't think most poetry is beyond comprehension of most college educated readers with a couple of lit courses under their belt. There's lots more to talk about in free verse than you indicate: theme/subject (or lack thereof), musicality/rhythms, repetitions/refrains, distance or closeness (emotionally), diction (stately, informal, high/low), that old bugabo the speaker's "voice." One could go on & on. In fact, except for regular meter & the form itself there is same set of topics to be addressed in either formal poetry or free verse. Sam's restaurant critic analogy I think was flawed...because anyone employed to be a food critic would know what pasta was...tho he/she might not be capable of making a chocolate souffle or a perfect Hollandaise sauce. But wouldn't any reviewer who spent inordinate ink on "the form" of a crown of sonnets be doing a disservice to the poem itself? It'd be as tho a wine reviewer wrote about the barrels or the bottle but never got around to decanting any for a taste. Finnegan << I see at least two problems here: 1) Nonpoets could probably profitably criticize typical free verse fairly well, because it really demands no more skill other than realizing what good images are, and so on. In fact most modern poetry reviews I have seen concentrate exclusively on images or turns of phrase -- not that much different from reviewing prose. But if someone were reviewing, for example, Marilyn Hacker, and didn't have much knowledge of what a "crown of sonnets" is beyond looking it up quickly in a poetry dictionary, how qualified are they to judge what she is trying to do? 2) Aside from the poems people are forced to read in high school and perhaps college, I think the poetry most people read is more represented by Maya Angelou than Jorie Graham or even Louise Gluck. I seem to remember the collection "A Working Girl Can't Win" doing fairly well recently, but that was heavily promoted in the "New Yorker" (not coincidentally she is a "New Yorker" writer) and is far more accessible than Jorie Graham. It might be helpful to specify what kind of poetry we are talking about when considering what nonpoets or non-academics might read. Moira Russell >> From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 19 10:30:57 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:30:57 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: <3c.7a213d7.27c29631@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2001 5:17:04 AM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > And if a restaurant critic wrote, "That stringy while stuff was too mushy > and mealy, and the red stuff they poured on it was too acidic," I'd think it > was a little odd. But I'd have a fairly good impression of the meal. > > Tad Richards What if a poetry critic wrote: "Dese woids on duh page don't go all duh way to the righthand margin. What's going on heah?" I think I'd get a pretty good impression of the critic's reliability. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 19 10:36:43 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:36:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Qualifications Message-ID: <3a.11097088.27c2978b@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2001 9:17:19 AM Central Standard Time, wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu writes: > Leaving aside the very pertinent question > of whether it now makes any sense to write sonnets at all, I think there's a > much more important issue: will the reviewer be subtle and generous enough > to > talk about really *new* poetry? This is very pertinent question-begging. I would argue that is makes more sense than ever, as (I assume) would Hacker, Nelson, and the scores of poets who write them. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 19 10:48:50 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:48:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry References: <4.2.0.58.20010219093154.00a4cc00@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Message-ID: <3A914062.110C@nut-n-but.net> About my complaint about lack of review opportunities, Fred M. replied, "Well, there's part of the problem -- waiting to be 'asked.'" Yes. I almost put something in my post to that effect. I'm terrible about pushing my way into others' notice (which is probably why I sometimes over-do it on the Internet, where it's easy). I HAVE tried a few times, but I'm too apt to blow up when I get form-rejected, and assume the one editor who has done this to me (perhaps for reasons other than my submission's being flawed) represents ALL editors. > Believe me, the reviews you've already published > are credentials enough. Thanks for saying this, Fred. I guess we're over our spat? (To those who don't know about it, Fred and I popped off a bit foolishly at each other a while ago, about E. e. cUmmings, I think because I whammed too superiorly into Fred for not admiring Cummings as much as I do.) > I've been reviewing poetry > regularly for 20 years now, and while my first one or two > reviews may have been solicited though the usual > somebody-at-a-little-magazine-knew-somebody-who- > knew-I'd-review-a-particular-book-gratis, since > then I've usually had to make the first move before > being taken on, and despite publishing about 10-12 > reviews a year I still have to beat the bushes now > and then. What I normally do is target a > publication I think I'd like to write for > (or one that might be open enough > to consider an outsider), decide on a > few new books that interest me, and > send a proposal along with some past clippings. > Sometimes the mag says yes, I write a review and > they take it; sometimes they say yes, I write a > review and they reject it; sometimes they just > say no; sometimes they don't reply at all (generally, > publications that pay fall into this last > category). Occasionally an editor says "what a > coincidence: I've seen your reviews and was thinking > about contacting you...," but I know they never > would have had I not contacted them first. > Eventually, maybe a publication or two will > take you on as a regular reviewer, but there's > always some spec work involved first, and with > it the risk of wasting your time writing > something that will never see print. But then, > that's a risk all writers take all the time... Better watch out, Fred--your advice is too good: now you'll suddenly have half of this new discussion group competing with you for reviewing space! But, thanks. --Bob G. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 19 10:51:04 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:51:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: <4c.10f57a31.27c29ae8@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2001 9:32:11 AM Central Standard Time, JforJames at aol.com writes: > Sam's restaurant critic analogy I think was flawed...because anyone > employed to be a food critic would know what pasta was...tho he/she > might not be capable of making a chocolate souffle or a perfect Hollandaise > sauce. But wouldn't any reviewer who spent inordinate ink on "the form" > of a crown of sonnets be doing a disservice to the poem itself? It'd be as > tho a wine reviewer wrote about the barrels or the bottle but never got > around to decanting any for a taste. By the same analogy, anyone employed as a poetry critic should/would know what a crown of sonnets is--or at least take the trouble to find out before proceeding. And who said anything about a critic's ability to write a sonnet, or make a souffle or a sauce? I'm just saying that critics (of anything--movies, wine, opera) ought to get to know the beast before they dissect it. Would we trust Click and Clack if we found out they'd never driven a car? Besides, in such an elaborate form as a sonnet crown it would be inconceivable that a critic wouldn't concentrate equally on form and content since they're so inseparable in such a confection. Would you praise the height and texture of a souffle if it tasted like a tire? Or would you praise the taste of the souffle if it was 1/4 inch tall? I wouldn't. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Feb 19 10:49:20 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:49:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: <3c.7a213d7.27c29631@cs.com> Message-ID: <023601c09a8b$86b03380$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> That would be a different story. But my point kinda was that there will be relatively few people like that reviewing for most journals that review poetry. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Monday, February 19, 2001 10:30 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan > In a message dated 2/19/2001 5:17:04 AM Central Standard Time, > tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > > > And if a restaurant critic wrote, "That stringy while stuff was too mushy > > and mealy, and the red stuff they poured on it was too acidic," I'd think > it > > was a little odd. But I'd have a fairly good impression of the meal. > > > > Tad Richards > > What if a poetry critic wrote: "Dese woids on duh page don't go all duh way > to the righthand margin. What's going on heah?" I think I'd get a pretty > good impression of the critic's reliability. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From dwc8 at psu.edu Mon Feb 19 11:02:52 2001 From: dwc8 at psu.edu (David Clippinger) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 11:02:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Qualifications In-Reply-To: <3a.11097088.27c2978b@cs.com> Message-ID: <200102191606.LAA41888@f04n01.cac.psu.edu> At 10:36 AM 2/19/01 -0500, you wrote: >In a message dated 2/19/2001 9:17:19 AM Central Standard Time, >wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu writes: > >> Leaving aside the very pertinent question >> of whether it now makes any sense to write sonnets at all, I think there's >a >> much more important issue: will the reviewer be subtle and generous enough >> to >> talk about really *new* poetry? > >This is very pertinent question-begging. I would argue that is makes more >sense than ever, as (I assume) would Hacker, Nelson, and the scores of poets >who write them. But _why_ does it make more sense than ever? David Clippinger, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English and American Studies Penn State University 100 University Drive Monaca, PA 15061 (724) 773-3884 www.clippinger.com/david ____________________________________________________________________ The thinker as reader reads what has been written. He hears the words he reads to look upon Within his being Wallace Stevens, "Things of August" ____________________________________________________________________ From fmm1 at cornell.edu Mon Feb 19 11:08:03 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 11:08:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Unbecummings In-Reply-To: <3A914062.110C@nut-n-but.net> References: <4.2.0.58.20010219093154.00a4cc00@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010219110447.00a67ab0@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Actually, Bob, the other party in the cummings tiff wasn't me at all; I only posted to this new incarnation of CAP-L for the first time this morning. While I have popped off foolishly from time to time, this wasn't one of those times. - Fred >Thanks for saying this, Fred. I guess we're over our >spat? (To those who don't know about it, Fred and I >popped off a bit foolishly at each other a while ago, >about E. e. cUmmings, I think because I whammed too >superiorly into Fred for not admiring Cummings as >much as I do.) > > --Bob G. > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 19 11:18:43 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 11:18:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Qualifications Message-ID: In a message dated 2/19/2001 10:08:54 AM Central Standard Time, dwc8 at psu.edu writes: > This is very pertinent question-begging. I would argue that is makes more > >sense than ever, as (I assume) would Hacker, Nelson, and the scores of > poets > >who write them. > > But _why_ does it make more sense than ever? I was just doing some logical coin-flipping. It makes more sense than ever to me because I like to write them, write them well, and enjoy reading others that are well written. They are not debased currency in our time. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 19 12:30:36 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 08:30:36 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: Let me try to put it another way: if someone rarely listened to string quartets, hadn't studied the scores, and was listening to the string quartet for the first time during a performance, I don't know how much I would value their review. Even a careful listener at that point might miss much. Are people really arguing that to have experience in the field one reviews is unimportant? Personal observation can take you only so far. Naive inspection of something and untutored opinons can bring forth some wonderful surprises, but... Moira Russell Seattle, WA Bob Grumman wrote: > >Furthermore, as a restaurant critic, I'd be > >hesitant to review an Italian restaurant > >if I didn't know what pasta was. >As someone who eats, I wouldn't hesitate at all. >--Bob G. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 19 12:32:42 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 08:32:42 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry Message-ID: Thank you, Fred, for all your wonderful suggestions about reviewing -- although as Bob said unfortunately it may lead to more competition for you! Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 19 12:38:45 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 08:38:45 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Qualifications Message-ID: Are you saying that it no longer makes sense to write sonnets, or other formal poems, in the postmodern era? I find it interesting all the poets you mention are from a much earlier era and certainly knew their prosody -- and more than traces of it wind in and out of their poems. I was thinking of the free verse of today, which seems to consist mainly of poems longer than 10 lines but shorter than 30, with no rhymes (perhaps some attempt at slant rhyme), no patterned meter, and so on. (Lyn Lifshin, as one of the most-published poets I'm aware of, springs instantly to mind.) I agree that this "mainstream" poetry is less challenging than ever. But I don't think formal poetry can be classified as "mainstream" poetry, although I think that's how you are classifying it. Sorry about the coffee; hope it didn't land on any important manuscripts. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Zafano at aol.com Mon Feb 19 12:41:37 2001 From: Zafano at aol.com (Zafano at aol.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 12:41:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] poetry & pasta Message-ID: On poetry criticism v. food criticism: In this analogy, the comparison should be between the sonnet and pasta. Certainly any poetry-critic should know what a sonnet is, just as a food-critic should know what pasta is. By extension, a good critic of poetry probably should know what a crown of sonnets is, at least to the extent of being able to recognize one and have a name for it; and a good food-critic should know that there are tubular forms of pasta, like rigatoni and penne in their various shapes and sizes, as opposed to noodle pastas like spaghetti and linguini, and that all of these are intended to go with different types of sauce. At least I'd feel more comfortable in the presence of the views of such a critic, whether or not he/she had to rely on outside resources to get the names right. At this point the analogy depletes its own usefulness, because I realize that certain types of Italian food are far more significant products of Italian culture than even the most expert renderings of other products of Italian culture, including the sonnet, especially in its more ornate embodiment in the so-called crown, which was probably invented by a Frenchman in an attempt to make the fairly simple Italian model unnecessarily more complex. Come to think of it, this probably happened around the time French cooks were trying to do the same thing with the Italian model re: food, which as everyone knows is how French cuisine got started. So, on the subject of food, which ought to be as important to poets as poetry itself, I'd happily incline my attention toward a food critic who knew, for instance, the variants of puttanesca and could talk about them with complete familiarity. If this critic also knew, from first-hand experience, that the olives had to go in last, in order to retain their full measure of tartness, I'd be even more at ease. If this critic furthermore could confidently aver that no serious Italian cook would ever present a plate of puttanesca ladled onto linguini, I'd know I had come across the critic who could tell me how to get myself to the right place for dinner. Michael Heffernan From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 19 12:48:41 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 08:48:41 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: >From: JforJames at aol.com >There's lots more to talk about in free verse than you indicate: >theme/subject (or lack thereof), musicality/rhythms, repetitions/refrains, >distance or closeness (emotionally), diction (stately, informal, high/low), >that old bugabo the speaker's "voice." Hmmm, I don't think I have seen that many free verse poems with a lot of refrains -- and couldn't you argue that when a "free verse" poem has a refrain it is no longer vers libre but is instead in some kind of form? Also, with "musicality/rhythms," what exact way can we talk about these without the framework of meter and rhyme? I think it is possible to talk about "musicality" in free verse in a sort of very general subjective way, but aren't we always going to be depending in some way on the ghost of meter? So what, exactly, are the standards we are depending on? Re diction, voice, and so on -- don't these fit into the more "narrative" way of analyzing poetry? If you're going to be analyzing "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," for instance, I would imagine it is at least as important to note the meter and the end-rhymes as it is to talk about the speaker's identity. What you zero in on seems as common to short stories as to free verse, and this seems to be part of the problem to me. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Jholmes at boisestate.edu Mon Feb 19 12:55:05 2001 From: Jholmes at boisestate.edu (Janet Holmes) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 10:55:05 -0700 Subject: [New-Poetry] Janet Lewis Message-ID: Moira, regarding your question about Janet Lewis: her Selected Poems were published last year by Swallow Press (an Ohio State imprint, I believe). Phillip Levine also has written about her influence in his book of essays, THE BREAD OF TIME. I reviewed the Selected for ForeWord, and have to say I thought the impression was slight. The novels, on the other hand... Janet Holmes From JforJames at aol.com Mon Feb 19 13:29:02 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 13:29:02 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: <10.8fa339d.27c2bfee@aol.com> Sam, too many cooks perhaps in this discussion, but I wanted to restate: We have poet-reviewers; we have academic-reviewers. The former practice (& presumably study the art of poetry). The latter study the literature of poetry/poetics (& perhaps try or have tried their hand at the art). There's certainly room &, I'd argue, need, for reviewers who are none of the above. Yes, they should bring a modicum of knowledge to the subject at hand...but something like "a crown of sonnets" could be found in many handbooks of forms available at one's local library or on the net...the important thing would be the quality of thought brought to bear on the book. But it's wishful thinking, as Moira said, that we'll see more of these reviews/reviewers in our local newspapers and national circulation publications. As a side note, I would say that any form that foregrounds itself to the point where a reviewer had to spend half his/her review addressing its intricacies and its effects, would be a novelty to me and of less interest. Finnegan n a message dated 2/19/01 10:54:40 AM Eastern Standard Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes: << By the same analogy, anyone employed as a poetry critic should/would know what a crown of sonnets is--or at least take the trouble to find out before proceeding. And who said anything about a critic's ability to write a sonnet, or make a souffle or a sauce? I'm just saying that critics (of anything--movies, wine, opera) ought to get to know the beast before they dissect it. Would we trust Click and Clack if we found out they'd never driven a car? Besides, in such an elaborate form as a sonnet crown it would be inconceivable that a critic wouldn't concentrate equally on form and content since they're so inseparable in such a confection. Would you praise the height and texture of a souffle if it tasted like a tire? Or would you praise the taste of the souffle if it was 1/4 inch tall? I wouldn't. >> From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 19 13:35:19 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 13:35:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: In a message dated 2/19/01 12:30:32 PM Central Standard Time, JforJames at aol.com writes: > As a side note, I would say that any form that foregrounds itself to the > point > where a reviewer had to spend half his/her review addressing its intricacies > and its effects, would be a novelty to me and of less interest. > Finnegan > I'd certainly second this. You'd be dealing with someone like Jose Garcia Villas (I think that was his name). On the other hand, a lot of May Swenson and cummings depends almost entirely on visual form. From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Mon Feb 19 13:51:35 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 13:51:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Money and poetry References: Message-ID: <3A916B35.F968CD9E@providence.edu> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/19/2001 10:08:54 AM Central Standard Time, dwc8 at psu.edu > writes: > > > This is very pertinent question-begging. I would argue that is makes more > > >sense than ever, as (I assume) would Hacker, Nelson, and the scores of > > poets > > >who write them. > > > > But _why_ does it make more sense than ever? > > I was just doing some logical coin-flipping. It makes more sense than ever > to me because I like to write them, write them well, and enjoy reading others > that are well written. They are not debased currency in our time. Interesting -- two currency metaphors in three sentences. There are very different ways to read these. You probably use "logical coin-flipping" to mean the other side of the coin. I'd use it in a very different way: to accept and even cultivate chance and unintended meanings. This is nothing new, of course, but it's largely ignored in most mainstream poetry. I'm more interested in "debased currency," which is an anachronism these days. To debase a currency means to cut it with "impure" metals, or not have enough gold, silver, cattle (which are the root of "pecuniary) to back it up. Currency no longer works this way, obviously: with EFT-POS, direct deposit, phone cards, etc., currency "works" much less than it ever did. Even when money was on the gold standard, it was abounding with metaphysical niceties (to rework Marx's line about the commodity). The root of money is "Moneta," a goddess to whom the Romans prayed to keep the currency from failing. Gold's worth was traditionally based upon its aesthetic uses: art, jewelry, etc., and on its scarcity. Given that, "worth" becomes a much more slippery notion. All of this is a roundabout way of saying I agree with your metaphors for poetry, but I would use them in a radically different way. Yes, money is a type of poetry (is that the exact quote from Stevens), but only because money is much stranger than we think it is. Poetry should be, too. Bill Freind (who's about to go spend virtual money as he buys groceries) From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 19 13:52:17 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 13:52:17 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Money and poetry Message-ID: <61.b8e0553.27c2c561@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/01 12:44:44 PM Central Standard Time, wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu writes: > > Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > > > In a message dated 2/19/2001 10:08:54 AM Central Standard Time, dwc8 at psu. > edu > > writes: > > > > > This is very pertinent question-begging. I would argue that is makes > more > > > >sense than ever, as (I assume) would Hacker, Nelson, and the scores of > > > poets > > > >who write them. > > > > > > But _why_ does it make more sense than ever? > > > > I was just doing some logical coin-flipping. It makes more sense than > ever > > to me because I like to write them, write them well, and enjoy reading > others > > that are well written. They are not debased currency in our time. > > Interesting -- two currency metaphors in three sentences. There are very > different ways to read these. You probably use "logical coin-flipping" to > mean > the other side of the coin. I'd use it in a very different way: to accept > and > even cultivate chance and unintended meanings. This is nothing new, of > course, > but it's largely ignored in most mainstream poetry. > > I'm more interested in "debased currency," which is an anachronism these > days. To > debase a currency means to cut it with "impure" metals, or not have enough > gold, > silver, cattle (which are the root of "pecuniary) to back it up. Currency no > longer works this way, obviously: with EFT-POS, direct deposit, phone cards, > etc., currency "works" much less than it ever did. > > Even when money was on the gold standard, it was abounding with metaphysical > niceties (to rework Marx's line about the commodity). The root of money is > "Moneta," a goddess to whom the Romans prayed to keep the currency from > failing. > Gold's worth was traditionally based upon its aesthetic uses: art, jewelry, > etc., > and on its scarcity. Given that, "worth" becomes a much more slippery notion. > > > All of this is a roundabout way of saying I agree with your metaphors for > poetry, > but I would use them in a radically different way. Yes, money is a type of > poetry > (is that the exact quote from Stevens), but only because money is much > stranger > than we think it is. Poetry should be, too. > > Bill Freind > (who's about to go spend virtual money as he buys groceries) > Maybe I should have simply said that I didn't think the argument was worth its salt. From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Mon Feb 19 14:01:11 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:01:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Qualifications References: Message-ID: <3A916D76.6A09366E@providence.edu> Moira Russell wrote: > Are you saying that it no longer makes sense to write sonnets, or other > formal poems, in the postmodern era? I'm saying it didn't make sense to write conventional sonnets in the *modern* era. It makes even less sense now. If you want to wrench the form (e.g. Berrigan's sonnets), fine. > I find it interesting all the poets you mention are from a much earlier era > and certainly knew their prosody -- and more than traces of it wind in and > out of their poems. Stein? Riding? The Cantos? > I was thinking of the free verse of today, which seems > to consist mainly of poems longer than 10 lines but shorter than 30, This describes an extremely limited range of contemporary poetry. > with no > rhymes (perhaps some attempt at slant rhyme), no patterned meter, and so on. > (Lyn Lifshin, as one of the most-published poets I'm aware of, springs > instantly to mind.) I agree that this "mainstream" poetry is less > challenging than ever. But I don't think formal poetry can be classified as > "mainstream" poetry, although I think that's how you are classifying it. Why not? It's certainly not offering any real challenge to the mainstream -- except maybe to challenge it to write the same poems in iambic pentameter. > Sorry about the coffee; hope it didn't land on any important manuscripts. No, but I just gave my cat too much food and he regurgitated it right next to a stack of library books. He's a rare and precious gem. Bill Freind From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 19 13:45:37 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 13:45:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: <4c.10f57a31.27c29ae8@cs.com> Message-ID: <3A9169D1.2061@nut-n-but.net> The question is who should criticize X? I simply say that if X is something that almost everyone is familiar with--like texts or foods--the answer is anyone INTELLIGENT. In other words, no special knowledge is required. I would, OF COURSE, expect most people to know something, but not everything, about a field before criticizing an X from it. It's just that we should not bar someone who knows almost nothing (I claim everyone will know something) of a field from criticizing an X from it. At worst, he'll probably say things other non-specialists will relate to better than a specialist's critique. At best, he'll say something from an angle no specialist would think of viewing the X from. I think another plus would be that he would be more likely to understand how little he really knows about the X than some specialist. I would add that I think one big problem with the criticism of poetry today is that it is too specialized: free-versers are not expected to be able to say anything about formal verse, and formalists are supposed not be unable to tackling free verse, and neither is considered able to say anthing about language poetry, etc. The lean seems to be toward sonnet-experts, haiku-experts, Stevens-specialists, and on and on. I frankly can't, as a hoomin bean, understand why everyone doesn't agree that it would be healthy to have criticism of poetry by both specialists and non-specialists. As an amateur student of psychology, I do (I think) understand it. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 19 14:01:45 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:01:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Unbecummings References: <4.2.0.58.20010219093154.00a4cc00@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> <4.2.0.58.20010219110447.00a67ab0@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Message-ID: <3A916D99.39FB@nut-n-but.net> Gee, first John and William Logan and now this mix up of mine of Fred Muratori with someone else of similar name. And the list of people who think I'm a jerk still has the same number of names on it. Phooey. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 19 14:14:18 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:14:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] poetry & pasta References: Message-ID: <3A91708A.31A4@nut-n-but.net> Poetry critcis should no what sonnets are? But what if someone intelligent but who didn't know what a sonnet was, was asked to criticize a handful of them. Might he not notice that the 14-line length had some kind of significance, and try to figure out what it was? Whereas a specialist might just identify the poems as sonnets and go on to something else. And might not the non-knower, in search of the rationale for 14 lines, go to who knows what and maybe come up with some new insight into the validity of 14 lines as a length instead of to Petrarch or whoever, where a specialist would go-- and not come up with anything provocative. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 19 14:28:43 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:28:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: Message-ID: <3A9173EB.4309@nut-n-but.net> > > As a side note, I would say that any form that > > foregrounds itself to the point where a reviewer > > had to spend half his/her review addressing its > > intricacies and its effects, would be a novelty > > to me and of less interest. > > Finnegan I don't know about "foregrounds itself to the point where" but replace that phrase with "is sufficiently important that" and your where I want to be as a critic, discussing what, how and why a poem is doing what it's doing rather than what it's saying. So, it takes all kinds, what else is noo? As for Cummings ever depending entirely on visual form, I don't know any of his poems for which this is true. He uses a few verbo-visual devices and a lot of infraverbal devices the way less pluraesthetic poets use alliteration, rhyme, meter, etc. Contemporary visual poets use visual elements much more and sometimes have to be discussed more as visual artists than as poets. Which doesn't mean form is everything in their work. --Bob G. From MillB at aol.com Mon Feb 19 14:43:41 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:43:41 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] poetry & pasta Message-ID: <35.10ecbddf.27c2d16d@aol.com> Bob: Your note reminds me of a quote (paraphrasing heavily here). When he was 14, Picasso could draw like Rembrant and Rubens, but it took him a lifetime to draw like a child. Mill From Zafano at aol.com Mon Feb 19 15:03:09 2001 From: Zafano at aol.com (Zafano at aol.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 15:03:09 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: <76.7e4e2fb.27c2d5fd@aol.com> I also can't understand why anyone would think that it isn't useful to have knowledge of a subject before attempting to talk about it meaningfully. Michael Heffernan << I frankly can't, as a hoomin bean, understand why everyone doesn't agree that it would be healthy to have criticism of poetry by both specialists and non-specialists. As an amateur student of psychology, I do (I think) understand it. >> From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Feb 19 15:13:45 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:13:45 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/list reviews In-Reply-To: <005101c099e8$bbc842e0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> References: Message-ID: Before we get too carried away with sniping across those old weary battle lines (free verse vs. traditional, la-di-da-ho-hum), I'd like to second Tad's plug for reviving the excellent practice of talking about particular poems, poets, and books. I thought that the short-lived go-round of reviewing actual books on CAP-L was a great idea. I'm all for renewing that notion here, if at all possible. Of course, one virtue of a list such as this is that no one has to wait to be asked. Got some thoughts about a recently published book? Why not share them, with an example or two for the benefit of those who haven't access to the book? This list offers an excellent opportunity for such exchange, and a "review" here doesn't need to be as formal or as lengthy as one of William Logan's *New Criterion* pieces. Perhaps a more formalized system of regular book reviews might also be good--especially if we can con some publishers into giving NewPoetry free books!--but in the meantime, nothing's stopping us from looking at actual poems and books. I'm all ears. (And thanks, of course, to those who have already done so, with Charles Simic and other poets.) David Graham ______________________ >David - For reasons not worth mentioning, I was searching through the old >CAP-L archives, and I came across your review of Donald Justice's Collected >Poems. And it was a perfect example of how a review of a book toward which >one is favorable disposed can be thoughtful and thought-provoking, not just >puffery. > >There was only that one go-round of book reviews on CAP-L, and it's too bad >that it didn't become more regular event. This format, with its instant >interactivity, is an excellent one for reviewing of books. > >I've suggested the idea to Jim, and I believe he's looking into it. > >Tad > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From Zafano at aol.com Mon Feb 19 15:19:28 2001 From: Zafano at aol.com (Zafano at aol.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 15:19:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: One of the biggest problems with the criticism of poetry today is that too many reviewers refuse to write negative reviews. And sometimes, perhaps, they are discouraged from doing so, for various reasons. When I was reviewing fairly widely several years ago, the then-editor of Poetry (Chi) deleted a negative segment from an omnibus review of mine, on the grounds that the poet in question had published frequently in those pages. I thought, well, probably, fair enough. At least I saw the rest of the review into print, including a segment that was mixed at best. Another time, I was backhandedly chided in APR by a well-known poet on behalf of another poet, whose work I had negatively reviewed in the same pages, in this manner: well-known poet writes a column in the next issue stating the following: 1) well-known poet was recently a panelist for the Literature Program of the NEA; 2) well-known poet is an intimate friend of the other poet whose work I'd reviewed negatively; and 3) well-known poet thinks poets should probably not review the works of other poets, that instead we need critics who are not poets to do that, because it tends to ruffle too many feathers. Subtext: Heffernan, you bastard, it'll be a cold day in hell before you get a grant from the NEA. Actually, as it turned out, I ended up getting three NEAs. But that didn't keep me from feeling, at the time, that I'd just been served notice. Call me paranoid, but there seemed to be a message there. Consequently, I didn't write another review for twenty years. Fact is, as of 2001, I don't think the situation has changed much. In short, thank God for William Logan. MH In a message dated 02/19/2001 1:28:21 PM Central Standard Time, BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes: << I would add that I think one big problem with the criticism of poetry today is that it is too specialized: free-versers are not expected to be able to say anything about formal verse, and formalists are supposed not be unable to tackling free verse, and neither is considered able to say anthing about language poetry, etc. The lean seems to be toward sonnet-experts, haiku-experts, Stevens-specialists, and on and on. >> From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 19 15:21:07 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 11:21:07 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Janet Lewis Message-ID: >From: "Janet Holmes" >Moira, regarding your question about Janet Lewis: her Selected Poems were >published last year by Swallow Press (an Ohio State imprint, I believe). >Phillip Levine also has written about her influence in his book of essays, >THE BREAD OF TIME. I reviewed the Selected for ForeWord, and have to say I >thought the impression was slight. The novels, on the other hand... Thank you very much for the information. Out of sheer mordant curiosity, I have to wonder whether Winters' blurb is on the back of that Selected....or if the publisher decided to just say no. How long are her novels? I really enjoyed "Martin Guerre," but in my edition it is about 50-60 regular-sized (i.e., not trade-sized) pages -- not exactly what I would call a novel. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 19 15:28:41 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 11:28:41 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Qualifications Message-ID: >I'm saying it didn't make sense to write conventional sonnets in the >*modern* >era. It makes even less sense now. If you want to wrench the form (e.g. >Berrigan's sonnets), fine. But why, exactly? Because the modern world is so broken-up and distressing? It seems to me an argument could just as easily be made that such a time would _require_ sonnets (or formal poetry) -- why are only "wrenched" forms acceptable to you? It sounds as though, if this argument extended to figurative art, it would no longer be aesthetically proper to draw a realistic human figure. > > I was thinking of the free verse of today, which seems > > to consist mainly of poems longer than 10 lines but shorter than 30, >This describes an extremely limited range of contemporary poetry. But this is the poetry I most often see even in literary quarterlies, and revised by the NYTBR for example -- a recent (I think) review of the new volume of poems "The Beautiful Husband". Even though the "New Yorker" ran a long flattering profile on Jorie Graham a year or two ago they don't publish a lot of her poetry. >It's certainly not offering any real challenge to the mainstream -- >except maybe to challenge it to write the same poems in iambic pentameter. I think, for one, Marilyn Hacker offers a big challenge to the mainstream, even if you only consider her politics. At any rate what I was thinking is that at this point formal poetry is so battered writing it now may be considered a radical move, just as writing free verse was radical in the early twentieth century. A sort of flip-flop effect. >I just gave my cat too much food and he regurgitated it right next to a >stack of library books. He's a rare and precious gem. Were any of the library books volumes of poetry? Perhaps your cat is trying its hand at criticism....like when I had just finished an elaborate charcoal still-life, set it and left it to dry, and my cat promptly hopped up and yarked a hairball onto the bottom left-hand corner of it. Of course the stain remained a permanent part of the artwork, which was relegated to a dark closet. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From languagethief at yahoo.com Mon Feb 19 15:46:52 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 12:46:52 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry in the Olive Garden In-Reply-To: <3A9169D1.2061@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <20010219204652.44274.qmail@web12206.mail.yahoo.com> Well, I've ben blithely arguing against Moira and Sam here. Thn it suddenly occurred to me that we have had -- fairly recently -- a well-konwn and widely circulated poetry critic who didn't know the difference between penne and rigatoni...Bill Moyers. So... (small voice)...never mind..... Tad __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Feb 19 04:41:44 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 03:41:44 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviews Message-ID: I agree with the list writers who argue that there's not enough negative reviewing--as well as with those who admire Jarrell because of his essays of appreciation. I've dipped back into reviewing a bit of late, after quitting reviewing for a number of years. Instead of single book reviews, though, I now prefer writing brief essays that consider the work of individual poets. Poets on this list who don't like to review might consider writing essays about poets whose work they admire. Last year I was touting the poetry of Kay Ryan, so at the risk of overtaxing the email systems of list subscribers, I'll post a short essay I published about Ryan's work last summer in Threepenny Review. You can just delete if it's too long to mess with. And of course the formatting will be a bit bollixed. Paul Lake * * * Telling it Slant: The Poetry of Kay Ryan Over the course of four volumes, Kay Ryan has developed a poetic voice as clear and distinctive as the landscapes of California?s San Joaquin Valley and Mojave Desert, where she was raised. Growing up in a working class family, far from the centers of American literary culture, Ryan is a true outsider. Unlike so many of her contemporaries who teach creative writing in universities, Ryan has spent her adult life working in the trenches of academe, teaching basic writing at the College of Marin and San Quentin Prison. As her poems attest, however, working outside the literary and academic mainstream has its advantages. During the nine years between the appearance of her first two books (Dragon Acts to Dragon Ends, 1983, and Strangely Marked Metal, 1985 ) and her brilliant 1994 collection Flamingo Watching, Ryan developed her own highly distinctive style. The publication of Elephant Rocks in 1996 confirmed her as one of the country's most accomplished and original poets. Each of her two recent books contains more fully-realized poems than the Selected?s of most of her contemporaries. Though it is always dangerous to speculate on a poet?s origins and development, we might locate one source of Ryan?s distinctive vision in her desert childhood. Dana Gioia, in ?Discovering Kay Ryan,? the first published essay on Ryan?s work, notes the influence of Southern California on her poetry and observes, ?Something of Ryan?s harsh and hard-worked native terrain is reflected in her luxuriant minimalist aesthetic.? In "A Certain Meanness of Culture," Ryan describes the Spartan aesthetic enforced by a desert economy. You can get an appreciation for why a donkey is fussy about books since she has to carry them. You start to value culture like you would water. . . . . . . And when you dream, it's not romance. Things are too thin out here already to chance sad endings. You get pretty stringy and impatient with the fat smoke off old cities. You get cranky and admire just what stands up to the stars' cold and the sun's fire. You like winches and pulley's, picks and khakis, and the rare sweet grass you can find for your donkey. Raised in such a bleak and unforgiving environment, Ryan must have learned early how to adapt and survive. Later, when the time came to fashion a poetic style, she acted in the best American tradition and, with the pragmatic efficiency of a pioneer, jury-rigged a poetics to suit her needs. Though echoes of H. D.'s classics-influenced Imagism are audible in her first books, by the time Ryan published Flamingo Watching, she had fully assimilated her influences. The lyrics of her mature style marry the trimeter and tetrameter lines of the English lyric tradition to the more syncopated free verse line of the Pound-Williams-Black Mountain school. Combining occasional end-rhyme and regular meter with free verse, the poet compensates for the increased irregularity of her method by formalizing and enriching the poem?s aural texture with internal rhyme and assonance, to achieve her signature style. In some poems (such as "Spring" or "When Fishing Fails") Ryan's formalism dominates; in others, free verse prevails. But in her most distinctive poems, the two forms merge to make a music all her own: No Rest for the Idle The idle are shackled to their oars. The waters of idleness are borderless of course and must always be plied. Relief is foreign on this wide and featureless ocean. There are no details: no shores, no tides, no times when things lift up and then subside, no sails or smokestacks, no gravel gathered up and spit back, no plangencies, no sea birds startled; the weather, without the Mathew Arnold. This is formal verse even free verse poets can love; free verse, for which formalists can feel a warm consanguinity. In achieving such a fusion, Ryan has made her work thoroughly modern without employing the usual Modernist and postmodernist strategies. Instead of fragmentation or sterile verbal hijinks, her poems surprise and delight readers with their playfully shifting patterns and densely concentrated meanings. Her verse's occasional difficulty results not from the poet?s disregard for the bourgeois reader, but from her determination to follow Emily Dickinson?s injunction to tell the truth, but tell it ?slant.? Though her poems are loaded with images, Ryan is not an imagist of any modern school; instead, she x-rays her subjects, revealing their secrets designs. Nor does she follow Ezra Pound's injunction to "Go in fear of abstractions," but rather seems to revel in them. Her books? Tables of Contents are litanies of lofty immensities: "Hope," "Relief," "Doubt," "Force," Intention," "Emptiness," "Age." Yet from these abstractions, Ryan wrings pathos, ironic insights, and heart-felt wisdom. The poet accomplishes such magic because she is, at heart, not quite of this age. Her poems are suffused with an almost Medieval religious sensibility. Saints, the kabala, virgin births, relics, reliquaries and other religious subjects appear in her lines with surprising frequency. The world in her poems often seems a complex allegorical tapestry, filled with secret emblems and occult correspondences. Though often writing with a naturalist's eye for details, Ryan is not a conventional nature poet, but, rather, that all-but-extinct species of literary artist, an allegorist. Reading her poems is like unraveling the complex symbolism of Medieval heraldry. Animals in particular often appear less as biological entities than mysterious emblems bearing a wealth of hidden meanings. Here is a little masterpiece called "Turtle" that typifies her approach: Who would be a turtle who could help it? A barely mobile hard roll, a four-oared helmet, she can ill afford the chances she must take in rowing toward the grasses that she eats. Her track is graceless, like dragging a packing-case places, and almost any slope defeats her modest hopes. Even being practical, she's often stuck up to the axle on her way to something edible. With everything optimal, she skirts the ditch which would convert her shell into a serving dish. She lives below luck-level, never imagining some lottery will change her load of pottery to wings. Her only levity is patience, the sport of truly chastened things. Ryan's unheroic little turtle is, among other things, an emblem of the poet, who must have quietly mastered her art while slogging through years of teaching basic English, ?Never imagining some lottery / [would] change her load of pottery to wings.? Well-schooled in humility and patience, Ryan offers lessons in endurance and survival in her verse. Her chief poetic preoccupation is what in earlier times was called simply The Virtues. Unlike her turtle, however, Ryan?s literary excursions are sustained by more than one type of levity; irony, playful wit, and a wry sardonicism lighten the burden of her moral fables. For all her hermetic religiosity, Ryan is a thoroughly modern writer, her world view shaped by science as much as by her own hard-won experience. As might be expected of one who grew up ?living at the wrong edge / of the arable,? where the impersonal mechanisms of nature are most visibly evident, she is a sharp-eyed and unsentimental observer of the natural scene, with a vision permeated by Darwinism. Frequently, both strains of her vision intertwine, as here, in this little two stanza lyric called ?The Hinge of Spring,? where straightforward naturalistic description is infused with metaphoric significance: The jackrabbit is a mild herbivore grazing the desert floor, quietly abridging spring, eating the color off everything rampant-height or lower. Rabbits are one of the things coyotes are for. One quick scream, a few quick thumps, and a whole little area shoots up blue and orange clumps. In another poem, about a remark by Darwin, Ryan gives her evolutionism a more optimistic slant, suggesting that "Perhaps not chance, / but need, selects; and desperation / works upon giraffes until their necks / can reach the necessary branch." Constrained by a hard-nosed skepticism, Ryan's faith in the meaningfulness and dignity of life is, like her turtle, well-grounded. Though she believes, like Hopkins, that there lives "a dearest freshness deep down things," her faith and optimism do not depend on transcendental hopes or supernatural aspirations, but are rooted in a thoroughly American pragmatism. Faith and hope are true not because they are underwritten by religious codes or divine revelations, but because, like those winches and pulleys of an earlier poem, they work--physically, morally, and psychologically. In ?Doubt,? Ryan shows the inefficacy of pessimism, and, by implication, the practical utility of its opposite: A chick has just so much time to chip its way out, just so much egg energy to apply to the weakest spot or whatever spot it started at. It can't afford doubt. Who can? Doubt uses albumen at twice the rate of work. One backward look by any of us can cost what it cost Orpheus. . . . Like the neck of her poem's flamingo, Ryan?s idiosyncratic faith is not rigidly orthodox, but "flexible to the point / of oddity." The poet looks at things from odd angles, re-examines old ideas and opinions, refusing to settle into orthodoxy. Irresistibly quotable, Ryan?s poems tease the imagination, yielding richer implications with each reading. Word play and sudden reversals keep readers on their toes. Sometimes compressed to the point of obliquity, her lines make readers work hard to scry their meanings. New tangents often hinge on a single word, as in "Flamingo Watching," where the poet takes a sly jab at fundamentalist stiff-necks who fail to appreciate her emblematic bird?s disconcerting flamboyance: . . . The natural elect, they think, would be less pink, less able to relax their necks, less flamboyant in general. They privately expect that it's some poorly jointed bland grey animal with mitts for hands whom God protects. Written with painstaking exactness, Ryan?s poems are pure distillates of meaning. Perhaps more than any other quality, her near-religious faith in poetry's ability to illuminate experience sets Ryan apart from her contemporaries. Her poems, even at their most flamboyant, are more than brilliant exhibitions of verbal wit; they are fraught with meaning and significance. Though Ryan tells truth "slant," truth it remains, obdurate as a granite. More even than her idiosyncratic style, her adherence to poetry?s ancient truth-telling function marks Ryan as a literary maverick. For "truth," say our best postmodern doctrines, is a curiously elusive thing, like the "snipe" of our childhood snipe-hunts; the formal mechanisms of language are said to be far too fluid and ephemeral to catch that flamboyantly feathered bird. Perhaps what enables Ryan to avoid so many of the era?s pitfalls is that her guiding principle is pleasure, not power. Her primary allegiance is to the poem at hand, not fashion, personality, or ideology. Though often suffused with a wily if understated feminism, her poems are too many-minded and self-questioning to espouse ideas single-mindedly. The poet climbs Parnassus alone, without map or guide--a process in which readers become privileged witnesses of a journey of discovery. Though often, like the museum-goers in "Outsider Art,? we are ?not / pleased the way we thought / we would be pleased,? we are singularly entertained at every turn of the poet?s sometimes perilous ascent. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 19 15:51:27 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 15:51:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: <76.7e4e2fb.27c2d5fd@aol.com> Message-ID: <3A91874F.5392@nut-n-but.net> I know I'm jabbering too much but where did I say or imply knowledge of a thing would not be useful to have in order to discuss it meaningfully? I'm only saying it is not necessary, and in some cases good might come of it. --Bob G. Zafano at aol.com wrote: > > I also can't understand why anyone would think that it isn't useful to have > knowledge of a subject before attempting to talk about it meaningfully. From languagethief at yahoo.com Mon Feb 19 15:55:36 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 12:55:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Unbecummings In-Reply-To: <3A916D99.39FB@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <20010219205536.83763.qmail@web12212.mail.yahoo.com> Fred Moramarco? Tad --- Bob Grumman wrote: > Gee, first John and William Logan and now > this mix up of mine of Fred Muratori with > someone else of similar name. And the list > of people who think I'm a jerk still has > the same number of names on it. Phooey. > > --Bob G. > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Feb 19 15:58:20 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:58:20 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Janet Lewis/Abbie H. Evans Message-ID: This may be Janet Lewis's most anthologized poem; it's available in the Library of America anthology, among other places: Girl Help Mild and slow and young, She moves about the room, And stirs the summer dust With her wide broom. In the warm, lofted air, Soft lips together pressed, Soft wispy hair, She stops to rest. And stops to breathe, Amid the summer hum, The great white lilac bloom Scented with days to come. --Janet Lewis, fr. *The Indians in the Woods*, 1922 --------------------------------------------------------- I would not make major claims for Lewis's poetry, myself, though fretting about the major/minor demarcation seems largely a waste of time to me in any case. Lyrics like hers are a small enduring pleasure, one I would not willingly forego for all the *Cantos* in the world. Another mostly forgotten poet unearthed in the LOA volumes is Abbie Huston Evans. Also an able maker of traditional lyrics. She did not die young as Lewis did at age 99. Older than Williams, Pound, Millay, Moore and Eliot, Evans made it to 1983 and age 102. I like Evans's poems a lot. Here's a sample from something she published when she was a mere stripling of 80. FROM AN OFFSHORE ISLAND (September Gale) Hear now the ocean trouncing off this island, The under-roar of wind down unfenced sea, And through chance flaws, like dim light down a tunnel, The bell buoy spent with distance. Orion's chill, washed, subterranean glitter Wheels up from under, and great Rigel blazes Between tossed oak boughs that the gale of autumn Tears at, lifts, lets fall. Old ocean's hoarse and implicated roaring Brings me up sitting at the dead of night, Its pent-in mouthless fury calling back The wild first of creation, The rage, the might, the rampage. How shall I Up from this anchored rock not make answer, I with my bones of rock-dust hardly knitted And my blood still salt from the sea? ---Abbie Huston Evans, from *Fact of Crystal*, 1961 --------------------------------------------------------- David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Feb 19 05:07:19 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 04:07:19 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ghost of meter Message-ID: Moira Russell wrote: "Also, with "musicality/rhythms," what exact way can we talk about these without the framework of meter and rhyme? I think it is possible to talk about "musicality" in free verse in a sort of very general subjective way, but aren't we always going to be depending in some way on the ghost of meter?" For anyone interested, an essay on free verse I originally published in Southern Review is available on line at the address below. The title is "Disorderly Orders: Free Verse, Chaos, and the Tradition." The essay goes into the whole "ghost of meter" thing. One drawback is that my scansion marks over the verse got lost when the editor translated to its online format. Paul Lake http://members.aol.com/PoeticVoices1/Disorderly.html From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 19 17:22:51 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 17:22:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/list reviews References: Message-ID: <3A919CBA.7D26@nut-n-but.net> I'm all for posting discussions of books, poems, poets, etc. here, but wonder if anyone reads them. It's no fun posting one that no one reads, so far as one knows, as has happened on occasion to me. Would it be possible to attach a counter to each posting of a discussion, so its author could see whether it was worthwhile to post again? Before ending my final post of the day (because I have to leave the Internet to free up my phone in case someone wants to call me tonight to ask me to substitute teach tomorrow), I'd like to remind everyone that I have a website at http://www.text-assessment.com where you can review anonymously and/or send letters-to-editors you know the publication you want to send them to would not publish, or the like. I also have a poetry site at http://www.geocities.com/comprepoetica/index.html where I now have almost eighty bios of poets, some fifty or sixty of their poems, and essays. I welcome poets' statements, reviews, just about anything related to any school of poetry. --Bob G. From DICK at watson.ibm.com Mon Feb 19 17:11:28 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 01 17:11:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] definitions Message-ID: <200102192223.RAA06716@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Neat list we have here. Somebody mentions "crown of sonnets", someone else defines the term, and we're all better for it. "Language poetry" has been mentioned a few times. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 19 17:25:42 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 17:25:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] poetry & pasta References: <35.10ecbddf.27c2d16d@aol.com> Message-ID: <3A919D66.1800@nut-n-but.net> > Your note reminds me of a quote (paraphrasing heavily here). > When he was 14, Picasso could draw like Rembrant and Rubens, > but it took him a lifetime to draw like a child. Yes, that's part of where I'm going. --Bob G. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 19 17:38:45 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 17:38:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviews Message-ID: <5f.111e7b05.27c2fa75@cs.com> Kay Ryan's work should be more widely known, and Paul Lake's essay is a wonderful introduction to it. She has been appearing in the New Yorker in recent years, and I've consistently enjoyed her poems more that any I've seen there in two decades (which ain't sayin' much, now that I think of it). Which is only to say that if I see her poems anywhere they're always the first I read. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Feb 19 06:36:20 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 05:36:20 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ghost 0f meter Message-ID: Thanks, Moira, for the kind words. Making it through "Disorderly Orders" involves real commitment. To answer your questions, in the cases of both the Kay Ryan essay and the longer piece in Southern Review, I wrote the essays first to please myself and then shopped them around a bit to find a home for them. If you write about something you're deeply interested in and do a good job with it, it's easier to publish essays and reviews than poems, despite their greater length. (Less competition, I guess. Everybody is going to write poems anyway, for the sheer joy of it. Criticism's not as much fun.) Sometimes, though, it's worthwhile to write an editor ahead of time about an idea for a review to see if they're interested. Paul Lake From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Mon Feb 19 20:35:42 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 20:35:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Qualifications References: Message-ID: <3A91C9ED.7B333549@providence.edu> Moira Russell wrote: > >I'm saying it didn't make sense to write conventional sonnets in the > >*modern* > >era. It makes even less sense now. If you want to wrench the form (e.g. > >Berrigan's sonnets), fine. > > But why, exactly? Because the modern world is so broken-up and distressing? Not distressing, necessarily, but different. This ties in to my central gripe about mainstream poetry -- formal or free verse. In its very essence, it seems reactionary, as if it wants to deny the complexity of modernity and reduce it to a first person narrative rendered in language that aspires to transparency. That sometimes gets called romantic subjectivity, but the Romantics never had views of language or the self that were that reductive. In other words, the poetry that gets published in The New Yorker, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, etc. etc., is largely a form of anti-modernism. I'm not saying you have to love this world -- far from it. Wordsworth hated industrialization -- but he knew it existed. Mainstream poetry seems to me like something written by the NEA winners in Petticoat Junction. Speaking of which -- hasn't Billy Collins read on A Prairie Home Companion? > It seems to me an argument could just as easily be made that such a time > would _require_ sonnets (or formal poetry) -- why are only "wrenched" forms > acceptable to you? It sounds as though, if this argument extended to > figurative art, it would no longer be aesthetically proper to draw a > realistic human figure. The better analogy would be that it's no longer possible to paint a still life with a dead squab in it. I like ragtime, but when I hear someone playing ragtime now it's almost always like a trip to the museum: "remember the good old days?" I feel the same way about blues: on a Saturday night you can go to any decent-sized town in America and hear a band that has a name like Big Bob and the Houserockers doing covers of "Sweet Home Chicago" and "Bright Lights, Big City." Once upon a time that was new and radical, but to borrow a line from Ashbery "you can't say it that way anymore." That doesn't mean we throw out the past, but it also doen't mean we start wearing hoop skirts and spats. > > > I was thinking of the free verse of today, which seems > > > to consist mainly of poems longer than 10 lines but shorter than 30, > > >This describes an extremely limited range of contemporary poetry. > > But this is the poetry I most often see even in literary quarterlies, and > revised by the NYTBR for example -- a recent (I think) review of the new > volume of poems "The Beautiful Husband". You're absolutely right -- and that's the problem. The really interesting stuff (to my mind, anyway) comes out in small journals like Jacket, Big Allis, Kenning, The East Village Web and others that vanish after a few issues. It gets published in webzines that specialize in cyberwriting. It gets self-published, or published by people who are ecstatic if they break even. > Even though the "New Yorker" ran a > long flattering profile on Jorie Graham a year or two ago they don't publish > a lot of her poetry. They used to -- Vendler was a big supporter of hers. I'm not wild about Jorie Graham, but at least she's doing something different. The only Big Names in contemporary poetry who are operating outside the conventions are she and Ashbery (whose work I like a lot) and it's interesting to note that both of them have had major academic critics on their sides (Vendler and Bloom). I think that's an indication of how pathological contemporary poetry has become. Bill Freind From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 19 17:10:07 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 13:10:07 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/list reviews Message-ID: Reading reviews of poetry books/books about poetry certainly does sound more fun than sniping, and with the eclectic mix of people here, there ought to be a pretty interesting range of books discussed. Would we just send our reviews out, alert the moderator, or what? What about re-posting some reviews which may have appeared on Cap-L to get us started? Moira Russell Seattle, WA >From: David Graham >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/list reviews >Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 14:13:45 -0600 >Before we get too carried away with sniping across those old weary battle >lines (free verse vs. traditional, la-di-da-ho-hum), I'd like to second >Tad's plug for reviving the excellent practice of talking about particular >poems, poets, and books. >I thought that the short-lived go-round of reviewing actual books on CAP-L >was a great idea. I'm all for renewing that notion here, if at all >possible. >Of course, one virtue of a list such as this is that no one has to wait to >be asked. Got some thoughts about a recently published book? Why not >share them, with an example or two for the benefit of those who haven't >access to the book? This list offers an excellent opportunity for such >exchange, and a "review" here doesn't need to be as formal or as lengthy as >one of William Logan's *New Criterion* pieces. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Feb 19 23:54:32 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 22:54:32 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Innovation, Tradition, Selfhood In-Reply-To: <3A91C9ED.7B333549@providence.edu> References: Message-ID: I imagine everyone necessarily draws some line between a fresh, interesting use of tradition, and mere re-hash. Few will deny all connection to the past, and even the farthest from the middle of whatever road will commonly point to precursors, honored models, and so forth. For some, it isn't rehash or archaism until you're actually thee- and thou-ing, or eliding syll'bles for the meter; for them, there's nothing inherently retrograde about meter and the rest of it. For others, any whiff of conventional form consigns the work to that deadly dustbin of the outmoded or reactionary. And many--myself included--not only occupy the rather broad and varied terrain between those extremes, but weary fast of any broom that wants to sweep away the differences between, say, Yusef Komunyakaa and Billy Collins, or Marilyn Hacker and Dana Gioia, or Lyn Hejinian and Bob Perelman. We may even think that Billy Collins has merits that do not necessarily call John Ashbery's work into question, and vice versa. My particular hobby horse is the argument that mainstream poetry tends to be simplistic in its employment of the first person, somehow denying the complexities of modern life via its treatment of subjectivity. This is a vast argument, I know, and that's one of the problems I continually have with most instances where it crops up--its sweeping nature. I would like to see more examples, along with explanation of how the lyric-I gets implicated, for such readers, in this sort of historical reductiveness. I've read a lot of such arguments (in fact I should probably come clean about the fact that I'm co-editor of a forthcoming anthology of essays on the topic of autobiographical poetry, so the issue resonates for me). In any case, the connections often drawn between formal choices (including relatively unified or fragmented presentation of self) and historical necessity have frequently struck me as somewhat shaky. Of course, I know that many see things differently. David Graham =============================================== >Moira Russell wrote: > >> >I'm saying it didn't make sense to write conventional sonnets in the >> >*modern* >> >era. It makes even less sense now. If you want to wrench the form (e.g. >> >Berrigan's sonnets), fine. >> >> But why, exactly? Because the modern world is so broken-up and distressing? > >Not distressing, necessarily, but different. This ties in to my central gripe >about mainstream poetry -- formal or free verse. In its very essence, it seems >reactionary, as if it wants to deny the complexity of modernity and reduce >it to >a first person narrative rendered in language that aspires to >transparency. That >sometimes gets called romantic subjectivity, but the Romantics never had views >of language or the self that were that reductive. > >In other words, the poetry that gets published in The New Yorker, Poetry, >Prairie Schooner, etc. etc., is largely a form of anti-modernism. I'm not >saying >you have to love this world -- far from it. Wordsworth hated industrialization >-- but he knew it existed. Mainstream poetry seems to me like something >written >by the NEA winners in Petticoat Junction. Speaking of which -- hasn't Billy >Collins read on A Prairie Home Companion? > >> It seems to me an argument could just as easily be made that such a time >> would _require_ sonnets (or formal poetry) -- why are only "wrenched" forms >> acceptable to you? It sounds as though, if this argument extended to >> figurative art, it would no longer be aesthetically proper to draw a >> realistic human figure. > >The better analogy would be that it's no longer possible to paint a still life >with a dead squab in it. I like ragtime, but when I hear someone playing >ragtime >now it's almost always like a trip to the museum: "remember the good old >days?" >I feel the same way about blues: on a Saturday night you can go to any >decent-sized town in America and hear a band that has a name like Big Bob and >the Houserockers doing covers of "Sweet Home Chicago" and "Bright Lights, Big >City." Once upon a time that was new and radical, but to borrow a line from >Ashbery "you can't say it that way anymore." That doesn't mean we throw >out the >past, but it also doen't mean we start wearing hoop skirts and spats. > >> > > I was thinking of the free verse of today, which seems >> > > to consist mainly of poems longer than 10 lines but shorter than 30, >> >> >This describes an extremely limited range of contemporary poetry. >> >> But this is the poetry I most often see even in literary quarterlies, and >> revised by the NYTBR for example -- a recent (I think) review of the new >> volume of poems "The Beautiful Husband". > >You're absolutely right -- and that's the problem. The really interesting >stuff >(to my mind, anyway) comes out in small journals like Jacket, Big Allis, >Kenning, The East Village Web and others that vanish after a few issues. >It gets >published in webzines that specialize in cyberwriting. It gets self-published, >or published by people who are ecstatic if they break even. > >> Even though the "New Yorker" ran a >> long flattering profile on Jorie Graham a year or two ago they don't publish >> a lot of her poetry. > >They used to -- Vendler was a big supporter of hers. I'm not wild about Jorie >Graham, but at least she's doing something different. The only Big Names in >contemporary poetry who are operating outside the conventions are she and >Ashbery (whose work I like a lot) and it's interesting to note that both >of them >have had major academic critics on their sides (Vendler and Bloom). I think >that's an indication of how pathological contemporary poetry has become. > >Bill Freind __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 20 00:15:29 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 00:15:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Innovation, Tradition, Selfhood Message-ID: <49.7a438eb.27c35771@cs.com> In a message dated 2/19/2001 10:53:53 PM Central Standard Time, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > My particular hobby horse is the argument that mainstream poetry tends to > be simplistic in its employment of the first person, somehow denying the > complexities of modern life via its treatment of subjectivity. This is a > vast argument, I know, and that's one of the problems I continually have > with most instances where it crops up--its sweeping nature. I would like > to see more examples, along with explanation of how the lyric-I gets > implicated, for such readers, in this sort of historical reductiveness. What amazes me is to leaf through an anthology and read the number of poems that mention a family member--my father, my uncle, my sister, my second cousin twice removed--in the opening two or three lines. Can anyone list--off the top of his or her head--a dozen poems written before 1940 that do this? The only one that springs immediately to mind is Marianne Moore's "Silence," and it's not even about the poet's own father. Was poets in early eras not as advanced as we is? From Jandhodge at aol.com Tue Feb 20 01:09:44 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 01:09:44 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Qualifications Message-ID: <3b.10a6d85b.27c36428@aol.com> Bill Freind wrote: << Leaving aside the very pertinent question of whether it now makes any sense to write sonnets at all, I think there's a much more important issue: will the reviewer be subtle and generous enough to talk about really *new* poetry? Anyone can buy a copy of Turco's book of forms, but how many people can talk about innovative poetry -- especially now, when manstream poetry is probably more safe and unchallenging as it has been in any time in history? >> Ah, the neat platitudes of revolution! To chuck the tried with easy "irrelevance" as if some necessary diminution inhered in form despite its resonance. I grant it's good to innovate--find new, defiant strategies to sound the times and stir the language in its crusty stew. But save room for the sonnet's measured rhymes; don't rush to consign it living to its tomb. It's served us well five centuries and more and many still discover within it room to sing or grieve or pray . . . or even bore. Writing didn't displace our taste for talk, and cars are nice, but it can be good to walk. Isn't the question rather how many people can (and are willing to) talk intelligently about good poetry, whether "traditional" or "innovative"? Why is it self-evident that it wouldn't make sense to write sonnets? No one I trust would argue that mere knowledge of forms makes good poetry; isn't any form as good (or as bad) as the writer employing it? Jan D. Hodge From griffinbaker at home.com Tue Feb 20 01:38:42 2001 From: griffinbaker at home.com (Mark Baker) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 22:38:42 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Innovation, Tradition, Selfhood References: <49.7a438eb.27c35771@cs.com> Message-ID: <3A9210F2.B4D5456B@home.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Feb 20 02:01:07 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 23:01:07 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Innovation, Tradition, Selfhood Message-ID: <20010220070107.A26D42742@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Feb 20 02:34:36 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 23:34:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Qualifications Message-ID: <20010220073436.BDA5436F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From JackKerouac25 at aol.com Mon Feb 19 15:28:19 2001 From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 15:28:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Philip Levine Message-ID: <8f.7190f45.27c2dbe3@aol.com> New-Poetry Listers, I've been reading Philip Levine lately--a habit, since he is one my favorite poets and favorite models. One thing I've noticed is that, although Levine is Jewish, he rarely approaches this subject in his work. I've been reading his latest, _The Mercy_, and while it does have some wonderful portraits of his childhood days--nothing new for Levine, I know--he never approaches his Jewish heritage. I have a copy of his memior/biography book of essays, _The Bread of Time_, but I can't find anything relating to his heritage. Has there been any work done regarding Levine's Jewish heritage? Please get back to me, if you can. I'd love to swap ideas and share info. Thanks, Jeff Newberry From BEGGSM at hsu.edu Mon Feb 19 16:25:21 2001 From: BEGGSM at hsu.edu (BEGGS, MARCK) Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 15:25:21 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ghost of meter Message-ID: <6324ABED2FA4D2118E2800104B22EDE2010AC4DE@ex.hsu.edu> Paul, <> This is what happens when you deal with amateurs....ha, ha. Well, maybe it is NOT funny. Why don't more online editors take such details seriously? Marck L. Beggs, Editor Arkansas Literary Forum www.hsu.edu/dept/alf From joris at albany.edu Tue Feb 20 08:23:38 2001 From: joris at albany.edu (Pierre Joris) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 08:23:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] definitions In-Reply-To: <200102192223.RAA06716@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Message-ID: -----Original Message----- From: new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu Neat list we have here. Somebody mentions "crown of sonnets", someone else defines the term, and we're all better for it. "Language poetry" has been mentioned a few times. >From time to time I've tried to found out what it is, without success. Help? Richard I don't think it helps to give brief definitions of something as complex as, say, Language poetry -- or any other such movement. But, I am right now reading Lyn Hejinian's marvellous collection of essays, _The Language of Inquiry_ (U of California Press, 2000)& recommend it to anyone wanting to find out what L-poetry is or can be. It's an absolutely superb book. Pierre ________________________________________________________________ Pierre Joris "Let me tell you about Florida politicians. I make them out of 6 Madison Place whole cloth, just like a tailor makes a suit. I get their name in the Albany NY 12202 newspaper.I get them some publicity and get them on the ballot. Tel: (518) 426-0433 Then after the election, we count the votes. And if they don?t turn Fax: (518) 426-3722 out right we recount them. And recount them again. Until they do.? Email: joris@ albany.edu - Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo. Url: ____________________________________________________________________________ _ From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Tue Feb 20 09:37:01 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 09:37:01 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom References: <49.7a438eb.27c35771@cs.com> Message-ID: <3A92810C.3A21B106@providence.edu> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > What amazes me is to leaf through an anthology and read the number of poems > that mention a family member--my father, my uncle, my sister, my second > cousin twice removed--in the opening two or three lines. Can anyone > list--off the top of his or her head--a dozen poems written before 1940 that > do this? You're absolutely right, but you left out the most overused one: the grandparent, which is usually the grandmother. It's an essentially nostalgic move: grandparent as source of tradition in the face of the uncertainty of contemporary society. I had a friend in a creative writing workshop who observed that most people begin writing poetry when a grandparent dies. Anyway, I think this all goes back to Lowell's Uncle Devereux. Charles Bernstein analyzes how incredibly formulaic these poems are, even when written by people of color or marginalized ethnic groups. They typically take place in a kitchen or mention food in some way. Bill Freind From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 20 09:03:33 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 09:03:33 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: <70.800d1ba.27c3d335@aol.com> Moira, quite a few free verse poems make use of refrains...esp. in more ecstatic modes...Joy Harjo's "She Had Some Horses," comes to mind...also, in more understated ways...Linda Gregg's beautiful lyric "Let Birds." And anaphora, a close kin to outright refrain, is all over the place in free verse poetry. & lots of other musical or sonic effects get employed...not "ta-tum ta-tum," of course, but, for example, the use of internal close/half rimes. Creating resonance line to line. Richard Hugo discusses his use of this effect in one of his writing essays. I wouldn't put voice or diction in category of necessarily "narrative"... in lyric poetry "voice" is often the only way we can talk about the speaker (because he/she is so ill-defined). Diction, often as it applies to tone is exploited in free verse, as well...the downhomey lyrics of Wm. Stafford employ a diction different from the controlled casualness of say, Stephen Dunn. I think it's pretty much the same set of issues a critic addresses whether free verse or formal. And a critic who dwelt too long on the relatively well-known forms and trad meters, would hardly be doing his/her readers a service. Finnegan << There's lots more to talk about in free verse than you indicate: >theme/subject (or lack thereof), musicality/rhythms, repetitions/refrains, >distance or closeness (emotionally), diction (stately, informal, high/low), >that old bugabo the speaker's "voice." Hmmm, I don't think I have seen that many free verse poems with a lot of refrains -- and couldn't you argue that when a "free verse" poem has a refrain it is no longer vers libre but is instead in some kind of form? Also, with "musicality/rhythms," what exact way can we talk about these without the framework of meter and rhyme? I think it is possible to talk about "musicality" in free verse in a sort of very general subjective way, but aren't we always going to be depending in some way on the ghost of meter? So what, exactly, are the standards we are depending on? Re diction, voice, and so on -- don't these fit into the more "narrative" way of analyzing poetry? If you're going to be analyzing "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death," for instance, I would imagine it is at least as important to note the meter and the end-rhymes as it is to talk about the speaker's identity. What you zero in on seems as common to short stories as to free verse, and this seems to be part of the problem to me. >> From KaeseWoche at aol.com Tue Feb 20 09:55:58 2001 From: KaeseWoche at aol.com (KaeseWoche at aol.com) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 09:55:58 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Philip Levine Message-ID: <80.717e6d6.27c3df7e@aol.com> JackKerouac25 at aol.com (Jeff Newberry) writes: > . I've been reading > his latest, _The Mercy_, and while it does have some wonderful portraits of > his childhood days--nothing new for Levine, I know--he never approaches his > Jewish heritage. In that book he seems to address it only briefly, and as a kind of difference, otherness, or something that's not something else. For example, there's a poem whose speaker, an orphan, remembers the foster mother or head of the orphanage making him pray to "her god" (lower-case) at bedtime; and in the title poem the immigrant prays in Russian and Yiddish, but when some passengers and sailors die and are buried at sea, there are strange prayers in a strange language. The adolescent who's just arrived in New York surprises the owner of a kosher restaurant with the fact that "they got Jews in Detroit!" These characters are depicted as minority Jews in a majority-Christian society, but no, the difference doesn't seem to be explored all that much, just noted. Bruce Tindall Dallas, Texas From gmcvay at patriot.net Tue Feb 20 10:09:30 2001 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 10:09:30 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >>>In short, thank God for William Logan. Many a year ago, I worked on the AWP Chronicle, back when it was called that, and had to deal with many senseless phone calls from Dr. Logan complaining that the articles were boring (not untrue) and we should cut them out entirely and run a sheet of only ads. I do not think it is God who is responsible for the phenomenon of William Logan. Gwyn From TerryP17 at aol.com Tue Feb 20 10:17:56 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 10:17:56 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ghost of meter Message-ID: <30.10b875c3.27c3e4a4@aol.com> All-- RE: how poems with scansion or anything else actually appear on a Web page. The Web sometimes poses a challenge to editors who are trying to produce a printed page faithfully on a Web page, as I well know, having messed up a few posted poems on Edge City Review's website. Problem is that sometimes an editor thinks he or she has gotten it right, and it looks right on the editor's machine, but then it shows up wrong or not at all on other folk's computers. Part of this is due to an editor's not fully grasping all the nuances of html (my problem). A lot of it is due to people who use old rev numbers of browsers which respond in quirky ways to newly-created html commands employed by the latest browser versions (like "cascading style sheets"). And part of it is due to the size of the user's computer screen, which varies quite a lot. And, of course, yes, you could also have a lousy or inattentive editor. It happens. In a print magazine, the solution for me for problems like this has been to use a monospaced font like Courier when placing scansion marks. (Technically, many standard web fonts are monospaced as well, but it doesn't always work this way.) Maybe, with a challenging poetry setting or scansion, a solution could be to format the poem and/or scansion in Courier in Microsoft Word, say, then make a downloadable PDF out of it. The PDF should display properly on pretty much any machine. If you have Acrobat Reader installed. Well, enough tech talk for today. --Terry Ponick, Ed. Edge City Review terryp17 at aol.com From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Tue Feb 20 10:43:55 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 09:43:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Philip Levine In-Reply-To: <8f.7190f45.27c2dbe3@aol.com> Message-ID: Although I do not specifically investigate "work done regarding Levine's Jewish heritage," since you are reading _The Mercy_ and others have suggested sharing reviews with the list, this may be a good place to mention my review of _The Mercy_ written a couple years ago and available at the following: http://wwwstage.valpo.edu/english/vpr/byrneessay.html --Edward Byrne > I've been reading Philip Levine lately--a habit, since he is one my > favorite poets and favorite models. One thing I've noticed is that, > although Levine is Jewish, he rarely approaches this subject in his > work. I've been reading his latest, _The Mercy_, and while it does > have some wonderful portraits of his childhood days--nothing new for > Levine, I know--he never approaches his Jewish heritage. > > I have a copy of his memior/biography book of essays, _The Bread of > Time_, but I can't find anything relating to his heritage. > > Has there been any work done regarding Levine's Jewish heritage? > Please get back to me, if you can. I'd love to swap ideas and share > info. > > Thanks, > > Jeff Newberry -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Feb 20 11:22:51 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 10:22:51 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Philip Levine In-Reply-To: <8f.7190f45.27c2dbe3@aol.com> Message-ID: Interesting point about Levine. If you go looking for Jewish spirituality in his work, of course, there's not going to be much to talk about in that old atheist/anarchist. There are at least glancing references to other aspects of his heritage, though, from the early poems "Uncle" and "Zaydee" to the poems that describe ethnic prejudice against Jews. ("The Sweetness of Bobby Hefka," "Coming of Age in Michigan"). Then there is "The Seventh Summer" ("How could I not know God had a son? / the biggest kid asked."), "Jewish Graveyards, Italy," etc. But you're right: it's not a dominant theme. David Graham __________________________ >New-Poetry Listers, > >I've been reading Philip Levine lately--a habit, since he is one my favorite >poets and favorite models. One thing I've noticed is that, although Levine >is Jewish, he rarely approaches this subject in his work. I've been reading >his latest, _The Mercy_, and while it does have some wonderful portraits of >his childhood days--nothing new for Levine, I know--he never approaches his >Jewish heritage. > >I have a copy of his memior/biography book of essays, _The Bread of Time_, >but I can't find anything relating to his heritage. > >Has there been any work done regarding Levine's Jewish heritage? Please get >back to me, if you can. I'd love to swap ideas and share info. > >Thanks, > >Jeff Newberry __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 20 13:48:21 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 09:48:21 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviews Message-ID: >Kay Ryan's work should be more widely known, and Paul Lake's essay is a >wonderful introduction to it. I agree. Based on what Paul quoted, I will look up some of her books, and I really enjoyed reading the essay. Let's try to have more high-quality review-essays like this -- it would be great if there were more on lesser-known poets -- I can't imagine why I have never heard of her, her work is so good. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 20 13:57:13 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 09:57:13 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Innovation, Tradition, Selfhood Message-ID: David Graham wrote: >My particular hobby horse is the argument that mainstream poetry tends to >be simplistic in its employment of the first person, somehow denying the >complexities of modern life via its treatment of subjectivity. This is a >vast argument, I know, and that's one of the problems I continually have >with most instances where it crops up--its sweeping nature. I would like >to see more examples, along with explanation of how the lyric-I gets >implicated, for such readers, in this sort of historical reductiveness. For some of us, the unrelieved autobiographical nature of a lot of poetry is as seemingly hackneyed as, well, sonnets are to others on this list....the first-person present-tense short lyric poem about 1) love 2) one's parents 3) possibly both wears on me terribly at this point. In the era of the "Poet in the Gray Flannel Suit," as Randall Jarrell put it, it was revolutionary and dynamic when Elizabeth Bishop wrote about her experience of sudden alienation in a waiting room among the National Geographics, or when Lowell wrote "Tamed by Miltown, we lie on mother's bed" and, in the words of A. Alvarez (I think) "you realize that's not a prop there with him, that's another human being." It was a welcome change from a lot of the overly worked "Peter Quince at the Clavier" stuff the period was drowning in. But now.....it seems love affairs, abortions, breakups and even mental breakdowns are about as hackneyed as rainbows, flowers, spring meadows and first snowfalls ever were....Not to say that autobiographical writing is bad, or even writing about such subjective topics is bad, or that poets shouldn't draw on their own lives for inspiration (what else do we have to draw on?). But there's a certain cookie-cutter sameness that makes me think, as an admitted outsider, that a lot of this work is a lot less revolutionary than the people writing it think it is. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From dweinsto at jaguar.middlebury.edu Tue Feb 20 13:59:21 2001 From: dweinsto at jaguar.middlebury.edu (Weinstock, David) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 13:59:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom Message-ID: <5F0819E34A27D411AFD400D0B77CF9B70170A4AE@leopard.middlebury.edu> I've noticed an even more formulaic strain of grandparent poetry: the grandparent-dying-of-cancer poem. And it must be cancer, no lesser disease. Pneumonia doesn't count. Congestive heart failure is infra dig. Only cancer seems to have the right stuff for poetry. David Weinstock Middlebury, VT From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 20 14:01:35 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 10:01:35 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: I think we are defining free verse in different ways. I would say a poem with refrains in it occurring every stanza or so is, by definition, not free verse. But why do you confine formal effects to "ta-tum ta-tum"? Moira Russell Seattle, WA >From: JforJames at aol.com >Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan >Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 09:03:33 EST > >Moira, quite a few free verse poems make use of refrains...esp. >in more ecstatic modes...Joy Harjo's "She Had Some Horses," >comes to mind...also, in more understated ways...Linda Gregg's >beautiful lyric "Let Birds." And anaphora, a close kin to outright refrain, >is all over the place in free verse poetry. & lots of other musical >or sonic effects get employed...not "ta-tum ta-tum," of course, but, >for example, the use of internal close/half rimes. Creating resonance >line to line. Richard Hugo discusses his use of this effect in one of >his writing essays. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Feb 20 02:55:40 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 01:55:40 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Qualifications Message-ID: Bill Friend writes: "In other words, the poetry that gets published in The New Yorker, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, etc. etc., is largely a form of anti-modernism." Bill, instead of calling it "anti-modernism" and thus unhip and "bad," how about calling it post-postmodernism." That would make it cutting edge and thus good. "Not distressing, necessarily, but different. This ties in to my central gripe about mainstream poetry -- formal or free verse. In its very essence, it seems reactionary, as if it wants to deny the complexity of modernity and reduce it to a first person narrative rendered in language that aspires to transparency." Bill, one could say the same thing about your letter. Every word in your letter precedes Modernism, and your orderly syntax and grammar betray a pre-Modernist sense of form and order--as well as a belief in the ability of words to convey meaning. Your style suggests you believe in language's transparency. There's even a narrative element in parts of your letter, which, one might argue, makes it as outdated as spats and hoopskirts. When you write a letter, you want it to communicate. Modernist fragmentation and Ashberian dithering are off-putting in letters because they impede communication by annoying and distracting readers. Though we give poetry more latitude, why should we suspend conventions that make communication possible in a never-ending quest for innovation? Why not, instead, make language richer, deeper, and MORE orderly than the ordinary prose by employing things like poetic rhythm, form, and even narrative? Paul Lake From fmm1 at cornell.edu Tue Feb 20 14:07:02 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 14:07:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom In-Reply-To: <3A92810C.3A21B106@providence.edu> References: <49.7a438eb.27c35771@cs.com> Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010220134252.00a20c70@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> At 09:37 AM 2/20/01 -0500, you wrote: >You're absolutely right, but you left out the most overused one: the >grandparent, >which is usually the grandmother. It's an essentially nostalgic move: >grandparent >as source of tradition in the face of the uncertainty of contemporary >society. I >had a friend in a creative writing workshop who observed that most people >begin >writing poetry when a grandparent dies. Anyway, I think this all goes back to >Lowell's Uncle Devereux. > >Charles Bernstein analyzes how incredibly formulaic these poems are, even when >written by people of color or marginalized ethnic groups. They typically take >place in a kitchen or mention food in some way. > > >Bill Freind This sense of sameness or formula despite ethnic/racial differences really came across to me in an anthology titled _Identity Lessons_, which appeared a year or two ago. So many of the poems were flat (if sometimes finely drawn), prosaic portraits of family members, and yes, lots of food imagery, catalogs really. I think personal poems about family became legit poetic subject matter with the Confessionals (Plath, Lowell), who were often obsessed with psychoanalysis and rebelled against parents and rigid family traditions as an act toward self-definition. But much of what I've read since the 70s seems far less harrowing, and more in the mode of nostalgia, a preservation of the personal. I remember a poet-classmate in grad school once joking that you'd always have a subject if you had relatives who wore babushkas -- this after reading Norman Dubie. There were lots of borderline surreal European peasant poems showing up back then, probably due to the influence of Simic. Creative Writing Workshop culture had a role here, too, since I know many students were (are?) advised to write poems about photographs to get the juices going, and what's handier than the family photo album? For a long time -- at least up through and beyond WWII -- ethnic Americans especially were encouraged to sublimate their ethnic cultural traits toward the greater good of assimilation. But then the Baby Boomers, realizing that they were also losing the heritage that their parents were all too happy to lose, starting picking the brains of grandparents to take up the dropped threads. This process is obviously still going on, and poetry is one of the channels through which it's manifested. Hey, I'd love to write a whole essay on this, but I gotta go... --Fred M(uratori) From dweinsto at jaguar.middlebury.edu Tue Feb 20 14:11:48 2001 From: dweinsto at jaguar.middlebury.edu (Weinstock, David) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 14:11:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ghost of meter Message-ID: <5F0819E34A27D411AFD400D0B77CF9B70170A4AF@leopard.middlebury.edu> Terry Ponick wrote: >The Web sometimes poses a challenge to editors who are trying to produce >a printed page faithfully on a Web page May I recommend an excellent book which bridges the gap between classic graphic design and Web design: Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton, Yale University Press, 1999. The book is particularly strong on how to create "durable content" for the web--publications which need to stay up and stay useful for a long time: reference works, journals, etc. David Weinstock Middlebury, VT From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Tue Feb 20 14:38:33 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 14:38:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry and prose In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010220143833.0087c690@postoffice.providence.edu> At 01:55 AM 2/20/01 -0600, Paul Lake wrote: > >Bill, one could say the same thing about your letter. Every word in your >letter precedes Modernism, and your orderly syntax and grammar betray a >pre-Modernist sense of form and order--as well as a belief in the ability of >words to convey meaning. Yes, but my letter isn't poetry. Your point is telling, though, since from my perspective the poetry of most mainstream poets aspires to the condition of prose. I don't mean that as pejoratively as it sounds: my point is that the work of Dana Gioia or Billy Collins or Merwin or Dove, etc., etc. usually doesn't seem much different from a newspaper article, or from an e-mail message. Read it once, slowly, and it's done. >When you write a letter, you want it to communicate. Modernist >fragmentation and Ashberian dithering are off-putting in letters because >they impede communication by annoying and distracting readers. Your assumption here seems to be that there is something outside of the poem to communicate, that poetry is the process of taking ideas and translating them into another poetic language. If that's the case, why not write a simple, expository essay? That's not a rhetorical question. Bill Freind From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 20 14:37:40 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 10:37:40 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reviewing Poetry/more Logan Message-ID: >for those of us outside here with little library access, can you wuggest a >good source of reviewing by Disch? A good place to start on the web is http://www.michaelscycles.freeserve.co.uk/tmd.htm although "Castle" should be fairly available. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From jdavis at panix.com Tue Feb 20 14:39:17 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 14:39:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Carjack In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Good to see a certain consistency from list to list -- Paul, instead of putting forth non-readings of Bill's post, how about engaging with the conventions of naming -- such as that the prefix "post-" implies a connection with the original term. For example, the adjective "post-war" implies that whatever it modifies has had to adjust to the results of some conflict. I'd argue, and I daresay Bill already did, that there is a body of work that _refuses_ to adjust to the aftermath of post-modernism, just as there was a body of work that _refused_ to adjust to the aftermath of modernism. If anti-modernism strikes you as unhip, and it's hipness you seek, why not try immodernism, or non-post-modernism. Those'll derail 'em, you betcha. Jordan Davis On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, Paul Lake wrote: > > Bill Friend writes: > > "In other words, the poetry that gets published in The New Yorker, Poetry, > Prairie Schooner, etc. etc., is largely a form of anti-modernism." > > Bill, instead of calling it "anti-modernism" and thus unhip and "bad," how > about calling it post-postmodernism." That would make it cutting edge and > thus good. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Feb 20 03:41:08 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 02:41:08 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Prose virtues Message-ID: Bill, I agree with Ezra Pound that poetry should, at the very least, possess the virtues of good prose. But of course poetry should be even richer than good prose. As to your statement below-- "Your assumption here seems to be that there is something outside of the poem to communicate, that poetry is the process of taking ideas and translating them into another poetic language. If that's the case, why not write a simple, expository essay? That's not a rhetorical question." --I find I'm largely in agreement with part of this. The poem itself is the act of communication. Writing a poem--which is always a process--is a way of finding or inventing the embodied meaning of the poem itself, in all its complexity. The conventional view--that a "poem of process" is necessarily irregular in form, incomplete, and difficult to read--seems outdated to me. Paul Lake From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 20 14:56:05 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 10:56:05 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Another by Janet Lewis Message-ID: Janet Lewis doesn't appear to have much of a presence on the Net, but I did find three of her poems (one already quoted), and here are the other two: Early Morning The path The spider makes through the air, Invisible, Until the light touches it. The path The light makes through the air Invisible, Until it finds the spider?s web. October Morning The pump froze, the trees Were hoar with mist In the plumed branch Of white pine Near the woodshed door Were dozens of honey bees. Although I agree that fiddling and fretting around about who is Great and who is not (the "majah/minah" syndrome) is pretty much a waste of time, I was just interested to see what her poetry actually consisted of since Yvor Winters had praised it so highly, and he certainly fretted greatly (sorry) about who was Great. Searching for "Yvor Winters" on google.com brings up some pretty amazing one-line imagistic early experimental stuff. I wonder how he would feel about it being world-wide available decades later.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 20 14:59:15 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 14:59:15 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: <57.11cede72.27c42693@aol.com> > But why do you confine formal effects to "ta-tum ta-tum"? Moira, I didn't mean to. That was just my shorthand way of contrasting free verse with formal; free verse being defined (oversimply) as poetry having irregular (or random) sonic effects; non-conforming to any of the established meters or known forms (of which there are many; & probably many more than I know). Finnegan From TerryP17 at aol.com Tue Feb 20 15:04:21 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 15:04:21 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ghost of meter Message-ID: <46.10dd4eea.27c427c5@aol.com> David, In a message dated 2/20/01 2:13:16 PM, dweinsto at jaguar.middlebury.edu writes: << May I recommend an excellent book which bridges the gap between classic graphic design and Web design: Web Style Guide: Basic Design Principles for Creating Web Sites, by Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton, Yale University Press, 1999. The book is particularly strong on how to create "durable content" for the web--publications which need to stay up and stay useful for a long time: reference works, journals, etc. >> Thanx--I'll check this out. Good suggestion. --Terry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 20 15:04:52 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 15:04:52 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom Message-ID: <49.7aa30f2.27c427e4@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/01 12:35:19 PM Central Standard Time, wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu writes: > > Charles Bernstein analyzes how incredibly formulaic these poems are, even > when > written by people of color or marginalized ethnic groups. They typically > take > place in a kitchen or mention food in some way. > > Good point. I think even Adrienne Rich has one that does this. From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Tue Feb 20 15:27:08 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 15:27:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] APB on difficulty In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010220152708.0088fdd0@postoffice.providence.edu> At 02:41 AM 2/20/01 -0600, Paul Lake wrote: The conventional view--that a "poem of process" is necessarily >irregular in form, incomplete, and difficult to read--seems outdated to me. > Hey, whatever happened to difficulty? I don't mean obscurity, which suggests that the "meaning" could be un-obscured. I mean poetry that really challenges the reader to rethink language itself. Here's an example. Walking around the Toledo Art Museum, I heard a couple of women discussing the paintings. It was obvious they had no formal training in art history, but they stopped in front of a de Kooning and said "I like that." I guess some arrangement of colors and form pleased them. It certainly wasn't the heroic ab-ex stance that was reaching them. So why are so many readers of poetry who *have* formal training, and who continue to read and write poetry, reluctant to deal with the opacities, discontinuities and semi-referentiality of (for instance) Blake, Heine, Lautreamont, Rimbaud, Loy, Stein, Soupault, Desnos, Cesaire, Khlebnikov -- not to mention Hejinian, Watten, Rosemarie Waldrop? Cubism didn't "kill" representational painting, but it damn sure made artists rethink their stance toward fixed perspectives and a whole host of music. Schoenberg didn't "kill" seven-tone music, but he levelled some pretty pointed questions at it. Ditto Cage. On the other hand, most mainstream poetry isn't just anti-modern: it shows no connection with any work that comes before Auden. I think that pretty clearly indicates how safe and downright reactionary mainstream poetry has become. There are all sorts of ways to challenge the mods. Pretending they didn't exist isn't one of them. Bill Freind From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 20 15:27:27 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 11:27:27 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: > > But why do you confine formal effects to "ta-tum ta-tum"? > >Moira, I didn't mean to. That was just my shorthand way of >contrasting free verse with formal; free verse being defined >(oversimply) as poetry having irregular (or random) sonic effects; >non-conforming to any of the established meters or known forms >(of which there are many; & probably many more than I know). Hmm, how about "lub-dub lub-dub"? That would seem to be a nice shorthand for the iambic form, which arguably is based on the rhythm of the human heart and hence at the base of all our formal structures built up like nautilus shells around it. "Ta-tum ta-tum" just seems a bit dismissive. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 20 15:29:54 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 11:29:54 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] APB on difficulty Message-ID: Bill, what exactly do you mean by "mainstream poetry"? I am not sure what you are referring to. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From mbales at cybergate.net Tue Feb 20 15:44:37 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 15:44:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Qualifications In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Bill Friend writes: > "In other words, the poetry that gets published in The New Yorker, > Poetry, Prairie Schooner, etc. etc., is largely a form of > anti-modernism." I'm afraid this confuses me entirely. In what sense is the the poetry published in those magazines anti-modern? mbales at cybergate.net From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Tue Feb 20 15:44:07 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 15:44:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] APB on difficulty In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010220154407.0087c290@postoffice.providence.edu> At 11:29 AM 2/20/01 -0900, Moira wrote: > >Bill, what exactly do you mean by "mainstream poetry"? I am not sure what >you are referring to. I was wondering when someone was going to ask me that. Almost any of the stuff that gets published in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, etc. The poets who get laureated. Most of the poets who win Pulitzers, National Book Awards, National Book Critics Circle Awards. Who get reviewed in the New York Times or NYRB or The Nation. Who read on NPR. Bill Freind From klvarnes at home.com Tue Feb 20 16:16:15 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 15:16:15 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom In-Reply-To: <49.7aa30f2.27c427e4@cs.com> Message-ID: I'm disturbed by the assumptions here, that "people of color or marginalized ethnic groups" _should_ be somehow automatically writing poems that eschew formula. How fair is that? Surprises me that Bernstein would suggest it. Or maybe I misunderstand ---?? Of course poems about grandmothers would typically take place in kitchens or mention foods -- that's one of the few places women of several generations were allowed to express themselves creatively. It makes sense to me that a poet thinking about history or family or both, indeed, would consider this. Seems that sometimes the only real difference between "formula" and "tradition" is whether the critic/reader likes it. An exclusive writer of prose once told me that all poetry was formulaic. Her formula, my tradition. Kathrine Varnes > >> >> Charles Bernstein analyzes how incredibly formulaic these poems are, even >> when >> written by people of color or marginalized ethnic groups. They typically >> take >> place in a kitchen or mention food in some way. >> >> > > Good point. I think even Adrienne Rich has one that does this. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 20 16:23:51 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 12:23:51 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] APB on difficulty Message-ID: >At 11:29 AM 2/20/01 -0900, Moira wrote: > > > >Bill, what exactly do you mean by "mainstream poetry"? I am not sure >what > >you are referring to. >I was wondering when someone was going to ask me that. Almost any of the >stuff that gets published in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, >etc. The poets who get laureated. Most of the poets who win Pulitzers, >National Book Awards, National Book Critics Circle Awards. Who get reviewed >in the New York Times or NYRB or The Nation. Who read on NPR. Bill, I think you are better off referring to this as "Establishment poetry" and to yourself as "anti-Establishment," as in the old days. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Tue Feb 20 16:41:42 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 15:41:42 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] APB on difficulty In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20010220154407.0087c290@postoffice.providence.edu> Message-ID: Bill and Moira, Thanks for the clarification. I thought Bill was using the term "mainstream poetry" somehow to characterize particular styles of poetry. However, this definition merely seems to imply that his use of the term "mainstream poetry" does not have anything to do with the identifiable characteristics of the poetry itself as written, but is based more upon the acceptance or non-acceptance of any poetry by certain editors and publications, or recognition for reviews and rewards of any poets by certain institutions. The definition here does not appear to identify the style (or styles) of poetry; instead, it seems to locate and categorize poems or poets by places where that poetry is viewed or honored, some of those places being ones which I would regard as differing from each other in editorial taste or the profile of typical readers. I am wondering to what use such a term serves. Curious, --Edward Byrne > At 11:29 AM 2/20/01 -0900, Moira wrote: > > > >Bill, what exactly do you mean by "mainstream poetry"? I am not sure > what >you are referring to. > > > I was wondering when someone was going to ask me that. Almost any of the > stuff that gets published in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia > Review, etc. The poets who get laureated. Most of the poets who win > Pulitzers, National Book Awards, National Book Critics Circle Awards. > Who get reviewed in the New York Times or NYRB or The Nation. Who read > on NPR. > > Bill Freind -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Feb 20 16:51:16 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 15:51:16 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla In-Reply-To: <49.7aa30f2.27c427e4@cs.com> Message-ID: If you squint your eyes sufficiently, a fox is identical to a dog, and a cat is nothing but a tiny cougar. Adrienne Rich is Yusef Komunyakaa. And all mainstream poetry is dull, all language poetry opaque, all new formalist poetry rigidly reactionary . . . . Yes, there are many poems out there concerning grandmothers. It is rather a fashion, I suppose, just as statues-in-Rome poems were in the 1950s. But to note that fact is not to say much, and is certainly not a sufficient criticism. It's rather like saying "those Elizabethans, all their poems are about love and god," without noticing any significant differences between the work of Shakespeare and Humfrey Gifford. In his lovely essay "Dull Subjects" William Matthews lampoons this sort of reductive critique, formulating for all eternity what he calls "a short but comprehensive summary of subjects for lyric poetry": 1. I went out into the woods today and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious. 2. We're not getting any younger. 3. It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey. 4. Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent and on we know not what. And he concludes his reductio as follows: "One could, I suppose, if one were possessed of a mania for condensation and categorization, offer a single ur-plot for lyric poetry and indeed for all imaginative literature, and if so, one could do worse than the following four-word sentence, a plot summary of the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour film, *The Road to Bali*: 'Amorous gorilla pursues Hope.' " ["Dull Subjects." -Curiosities-. U Michigan Press, 1989] David Graham _______________________ >In a message dated 2/20/01 12:35:19 PM Central Standard Time, >wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu writes: > >> >> Charles Bernstein analyzes how incredibly formulaic these poems are, even >> when >> written by people of color or marginalized ethnic groups. They typically >> take >> place in a kitchen or mention food in some way. >> >> > >Good point. I think even Adrienne Rich has one that does this. >_______________________________________________ __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 20 17:21:29 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 13:21:29 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] APB on difficulty Message-ID: Edward Byrne wrote, >The definition here does not appear to identify the style (or styles) >of poetry; instead, it seems to locate and categorize poems or poets by >places where that poetry is viewed or honored, some of those places >being ones which I would regard as differing from each other in >editorial taste or the profile of typical readers. I am wondering to >what use such a term serves. This is why I half-facetiously suggested Bill call it "Establishment poetry" instead -- he seems to be viewing a number of (different) poetry magazines/institutions which honor poetry/poet laureates all as part of one large Establishment which is not radical enough. To my mind, this puts the case more neatly and comprehensibly than "mainstream," which sends my mind richocheting back and forth between Donald Justice and Rita Dove. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 20 17:23:34 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 13:23:34 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] William Logan Poem Message-ID: Curious to see what William Logan's own poetry would be like, I searched for his name at newcriterion.com and up popped four poems. I have to say that although I find his criticism bitingly refreshing (although often too astringent) the poems seemed a little bland, well-done though disappointing. Here was the one I liked best (subjective, yes, but I'm too nervous about copyright to quote all four): Samphire by William Logan Girls from the language schools go chittering in birdlike tongues, thin-breasted, doe-eyed, Spanish or Italian, full of hormones, angst, vocabulary. You caught me eyeing a Swede with bee-stung lips, Botticelli face in a virgin?s halo of blonde. Her breasts spelled desire through her cotton shirt. A summer ago we stood unhappy, ill through our bones, not able to speak in the hail of argument and never sure, after, if our non-arguments survived. Is aphasia the rain shower against speech, or loss of memory of speech, the unspoken burning in half-life longer than what surfaces? I?m grateful for what you have chosen to ignore. This summer, hand in hand, we discover again cowpath walks worming our medieval city, home further than ever and myriad ways not to return. In the market we buy tidal samphire, Shakespeare?s drenched vegetable, or Gloucester?s, or Edgar?s, bulbous, green and salty, stripped hot with the teeth, and not Shakespeare?s after all, we learn by the book. O vegetable love, a different vegetable entirely. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From mbales at cybergate.net Tue Feb 20 17:59:52 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 17:59:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan In-Reply-To: <57.11cede72.27c42693@aol.com> Message-ID: > free verse being defined > (oversimply) as poetry having irregular (or random) sonic effects; How do we distinguish poetry with random sonic effects from prose? Or from nonsense? mbales at cybergate.net From languagethief at yahoo.com Tue Feb 20 18:32:11 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 15:32:11 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Ghost of meter In-Reply-To: <30.10b875c3.27c3e4a4@aol.com> Message-ID: <20010220233211.33529.qmail@web12205.mail.yahoo.com> When I know scansion marks aren't going to work, I just use upper case for accented syllables. but one can force a courier font in html by use of the < pre > command. Tad --- TerryP17 at aol.com wrote: > All-- > > RE: how poems with scansion or anything else > actually appear on a Web page. > > The Web sometimes poses a challenge to editors who > are trying to produce a printed page faithfully on a > Web page, as I well know, having messed up a few > posted poems on Edge City Review's website. Problem > is that sometimes an editor thinks he or she has > gotten it right, and it looks right on the editor's > machine, but then it shows up wrong or not at all on > other folk's computers. > > Part of this is due to an editor's not fully > grasping all the nuances of html (my problem). A lot > of it is due to people who use old rev numbers of > browsers which respond in quirky ways to > newly-created html commands employed by the latest > browser versions (like "cascading style sheets"). > And part of it is due to the size of the user's > computer screen, which varies quite a lot. And, of > course, yes, you could also have a lousy or > inattentive editor. It happens. > > In a print magazine, the solution for me for > problems like this has been to use a monospaced font > like Courier when placing scansion marks. > (Technically, many standard web fonts are monospaced > as well, but it doesn't always work this way.) > Maybe, with a challenging poetry setting or > scansion, a solution could be to format the poem > and/or scansion in Courier in Microsoft Word, say, > then make a downloadable PDF out of it. The PDF > should display properly on pretty much any machine. > If you have Acrobat Reader installed. > > Well, enough tech talk for today. > > --Terry Ponick, Ed. > Edge City Review > terryp17 at aol.com > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices! http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From dwc8 at psu.edu Tue Feb 20 18:44:45 2001 From: dwc8 at psu.edu (David Clippinger) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 18:44:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom In-Reply-To: References: <49.7aa30f2.27c427e4@cs.com> Message-ID: <200102202348.SAA54202@f04n07.cac.psu.edu> At 03:16 PM 2/20/01 -0600, you wrote: > >I'm disturbed by the assumptions here, that "people of color or marginalized >ethnic groups" _should_ be somehow automatically writing poems that eschew >formula. How fair is that? Surprises me that Bernstein would suggest it. >Or maybe I misunderstand ---?? Within the context of scholarship on this issue--say, Hank Lazer's _Opposing Poetries_, Jed Rasula's _American Poetry Wax Museum_, Alan Golding's study of canons, and essays by Marjorie Perloff, among others--the argument is not that "People of color or marginalized ethnic groups" should eshew formula, but that the representations of work by "people of color, etc" within anthologies _is_ not easily differentiated from the white hegemonic poetry. The issue is not a question of identity and form, but a question of why are poems written by poets of color who do not conform to mainstream form (John Yau, Nat Mackey, Lorenzo Thomas, etc) not included within anthologies that that purport to be "inclusive." The issue is acceptable (and anthology worthy) form. Best, David l difference between "formula" and >"tradition" is whether the critic/reader likes it. An exclusive writer of >prose once told me that all poetry was formulaic. Her formula, my >tradition. > >Kathrine Varnes >> >>> >>> Charles Bernstein analyzes how incredibly formulaic these poems are, even >>> when >>> written by people of color or marginalized ethnic groups. They typically >>> take >>> place in a kitchen or mention food in some way. >>> >>> >> >> Good point. I think even Adrienne Rich has one that does this. >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > David Clippinger, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English and American Studies Penn State University 100 University Drive Monaca, PA 15061 (724) 773-3884 www.clippinger.com/david ____________________________________________________________________ The thinker as reader reads what has been written. He hears the words he reads to look upon Within his being Wallace Stevens, "Things of August" ____________________________________________________________________ From antrobin at clipper.net Tue Feb 20 18:44:24 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 15:44:24 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom References: <49.7aa30f2.27c427e4@cs.com> Message-ID: <03e101c09b98$59a51820$0facefd8@0021936706> Can someone point me to both of these essays? This topic hits close to home for me--I recently left an MFA program in which I was expected to write this sort of autobiographical "ethnic" narrative. Tony > > > Charles Bernstein analyzes how incredibly formulaic these poems are, even > > when > > written by people of color or marginalized ethnic groups. They typically > > take > > place in a kitchen or mention food in some way. > > > > > > Good point. I think even Adrienne Rich has one that does this. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From antrobin at clipper.net Tue Feb 20 18:46:25 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 15:46:25 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan References: Message-ID: <03e201c09b98$5a7f4b80$0facefd8@0021936706> Not bad, but "lub-dub" sounds like a spondee to this ear. Ta-Tum, on the other hand is clearly iambic. Tony > Hmm, how about "lub-dub lub-dub"? That would seem to be a nice shorthand > for the iambic form, which arguably is based on the rhythm of the human > heart and hence at the base of all our formal structures built up like > nautilus shells around it. "Ta-tum ta-tum" just seems a bit dismissive. From antrobin at clipper.net Tue Feb 20 18:53:35 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 15:53:35 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom References: Message-ID: <03e401c09b98$5c6dae00$0facefd8@0021936706> Is it not equally disturbing though to assume that "people of color or marginalized ethnic groups" should be writing poems that "perform" their ethnicity in certain prescribed/accepted ways, i.e. gramma poems? Is it fair to assume that a hispanic male poet, for example would or even should write about the "hispanic male experience," whatever that is? Perhaps we shouldn't automatically eschew a particular formula, but we should also be careful of automatically employing an "accepted" formula, as well. And to pick up on another thread--if you look in "mainstream" poetry journals, and read the work of "mainstream" poets, most of what you'll find being published by "ethnic" writers tends to fit a certain mold--the autobiographical narrative that addresses my ethnicity, race, class, etc. Tony From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Feb 20 19:30:55 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 16:30:55 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom Message-ID: <20010221003100.1DEC4274B@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Feb 20 19:46:02 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 16:46:02 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] APB on difficulty Message-ID: <20010221004603.EA2172748@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From schro047 at tc.umn.edu Tue Feb 20 20:17:14 2001 From: schro047 at tc.umn.edu (Steve Schroer) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 19:17:14 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] difficulty Message-ID: <3A93171A.2F88EB8A@tc.umn.edu> > So why are so many readers of poetry who *have* formal > training, and who continue to read and write poetry, reluctant > to deal with the opacities, discontinuities and semi-referentiality > of (for instance) Blake, Heine, Lautreamont, Rimbaud, Loy, > Stein, Soupault, Desnos, Cesaire, Khlebnikov -- not to mention > Hejinian, Watten, Rosemarie Waldrop? Well, it's a matter of degree, isn't it? All language contains "opacities, discontinuities and semi-referentiality," and I think it's beyond dispute that poetry can make hay with these. The question is at what point your returns begin to diminish. For Language poetry, that point is a speck in the rear view mirror. Me, I'm "reluctant to deal with" most of the writers named above (post-Rimbaud, anyway) because I find them extremely dull. Doubtless this is because I myself am extremely dull. If I weren't so dull, I'd probably devote more of my time and energy to poring over gibberish posed seductively in the lingerie of literary theory. Steve Schroer From klvarnes at home.com Tue Feb 20 20:51:32 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 19:51:32 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom/Dad In-Reply-To: <200102202348.SAA54202@f04n07.cac.psu.edu> Message-ID: > The issue is not a question of identity > and form, but a question of why are poems written by poets of color who do > not conform to mainstream form (John Yau, Nat Mackey, Lorenzo Thomas, etc) > not included within anthologies that that purport to be "inclusive." The > issue is acceptable (and anthology worthy) form. Right. Thanks, David C., for sketching out where that little snippet came from. That makes more sense and jibes more with the Bernstein I know. Oh sure, Bob, I understand how some people believe that repetition can lead to banality, as you put it --and many poems out there are a virtual color guard of banality. David G. says all needs be said on it, though, to my mind. I do have concern for someone reading these posts with a 3/4 of the way finished near-brilliant poem that features a grandmother, bubbling pot of homemade applesauce from the orchard, perhaps spliced with letters from Dorothy Wordsworth (I'm making this up, realize). It would be rotten if the poem were abandoned just because others had been pronounced failures, especially since good examples (Bishop's celebrated "Sestina," Mona Van Duyn's series of narrative poems in her grandmother's voice) exist. Maybe we could take the heat off Grandma in the kitchen, now, and lean on Dad coming home from work. Kathrine (I'll be taking a little break from email -- deadlines, etc. -- so please take no umbrage if met with future silence.) From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 20 21:07:29 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 21:07:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] APB on difficulty Message-ID: In a message dated 2/20/01 3:27:51 PM Eastern Standard Time, wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu writes: << On the other hand, most mainstream poetry isn't just anti-modern: it shows no connection with any work that comes before Auden. I think that pretty clearly indicates how safe and downright reactionary mainstream poetry has become. There are all sorts of ways to challenge the mods. Pretending they didn't exist isn't one of them. >> Bill, you seem to be substituting new gods for old gods without question. Indeterminacy vs. definition; fragmentation vs. integration; disruption vs. resolve. You would choose all the former over the latter...but on some basis more than blind faith or mere taste? Why should a poet embrace one over the other? To my mind, one of poetry's great facilities is that amidst the "complexity of modernity," to lift your phrase, it that can fix, it can resolve, cutting through the chaos to find the stillpoint. Art is not a mirror...see how easily that phrase can turn both ways...critizing both the representational and all that is disintegrated & fragmentary in our the time. Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 20 21:23:46 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 21:23:46 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: <12.909ea2b.27c480b2@aol.com> In a message dated 2/20/01 5:57:49 PM Eastern Standard Time, mbales at cybergate.net writes: << How do we distinguish poetry with random sonic effects from prose? Or from nonsense? >> Simply put, poetry is not a matter of _only_ the sound(s) it makes... Finnegan From Thom424 at aol.com Tue Feb 20 21:32:27 2001 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 21:32:27 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Editors? Message-ID: I'm wondering to what degree editors (of poetry journals, magazines, anthologies, presses, etc.) play in what makes or doesn't make it into the "mainstream" or establishment or anti-establishment poetry, or whatever term we want to use to describe what's being read or perceived as being "in" at any given time. Unless poets self-publish, shouldn't we be asking journal editors to talk about their choices? Aren't they the ones who are choosing to print those poems instead of other poems, by nature of what they do as editors? Perhaps editors who publish poems about grandmothers in the kitchen/grandfathers in the garage are just as responsible for this phenomena asthe writers, themselves. If editors wouldn't publish these poems, then they wouldn't "enter" the stream (again, unless self-published). By the way, I have been enjoying the liveliness of and frequency of posts to the new New Poetry list. Thanks to the folks who revived CAP. I hope to get my MFA poetry writing students to sign on so they can witness the intelligent, passionate "conversations" that are going on. Good level of discourse, here. Keep it up! The links to on-line essays and other references to books/titles, etc. are also helpful! Thom Tammaro Moorhead, MN (due west of Lake Wobegone) From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 20 21:44:10 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 21:44:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom Message-ID: In a message dated 2/20/01 6:50:08 PM Eastern Standard Time, dwc8 at psu.edu writes: << The issue is not a question of identity and form, but a question of why are poems written by poets of color who do not conform to mainstream form (John Yau, Nat Mackey, Lorenzo Thomas, etc) not included within anthologies that that purport to be "inclusive." The issue is acceptable (and anthology worthy) form. >> David, You are speaking to the issue of "aesthetic diversity"...Thylias Moss or Yusef Komunyakaa probably won't make it into the same anthology that prints Nathanial Mackey and Harryette Mullen, & vice versa. Nothing to do with a lack of inclusiveness, really. Part of the glut of domestic and familial poetry has to do with an overcorrection, perhaps...for many years, and well into this century, these "insignificant and lesser" subjects were not considered worthy of capital P Poetry. Finnegan From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 20 23:58:08 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 23:58:08 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom Message-ID: <88.2a72654.27c4a4e0@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2001 3:17:46 PM Central Standard Time, klvarnes at home.com writes: > I'm disturbed by the assumptions here, that "people of color or marginalized > ethnic groups" _should_ be somehow automatically writing poems that eschew > formula. How fair is that? Surprises me that Bernstein would suggest it. > Or maybe I misunderstand ---?? There was a book called Thomas and Beulah by Rita Dove . . . From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 21 00:03:14 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 00:03:14 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla Message-ID: In a message dated 2/20/2001 3:52:43 PM Central Standard Time, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > if so, one could do worse than the > following four-word sentence, a plot summary of the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby > and Dorothy Lamour film, *The Road to Bali*: 'Amorous gorilla pursues > Hope.' " Personally, I was so moved by the following newspaper tv blurb of Hamlet that I wrote a poem about it. I must bow to the blurbist, whose sense of iambic pentameter is sublime: "A man is haunted by his father's ghost." From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 21 00:06:10 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 00:06:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: <7e.11278811.27c4a6c2@cs.com> In a message dated 2/20/2001 4:57:49 PM Central Standard Time, mbales at cybergate.net writes: > How do we distinguish poetry with random sonic effects from > prose? Or from nonsense? > Try Hopkins, for a starter. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Wed Feb 21 01:02:06 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 01:02:06 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla References: Message-ID: <070701c09bcb$d640a100$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> How about these two, also real? Ambitious Senator plots to murder the emperor of Rome. and A proud man discovers that by a strange twist of fate, he has killed his father and married his mother. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:03 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla > In a message dated 2/20/2001 3:52:43 PM Central Standard Time, > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > > > if so, one could do worse than the > > following four-word sentence, a plot summary of the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby > > and Dorothy Lamour film, *The Road to Bali*: 'Amorous gorilla pursues > > Hope.' " > > Personally, I was so moved by the following newspaper tv blurb of Hamlet that > I wrote a poem about it. I must bow to the blurbist, whose sense of iambic > pentameter is sublime: > "A man is haunted by his father's ghost." > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 21 01:30:46 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 01:30:46 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla Message-ID: Shakespearean Sonnet With a first line taken from the tv listings A man is haunted by his father's ghost. A boy and girl love while their families fight. A Scottish king is murdered by his host. Two couples get lost on a summer night. A hunchback murders all who block his way. A ruler's rivals plot against his life. A fat man and a prince make rebels pay. A noble Moor has doubts about his wife. An English king decides to conquer France. A duke learns that his best friend is a she. A forest sets the scene for this romance. An old man and his daughters disagree. A Roman leader makes a big mistake. A sexy queen is bitten by a snake. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Wed Feb 21 02:34:56 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 02:34:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla References: Message-ID: <07b701c09bd8$cae32960$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Sam....I love this. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2001 1:30 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla > Shakespearean Sonnet > > With a first line taken from the tv listings > > A man is haunted by his father's ghost. > A boy and girl love while their families fight. > A Scottish king is murdered by his host. > Two couples get lost on a summer night. > A hunchback murders all who block his way. > A ruler's rivals plot against his life. > A fat man and a prince make rebels pay. > A noble Moor has doubts about his wife. > An English king decides to conquer France. > A duke learns that his best friend is a she. > A forest sets the scene for this romance. > An old man and his daughters disagree. > A Roman leader makes a big mistake. > A sexy queen is bitten by a snake. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From EFerg14849 at aol.com Wed Feb 21 03:34:27 2001 From: EFerg14849 at aol.com (EFerg14849 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 03:34:27 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla Message-ID: <93.729f5c3.27c4d793@aol.com> I don't know why I am receiving this. I did not request it. From KaeseWoche at aol.com Wed Feb 21 05:59:02 2001 From: KaeseWoche at aol.com (KaeseWoche at aol.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 05:59:02 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Free verse prosody (Was: a few more thoughts on William Logan) Message-ID: <32.10e46e18.27c4f976@aol.com> > > free verse being defined > > (oversimply) as poetry having irregular (or random) sonic effects; > > How do we distinguish poetry with random sonic effects from > prose? Or from nonsense? It might be useful to mention Charles O. Hartman's book "Free Verse: An Essay on Prosody" here. (Published in 1980, it was recently reissued in paperback by Northwestern.) Hartman painstakingly defines his terms -- "verse" is "language in lines", "prosody" is "the poet's method of controlling the reader's [attention to the] temporal experience of a poem", "meter" is a numerically-organized prosody, and "free verse" is verse whose prosody is not-metrical, i.e., non-numerical. Although the title sounds like an oxymoron -- how can non-metrical verse have prosody? -- Hartman goes on to demonstrate various prosodic effects possible in free verse. The fact that verse is written in lines tends to create more stresses than the same text written as prose would have, for various reasons he enumerates; stress can affect meaning, and therefore so can lineation. Lineation can also affect meaning by means of enjambment, another effect not possible in prose. The poet can arrange lines so that they have similar or dissimilar rhythms, or can choose to make lineation and syntax either coincide or not, with differing effects. Etc. This is a shameless oversimplification of Hartman's book, sorry, but maybe it gives some idea of his argument. Also, Alice Fulton had an article in a 1986 issue of Poetry East in which she listed a large number of non-prosodic organizing principles that all verse -- free or metrical -- uses, including refrain, movement (e.g. from the general to the specific), registers of diction, conceits, lists, allusions, puns, rhetorical questions, analogues to other genres (TV listings [hi, Sam!], horoscopes, etc; I think Dean Young does a good deal of this), interruption and digression, etc. etc. etc. Bruce Tindall Dallas, Texas From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 21 06:18:49 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 06:18:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Unfortunately, the closing couplet merely adds to the list. Hal "Flotsam, please, and a side order of jetsam." Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > Shakespearean Sonnet > > With a first line taken from the tv listings > > A man is haunted by his father's ghost. > A boy and girl love while their families fight. > A Scottish king is murdered by his host. > Two couples get lost on a summer night. > A hunchback murders all who block his way. > A ruler's rivals plot against his life. > A fat man and a prince make rebels pay. > A noble Moor has doubts about his wife. > An English king decides to conquer France. > A duke learns that his best friend is a she. > A forest sets the scene for this romance. > An old man and his daughters disagree. > A Roman leader makes a big mistake. > A sexy queen is bitten by a snake. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Feb 21 07:06:28 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 07:06:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free verse prosody References: <32.10e46e18.27c4f976@aol.com> Message-ID: <3A93AF44.36BC@nut-n-but.net> I have an essay at my website (URL below) that goes into free verse versus formal verse, etc. Doesn't say much that's new but pretty thorough, I think. --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- Bob Grumman BobGrumman at Nut-N-But.Net http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1492 Comprepoetica, the Poetry-Data-Collection Site From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Feb 21 07:27:39 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 04:27:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Free verse prosody Message-ID: <20010221122739.5FACC3ED5@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From mbales at cybergate.net Wed Feb 21 07:40:20 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 07:40:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free verse prosody (Was: a few more thoughts on William Logan) In-Reply-To: <32.10e46e18.27c4f976@aol.com> Message-ID: > > > free verse being defined > > > (oversimply) as poetry having irregular (or random) sonic > > > effects;<< > > How do we distinguish poetry with random sonic effects from > > prose? Or from nonsense?<< > ... Hartman painstakingly defines ... "prosody" is "the poet's > method of controlling the reader's [attention to the] temporal > experience of a poem", ... Hartman goes on to demonstrate > various prosodic > effects possible in free verse. The fact that verse is written in > lines tends to create more stresses than the same text written as > prose would have, for various reasons he enumerates; stress can affect > meaning, and therefore so can lineation. Lineation can also affect > meaning by means of enjambment, another effect not possible in prose. > The poet can arrange lines so that they have similar or dissimilar > rhythms, or can choose to make lineation and syntax either coincide or > not, with differing effects.<< But when we're talking about stresses and lineation and the like aren't we talking about sonic effects? > Also, Alice Fulton had an article in a 1986 issue of Poetry East in > which she listed a large number of non-prosodic organizing principles > that all verse -- free or metrical -- uses, including refrain, > movement (e.g. from the general to the specific), registers of > diction, conceits, lists, allusions, puns, rhetorical questions, > analogues to other genres (TV listings [hi, Sam!], horoscopes, etc; I > think Dean Young does a good deal of this), interruption and > digression, etc. etc. etc.<< But these are by no means unique to poetry; that is to say, they do not help to distinguish poetry from prose. mbales at cybergate.net From mbales at cybergate.net Wed Feb 21 07:40:21 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 07:40:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan In-Reply-To: <12.909ea2b.27c480b2@aol.com> Message-ID: > << How do we distinguish poetry with random sonic effects from > prose? Or from nonsense? >> > Simply put, poetry is not a matter of _only_ the sound(s) it > makes...<< Nor is prose only the sense it makes -- but the sense of prose and the sound of poetry are not just significant but important indicators of how we distinguish one from the other. Nonsense prose and random sonic effect poetry would seem to have the harder path to acceptance because so much of what we use to distinguish one from the other is absent. mbales at cybergate.net From mbales at cybergate.net Wed Feb 21 07:40:22 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 07:40:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla In-Reply-To: <070701c09bcb$d640a100$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: > How about these two, also real? > > Ambitious Senator plots to murder the emperor of Rome. > and > A proud man discovers that by a strange twist of fate, he has killed > his father and married his mother. Well, to start with, neither are iambic pentameter. mbales at cybergate.net From mbales at cybergate.net Wed Feb 21 07:40:22 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 07:40:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > You are speaking to the issue of "aesthetic diversity"...Thylias Moss > or Yusef Komunyakaa probably won't make it into the same anthology > that prints Nathanial Mackey and Harryette Mullen, & vice versa. > Nothing to do with a lack of inclusiveness, really.<< Why not? Isn't the notion of inclusiveness in aesthetics that it doesn't distinguish Komunyakaa's work from Mullen's by leaving one or the other out; by choosing to include one and not the other? mbales at cybergate.net From mbales at cybergate.net Wed Feb 21 07:40:20 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 07:40:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan In-Reply-To: <7e.11278811.27c4a6c2@cs.com> Message-ID: > > How do we distinguish poetry with random sonic effects from > > prose? Or from nonsense?<< > Try Hopkins, for a starter.<< You thesis in this suggestion is ... what? That Hopkins's sonic effects are random? That Hopkins's work is nonsense? That Hopkins's work is prose? mbales at cybergate.net From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Wed Feb 21 08:55:52 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 08:55:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty and establishments. References: Message-ID: <3A93C8E7.128ECB5@providence.edu> JforJames at aol.com wrote: > > Bill, you seem to be substituting new gods for old gods without question. > Indeterminacy vs. definition; fragmentation vs. integration; disruption vs. > resolve. You would choose all the former over the latter...but on some basis > more than blind faith or mere taste? Why should a poet embrace one over > the other? You're right, James, that my own taste runs more to the former, but my point was a little different from that. Every age has its "difficult" poems, that is, poems that require an extensive knowledge of literature, that tax a reader's attention span, that edge toward the opaque. I think that's a fairly uncontroversial statement, and works such as (for example) The Faerie Queen, Paradise Lost, The Triumph of Life, Don Juan, any of Blake's prophecies, Sordello and many others all amply demonstrate that. Far from substituting new gods for old, I'm arguing for at least a partial return to the old gods of challenging literature. Of course my description of the mainstream doesn't apply to everyone, although I think the fact that two people brought up Yusef Komunyakaa indicates how few poets break that mold. I'd also add James Tate and Russell Edson to that list. Once upon a time Simic might have been in there, too. Someone (sorry, I forgot who) mentioned Adrienne Rich -- clearly she's on the list, too. However, the overwhelming majority of the poetry in the major journals eschews difficulty, instead aspiring to a transparency of language and meaning. This applies to a variety of work in a variety of styles, which is why my gripe isn't with the establishment but with a shared set of assumptions that governs the overwhelming majority of mainstream poetry. Bill Freind > To my mind, one of poetry's great facilities is that amidst the > "complexity of modernity," to lift your phrase, it that can fix, it can > resolve, > cutting through the chaos to find the stillpoint. Art is not a mirror...see > how > easily that phrase can turn both ways...critizing both the representational > and all that is disintegrated & fragmentary in our the time. > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From JforJames at aol.com Wed Feb 21 09:40:38 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 09:40:38 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom Message-ID: <7e.1127aab7.27c52d66@aol.com> In a message dated 2/21/01 7:38:38 AM Eastern Standard Time, mbales at cybergate.net writes: << Why not? Isn't the notion of inclusiveness in aesthetics that it doesn't distinguish Komunyakaa's work from Mullen's by leaving one or the other out; by choosing to include one and not the other? >> Marcus, because one's aesthetics are akin to a religious belief system it is hard to see too many editors endorsing inclusive aesthetics... No reason it couldn't happen...but there are few editors willing or able to build anthologies on the premise of "big tent" aesthetics; and if one or a few tried...certain subgroups or would surely get overlooked or carp about their page count v-a-v some other constituency. David C. mentioned a number of books that discuss canon-making through anthologies (Golding's book is called From Outlaw to Classic): anthologies are taste making projects. Peirre Jorris posted here recently...he & Jerome Rothenberg created a fine two-volume anthology, Poems for the Millennium. A different set of aesthetic notions drove the choices made for that project than the aesthetic notions behind the new Norton. But I'm not saying anything new, so I'll stop here. Finnegan From dwc8 at psu.edu Wed Feb 21 10:00:14 2001 From: dwc8 at psu.edu (David Clippinger) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 10:00:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: My Grandmother's Anthologies In-Reply-To: <7e.1127aab7.27c52d66@aol.com> Message-ID: <200102211504.KAA42128@f04n01.cac.psu.edu> There indeed have been inclusive aesthetically-driven anthologies, although they are so few that it is easy to name them: Carruth's _The Voice that is Great Within Us_ and Cary Nelson's new _Modern American POetry_. Regardless of the page numbers dedicated to particular poets and/or ethnic groups, these two anthologies have an aesthetic breadth that is practically unthinkable in the too-factional contemporary poetry world. I think that at issue is that too many editors (who are in fact poets or scholars contained within the ideologically driven aesthetic program of their respective institution--the MFA granting university) are unwilling to acknowledge that their choices are not based upon merit but the socio-political nature of poetry's dwindling academic and social turf and an ahistorical understanding of American poetry. In short, aesthetic nepotism, which is not symptomatic (simply) of the demonized mainstream but also of the so-called margins as well. David Clippinger At 09:40 AM 2/21/01 -0500, you wrote: >In a message dated 2/21/01 7:38:38 AM Eastern Standard Time, >mbales at cybergate.net writes: > ><< Why not? Isn't the notion of inclusiveness in aesthetics that it > doesn't distinguish Komunyakaa's work from Mullen's by leaving > one or the other out; by choosing to include one and not the other? >> > >Marcus, because one's aesthetics are akin to a religious belief system >it is hard to see too many editors endorsing inclusive aesthetics... >No reason it couldn't happen...but there are few editors >willing or able to build anthologies on the premise of "big tent" >aesthetics; and if one or a few tried...certain subgroups >or would surely get overlooked or carp about their page count >v-a-v some other constituency. David C. mentioned a number of books >that discuss canon-making through anthologies (Golding's book >is called From Outlaw to Classic): anthologies are taste making >projects. Peirre Jorris posted here recently...he & Jerome Rothenberg >created a fine two-volume anthology, Poems for the Millennium. >A different set of aesthetic notions drove the choices made >for that project than the aesthetic notions behind the new Norton. >But I'm not saying anything new, so I'll stop here. >Finnegan >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > David Clippinger, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English and American Studies Penn State University 100 University Drive Monaca, PA 15061 (724) 773-3884 www.clippinger.com/david ____________________________________________________________________ The thinker as reader reads what has been written. He hears the words he reads to look upon Within his being Wallace Stevens, "Things of August" ____________________________________________________________________ From JforJames at aol.com Wed Feb 21 10:04:23 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 10:04:23 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: <94.1066af21.27c532f7@aol.com> In a message dated 2/21/01 7:38:30 AM Eastern Standard Time, mbales at cybergate.net writes: << How do we distinguish poetry with random sonic effects from > prose? Or from nonsense? >> > Simply put, poetry is not a matter of _only_ the sound(s) it > makes...<< Nor is prose only the sense it makes -- but the sense of prose and the sound of poetry are not just significant but important indicators of how we distinguish one from the other. Nonsense prose and random sonic effect poetry would seem to have the harder path to acceptance because so much of what we use to distinguish one from the other is absent. >> Marcus, we could spend eons on "the difference between poetry and prose," and still be chasing our tails. (Not that the exercise isn't worthwhile from time to time.) The prose poem was invented at least a century ago. There's poetic prose...& passages of poetry within prose. I'm unwilling to say poetry can only be defined by its "organized" sonic effects. I don't discount the importance of sound...the conscious use of sonic effects could only be an enhancement to a poem. I was trying to point out that it's one of many elements (diction, imagery, repetitions, word order/association,...add 50 more) that tell us the text at hand is a "poem." And ultimately the poet gets to decide whether or not he/she's presenting a particular text as a "poem;" and we the readers/critics get to decide whether we accept it as one or not. Finnegan From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Wed Feb 21 10:12:50 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 10:12:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty and establishments. References: <3A93C8E7.128ECB5@providence.edu> Message-ID: <003d01c09c18$c3a82a20$f829f7a5@compaqcomputer> Bill Friend wrote: However, the > overwhelming majority of the poetry in the major journals eschews difficulty, > instead aspiring to a transparency of language and meaning. No poet, who's any good, aspires to "transparency of language." "Transparency" is just another straw-man argument Deconstructionts and language poets use to show how simple-minded the "mainstream" is. Even poets like Frost, W.C. Williams, Neruda, Ammons want you to look at, as well as through, their language. There are lots of problems with mainstream poetry, and dullness is certainly one of them, but I'm not sure how much is clarified by skipping deconstructionist cliches across its surface. John Brehm From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Tue Feb 20 23:39:48 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 22:39:48 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty Message-ID: "No poet, who's any good, aspires to "transparency of language." "Transparency" is just another straw-man argument Deconstructionts and language poets use to show how simple-minded the "mainstream" is. Even poets like Frost, W.C. Williams, Neruda, Ammons want you to look at, as well as through, their language. There are lots of problems with mainstream poetry, and dullness is certainly one of them, but I'm not sure how much is clarified by skipping deconstructionist cliches across its surface." Bravo, John Brehm, for making the point so clearly and succinctly. Paul Lake From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 21 10:58:35 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 10:58:35 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla Message-ID: <7e.11267761.27c53fab@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2001 1:37:30 AM Central Standard Time, tadrichards at prodigy.net writes: > Sam....I love this. > > Tad > > Thanks, Tad. It was fun. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 21 11:03:08 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 11:03:08 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan Message-ID: <8.108967e3.27c540bc@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2001 6:38:48 AM Central Standard Time, mbales at cybergate.net writes: > > > How do we distinguish poetry with random sonic effects from > > > prose? Or from nonsense?<< > > > Try Hopkins, for a starter.<< > > You thesis in this suggestion is ... what? That Hopkins's sonic > effects are random? That Hopkins's work is nonsense? That > Hopkins's work is prose? Au contraire on all counts, though sometimes you have to admit he goes a bit over the top, also on all counts. I just typed out "Hurrahing in Harvest" for an exam. Almost blew up my spell-checker. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Feb 21 11:06:12 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 07:06:12 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla Message-ID: This is a classic! Moira Russell Seattle, WA >Shakespearean Sonnet > > With a first line taken from the tv listings > >A man is haunted by his father's ghost. >A boy and girl love while their families fight. >A Scottish king is murdered by his host. >Two couples get lost on a summer night. >A hunchback murders all who block his way. >A ruler's rivals plot against his life. >A fat man and a prince make rebels pay. >A noble Moor has doubts about his wife. >An English king decides to conquer France. >A duke learns that his best friend is a she. >A forest sets the scene for this romance. >An old man and his daughters disagree. >A Roman leader makes a big mistake. >A sexy queen is bitten by a snake. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Feb 21 11:29:19 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 08:29:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: My Grandmother's Anthologies... Message-ID: <20010221162920.74D1036EE@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Wed Feb 21 11:45:28 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 11:45:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty and establishments. In-Reply-To: <003d01c09c18$c3a82a20$f829f7a5@compaqcomputer> References: <3A93C8E7.128ECB5@providence.edu> Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010221114528.0087faa0@postoffice.providence.edu> At 10:12 AM 2/21/01 -0500, you wrote: >Bill Friend wrote: > >However, the >> overwhelming majority of the poetry in the major journals eschews >difficulty, >> instead aspiring to a transparency of language and meaning. > >No poet, who's any good, aspires to "transparency of language." >"Transparency" is just another straw-man argument Deconstructionts and >language poets use to show how simple-minded the "mainstream" is. Not at all. I've been in creative writing workshops, I've talked with respected mainstream poets, I've heard them read, I've read their essays and this is a theme that is repeated time and time again. And the metaphors used by many people on the list have suggested just such a view. Poetry has been described as communication and currency, both of which are (hopefully) unproblematic transfers of value or meaning from one person to another. Ashbery has been condemnned for his dithering, i.e., not getting to "the point." "Language poetry" has been dismissed as the frilly lingerie on literary theory -- which presumably sets it in opposition to "naked poetry." That poetry may not have "a point" seems to be off the radar here. By the way, that last sentence of yours comes pretty close to a straw person argument. Even poets >like Frost, W.C. Williams, Neruda, Ammons want you to look at, as well as >through, their language. With the exception of Ammons, none of these poets is even living. Frost and Williams have been dead since the Kennedy administration, Neruda since shortly before Nixon left in disgrace. That would pretty much take them out of the realm of contemporary mainstream poetry, which is what I've been talking about. And, of course, Williams was an enomous influence on the language writers. Bill Freind From cstroffo at earthlink.net Wed Feb 21 11:05:15 2001 From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (chris stroffolino) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 12:05:15 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla References: Message-ID: <3A93E73B.379CDAC9@earthlink.net> Dear RS--- Do you want to me to forward this to a Shakespeare email list I'm on---- I think people would enjoy it there (too)..... Chris Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > Shakespearean Sonnet > > With a first line taken from the tv listings > > A man is haunted by his father's ghost. > A boy and girl love while their families fight. > A Scottish king is murdered by his host. > Two couples get lost on a summer night. > A hunchback murders all who block his way. > A ruler's rivals plot against his life. > A fat man and a prince make rebels pay. > A noble Moor has doubts about his wife. > An English king decides to conquer France. > A duke learns that his best friend is a she. > A forest sets the scene for this romance. > An old man and his daughters disagree. > A Roman leader makes a big mistake. > A sexy queen is bitten by a snake. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 21 00:54:35 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 23:54:35 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Free verse prosody Message-ID: Bruce Tindall helpfully summarizes Charles O. Hartman's definitions of free and formal verse: "t might be useful to mention Charles O. Hartman's book "Free Verse: An Essay on Prosody" here. (Published in 1980, it was recently reissued in paperback by Northwestern.) Hartman painstakingly defines his terms -- "verse" is "language in lines", "prosody" is "the poet's method of controlling the reader's [attention to the] temporal experience of a poem", "meter" is a numerically-organized prosody, and "free verse" is verse whose prosody is not-metrical, i.e., non-numerical." I found Hartman useful in writing about free verse, but I have some disagreements with his discussion of the management of time in free and metrical verse. I briefly touch on the subject in my previously mentioned essay. Sorry for harping, but the online address is below for intrepid souls who have time to read a long article on some of the problems (and some of the glories) of modern free verse. http://members.aol.com/PoeticVoices1/Disorderly.html Paul Lake From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 21 12:19:38 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 12:19:38 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla Message-ID: In a message dated 2/21/01 10:45:43 AM Central Standard Time, cstroffo at earthlink.net writes: > Do you want to me to forward this to a Shakespeare email list I'm on---- > > I think people would enjoy it there (too)..... > > Chris > Sure. Thanks. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 21 12:21:01 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 12:21:01 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty and establishments. Message-ID: <53.2a749d1.27c552fd@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/01 10:46:19 AM Central Standard Time, wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu writes: > And, of course, Williams was an enomous influence on the > language writers. Why was this? I've never heard this connection before. In what way? From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 21 01:25:02 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 00:25:02 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Hopkins Message-ID: Below is a brief discussion of Hopkins's use of metrical and sonic effects, from my essay "The Shape of Poetry." The complete essay is available now in Poetry After Modernism, 2nd edition, ed. By Robert McDowell (Story Line) and is forthcoming in The Measured Word: Essays on Poetry and Science, ed. By Kurt Brown, Univ. of Georgia Press. The discussion of Hopkins completes a larger discussion about organic form. Or you can find the full text of the essay, in two parts, on line in the archives of Expansive Poetry and Music Online: http://www.n2hos.com/acm/ Paul Lake * * * Perhaps no poet, mathematician, or scientist of the last two hundred years has understood the laws of creation better--or embodied them more brilliantly--than Gerard Manley Hopkins. From his readings in the Medieval philosopher Duns Scotus, his own first-hand observations of nature, and his reflections on poetic form, Hopkins synthesized a surprisingly accurate theory of organic form. Consider the following extract from his Journal, dated February 24, 1875: "In the snow flat-topped hillocks and shoulders outlined with wavy edges, ridge below ridge, very like the grain of wood in line and in projection like relief maps. These the wind makes I think and of course drifts, which are in fact snow waves. The sharp nape of a drift is sometimes broken by slant flutes or channels. I think this must be when the wind after shaping the drift first has changed and cast waves in the body of the wave itself. All the world is full of inscape and chance left free to act falls into an order as well as purpose: looking out of my window I caught it in the random clods and broken heaps of snow made by the cast of a broom." Not only does Hopkins see the similarity between snow drifts and waves, he also notes that the pattern of their ?wavy edges? is similar to the grain pattern in wood and to another fractal pattern: hills on a relief map. Hopkins sees nature?s fractal scaling in the smaller waves etched into the larger drifts. Then he makes the most astounding observation of all, defining the principle underlying all such patterns when he writes, ?All the world is full of inscape and chance left free to act falls into an order as well as a purpose . . . [italics mine]. A modern Chaologist couldn?t have said it better: Chance, left free to act, will fall into an order. Hopkins notes the same order in ?the random clods and broken heaps of snow made by the cast of a broom.? This is not to say that Hopkins believed that the intricate forms of nature are produced by chance alone, or that poetry can be written by giving rein to ungoverned impulses. He believed that natural forms are produced by chance combined with natural law, and spent his whole life working out an elaborate system to explain the patterns he descried in art and nature. The word ?inscape,? which he used in the passage above, was Hopkins? term for the inner design or pattern that causes an object?s distinctive shape; he applied the term to a surprisingly wide range of phenomena, from music, paintings, and poems, to trees, clouds, and waterfalls. He also meant the term to suggest something like what Duns Scotus called haecceitas, the individualizing thisness found in everything in nature. Hopkins coined another word, instress, to define the force that upholds an object?s inscape. He believed that even the most seemingly random patterns in nature are produced by instress and can therefore be perceived, understood, and artistically rendered. For instance, in a journal entry dated August 10, 1872, he describes the patterns made by withdrawing waves on sand and notes how the eyes ?. . . unpack the huddling and gnarls of the water and law out the shapes and the sequence of the running. . . [italics mine].? Hopkins also believed it was possible for a reader to ?law out? a poem?s inscape. In fact, in some early lecture notes, he described poetry as ?. . . speech only employed to carry the inscape of speech for the inscape?s sake. . .? In a letter to his friend Robert Bridges, he rebukes poets like Ammons and Olson who ignore a poem?s inscape by reading only with their eyes, telling his correspondent not to read his poems ?with the eyes but with [his] ears. . . .? Anticipating the work of Frederick Turner, a synthesizing genius of our own time, Hopkins insisted that all the arts, including poetry, had to be performed to be fully experienced. In a letter to his brother Everard (November, 1885), the poet stated that ?. . . every work of art has its own play or performance.? And after defining how drama, symphonic music, and painting each achieves its performance, Hopkins added, ?A house performs when it is now built and lived in. To come nearer: books play, perform, or are played and performed when they are read.? A final poem by Hopkins will illustrate the depth of his understanding and achievement. Published without a title, it is known by its first line. As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell?s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same; Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves--goes itself; myself it speaks and spells; Crying What I do is me: for that I came. I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God?s eye what in God?s eye he is-- Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men?s faces. By now, we hardly need to point out how the poem performs itself, joining its various elements in one organic wholeness. We might begin by noting that it?s a Petrarchan sonnet, then observe how the rhyming of the sestet, cdcdcd, contrasts with the envelope rhyme-scheme of the octave--like the shift from one fractal dimension to another in the branching of human lungs. We might also note how the poem?s end-rhymes are echoed in rhymes and thick clusters of assonantally chiming sounds within the lines, and how the lush assonance of the poem finds a parallel in its dense alliteration. Taken together, there?s not a more densely interwoven texture of sound in English poetry. But the rhyming doesn?t stop at the level of sound: Hopkins also ?rhymes? on the higher level of metaphor, first in the flashing of kingfisher and dragonfly, then in the following lines where he rhymes the sounds of stones falling into wells with plucked strings and rung bells. Rhyming sense with sense, he also makes flashing kingfisher rhyme with vibrating strings and bells as each thing deals out ?that being indoors each one dwells.? The entire poem celebrates a self-similarity that extends throughout creation, from the distinctive beauty of pebbles and insects, to the higher forms of ethical and moral beauty in people, up to the very highest informing beauty of the creator himself. According to Hopkins, everything from a dragonfly to God not only possesses a distinctive beauty, a special thisness, it selves--a verb, notice, not a noun. This selving is a living process that happens across all levels of being; it is a lived performance. Hopkins declares that the just man ?Acts in God?s eye what in God?s eye he is?; that ?Christ plays in ten thousand places? [italics mine]. Everything in creation--from ?selving? pebbles and dragonflies to the man who ?justices? and ?keeps all his goings graces?--is tangled in one self-interfering loop. In man, the creative principle--what Hopkins calls God--achieves a transformative self-consciousness, able to act ?in God?s eye what in God?s eye [it] is.? A man is not only nature observing itself, but embodied personhood (like the incarnate Christ); he is God observing Himself. The final three lines of the poem capture this self-reflexive, paradoxical entangledness with remarkable beauty and economy: ? . . . For Christ plays in ten thousand places, / Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his / To the Father through the features of men?s faces.? Christ plays to the creator, who is also paradoxically himself, through the ?features of men?s faces,? with their distinctive, character-revealing symmetries and fractal wrinkles. Hopkins enacts his own selving in this poem in part through his distinctive style, nowhere more clearly than in his first line, where he plays out the implications of his metaphor at every level of sound, syntax, and rhythm: As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame . . . The pattern of ?k? and f sounds in the first half of the line is exactly duplicated in the interlocking pattern of dr and f sounds in the second. Running through this pattern of alliteration and binding it together is the assonantal chiming of short a sounds in ?as,? ?catch,? and ?dragon.? The syntax and rhythm of the two halves of the line are also nearly identical: As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame. . . A slight asymmetry is caused by the extra unstressed syllable of ?As? and the ghostly extra syllable hovering at the end of fire in the first half of the line, as well as by subtle differences in the stress and duration of corresponding syllables in each. A further asymmetry lies in the way the first line departs from the dominant iambic pattern of the poem. This asymmetry appears again most noticeably in the poem?s last line, which hovers suspended between three almost equally plausible scansions of its rhythms. The line can be heard as extremely loose iambic pentameter, with an anapestic substitution in the first foot, an iamb with a courtesy accent on ?through? in the second, a normal iamb in the third, and a pyrrhic and spondee (with a feminine ending) in the last two; as trochaic hexameter, with five of its six feet falling; and as an oddly symmetrical three-stress line composed of three anapests, with an extra unstressed syllable after each. The alliteration of the three heavily stressed syllables in ?Father,? ?features,? and ?faces? lends additional weight to this reading. Given Hopkins? experiments with accentual verse, one might argue that this poem?s metrical irregularities are due to its use of ?sprung rhythm,? an accentual pattern, usually with five stresses per line, developed by the poet from his readings in Anglo-Saxon verse. But the poem?s second line is so perfectly iambic that it establishes a clear metrical paradigm, retroactively influencing the way we see the first, which can be scanned as above, with an iamb, pyrrhic, and spondee before the comma; and ?headless? iamb, pyrrhic, and spondee after. Though this particular arrangement bears the inscape of Hopkins? peculiar genius, the use of pyrrhic and spondee is common in iambic verse. Matthew Arnold, for instance, uses it in ?Dover Beach? to create a line similar to that of Hopkins: ?Come to the window, sweet is the night air.? A similar situation arises in the final line, where, in order to get our five stresses, we have to count either the lightly stressed ?To? or ?through,? as well as ?men?s?--though none receives anywhere near the weight of the stresses in Fathers, features, faces. Within the larger metrical context, however, we can scan the line as above, as loose iambic. If we regard each line as a gestalt, even some of Hopkins? most difficult lines can be scanned as iambic pentameter--though a pentameter with a higher than usual number of stresses due to his frequent spondaic substitutions. All of which goes to show how holistic a formal poem is, how every line and every individual foot within it affects the reading of every other line and syllable. Though Hopkins substitutes with unparalleled boldness, especially in the sestet, where the lines buckle and strain against the iambic matrix, we have only to compare this poem to others such as ?Spelt from Sibyl?s Leaves? or ?Carrion Comfort? (both experimental ?sonnets? with the same rhyme scheme) to see the difference between it and the poet?s more thorough-going experiments in sprung rhythm. In ?As Kingfishers catch fire,? it seems that the sonnet form itself (that archetypal thing) reaches down to influence the reading of each constituent part by awakening expectations in us for certain rhymes and rhythms. Every fragment of syntax, every complication of metaphor influences every other part of the poem in ways both large and small. It is difficult to conceive how a poem without the regularly recurring rhythms or self-repeating forms of Hopkins? sonnet could produce such complexity of design or richness of interpretation. Through parallelisms of syntax and similarities of metaphors and sounds, free verse can sometimes attain isolated expressions of self-similarity in its parts and approximations of order in its overall design; but with fewer rules and less feedback to amplify and vary its constituent elements, it generally fails to achieve the same degree of self-similarity and scaling we find in the best formal verse. Drawn into being not so much by a strange attractor as by a series of provisional judgments and mechanical operations such as hitting return and space keys on a keyboard, free verse can only imitate the most superficial aspects of living forms like trees. Hopkins, even as a young man, suggested as much in an undergraduate essay on ?Poetic Diction?: "The structure of poetry is that of continuous parallelism, ranging from the technical so-called Parallelisms of Hebrew poetry and the antiphons of Church music up to the intricacy of Greek or Italian or English verse." Suggesting that there?s a hierarchy of forms in poetry and music, Hopkins calls the ?so-called Parallelisms? of free verse merely "technical" in nature and denies even the Hebrew poetry of the Bible the organic ?intricacy? of classical forms. From Zafano at aol.com Wed Feb 21 12:33:08 2001 From: Zafano at aol.com (Zafano at aol.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 12:33:08 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: My Grandmother's Anthologies... Message-ID: In a message dated 02/21/2001 10:30:45 AM Central Standard Time, CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com writes: << There is far too much in-breeding going on, especially in MFA degree granting institutions which look no further than their own graduates when seeking to fill new positions. Bob >> Not true here at Arkansas. Which other MFA programs are largely staffed by their own MFAs? MH From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Feb 21 12:40:50 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 11:40:50 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mythic Mainstream In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20010221114528.0087faa0@postoffice.providence.edu> References: <003d01c09c18$c3a82a20$f829f7a5@compaqcomputer> <3A93C8E7.128ECB5@providence.edu> Message-ID: I find this discussion frustrating, as it seems we're talking past each other on a number of fronts. Part of the trouble, I guess, is that terms like "mainstream poetry" remain vaguely defined at best, and certainly debatable in the extreme, so generalizations based upon such vagueness tend toward guess what. Let me see if I can spell out my frustration in a little more detail, in hopes it may lead somewhere. There's certainly a great difference between the way that Ashbery approaches language and the way Jane Kenyon did, to pick two easy instances. (Whether they are both contained within the mythic "mainstream" or not doesn't concern me much. They're obviously very different poets.) And yes, Kenyon was probably aiming at a certain effect that could be called "transparency," though naturally it was the product of considerable artifice. And Ashbery is plainly much closer to the language-centered end of the spectrum of contemporary style. But when I look around, I see a rather considerable variety of poets who are well known, praised and anthologized, and so forth. And I happen to find the differences more intriguing than their broad similarities. I am certainly aware that my own personal radar doesn't much pick up the sort of poets Bob Grumman likes to talk about, who often work at the syllable-level or make much of punctuation, and from that vantage point I see more variety than he may in that mythic mainstream. So be it. The differences I am pointing to nonetheless exist. The degree to which Mythic Mainstreamers (let's call 'em MMs for short) reach for Kenyon's kind of "transparency" seems to vary a good deal. (Might be intriguing to take the term "transparency" apart, no? Even old high-octane Whitman once commented that he was seeking a "plate-glassy" style.) I mentioned Rich and Komunyakaa earlier as instances of poets who strike me as very different from each other, both of whom might be termed "untransparent" as well as somewhat difficult. But they're hardly the only prominent poets who don't fit the stereotype of MFA simplicity. Other names? Well, they throng. Mark Doty's filigreed verse doesn't have a great deal in common, I think, with Lucille Clifton's, though both might be termed transparent. Fred Chappell's classically-tinged lyrics and great sprawling narratives don't even resemble each other, much less the work of Robert Bly or Sharon Olds. Then there is Hayden Carruth--certainly an MM--a poet it would be risky to call transparent, or condescend to as easy or dull. The syntactic complexity alone of Sydney Lea marks him as worlds apart from Ted Kooser's tightly imagistic lyrics, though both of those poets are supremely concerned with seeing if they might communicate to the perhaps mythical common reader. James Merrill's heavily allusive, formally elegant verse does not resemble Allen Ginsberg's equally allusive style, though of course both are enshrined as prime MMs in all the anthologies. Betsy Sholl's densely layered narrative/lyrics operate quite differently from the more linguistically slippery recent work of Alice Fulton, though again, both are poets of considerably foregrounded artifice. And Jorie Graham presents some similarities to Alice Fulton, yes, but how much more productive to study are their differing spins on things as they, in a sense, domesticate aspects of postmodern style. And so forth. I've been sticking mostly to familiar names, and the list could go on nearly idefinitely. Not too well known, for example, is Dennis Finnell, whose third book, *The Gauguin Answer Sheet*, (from U. Georgia) I am eagerly awaiting. His difficult but powerful work might be described as a strange mixture of styles, with liberal doses of transparency continually butting into a midwestern version of French surrealism. If you want an arguably mainstream poet who is, in Duke Ellington's favorite encomium, beyond category, check out Finnell's work. (His earlier books are *Red Cottage*, which won the Juniper Prize and *Beloved Beast*, also from Georgia.) I would not deny that a great deal of the verse found in the journals is dull, or that it subscribes to an aesthetic of sincerity and art-that-conceals-art that could be termed transparency. Most poetry at any given point is always mediocre, we should recall. I am simply suggesting that the poets I've mentioned, and many many more, call generalizations into question in productive ways. David Graham __________________ >At 10:12 AM 2/21/01 -0500, you wrote: >>Bill Friend wrote: >> >>However, the >>> overwhelming majority of the poetry in the major journals eschews >>difficulty, >>> instead aspiring to a transparency of language and meaning. >> >>No poet, who's any good, aspires to "transparency of language." >>"Transparency" is just another straw-man argument Deconstructionts and >>language poets use to show how simple-minded the "mainstream" is. > >Not at all. I've been in creative writing workshops, I've talked with >respected mainstream poets, I've heard them read, I've read their essays >and this is a theme that is repeated time and time again. > >And the metaphors used by many people on the list have suggested just such >a view. Poetry has been described as communication and currency, both of >which are (hopefully) unproblematic transfers of value or meaning from one >person to another. Ashbery has been condemnned for his dithering, i.e., not >getting to "the point." "Language poetry" has been dismissed as the frilly >lingerie on literary theory -- which presumably sets it in opposition to >"naked poetry." > >That poetry may not have "a point" seems to be off the radar here. > >By the way, that last sentence of yours comes pretty close to a straw >person argument. > > Even poets >>like Frost, W.C. Williams, Neruda, Ammons want you to look at, as well as >>through, their language. > >With the exception of Ammons, none of these poets is even living. Frost and >Williams have been dead since the Kennedy administration, Neruda since >shortly before Nixon left in disgrace. That would pretty much take them out >of the realm of contemporary mainstream poetry, which is what I've been >talking about. And, of course, Williams was an enomous influence on the >language writers. > >Bill Freind > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 21 12:48:18 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 12:48:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Mystery Poet on Form Message-ID: <16.91d415c.27c55962@cs.com> I wonder if anyone would care to guess at the identity of this senior American poet and Pulitzer Prize-winner. But for many of us contemporary poets, formalism is a way of life, a sustenance, a stout tree for the vine of our poems. We are, for better or for worse, committed to make rhymes, be they exact rhymes or slant. We are still writing sonnets, villanelles, sestinas, even pantoums and triolets, ballades and rondels, as well as inventing "nonce" forms to suit our uses. Practicing formal poetics does not in any way suggest that a poet is elitist or reactionary. Often a poet will choose to write in a historically powerful form in order to transform it. Fifteen years ago, in an interview, I was quoted on the same subject. What I said feels no less true to me today: I know that I write better poems in form-within the exigencies of a rhyme scheme and a metrical pattern-than I do in the looser line of free verse. Others can argue this point, claiming that free verse is a form and as such just as formal. But the harder - that is, the more psychically difficult -the poem is to write, the more likely I am to choose a difficult pattern to pound it into. This is true because, paradoxically, the difficulty frees me to be more honest and more direct. It is Yeats's "The fascination of what's difficult." From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Wed Feb 21 12:49:34 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 12:49:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty and establishments. References: <53.2a749d1.27c552fd@cs.com> Message-ID: <3A93FFAE.C89D29A1@lehigh.edu> > > Why was this? I've never heard this connection before. In what way? Ron Silliman mentions this in relation to his own work somewhere in _The New Sentence_ (Ron's on this list -- he can elaborate), notably the influence on him (and others) of Williams' early works such as _Spring and All_ and _Kora in Hell_, which are more fragmented, less "finished," thus more overtly improvisational than Williams' later work. These early works are also characterized by a hybridization of poetry and prose composition so that, for instance, the poem many know from anthologies as a stand-alone little gem ("The Red Wheelbarrow") is actually situated in a context of note-takings and meditations that the poem interrupts as an access (and perhaps, ultimately, a paradigmatic one) of a new sort of compositional lucidity. But the problematic of that lucidity is really only perceptible in the larger context. I think that's where the L-poets assert the connection. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Feb 21 12:49:39 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 08:49:39 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mythic Mainstream Message-ID: Part of the problem I have with the statement "Mainstream poets aim for transparency" is with the example of William Blake, whom Bill supports as a supposedly deliberately obscure poet. Who could deny that Blake's language is simple, deliberately so, and yet that his poetry is complex and "difficult"? A lot of modern poetry certainly is plainspoken and often directly addressed to the reader, yet I don't think that necessitates its not being "complex" or "difficult." Perhaps a phrase from the great experimentalist Virginia Woolf is useful here: in "A Room of One's Own," when a seemingly conventional narrative in a novel is suddenly broken off, Woolf comments, "This is good, if she (the novelist) does it not for the sake of breaking, but for the sake of creating." Difficulty does not necessarily depend on syntax and wilful obscurantism is not often a virtue. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 21 13:26:06 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 13:26:06 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] The elusive mainstream Message-ID: <8a.2ae5a65.27c5623e@cs.com> Here are some general observations that might be made about the so-called contemporary mainstream: 1. First-person speaker 2. Use of present tense, even when dealing with autobiographical material 3. Poems combine personal narrative with epiphany 4. Medium-length free verse (averaging 7-12 syllables) 5. Conversational idiom with primarily familiar level of diction 6. Formal arrangements often employ uniform stanzas (same number of lines) but without schematic use of rhyme (though often used as closure device) 7. Limited use of tropes--similes predominate 8. Rare use of rhetorical schemas 9. 25-line average length 10. No capitalization of first letters in lines; standard punctuation otherwise Now I'll admit that this is a pretty silly list, so I'll put it to the test by looking at the poems in the July 2000 issue of Poetry. Total number of poems: 24 (excluding five translations) 1. First-person speaker 10 (one clear dramatic monologue; several using "you" as an indeterminate second-person voice) 2. Use of present tense, even when dealing with autobiographical material 15 (a couple of others use future tense and one has no finite verb form) 3. Poems combine personal narrative with epiphany 9 (some narratives are largely implied by situations, settings, etc.) 4. Medium-length free verse (averaging 7-12 syllables) Pretty much. Three poems in conventional iambic pentameter--several others in pentameter-like lines that won't scan very regularly 5. Conversational idiom with primarily familiar level of diction I found a few allusions (agora, Kabbalistic) that readers might have to track down. Vocabulary struck me as 80%+ non-Latinate. 6. Formal arrangements often employ uniform stanzas (same number of lines) but without schematic use of rhyme (though often used as closure device) Two sonnets, two stanzaic poems with rhyme scheme. Of other poems, 6 in uniform stanzas, the rest in irregular stanzas or single stanza. 7. Limited use of tropes--similes predominate Several "_____ of _______" metaphors. A few similes. Some synesthesia. One hyperbole. Didn't find any metonymy. Apostrophe (if the "you" addressed is a truly absent you). 8. Rare use of rhetorical schemas One poem uses epistrophe. Occasional uses of parallel structure. 9. 25-line average length Four poems exceeded one page in length. 10. No capitalization of first letters in lines; standard punctuation otherwise 18 out of 24 didn't capitalize. All used more or less standard punctuation. I don't know what this proves, if anything, and I'm sure I missed a lot (spent about an hour on it). I was wondering if anyone else would care to modify the list or maybe apply it to the poems in some other "mainstream" magazine. From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Wed Feb 21 13:33:16 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 13:33:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty and establishments. In-Reply-To: <53.2a749d1.27c552fd@cs.com> Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010221133316.0087f670@postoffice.providence.edu> At 12:21 PM 2/21/01 EST, you wrote: >In a message dated 2/21/01 10:46:19 AM Central Standard Time, >wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu writes: > >> And, of course, Williams was an enomous influence on the >> language writers. > >Why was this? I've never heard this connection before. In what way? The earlier Williams of _Kora in Hell_ and _Spring and All_ offered a model for the disjunctures and associative leaps of some elements of langpo. In "The New Sentence," Ron Silliman mentions that Kora is the only real precedent for the new sentence, although he admits that even that isn't an exact precedent. I think Ron Silliman's on this list, so maybe he wants to say more about that. Seems like Williams is the Thomas Jefferson of American poetry: lots of very different camps want to claim him as their own. Bill Freind >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > From kellogg at duke.edu Wed Feb 21 11:22:52 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 11:22:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty References: Message-ID: <3A93EB5C.24F62EE3@duke.edu> Paul Lake wrote: > "No poet, who's any good, aspires to "transparency of language." > "Transparency" is just another straw-man argument Deconstructionts and > language poets use to show how simple-minded the "mainstream" is. Even poets > like Frost, W.C. Williams, Neruda, Ammons want you to look at, as well as > through, their language. There are lots of problems with mainstream poetry, > and dullness is certainly one of them, but I'm not sure how much is > clarified by skipping deconstructionist cliches across its surface." > > Bravo, John Brehm, for making the point so clearly and succinctly. Except that John's response is as cliched as what he attacks, and as simplistic. First, as one of the Heathers in the movie of the same name said of bulemia, "Deconstructionism is so 1987." By raising the red herring of deconstruction, Brehm does nothing but date his own response. Second, some good poets _do_ aspire to transparency of language, and not all of them are mainstream. Cid Corman, for example, who's pretty interesting and is no-one's idea of a mainstream poet, advocates just that in an interview in the July/August 2000 issue of APR. For my part, and this is only a partial answer, I'd say what makes _Poetry_ magazine -- if that magazine is representative of mainstream poetry -- so unbearably bad is not transparency but gentility, timidity, no risk-taking, sameness. That and Joseph Parisi's loathsome habit (I haven't read it in years, so maybe he's dropped this) of having a kind of ghostly theme or leitmotif behind every issue. I seem to remember once he included about a half dozen simply gawdawful poems containing images of highway overpasses just so he could include one by W.S. Merwin that also contained that image. It was at that point that his editing became unforgiveable, and I canceled my subscription. (I still read the reviews in the library copies). David Kellogg Assistant Director, University Writing Program Duke University (919) 660-4357; FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Feb 21 13:55:59 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 09:55:59 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] The elusive mainstream Message-ID: I would add the following: 11. Addressed to a loved one (current spouse, ex-spouse, boy/girlfriend, etc.) Just as I got overly sensitized to the use of first-person present-tense in a lot of today's poems, recently I started noticing that nearly every poem I run across in a magazine or a journal seems to have love as its subject. Surely nothing wrong with a good love poem, or ex-love poem, but after a while they start to sound maddeningly similar. Perhaps this could have a subcategory, 11b. Addressed to a loved one in the 2nd person ("You") which would qualify 99.95 of Ted Hughes' "Birthday Letters," for example. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Wed Feb 21 14:04:36 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 14:04:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Transparency In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010221140436.00888370@postoffice.providence.edu> I picked up the January issue of _Poetry_, figuring there'd be some examples of the poetry I've been dismissing as "mainstream." One of the things I've always liked about _Poetry_ is the way it prints last names on the cover, as if they were easily recognized brand names. But, of course, they're not: I see "Pope" and think Alexander, or perhaps John Paul II whose Selected Poems my godmother bought me for a very belated birthday a few years back. Actually, it's Jacquelyn. The Berry mentioned is Wendell, but the Lusk, who I'm hoping against hope might be Dorothy Trujillo, is really Daniel. I also love that the names are both alphabetical and crowded so close together -- it's like they become some orthographic exercise that resists the brand names impulse, so that we almost miss "Merwin" there in the center of the second line Anyway, here's the first poem I picked at random, by Albert Goldbarth Stationed It's the other ones, who soon enough return to being happy after the funeral, that are nearest to their own deaths -- in their gayety and everyday distraction, they're so open and unguarded...anything [ital.] could enter them; could claim them. It's the ones who weep incessantly that are saved for now, the ones who have taken a little of it into their systems: this is how inoculation works. And sorrow is difficult, a job: it requires time to complete. And the tears? -- the salt of the folk saying, that gets sprinkled over the tail feathers and keeps a bird from flying; keeps it stationed in this world. At first I like the title, since I don't know what it means -- especially in the context of the funeral. Of course, I don't usually like funeral poems: like poems about getting drunk, they almost always fall short of the real thing. (The exception here is the band X's song "Under the Big Black Sun," a brilliant romp through the agony of a sister's death.) Then I wonder why this is in quatrains, especially given the enjambment between stanzas. It's an unneccessary distraction that I find in too much contemorary poetry -- almost like they're pretending to write in meter. The first three stanzas are straightforward, so by line nine I can tell this is the kind of poem that's building to the Big Metaphor, that conclusion which is going to tie everything up in a nice big bow. And that's exactly what happens -- except it's worse than I thought. The Big Metaphor uses the title that I liked at first, bringing the poem in a nice, neat circle. For me, this is no different from an expository essay: read it once and it's done. Actually, there are lots of essays I'd read over and over again, so maybe this has less to say, at least in my estimation. This is precisely what I mean by transparency. I've flipped through the rest of the issue and there are poems I like more, like Jack Stewart's "Mirror" (which has an epigraph from Stevens that I can't for the life of me connect to the poem.) On the other hand, Berry's short poems seem like throwaways that make we want to go grab Cid Corman's _Of_ to remind myself has shorties are really written. Bill Freind From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Wed Feb 21 14:26:05 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 14:26:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The elusive mainstream In-Reply-To: <8a.2ae5a65.27c5623e@cs.com> Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010221142605.0088c5e0@postoffice.providence.edu> I just got done teaching a class on Surrealism and talking about the role of chance and odd connections. Then I see that Sam (uh...that is your name, right?) and I have both been flipping through recent issues of _Poetry_. Weird. This is actually a pretty good list, since it emphasizes the unquestioned, or at least agreed-upon assumptions that govern official verse culture. Also interesting that David Kellogg brought up Cid Corman's name, as I did. So why do I like Cid Corman, or Gary Snyder, or Whalen or Notley or O'Hara or Schuyler or Black Mountain -- none of whom offer the type of resistance I've been endorsing? I feel as if the "I" in the work of all those very different poets is much more unstable and open to question than in the work of, for instance, Merwin, Berry, Jarrell (to cite some rough contemporaries). And I think there are at least two reasons for that. One is the influence of Buddhism on Snyder, Corman and Whalen. (Was Alice Notley into Buddhism?) I think that makes the first person voice much more complex than the standard American individual voice (You're all different! "Yes, Lord: We're all different! Can I read you a poem about my grandmother?"). Another is the influence of surrealism, avant-garde art and music on the New York School writers. Yeah, O'Hara's work is cool and witty, but there's also a smoldering intelligence there. I'm now limiting myself to no more than two posts a day. Bill Freind At 01:26 PM 2/21/01 EST, you wrote: >Here are some general observations that might be made about the so-called >contemporary mainstream: > >1. First-person speaker >2. Use of present tense, even when dealing with autobiographical material >3. Poems combine personal narrative with epiphany >4. Medium-length free verse (averaging 7-12 syllables) >5. Conversational idiom with primarily familiar level of diction >6. Formal arrangements often employ uniform stanzas (same number of lines) >but without schematic use of rhyme (though often used as closure device) >7. Limited use of tropes--similes predominate >8. Rare use of rhetorical schemas >9. 25-line average length >10. No capitalization of first letters in lines; standard punctuation >otherwise > >Now I'll admit that this is a pretty silly list, so I'll put it to the test >by looking at the poems in the July 2000 issue of Poetry. > >Total number of poems: 24 (excluding five translations) > >1. First-person speaker > >10 (one clear dramatic monologue; several using "you" as an indeterminate >second-person voice) > >2. Use of present tense, even when dealing with autobiographical material > >15 (a couple of others use future tense and one has no finite verb form) > >3. Poems combine personal narrative with epiphany > >9 (some narratives are largely implied by situations, settings, etc.) > >4. Medium-length free verse (averaging 7-12 syllables) > >Pretty much. Three poems in conventional iambic pentameter--several others >in pentameter-like lines that won't scan very regularly > >5. Conversational idiom with primarily familiar level of diction > >I found a few allusions (agora, Kabbalistic) that readers might have to track >down. Vocabulary struck me as 80%+ non-Latinate. > >6. Formal arrangements often employ uniform stanzas (same number of lines) >but without schematic use of rhyme (though often used as closure device) > >Two sonnets, two stanzaic poems with rhyme scheme. > >Of other poems, 6 in uniform stanzas, the rest in irregular stanzas or single >stanza. > >7. Limited use of tropes--similes predominate > >Several "_____ of _______" metaphors. A few similes. Some synesthesia. One >hyperbole. Didn't find any metonymy. Apostrophe (if the "you" addressed is >a truly absent you). > >8. Rare use of rhetorical schemas > >One poem uses epistrophe. Occasional uses of parallel structure. > >9. 25-line average length > >Four poems exceeded one page in length. > >10. No capitalization of first letters in lines; standard punctuation >otherwise > >18 out of 24 didn't capitalize. All used more or less standard punctuation. > >I don't know what this proves, if anything, and I'm sure I missed a lot >(spent about an hour on it). I was wondering if anyone else would care to >modify the list or maybe apply it to the poems in some other "mainstream" >magazine. > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > From Jandhodge at aol.com Wed Feb 21 14:25:22 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 14:25:22 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty and establishments. Message-ID: Bill Freind writes: << the metaphors used by many people on the list have suggested just such a view [i.e. "transparency of language"]. Poetry has been described as communication and currency, both of which are (hopefully) unproblematic transfers of value or meaning from one person to another. >> Communication and currency are (hopefully) unproblematic?? Even these list exchanges show the folly of that assumption. I'd suggest that as a definition of "poetry" it might apply to greeting card verse [$2.75/clich?, though given my budget even that $2.75 can be problematic], but noone who uses language with any degree of seriousness or intelligence is naive enough to believe that--even Robert Francis in his delightfully paradoxical poem "Glass." << Ashbery has been condemnned for his dithering, i.e., not getting to "the point." . . . That poetry may not have "a point" seems to be off the radar here. >> Pointless granted. So why bother? I don't mean to be dismissive; it's a serious question. But for pointless verbal gymnastics, there are always the [London] Times crosswords. << "Language poetry" has been dismissed as the frilly lingerie on literary theory -- which presumably sets it in opposition to "naked poetry." >> Or in opposition to jeans and sweat shirts, dungarees, uniforms, sweaters, skirts, T-shirts, or whatever else the working world [poetic or otherwise] wears? Maybe it depends on who makes the presumption? By the way, were your work to receive notice in, say, the NYRB, would be be miraculously transmogrified to mainstreamness? and thereby necessarily debased? (Ah, yet another currency metaphor--or two.) Cheers, Jan D. Hodge From boisseaum at umkc.edu Wed Feb 21 14:36:19 2001 From: boisseaum at umkc.edu (Michelle Boisseau) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 13:36:19 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Amorous Gorilla In-Reply-To: References: <49.7aa30f2.27c427e4@cs.com> Message-ID: <4.1.20010221133523.00aaf100@imap4.exchange.umkc.edu> Thanks, David, for the brisk reminder. Michelle Boisseau boisseau at umkc.edu At 03:51 PM 02/20/2001 -0600, you wrote: >If you squint your eyes sufficiently, a fox is identical to a dog, and a >cat is nothing but a tiny cougar. Adrienne Rich is Yusef Komunyakaa. And >all mainstream poetry is dull, all language poetry opaque, all new >formalist poetry rigidly reactionary . . . . > >Yes, there are many poems out there concerning grandmothers. It is rather >a fashion, I suppose, just as statues-in-Rome poems were in the 1950s. But >to note that fact is not to say much, and is certainly not a sufficient >criticism. It's rather like saying "those Elizabethans, all their poems >are about love and god," without noticing any significant differences >between the work of Shakespeare and Humfrey Gifford. > >In his lovely essay "Dull Subjects" William Matthews lampoons this sort of >reductive critique, formulating for all eternity what he calls "a short but >comprehensive summary of subjects for lyric poetry": > > 1. I went out into the woods today and it made me feel, you >know, sort of religious. > > 2. We're not getting any younger. > > 3. It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) >with you, honey. > > 4. Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, >and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent and on we know >not what. > >And he concludes his reductio as follows: > >"One could, I suppose, if one were possessed of a mania for condensation >and categorization, offer a single ur-plot for lyric poetry and indeed for >all imaginative literature, and if so, one could do worse than the >following four-word sentence, a plot summary of the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby >and Dorothy Lamour film, *The Road to Bali*: 'Amorous gorilla pursues >Hope.' " > > ["Dull Subjects." -Curiosities-. U Michigan Press, 1989] > >David Graham >_______________________ > > > >>In a message dated 2/20/01 12:35:19 PM Central Standard Time, >>wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu writes: >> >>> >>> Charles Bernstein analyzes how incredibly formulaic these poems are, even >>> when >>> written by people of color or marginalized ethnic groups. They typically >>> take >>> place in a kitchen or mention food in some way. >>> >>> >> >>Good point. I think even Adrienne Rich has one that does this. >>_______________________________________________ > > >__________________ >David Graham >grahamd at mail.ripon.edu >__________________ > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Wed Feb 21 15:15:09 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 15:15:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty and establishments. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010221151509.008849c0@postoffice.providence.edu> At 02:25 PM 2/21/01 EST, you wrote: >Bill Freind writes: > ><< the metaphors used by many people on the list have suggested just such > a view [i.e. "transparency of language"]. Poetry has been described as > communication and currency, both of which are (hopefully) unproblematic > transfers of value or meaning from one person to another. >> > >Communication and currency are (hopefully) unproblematic?? Even these list >exchanges show the folly of that assumption. Well, yeah -- that was my point. I was discussing the metaphors used by others on this list. > ><< Ashbery has been condemnned for his dithering, i.e., not getting to "the > point." . . . That poetry may not have "a point" seems to be off the radar >here. >> > >Pointless granted. So why bother? I don't mean to be dismissive; it's a >serious question. But for pointless verbal gymnastics, there are always the >[London] Times crosswords. Wouldn't that be the exact opposite of pointless verbal gymnastics? The clue/answer form seems a lot closer to the poetry I've been dismissing as mainstream. I'm not sure what "pointless verbal gymnastics" refers to. I'm not being coy -- that just doesn't seem like an accurate description of any of the work I've been talking about. > >By the way, were your work to receive notice in, say, the NYRB, would be be >miraculously transmogrified to mainstreamness? and thereby necessarily >debased? (Ah, yet another currency metaphor--or two.) You've got the cart before the horse here. The problem is not the NYRB or any other journal. I'm not decrying institutionalization, co-optation or anything like that (although those are potential problems). My point is that these journals operate from such a narrow aesthetic that an enormous amount of poetry is automatically excluded. The problem isn't "the establishment" (whatever that might be) but the assumptions shared by many different poets, teachers and editors. So to answer your question, at this point in time it's impossible for me to imagine, say, Juliana Spahr getting a review there. If she ever does, I'll be happy. And then I'll call her a hack sellout. Just kidding. Here's a perfect example of the limitations I'm talking about: although I'm arguing against what I've been calling mainstream poetry, I've given some specific examples. I read Poetry, APR and other journals occasionally and I'm familiar with some of the work of the well-known figures in contemporary poetry. But in spite of the background sniping against "language poetry," I haven't seen one writer or work cited by name. Someone asked for a definition of langpo and Pierre Joris suggested he or she check out Lyn Hejinian's new collection of essays (an endorsement I would second). But the list was strangely silent. Maybe that's because few people in the anti-langpo camp are familiar enough with the work to offer a definition, or maybe not. But I'm curious about how many people who have argued against my positions have read New American Writing or Sulfur or Shiny on a regular basis. I suspect there are very few who have, although I'd be delighted to have someone prove me wrong. Bill Freind (who's really going to shut up for a while. Seriously.) From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Wed Feb 21 15:27:49 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 15:27:49 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty References: <3A93EB5C.24F62EE3@duke.edu> Message-ID: <00ee01c09c44$c5603660$f829f7a5@compaqcomputer> David Kellog wrote: First, as one of the Heathers in the movie of the same name said of > bulemia, "Deconstructionism is so 1987." By raising the red herring of > deconstruction, Brehm does nothing but date his own response. If Deconstruction is no longer a part of the literary landscape, I'm glad to hear it. (Ditto bulemia, though I think that's still around). I have friends in grad school theory programs and Derrida is still a central, if not phallocentric, figure in such places. And I think it was NYU that declared a Derrida month recently, replete with hero-worshipping symposia and lectures, etc. Maybe I misunderstand what's meant by "transparency," which itself is looking like a not-so-transparent term. I thought we were talking about language that is intended to disappear or dissolve into its referents. I just can't imagine poets who don't want their language to take on some degree of "materiality," to be lingered over, weighed, considered closely, appreciated for its sound and texture, etc. Newspaper language aspires to transparency. Poetry would seem to be by definition a use of language that calls attention to itself, to one degree or another, as language. John Brehm From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 21 04:38:44 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 03:38:44 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Playing catch, transparency, difficulty Message-ID: Someone mentioned Ted Kooser's language earlier today. At a conference a few years ago, Kooser did offer the image of a glass-bottomed boat as a model for poetry's transparency. I took issue with him, offering instead the following poem by Robert Francis as a more accurate image of how poetry works: Catch Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together, Overhand, underhand, backhand, sleight of hand, every hand, Teasing with attitudes, latitudes, interludes, altitudes, High, make him fly off the ground for it, low, make him stoop, Make him scoop it up, make him as-almost-as-possible miss it, Fast, let him sting from it, now, now fool him slowly, Anything under the sun to outwit the prosy, Over the tree and the long sweet cadence down, Over his head, make him scramble to pick up the meaning, And now, like a posy, a pretty one plump in his hands. Paul Lake From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Wed Feb 21 16:10:42 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 16:10:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty and establishments. References: <3.0.6.32.20010221151509.008849c0@postoffice.providence.edu> Message-ID: <010001c09c4a$c1203400$f829f7a5@compaqcomputer> Bill, As someone who's argued against some of what you've said, I confess I love the work of Kevin Davies, whose latest book is Comp. and who is completely hilarious, and Elaine Equi, though I don't know what camp she's in exactly. And I have read, with mixed reactions, mags like Shiny and Sulfur, and the poetry of Bruce Andrews, Jackson MacLow, and others, as well as Douglas Messerli's FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CENTURY: A NEW AMERICAN POETRY 1960-1990, which looks like a pretty comprehensive gathering of language poets and their predecessors. John Brehm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Freind" To: Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2001 3:15 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty and establishments. > At 02:25 PM 2/21/01 EST, you wrote: > >Bill Freind writes: > > > ><< the metaphors used by many people on the list have suggested just such > > a view [i.e. "transparency of language"]. Poetry has been described as > > communication and currency, both of which are (hopefully) unproblematic > > transfers of value or meaning from one person to another. >> > > > >Communication and currency are (hopefully) unproblematic?? Even these list > >exchanges show the folly of that assumption. > > Well, yeah -- that was my point. I was discussing the metaphors used by > others on this list. > > > > ><< Ashbery has been condemnned for his dithering, i.e., not getting to "the > > point." . . . That poetry may not have "a point" seems to be off the radar > >here. >> > > > >Pointless granted. So why bother? I don't mean to be dismissive; it's a > >serious question. But for pointless verbal gymnastics, there are always the > >[London] Times crosswords. > > Wouldn't that be the exact opposite of pointless verbal gymnastics? The > clue/answer form seems a lot closer to the poetry I've been dismissing as > mainstream. I'm not sure what "pointless verbal gymnastics" refers to. I'm > not being coy -- that just doesn't seem like an accurate description of any > of the work I've been talking about. > > > > >By the way, were your work to receive notice in, say, the NYRB, would be be > >miraculously transmogrified to mainstreamness? and thereby necessarily > >debased? (Ah, yet another currency metaphor--or two.) > > You've got the cart before the horse here. The problem is not the NYRB or > any other journal. I'm not decrying institutionalization, co-optation or > anything like that (although those are potential problems). My point is > that these journals operate from such a narrow aesthetic that an enormous > amount of poetry is automatically excluded. The problem isn't "the > establishment" (whatever that might be) but the assumptions shared by many > different poets, teachers and editors. So to answer your question, at this > point in time it's impossible for me to imagine, say, Juliana Spahr getting > a review there. If she ever does, I'll be happy. And then I'll call her a > hack sellout. Just kidding. > > Here's a perfect example of the limitations I'm talking about: although I'm > arguing against what I've been calling mainstream poetry, I've given some > specific examples. I read Poetry, APR and other journals occasionally and > I'm familiar with some of the work of the well-known figures in > contemporary poetry. > > But in spite of the background sniping against "language poetry," I haven't > seen one writer or work cited by name. Someone asked for a definition of > langpo and Pierre Joris suggested he or she check out Lyn Hejinian's new > collection of essays (an endorsement I would second). But the list was > strangely silent. Maybe that's because few people in the anti-langpo camp > are familiar enough with the work to offer a definition, or maybe not. But > I'm curious about how many people who have argued against my positions have > read New American Writing or Sulfur or Shiny on a regular basis. I suspect > there are very few who have, although I'd be delighted to have someone > prove me wrong. > > > Bill Freind > (who's really going to shut up for a while. Seriously.) > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Wed Feb 21 16:12:21 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 16:12:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty and establishments. References: <3A93C8E7.128ECB5@providence.edu> <3.0.6.32.20010221114528.0087faa0@postoffice.providence.edu> Message-ID: <3A942F35.10A74760@lehigh.edu> Forgive the length of this. This discussion connects with some of my current concerns and in some autobiographical way it really got my juices flowing. Here's an alternate take on this difficulty / transparency versus language-centered / framing of contemporary American poetry. I'm indebted to Allen Grossman's _Summa Lyrica_ (to my mind the most provocative and energizing consideration of the character and fate of poetry in our time) for some of my claims below. I'll lay my own cards on the table first. I'm a reader and and appreciator of work from across the contemporary spectrum, from the most mainstream to what gets labelled variously as Language poetry, experimental poetry, or innovative poetry -- and none of those three terms are any more adequate or satisfying than the term "mainstream." Years ago, as an undergrad, I studied briefly with Ai (a year or so after her first book, _Cruelty_, came out) and also briefly with one of the editors of _Boundary2_ whose touchstone poets where Olson and Oppen, and who could best be described as a Poundian. During that time I read Merwin, Kinnell, Rich, Levine, Bly, Lowell, Bishop, Plath, Sexton and many "mainstream" others alongside Creeley, Olson, Zukofsky, Kelly, Duncan, Spicer and their ilk (I know -- mostly men: that blind spot was faced up to later) and though I sensed differences in practice and aesthetic assumption, I never felt an unbridgeable gulf separated these distinct though occasionally intermingling streams of poetry. Over my years as a reader and writer I have sustained that multiple engagement. I can still read Edgar Bowers and Richard Wilbur with pleasure, but I can find equally as much to reward my attention in the work of Lyn Hejinian, Peter Gizzi, Juliana Spahr... The list of names on both sides of that "divide" could grow extremely lengthy. Occasionally I think that this catholicity of taste represents a failure of maturity, a refusal to take a stand for the poetics that matter most or mean most for me. More often, though, I feel that it represents a need to have some sense of what the current state of our "poetry system" is -- how all of the possibilities of what poetry might be or what poetry can do are constellated in expanding space. What gets contentious is the question of who gets rewarded and who gets recognized in the present moment, and, perhaps, who gets space cleared for possible future recognition. That has more to do with the institutional life of the art than it does with its growth and practice (though these are seriously intertwined). Sure, institutions mediate power and shape what gets known of poetry within certain narrow realms. But those roles are not definitive, nor constitutive, of poetry in any final sense. And much of the debate is about what gets legitimated as poetry and who gets to define the terms of that legitimation. So we hear a (mostly predictable) litany of names -- Vendler, Bloom, Altieri, Bernstein, Perloff, Lazer, all with academic pedigrees of one sort or another and all with some stake in a particular institutionalization. And we also get (rarely disinterested) quasi-scientific arguments for poetry with certain formal properties as being somehow potentially richer, more "right.". In all fairness, old essays like Olson's "Projective Verse" try to do this kind of thing for "experimental" writing, but on this list a good example on the other side of the fence is the argument advanced by Paul Lake (and in somewhat different form elsewhere by Frederick Turner) that metrical form is evidence of a higher-order structural principle that connects poetry to a sort of cognitive / aesthetic natural order. Meaning if it isn't metrical, it's probably slight. I must confess: I almost write Metrecal -- a diet beverage around when I was a kid -- perhaps because I consider such reductive arguments for meter something like arguments for Poetry Lite. Let me try to tie this personal rant together. Grossman provides some terms in his _Summa_ that enable a vision of continuity among these competing delineations of the poetic. For him, all poems are speech acts (what else would they be? -- well they're not autonomous verbal constructs) and as such carry within implicit traces of a speaker who is never simply the poet. Grossman situates his perspective on the visibility of speakers in poems around an exploration of figure/ground relationships. If, following Grossman, we take poetry to be the inscription of experience in language, envisioning language as matter for many possible inscriptions, language itself becomes ground. Against that ground, the speaker is figured. And the degree to which a given poetic mode places its valence upon either _presencing_ the speaker (making the figure dominant) or _presencing_ language as the substrate of the speaker's potential visibility (making the ground dominant) determines, I think, what's often perceived as the relative transparency or opacity of the writing, at least in relation to the loose uses of those terms here. It's not just a question of referentiality versus the material signifier; instead, it's related to how subjectivity is positioned and pictured (or not pictured) in a given mode. Grossman's argument is a lot more subtle than that reduction, because he also talks about the social ground for poetry and the relation between poetic visibility and cultural power. His implicit analysis of this in relation to the contradictions of liberal society are really interesting, but that's another issue. There is, however, a connection to the metrical / free verse divide that goes to the heart of much contentiousness around modern / pre-modern / post-modern / un-modern modes. Grossman contends that in the English language tradition that runs at least from Shakespeare through Wordsworth (and that serves even now as a major tributary for contemporary American poetic modes) the five-beat blank verse line forms a horizon against which a stable version of the speaking person -- the voiced subject -- is rendered visible. When the stability of that formalism begins to erode -- as in Pound's breaking the back of iambic pentameter -- it's a socio-cultural and aesthetic indicator that such stable visions of the person, though never gone completely, are losing some of their cultural traction or credibility. Grossman is a bit terse in this regard, but he does suggest that certain verse forms carry within them coded versions of the person. I want to close by suggesting that even in poetic modes that shun the centrality of the personal there's always a return of the repressed. It strikes me that whatever its strengths or weaknesses, much "language poetry" (and I _hate_ that term) and its related modes bear the impress of its makers' subjectivities, what one might derisively call their "voices" -- there is a clear signature to Silliman's work, to Perelman's, to Hejinian's, to Kit Robinson's, to Michael Palmer's, on and on. Bob Perelman gave a reading here last year and visited my writing class. He talked a lot in that class about what _he_ was trying to do in some of his poems that the class had read. And it was clear at his reading, and in the questions afterward, that fragmentation, opacity, self-conscious ironizing, mixed mode rhetoric, pastiche, etc. can be heard quite clearly as re-codings of lyric subjectivity. The self, the ego, just doesn't die, even when its loudly proclaimed a construct of language. End of rant. Hope some of what's here is of general interest and not mere self (self again) indulgence. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Feb 21 16:29:30 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 13:29:30 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: My Grandmother's Anthologies... Message-ID: <20010221212930.1B49D36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 21 05:42:11 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 04:42:11 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Joe Lucia on difficulty Message-ID: Joe, I found your discussion about poetic language quite interesting, especially the insight in your penultimate paragraph about the return of the repressed lyric self in language poetry. I also found your two comments below of considerable interest. One of the strangest poems I?ve written looks at the same issues, but from the different angle of a dramatic monologue. I?ve defined the poem in the past?on the old cap-list?as a formalist language poem?a seeming oxymoron. The editor who published it likened the poem to Browning?s ?My Last Duchess.? I agree, but with the caveat that its language is foregrounded in a postmodern manner similar to (but also different from) some language poetry. Your two relevant quotes are followed by the poem. ?If, following Grossman, we take poetry to be the inscription of experience in language, envisioning language as matter for many possible inscriptions, language itself becomes ground. Against that ground, the speaker is figured. And the degree to which a given poetic mode places its valence upon either _presencing_ the speaker (making the figure dominant) or _presencing_ language as the substrate of the speaker's potential visibility (making the ground dominant) determines, I think, what's often perceived as the relative transparency or opacity of the writing, at least in relation to the loose uses of those terms here. It's not just a question of referentiality versus the material signifier; instead, it's related to how subjectivity is positioned and pictured (or not pictured) in a given mode.? ?Grossman contends that in the English language tradition that runs at least from Shakespeare through Wordsworth (and that serves even now as a major tributary for contemporary American poetic modes) the five-beat blank verse line forms a horizon against which a stable version of the speaking person -- the voiced subject -- is rendered visible. When the stability of that formalism begins to erode -- as in Pound's breaking the back of iambic pentameter -- it's a socio-cultural and aesthetic indicator that such stable visions of the person, though never gone completely, are losing some of their cultural traction or credibility.? * Professing Rape Come, step into my office. Sit down. Please. I understand your nervousness in coming And promise not to step beyond the bounds You set for conversation. And yet without Touching on your specific allegations, I must express my shock and disappointment At what you?re doing and urge you privately To drop these groundless charges and think how In instigating such an inquisition Into our private conduct, you expose Not only me to forms of discipline You?d otherwise despise, but open yourself To charges that you lack a deep commitment To the theoretical principles you espouse. As your teacher, then, and one-time counselor, Let me review our present situation And urge you toward a different account, Reminding you that no interpretation Is ever true or final, since events Are sealed off from the hermeneutic circle Of discourse, leaving us to choose between, Not truth and falsehood, but competing fictions; And that, however truly you intend To give a strict and accurate account Of what transpired between us in recent days, Your testimony must inevitably Contain within it subtle gaps and fissures That crack its logic and disseminate New meanings in an endless play of signs. As a student, you were always quick to grasp Such acid logic and apply it to Official codes and canons of decorum. I therefore must conclude this little drama Is but the latest round in the endless play Of dominations that has constituted The ever-shifting web of our relations-- A clever ploy designed to elevate Your status here and in the discipline, And not, as you so disingenuously Aver in this vile letter to the Dean, A chance to ?set the record straight? concerning My ?sexual misconduct . . . harassment . . . rape. . .? That host of lies and misrepresentations By which you hope to blacken my good name, And salve a guilty conscience. There, you see, I understand the delicate situation You find yourself in now--a lover spurned, A scholar whose best work has been found wanting And now must justify her flagging efforts By turning on her friend. What shocks me more Than any allegation is the way You play the martyr so convincingly, Pretending to an uncritical faith In words to represent our situation Objectively, and offering as proof Of my malfeasance such ambiguous signs As soiled clothes and vaguely worded letters-- As if you had forgotten it was I Who trained you in interpretative methods, Or thought that, having taught you to expose The circular interplay of power-knowledge That animates all discourse, I?d abandon Rank and authority to play the villain In this, your sordid feminist melodrama. Let me remind you then what years of study Have failed to teach: That you are nothing more Than a decentered and fragmented subject, A point or node within a fluid skein Of many texts and contexts, the product of Immense impersonal technologies Of control--powerless, insignificant-- And not a sovereign ?self? that I?ve ?debased.? What pains me most in this grotesque affair Is how you?ve spurned such hard-won, painful knowledge To play the innocent, forgetting how Language, like your languid female body, Can by its very slipperiness betray Unauthorized desires, exposing itself To fresh interpretation. The seminal Stains you pose as evidence of rape Might just as well support a different case; The faint half-hearted protests and denials You offered might seem tokens of defense Designed to pacify the speaker?s conscience Or silence memories of how you came Alone that night to visit my apartment, And, drinking freely, later woke to find Your flesh become the happy medium Of unspeakable sensations, exquisite torments Of understanding . . . agonized assents . . . Till even your post-coital sobs and sniffles Incited lust to more transgressive passions. . . . But that?s all past. I see your face is set In a grim mask of humorless resistance. You?ll play your scene and have your little say. But be assured, if you subject my person To official probes and formalized procedures, I?ll paint you as a clever scheming slut Promiscuous in language as in morals; I?ll characterize your words as perjury And brand your scholarship as plagiarism. And since there?s no authoritative version Of past events with which to square accounts, You?ll sacrifice your chances of employment For the dubious solace of a failed revenge. Because, my dear, in cases such as this Where lines are drawn and facts are fluid texts, It all comes down to your word against mine. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Feb 21 18:12:44 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 15:12:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Joe Lucia on difficulty Message-ID: <20010221231259.1FF2636F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From fmm1 at cornell.edu Wed Feb 21 18:23:09 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 18:23:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Transparency In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20010221140436.00888370@postoffice.providence.edu > References: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010221181604.00a11d10@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> At 02:04 PM 2/21/01 -0500, you wrote: >I picked up the January issue of _Poetry_, figuring there'd be some >examples of the poetry I've been dismissing as "mainstream." One of the >things I've always liked about _Poetry_ is the way it prints last names on >the cover, as if they were easily recognized brand names. But, of course, >they're not: I see "Pope" and think Alexander, or perhaps John Paul II >whose Selected Poems my godmother bought me for a very belated birthday a >few years back. Actually, it's Jacquelyn. The Berry mentioned is Wendell, >but the Lusk, who I'm hoping against hope might be Dorothy Trujillo, is >really Daniel. I also love that the names are both alphabetical and crowded >so close together -- it's like they become some orthographic exercise that >resists the brand names impulse, so that we almost miss "Merwin" there in >the center of the second line > >Anyway, here's the first poem I picked at random, by Albert Goldbarth > > Stationed > > >Bill Freind If you hadn't identified this as a Goldbarth poem, I never would have recognized it as such. AG's poems are usually bursting with weird historical factoids, irreverent asides, hell-bent-for-leather diction, reversals, interjections -- in short, they're often bursting with linguistic energy and conceptual synergies that his typically loose forms barely contain. Even when Goldbarth writes an autobiographical poem, it's likely to involve Sumerian fertility rites or theories about Martian canals. Love it or hate it, AG's style has about as distinctive a personal signature as you'll find in poetry these days. "Stationed" is a tame poem, I agree, but it certainly isn't indicative of the Goldbarth I know. I hope the inclusion of this poem in _Poetry_ is more a sign of the editor's personal taste than of a "new" direction for Goldbarth. - Fred Muratori From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 21 18:31:18 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 18:31:18 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Joe Lucia on difficulty Message-ID: <6.126e2c31.27c5a9c6@cs.com> In a message dated 2/21/2001 5:14:11 PM Central Standard Time, CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com writes: > Professing Rape > > > > > >Come, step into my office. Sit down. Please. > >I understand your nervousness in coming > >And promise not to step beyond the bounds > >You set for conversation. And yet without > >Touching on your specific allegations, > >I must express my shock and disappointment > >At what you?re doing and urge you privately > >To drop these groundless charges and think how > >In instigating such an inquisition > >Into our private conduct, you expose > >Not only me to forms of discipline > >You?d otherwise despise, but open yourself > >To charges that you lack a deep commitment > >To the theoretical principles you espouse. > >As your teacher, then, and one-time counselor, > >Let me review our present situation > >And urge you toward a different account, > >Reminding you that no interpretation > >Is ever true or final, since events > >Are sealed off from the hermeneutic circle > >Of discourse, leaving us to choose between, > >Not truth and falsehood, but competing fictions; > >And that, however truly you intend > >To give a strict and accurate account > >Of what transpired between us in recent days, > >Your testimony must inevitably > >Contain within it subtle gaps and fissures > >That crack its logic and disseminate > >New meanings in an endless play of signs. > > > > > >As a student, you were always quick to grasp > >Such acid logic and apply it to > >Official codes and canons of decorum. > >I therefore must conclude this little drama > >Is but the latest round in the endless play > >Of dominations that has constituted > >The ever-shifting web of our relations-- > >A clever ploy designed to elevate > >Your status here and in the discipline, > >And not, as you so disingenuously > >Aver in this vile letter to the Dean, > >A chance to ?set the record straight? concerning > >My ?sexual misconduct . . . harassment . . . rape. . .? > >That host of lies and misrepresentations > >By which you hope to blacken my good name, > >And salve a guilty conscience. > > > > There, you see, > >I understand the delicate situation > >You find yourself in now--a lover spurned, > >A scholar whose best work has been found wanting > >And now must justify her flagging efforts > >By turning on her friend. > > What shocks me more > >Than any allegation is the way > >You play the martyr so convincingly, > >Pretending to an uncritical faith > >In words to represent our situation > >Objectively, and offering as proof > >Of my malfeasance such ambiguous signs > >As soiled clothes and vaguely worded letters-- > >As if you had forgotten it was I > >Who trained you in interpretative methods, > >Or thought that, having taught you to expose > >The circular interplay of power-knowledge > >That animates all discourse, I?d abandon > >Rank and authority to play the villain > >In this, your sordid feminist melodrama. > > > > > >Let me remind you then what years of study > >Have failed to teach: That you are nothing more > >Than a decentered and fragmented subject, > >A point or node within a fluid skein > >Of many texts and contexts, the product of > >Immense impersonal technologies > >Of control--powerless, insignificant-- > >And not a sovereign ?self? that I?ve ?debased.? > >What pains me most in this grotesque affair > >Is how you?ve spurned such hard-won, painful knowledge > >To play the innocent, forgetting how > >Language, like your languid female body, > >Can by its very slipperiness betray > >Unauthorized desires, exposing itself > >To fresh interpretation. > > The seminal > >Stains you pose as evidence of rape > >Might just as well support a different case; > >The faint half-hearted protests and denials > >You offered might seem tokens of defense > >Designed to pacify the speaker?s conscience > >Or silence memories of how you came > >Alone that night to visit my apartment, > >And, drinking freely, later woke to find > >Your flesh become the happy medium > >Of unspeakable sensations, exquisite torments > >Of understanding . . . agonized assents . . . > >Till even your post-coital sobs and sniffles > >Incited lust to more transgressive passions. . . . > > > > > >But that?s all past. I see your face is set > >In a grim mask of humorless resistance. > >You?ll play your scene and have your little say. > >But be assured, if you subject my person > >To official probes and formalized procedures, > >I?ll paint you as a clever scheming slut > >Promiscuous in language as in morals; > >I?ll characterize your words as perjury > >And brand your scholarship as plagiarism. > >And since there?s no authoritative version > >Of past events with which to square accounts, > >You?ll sacrifice your chances of employment > >For the dubious solace of a failed revenge. > >Because, my dear, in cases such as this > >Where lines are drawn and facts are fluid texts, > >It all comes down to your word against mine. > Wonderful blank verse. I never thought I'd find myself praising a poem without a single image in it, but how appropriate here (well, there is one stain) for this malevolent voice. Jonathan Holden did an equally impressive monologue a few years back called "Son of Babbitt" (yep) but didn't put it in his selected poems. My congratulations. From HntrRos at aol.com Wed Feb 21 18:55:37 2001 From: HntrRos at aol.com (HntrRos at aol.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 18:55:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry and prose Message-ID: <13.11c100a2.27c5af79@aol.com> Bill Freind wrote: >from my perspective the poetry of most mainstream >poets aspires to the condition of prose. I don't mean >that as pejoratively as it sounds: my point is that >the work of Dana Gioia or Billy Collins or Merwin or >Dove, etc., etc. usually doesn't seem much different >from a newspaper article, or from an e-mail message. The rhythms, the mystical overtones, the density of metaphor, the complexities of tone and association -- certainly not the Associated Press. >Read it once, slowly, and it's done. Read it once, stupidly, and it's done. (Provided you're a vegetable.) >assumption here seems to be that there is something >outside of the poem to communicate, Many somethings, whether the poet wants to or not. There's no such thing as gibberish, except for the lazy or faithless (the non-naive). >that poetry is the process of taking ideas and >translating them into another poetic language. >If that's the case, why not write a simple, expository >essay? That's not a rhetorical question. If you're feeling down, why sing the blues? Wouldn't it be simpler to just say you're sad? If you want to make an argument, why not use the most powerful, metaphor-rich language possible, charged with intellectually invigorating associations? If you want to express complex relationships between ideas, emotions, objects in a transmogrifying way, why use condensed, association-packed, or (at least mildly) enthralling or envigorating or memorable rhythms? Metaphor -- the ability to form associations between unlike things -- is central to most poetry, and the basis of all logic and new thought. There's no definite dividing line between an expository essay and poetry, if "poetry" doesn't just mean "verse". Some snippets of the New York Times make for better poetry than most of what gets published in lit journals, especially given mainstream rhetorical restraint. This sheepishness extends to sound as well: even poets who write in meter don't use their medium's full rhythmic range, much less try to add significantly to it or stretch it (partly, I think, because most people are no longer taught to recite/chant serious metrical verse in early childhood, just Dr. Seuss and nursery rhymes; so they either read verse like prose, or like Dr. Seuss, or with some insipid off-kilter affect -- as Auden wrote, metrical verse sounds incomparably better when recited by someone who knows how to recite meter, though he didn't really have a good voice to perform sonorous verse, or delivery for dramatic verse). From mbales at oh.verio.com Wed Feb 21 08:00:40 2001 From: mbales at oh.verio.com (mbales at oh.verio.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 08:00:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Grandmom In-Reply-To: <7e.1127aab7.27c52d66@aol.com> Message-ID: <3A9375A8.28345.1313C7@localhost> > << Why not? Isn't the notion of inclusiveness in aesthetics that it > doesn't distinguish Komunyakaa's work from Mullen's by leaving > one or the other out; by choosing to include one and not the other? >> > Marcus, because one's aesthetics are akin to a religious belief system > it is hard to see too many editors endorsing inclusive aesthetics... > No reason it couldn't happen...but there are few editors > willing or able to build anthologies on the premise of "big tent" > aesthetics;...<< I see -- so "inclusiveness" in discussing poetry or aesthetics is a term of art that actually means something other than "inclusiveness"? mbales at oh.verio.net From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Wed Feb 21 20:17:58 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 17:17:58 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Joe Lucia on difficulty Message-ID: <20010222011759.0CADF2753@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Feb 21 20:09:02 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 20:09:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mythic Mainstream References: <003d01c09c18$c3a82a20$f829f7a5@compaqcomputer> <3A93C8E7.128ECB5@providence.edu> Message-ID: <3A9466AE.54AE@nut-n-but.net> I'm with David Graham in feeling that "mainstream" is a term of secondary importance in discussions of poetry. I also would claim that I've never suggested that "mainstream" poets aren't various, or are not doing all kinds of interesting things. But it still seems to me that there are definitely "in" poets and ignored poets. It is useful, therefore, to class poets who are doing work that has a good chance of being published in the venues someone mentioned like The Kenyon Review, APR, the New Yorker, etc., as "mainstream." Mainstream poetry, for me, then, is simply recognized poetry. "Otherstream" poetry is unrecognized AND NEVER-recognized poetry, or more exactly, "poetry whose techniques and practitioners are unknown (except very perhaps as names) to almost all college English departments." There is also poetry that is unrecognized but formerly-recognized-- like the neoformalists'. I think I have a "stream" for it, too, but can't remember it. It and mainstream poetry are branches of what I call "knownstream poetry," so "otherstream poetry is not exactly the opposite of "mainstream poetry." As I've said possibly too much at the Modern Poetry discussion group, I certainly think the best mainstream poets are as good as the best otherstream poets. But I continue to believe that the best otherstream poets are more imPORtant than the best mainstream poets, because they are revealing significant new ways of doing poetry. For improved investigations of the sociology or whatever of poetry, I would prefer discussions of specific schools of poetry, but hardly anyone seems to agree with me. I have an essay on schools of poetry up at my website (URL below) that I've posted before in various places and had in Small Press Review hoping it'd generate discussion AND that others would suggest additions and improvements. Just about no one has. It seems to me that a main reason discussions of the state of current American poetry don't get too far is that we lack accepted names for the various schools. --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- Bob Grumman BobGrumman at Nut-N-But.Net http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1492 Comprepoetica, the Poetry-Data-Collection Site From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Feb 21 20:19:03 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 20:19:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The elusive mainstream References: <8a.2ae5a65.27c5623e@cs.com> Message-ID: <3A946907.7D0@nut-n-but.net> I would suggest that the mainstream has several sub-streams, and that the Iowa School, the criteria for which RS Gwinn seems to me to have given, is the central one. I think one rule that would cover ALL mainstream poetry is that it does nothing technical that was not familiar fifty years ago. (I include Jorie Graham and John Ashbery in the mainstream.) Or maybe there is only one mainstream but it contains poems that follow a majority of the rules. Hence some are allowed to have strict iambic lines, others to be a little surreal, etc. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Feb 21 20:23:14 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 20:23:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty References: <3A93EB5C.24F62EE3@duke.edu> Message-ID: <3A946A02.52B3@nut-n-but.net> I don't think transparency is very important to many poets but I agree that some poets try for it. Most conventional haiku poets, for instances (and there's an interestingly knownstream school that is not mainstream). I might add that I am one who would count Cid Corman, whose poetry I admire, as mainstream. --Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Wed Feb 21 20:47:17 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 20:47:17 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty and establishments. Message-ID: In a message dated 2/21/01 3:15:08 PM Eastern Standard Time, wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu writes: << But the list was strangely silent. Maybe that's because few people in the anti-langpo camp are familiar enough with the work to offer a definition, or maybe not. But I'm curious about how many people who have argued against my positions have read New American Writing or Sulfur or Shiny on a regular basis. I suspect there are very few who have, although I'd be delighted to have someone prove me wrong. >> Bill, I won't speak for anyone else on the list...but this is bogus. I can see an issue of Sulfur (I understand Clayton Eshleman has called it quits...& congrats to him for fighting the good fight thru so many fine issues) from where I sit & a big fat From The Other Side Of The Century....also a Georgia Review and a Threepenny. What does this prove? Nothing. You're not wrong to argue your case for particular poets/poetics... but you must realize that not everyone who is deeply committed to poetry has bought into "decentered/indeterminate/fractured/asyntactic/...." I know the literature; you have to persuade me. Finnegan From patrick at proximate.org Wed Feb 21 20:59:26 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 20:59:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] weekly correspondence In-Reply-To: <200102212114.f1LLE2Z00972@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: Hi New Poets - It's nice to be joining you. I'm going to hang back in this group as a weekly correspondent and post something of potential interest for the gang every week. This week I stumbled across a pair of essays on WebDelSol by poet Joan Houlihan. In these two essays, Houlihan attempts to rescue poetry from two different contemporary poetic trends that she seems to see as encroachments upon the art of poetry. Her first essay efforts to save poetry from becoming too prosaic in the literal sense. Houlihan's second attacks what Houlihan sees as the "incoherence" of language poetry. I would be fascinated to see what responses Houlihan's essay might generate in this group, if any. Your responses may serve to tell us a little about each other's poetic tastes, sensibilities, and imaginations, and all on a very basic level. I also see people in this group returning to the same questions Houlihan attempts to answer in her two essays. *The WARNING! DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME caveat*: My one editorial comment on the article will be simply that Joan Houlihan's article could easily be construed as divisive. With that in mind, be forewarned that your opinions about her essays could prove as divisive as her essays, if not more so. And enter at your own risk. Part I: On the Prosing of Poetry: How Contemporary American Poets are Denaturing the Poem http://webdelsol.com/LITARTS/Boston_Comment/bostonc1.htm Part II: I=N=C=O=H=E=R=E=N=T: How Contemporary American Poets are Denaturing the Poem, Part II http://webdelsol.com/LITARTS/Boston_Comment/ Of course, if Houlihan's essays have already been exhausted on this list, then, by all means, never mind! Enjoy! Sincerely, Patrick Patrick Herron patrick at proximate.org http://proximate.org/ getting close is what we're all about here! From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Feb 21 21:03:58 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 21:03:58 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on difficulty and establishments. References: <3.0.6.32.20010221151509.008849c0@postoffice.providence.edu> Message-ID: <3A94738E.5F04@nut-n-but.net> I suspect much of the silence about what language poetry is, is that who knows. Most poet widely regarded as language poets claim not to be language poets or say they dislike the term. And, like most popular cultural terms, "language poetry," was more a term describing the output of a bunch of people who got together in a few magazines, and the l*a*n*g*u*a*g*e book rather than a kind of poetry. Here's my take on it, as a poetry critic only (i.e., I ignore what some language poets say a language poem's politics ought to be): language poetry started out as a shortened version of "language-centered poetry," meaning not that it was poetry in which language was central (since language is central to all poetry) but poetry in which linguistics is central--or language is closer to being exclusively a concern--than it is in other poetry; further, that its language concerns are much more detailed, philosophical and wide-ranging than they are in other poetry. And in language poetry normal language-use is challenged. Whereas in conventional poetry, prose norms are generally put aside only for improved auditory effectiveness, or expressive value (as with the old inversion to make a rhyme), in language poetry they are put aside to see what will happen. Big over-simplification, and I'm not that familiar with language poetry. In my own taxonomy, by the way, I don't use the term because I feel it has been used in too many conflicting ways now to be of much use. I have a category I term "xenolinguistic poetry" which is s rough synonym for what "language poetry" seems generally to mean. I divide xenolinguistic poetry into infraverbal poetry (i.e., poetry in which what happens inside words is central) and sprung- grammar poetry (i.e., poetry in which the conventions of syntax and inflection are stood on their heads). I believe most language poets are what I'd term sprung-grammar poets, very few are infraverbal poets though some use infraverbal techniques (P. Inman, most notably). (Note: who told the guys who organized this discussion group that I'm trying to get an Important Book done? Seems like it was started, and all these interesting threads begun on it, just to distract me!) --Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Wed Feb 21 21:36:53 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 21:36:53 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: Joan Retallack webcast Message-ID: <1e.11a09bec.27c5d545@aol.com> -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: wh at dept.english.upenn.edu (Writers House) Subject: Joan Retallack webcast Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 13:41:37 -0500 (EST) Size: 3855 URL: From JforJames at aol.com Wed Feb 21 22:04:27 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 22:04:27 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] The elusive mainstream Message-ID: In a message dated 2/21/01 1:27:46 PM Eastern Standard Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes: << Here are some general observations that might be made about the so-called contemporary mainstream: 1. First-person speaker 2. Use of present tense, even when dealing with autobiographical material 3. Poems combine personal narrative with epiphany 4. Medium-length free verse (averaging 7-12 syllables) 5. Conversational idiom with primarily familiar level of diction 6. Formal arrangements often employ uniform stanzas (same number of lines) but without schematic use of rhyme (though often used as closure device) 7. Limited use of tropes--similes predominate 8. Rare use of rhetorical schemas 9. 25-line average length 10. No capitalization of first letters in lines; standard punctuation otherwise >> Sam, It's a good list...something that a magazine like Coutermeasures (which is going web only) might be interested in for its "Provocations." Tho... the underlying assumption is always that what is prevalent is necessarily problematic. "No capitalization of first lines" is a current stylistic choice... but could a poem be better/worse for the first letter of each line being capped? Thank god, I say, that poems don't have an average line length of 250 or 2.5. & no point in putting sonnets, villanelles, etc., thru the average line length test, I presume. Finnegan From cstroffo at earthlink.net Wed Feb 21 23:02:54 2001 From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (chris stroffolino) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 00:02:54 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mythic Mainstream References: Message-ID: <3A948F6F.19E06C90@earthlink.net> Moira--- but which Blake do you mean? What you describe seems true of Songs of I and E, "marriage of h and h" and some other short lyrics, but what Bill writes seems truer of "Milton" and "Four Zoas" etc--- I think it's great that Blake can do both; almost as if a contemporary poet were able, or willing, to write like Langston Hughes sometimes and other times like Ashbery, or Will Alexander---- Chris Moira Russell wrote: > Part of the problem I have with the statement "Mainstream poets aim for > transparency" is with the example of William Blake, whom Bill supports as a > supposedly deliberately obscure poet. Who could deny that Blake's language > is simple, deliberately so, and yet that his poetry is complex and > "difficult"? A lot of modern poetry certainly is plainspoken and often > directly addressed to the reader, yet I don't think that necessitates its > not being "complex" or "difficult." Perhaps a phrase from the great > experimentalist Virginia Woolf is useful here: in "A Room of One's Own," > when a seemingly conventional narrative in a novel is suddenly broken off, > Woolf comments, "This is good, if she (the novelist) does it not for the > sake of breaking, but for the sake of creating." Difficulty does not > necessarily depend on syntax and wilful obscurantism is not often a virtue. > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Feb 22 00:06:52 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 00:06:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] The elusive mainstream References: <8a.2ae5a65.27c5623e@cs.com> Message-ID: <09f601c09c8d$45c60120$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Funny, I just got through talking to my poetry class about the first two...saying don't assume your poem should be in the first person or the present tense. Try different person, different tense, different gender. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2001 1:26 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] The elusive mainstream > Here are some general observations that might be made about the so-called > contemporary mainstream: > > 1. First-person speaker > 2. Use of present tense, even when dealing with autobiographical material > 3. Poems combine personal narrative with epiphany > 4. Medium-length free verse (averaging 7-12 syllables) > 5. Conversational idiom with primarily familiar level of diction > 6. Formal arrangements often employ uniform stanzas (same number of lines) > but without schematic use of rhyme (though often used as closure device) > 7. Limited use of tropes--similes predominate > 8. Rare use of rhetorical schemas > 9. 25-line average length > 10. No capitalization of first letters in lines; standard punctuation > otherwise > > Now I'll admit that this is a pretty silly list, so I'll put it to the test > by looking at the poems in the July 2000 issue of Poetry. > > Total number of poems: 24 (excluding five translations) > > 1. First-person speaker > > 10 (one clear dramatic monologue; several using "you" as an indeterminate > second-person voice) > > 2. Use of present tense, even when dealing with autobiographical material > > 15 (a couple of others use future tense and one has no finite verb form) > > 3. Poems combine personal narrative with epiphany > > 9 (some narratives are largely implied by situations, settings, etc.) > > 4. Medium-length free verse (averaging 7-12 syllables) > > Pretty much. Three poems in conventional iambic pentameter--several others > in pentameter-like lines that won't scan very regularly > > 5. Conversational idiom with primarily familiar level of diction > > I found a few allusions (agora, Kabbalistic) that readers might have to track > down. Vocabulary struck me as 80%+ non-Latinate. > > 6. Formal arrangements often employ uniform stanzas (same number of lines) > but without schematic use of rhyme (though often used as closure device) > > Two sonnets, two stanzaic poems with rhyme scheme. > > Of other poems, 6 in uniform stanzas, the rest in irregular stanzas or single > stanza. > > 7. Limited use of tropes--similes predominate > > Several "_____ of _______" metaphors. A few similes. Some synesthesia. One > hyperbole. Didn't find any metonymy. Apostrophe (if the "you" addressed is > a truly absent you). > > 8. Rare use of rhetorical schemas > > One poem uses epistrophe. Occasional uses of parallel structure. > > 9. 25-line average length > > Four poems exceeded one page in length. > > 10. No capitalization of first letters in lines; standard punctuation > otherwise > > 18 out of 24 didn't capitalize. All used more or less standard punctuation. > > I don't know what this proves, if anything, and I'm sure I missed a lot > (spent about an hour on it). I was wondering if anyone else would care to > modify the list or maybe apply it to the poems in some other "mainstream" > magazine. > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From mbales at cybergate.net Thu Feb 22 00:12:18 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 00:12:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] a few more thoughts on William Logan In-Reply-To: <8.108967e3.27c540bc@cs.com> Message-ID: > > > > How do we distinguish poetry with random sonic effects from > > > > prose? Or from nonsense?<< > > > > > Try Hopkins, for a starter.<< > > > > You thesis in this suggestion is ... what? That Hopkins's sonic > > effects are random? That Hopkins's work is nonsense? That > > Hopkins's work is prose? > > Au contraire on all counts<<< Well, what, then? mbales at cybergate.net From Jandhodge at aol.com Thu Feb 22 01:12:56 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 01:12:56 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Playing catch, transparency, difficulty Message-ID: <5f.113a41ac.27c607e8@aol.com> In a message dated 01-02-21 15:47:12 EST, you write: Paul Lake offered "the following poem by Robert Francis as a more accurate image of how poetry works: Catch Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together, . . . >> I mentioned Francis's poem "Glass" in a recent post. So let's make it a hat trick, and add as a further poetic comment on what it is that [some] poets [sometimes] do his "Pitcher": His art is eccentricity, his aim How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at, His passion how to avoid the obvious, His technique how to vary the avoidance. The others throw to be comprehended. He Throws to be a moment misunderstood. Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild, But every seeming aberration willed. Not to, yet still, still to communicate Making the batter understand too late. From JforJames at aol.com Thu Feb 22 08:38:35 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 08:38:35 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] ars poetica Message-ID: <50.11b9a3fc.27c6705b@aol.com> I while back on the Mod Poetry List, we had a spate of 'ars poetica' poems. Here are two sites in that vein... http://mbhs.bergtraum.k12.ny.us/cybereng/poetry/ & this site is looking for submissions: http://homepages.tesco.net/~magdtp/pap.html http://homepages.tesco.net/~magdtp/paplist.html From halvard at earthlink.net Thu Feb 22 08:38:34 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 08:38:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Quotation du jour Message-ID: from this morning's NY Times: Nashville, Feb. 21 "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass the literacy test." --Pres. G. W. Bush Hal "Flotsam, please, and a side order of jetsam." Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Thu Feb 22 09:16:05 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 09:16:05 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo References: Message-ID: <3A951F23.746AB978@providence.edu> Patrick, you provocateur, you... Actually, I don't really think these essays are all that divisive -- mostly because they're so lightweight. For instance, I agree with the general comment that much of contemporary poetry is getting prose-y, but there are a number of enormous problems with Houlihan's argument. First, she used the word "poetry" in an extraordinarily reductive way and seems to think the distiction between it and prose is obvious, although it was far from obvious to Wordsworth, who claimed that good prose is essentially poetry. She blows right past the advent of the prose poem in France and then misses the obvious Williams text: Spring and All. I'd expect better definitions from my students. Her piece on langpo is genuinely funny, since she manages to misunderstand its most basic tenets. She also trots out all the old ad hominems: langpo is radically "PC" (hey, somebody call Bruce Andrews), it's academically careerist (although almost none of its writers were in the academy in its heyday) and -- my favorite -- it's "unnatural," since "[t]he need for coherence appears to be basic, perhaps even neurological. Science has proved the human brain strives to find a pattern, an order, a meaning in chaos." So much for negative capability, or "a poem should not mean, but be." So much for the love of absurdity that's at the heart of humor. "Science" has proved otherwise, although Houlihan still has good words for Dada. Go figure. To put it bluntly, Houlihan has no idea what she's talking about. Eliot Weinberger's anti-langpo diatribes in the late '80's were vastly more sophisticated. I don't even think she understands that langpo per se hasn't existed since the early '90's at the latest. You'd think with a decade to survey the scene she could have done a little more research. I'm particularly interested in the "langpo as pathology" trope. Jameson associates it with schizophrenia in _Postmodernism_, and Joe Lucia's thoughtful post mentions that Grossman associates meter with the hardwiring of the human brain (I haven't read the Grossman, so I might be butchering his argument). The appeal to science reminds me of those studies that suggested that playing Mozart to your baby makes her smarter. Those studies have now been debunked (big surprise) and I'm equally skeptical of these claims. More to the point, there's something anxious or even shrill about them, as if they were so uncertain of making their claims on aesthetics alone that they had to move to the realm of the human brain itself. Bill Freind Patrick Herron wrote: > Hi New Poets - > > It's nice to be joining you. I'm going to hang back in this group as a > weekly correspondent and post something of potential interest for the gang > every week. > > This week I stumbled across a pair of essays on WebDelSol by poet Joan > Houlihan. In these two essays, Houlihan attempts to rescue poetry from two > different contemporary poetic trends that she seems to see as encroachments > upon the art of poetry. Her first essay efforts to save poetry from > becoming too prosaic in the literal sense. Houlihan's second attacks what > Houlihan sees as the "incoherence" of language poetry. > > I would be fascinated to see what responses Houlihan's essay might generate > in this group, if any. Your responses may serve to tell us a little about > each other's poetic tastes, sensibilities, and imaginations, and all on a > very basic level. I also see people in this group returning to the same > questions Houlihan attempts to answer in her two essays. > > *The WARNING! DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME caveat*: My one editorial comment on > the article will be simply that Joan Houlihan's article could easily be > construed as divisive. With that in mind, be forewarned that your opinions > about her essays could prove as divisive as her essays, if not more so. And > enter at your own risk. > > Part I: > On the Prosing of Poetry: How Contemporary American Poets are Denaturing the > Poem > http://webdelsol.com/LITARTS/Boston_Comment/bostonc1.htm > > Part II: > I=N=C=O=H=E=R=E=N=T: How Contemporary American Poets are Denaturing the > Poem, Part II > http://webdelsol.com/LITARTS/Boston_Comment/ > > Of course, if Houlihan's essays have already been exhausted on this list, > then, by all means, never mind! > > Enjoy! > > Sincerely, > Patrick > > Patrick Herron > patrick at proximate.org > http://proximate.org/ > getting close is what > we're all about here! > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From Zafano at aol.com Thu Feb 22 09:24:30 2001 From: Zafano at aol.com (Zafano at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 09:24:30 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Quotation du jour Message-ID: <8d.2bd028e.27c67b1e@aol.com> That's right up there with the best Bushisms ever. God this is a great time to be alive. From tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Feb 22 09:51:37 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 09:51:37 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo References: <3A951F23.746AB978@providence.edu> Message-ID: <0b9201c09cde$f5760880$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Bill - re "To put it bluntly, Houlihan has no idea what she's talking about." I'm thinking about this in terms of our previous discussion about whether someone not familiar with a crown of sonnets could legitimately review poetry. By the same token, can someone unfamiliar with the theoretical underpinnings of langpo legitimately review poetry? Should one, in fact, know both? I've already admitted to not knowing what a crown of sonnets is, so I might as well go all the way and admit that I would be in the Houlihan camp vis-a-vis langpo, as far as knowledge is concerned. More ignorant, probably. But I was asked (on CAP-L) to review a langpo collection by Joan Retallack, and I approached it from the point of view of admitted ignorance. I don't know anything about the theory of langpo. And maybe there no longer is one -- Bill, you've said that langpo as such has not existed since the early 90s. So I tried to use what I do know about poetry and about language to see if I could reconstruct the theory under it. Legitimate? I don't know. But I do wonder if more than a very small handful of us would have the bona fides to review anything, if we demanded a scholarly and theoretical grounding in the whole spectrum of poetry. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Freind" To: Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 9:16 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo > Patrick, you provocateur, you... > > Actually, I don't really think these essays are all that divisive -- mostly > because they're so lightweight. For instance, I agree with the general comment > that much of contemporary poetry is getting prose-y, but there are a number of > enormous problems with Houlihan's argument. First, she used the word "poetry" in > an extraordinarily reductive way and seems to think the distiction between it > and prose is obvious, although it was far from obvious to Wordsworth, who > claimed that good prose is essentially poetry. She blows right past the advent > of the prose poem in France and then misses the obvious Williams text: Spring > and All. I'd expect better definitions from my students. > > Her piece on langpo is genuinely funny, since she manages to misunderstand its > most basic tenets. She also trots out all the old ad hominems: langpo is > radically "PC" (hey, somebody call Bruce Andrews), it's academically careerist > (although almost none of its writers were in the academy in its heyday) and -- > my favorite -- it's "unnatural," since "[t]he need for coherence appears to be > basic, perhaps even neurological. Science has proved the human brain strives to > find a pattern, an order, a meaning in chaos." So much for negative capability, > or "a poem should not mean, but be." So much for the love of absurdity that's at > the heart of humor. "Science" has proved otherwise, although Houlihan still has > good words for Dada. Go figure. > > To put it bluntly, Houlihan has no idea what she's talking about. Eliot > Weinberger's anti-langpo diatribes in the late '80's were vastly more > sophisticated. I don't even think she understands that langpo per se hasn't > existed since the early '90's at the latest. You'd think with a decade to survey > the scene she could have done a little more research. > > I'm particularly interested in the "langpo as pathology" trope. Jameson > associates it with schizophrenia in _Postmodernism_, and Joe Lucia's thoughtful > post mentions that Grossman associates meter with the hardwiring of the human > brain (I haven't read the Grossman, so I might be butchering his argument). The > appeal to science reminds me of those studies that suggested that playing Mozart > to your baby makes her smarter. Those studies have now been debunked (big > surprise) and I'm equally skeptical of these claims. More to the point, there's > something anxious or even shrill about them, as if they were so uncertain of > making their claims on aesthetics alone that they had to move to the realm of > the human brain itself. > > Bill Freind > > > > Patrick Herron wrote: > > > Hi New Poets - > > > > It's nice to be joining you. I'm going to hang back in this group as a > > weekly correspondent and post something of potential interest for the gang > > every week. > > > > This week I stumbled across a pair of essays on WebDelSol by poet Joan > > Houlihan. In these two essays, Houlihan attempts to rescue poetry from two > > different contemporary poetic trends that she seems to see as encroachments > > upon the art of poetry. Her first essay efforts to save poetry from > > becoming too prosaic in the literal sense. Houlihan's second attacks what > > Houlihan sees as the "incoherence" of language poetry. > > > > I would be fascinated to see what responses Houlihan's essay might generate > > in this group, if any. Your responses may serve to tell us a little about > > each other's poetic tastes, sensibilities, and imaginations, and all on a > > very basic level. I also see people in this group returning to the same > > questions Houlihan attempts to answer in her two essays. > > > > *The WARNING! DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME caveat*: My one editorial comment on > > the article will be simply that Joan Houlihan's article could easily be > > construed as divisive. With that in mind, be forewarned that your opinions > > about her essays could prove as divisive as her essays, if not more so. And > > enter at your own risk. > > > > Part I: > > On the Prosing of Poetry: How Contemporary American Poets are Denaturing the > > Poem > > http://webdelsol.com/LITARTS/Boston_Comment/bostonc1.htm > > > > Part II: > > I=N=C=O=H=E=R=E=N=T: How Contemporary American Poets are Denaturing the > > Poem, Part II > > http://webdelsol.com/LITARTS/Boston_Comment/ > > > > Of course, if Houlihan's essays have already been exhausted on this list, > > then, by all means, never mind! > > > > Enjoy! > > > > Sincerely, > > Patrick > > > > Patrick Herron > > patrick at proximate.org > > http://proximate.org/ > > getting close is what > > we're all about here! > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Thu Feb 22 09:54:11 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 09:54:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo References: <3A951F23.746AB978@providence.edu> Message-ID: <3A952813.DC523F82@lehigh.edu> > > I'm particularly interested in the "langpo as pathology" trope. Jameson > associates it with schizophrenia in _Postmodernism_, and Joe Lucia's thoughtful > post mentions that Grossman associates meter with the hardwiring of the human > brain (I haven't read the Grossman, so I might be butchering his argument). It's not Grossman who associates meter with the hard-wiring of the human brain -- that'd be Frederick Turner. Turner published an essay in _Poetry_ back in the early '80s, I think, that rather infamously advanced this argument. Grossman's account of meter is more focused on cultural construction of a particular kind of speaking self, and the erosion of the predominance of the five-beat verse line in Enlgish language poetry is related to the eroision of that construction of the self. Grossman's arguments are deeply informed by an appreciation of structural lingusitics, though; Emile Beneviste is cited frequently early in his text. I do think that Grossman would hold with the notion that different kinds of prosody have different sorts of cognitive effects, but that's really something esle entirely -- it's not quasi-scientific underwriting of legitimacy of a particular formalism. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From TerryP17 at aol.com Thu Feb 22 10:00:53 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 10:00:53 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Quotation du jour Message-ID: Glad to see that Dubya's finally been outted as a closet language poet. Maybe this will take attention away from our daily Clintoon, eh? --Terry Ponick terryp17 at aol.com From Zafano at aol.com Thu Feb 22 10:01:25 2001 From: Zafano at aol.com (Zafano at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 10:01:25 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo Message-ID: In a message dated 02/22/2001 8:11:53 AM Central Standard Time, wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu writes: << Actually, I don't really think these essays are all that divisive -- mostly because they're so lightweight. For instance, I agree with the general comment that much of contemporary poetry is getting prose-y, but there are a number of enormous problems with Houlihan's argument. >> etc. I could tell from Patrick's initial description that there couldn't be much there to put me in a lather. First of all, anyone who teaches 20thC poetry has to deal with its connection with prose. Annie Finch makes the solid point that early free verse came about in response to the ascendancy of prose over poetry by the end of the 19th century -- the fact that greater work was being done in prose than in verse (G. Eliot, Ruskin, Dickens, James, &c&c) and that early 20thC poets sensed that traditional verse could no longer produce the masterpieces prose had, so they moved the verse line closer to the prose sentence. Everyone's read, I hope, early WCW. Most of us should know that "The Red Wheelbarrow" does not exist under that title in WCW's work (except in the index of the Collected): it's the verse-bit in front of two pages of experimental prose about knowledge / imagination prose / poetry, in section XXII of Spring and All. My only real problem is with the implicit use of the term prose (or prosey, worse yet prosaic) as a pejorative. WCW acknowledges: "There is no need for [prose] to approach poetry except to be weakened" (S&A XXII). I've tried to coin the neutral term prosal to describe poems that use language in the manner of prose without suggesting that there is something wrong with prose. And I'm always encouraging my struggling poets to try writing essays. As to langpo, I can't be shocked over anyone's brief against it, since it was one of many marginally interesting experiments of the late 20th century. See Michael Palmer's interview on the subject in Jubilat. Michael Heffernan From DICK at watson.ibm.com Thu Feb 22 09:52:29 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 01 09:52:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] what is language poetry Message-ID: <200102221502.KAA23244@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> Thanks to Bob Grumman for the following: it was just what I was hoping for. I sort of suspected that was what it was about - I've heard or read a little of Silliman, Osman, Bernstein and Hajinian - but Bob puts it very well. >>I suspect much of the silence about what language poetry >>is, is that who knows. Most poet widely regarded as >>language poets claim not to be language poets or say they >>dislike the term. And, like most popular cultural terms, >>"language poetry," was more a term describing the output >>of a bunch of people who got together in a few magazines, >>and the l*a*n*g*u*a*g*e book rather than a kind of poetry. >> >>Here's my take on it, as a poetry critic only (i.e., I >>ignore what some language poets say a language poem's >>politics ought to be): language poetry started out as >>a shortened version of "language-centered poetry," >>meaning not that it was poetry in which language was >>central (since language is central to all poetry) but >>poetry in which linguistics is central--or language is >>closer to being exclusively a concern--than it is in other >>poetry; further, that its language concerns are much more >>detailed, philosophical and wide-ranging than they are >>in other poetry. And in language poetry normal language-use >>is challenged. Whereas in conventional poetry, prose norms >>are generally put aside only for improved auditory effectiveness, >>or expressive value (as with the old inversion to make a rhyme), >>in language poetry they are put aside to see what will happen. >> >>Big over-simplification, and I'm not that familiar with >>language poetry. In my own taxonomy, by the way, I don't >>use the term because I feel it has been used in too many >>conflicting ways now to be of much use. I have a category >>I term "xenolinguistic poetry" which is s rough synonym for >>what "language poetry" seems generally to mean. I divide >>xenolinguistic poetry into infraverbal poetry (i.e., poetry >>in which what happens inside words is central) and sprung- >>grammar poetry (i.e., poetry in which the conventions of >>syntax and inflection are stood on their heads). I believe >>most language poets are what I'd term sprung-grammar poets, >>very few are infraverbal poets though some use infraverbal >>techniques (P. Inman, most notably). Finnegan's list of (negative capability?) adjectives is also useful: >>poetry has bought into "decentered/indeterminate/fractured/asyntactic/...." I know it's asking a lot, but if one of the proponents of LangPo had the time, it would be useful to post a "typical" (or atypical, _pace_ negative capability) example of such a poem (can I call it that?) and how it works (if it's meaningful to use such a term.) Richard From Zafano at aol.com Thu Feb 22 10:24:02 2001 From: Zafano at aol.com (Zafano at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 10:24:02 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo Message-ID: <73.b38c456.27c68912@aol.com> In a message dated 02/22/2001 8:55:04 AM Central Standard Time, jpl3 at lehigh.edu writes: << Turner published an essay in _Poetry_ back in the early '80s, I think, that rather infamously advanced this argument. >> Turner / Poppel, "The Neural Lyre" (Poetry, Aug '83) From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Feb 22 11:19:28 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 10:19:28 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen Message-ID: Louise Gluck has won the Bollingen Prize. http://www.williams.edu/News/NewsReleases/01022103.htm David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From TerryP17 at aol.com Thu Feb 22 11:16:59 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 11:16:59 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo Message-ID: In a message dated 2/22/01 10:25:48 AM, Zafano at aol.com writes: << << Turner published an essay in _Poetry_ back in the early '80s, I think, that rather infamously advanced this argument. >> Turner / Poppel, "The Neural Lyre" (Poetry, Aug '83) >> Yes, and later anthologized in the volume "Expansive Poetry" (Story Line Press, 1989, book recently updated and edited by Sam Gwynn.) Terry Ponick terryp17 at aol.com From Zafano at aol.com Thu Feb 22 11:41:20 2001 From: Zafano at aol.com (Zafano at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 11:41:20 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo Message-ID: <69.117b04ac.27c69b30@aol.com> I don't have Turner / Poppel here in front of me, but one of the more "infamous" claims they make, as I recall, is that free verse somehow becomes an instrument of totalitarianism by pushing poetry deeper into subjectivity, while the corporate & political masters appropriate formal verse for slogans & propaganda. This was a few months before the beginning of 1984. Weren't the 80s quaint? MH From poetmuse at swbell.net Thu Feb 22 11:24:55 2001 From: poetmuse at swbell.net (Vicki) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 10:24:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Grackles swim in the Main? Message-ID: <3A953D57.B49741A6@swbell.net> As a non-academic who enjoys following the discussions of poetry and poets on the list, I have a question: Where does the recently debated Forrest Gander fit into the categorizations (mainstream, langpo, ganderism?) Vicki Colker -- FREE Personalized Full-Color Suitable for Framing TEXAS HEROES AWARD! FREE... Makes a great gift for Texas Wannabes! Visit my website, Austin Tx Homefinder.com (www.austintxhomefinder.com). Take as many as you like! Pass them out to your friends! From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Feb 22 11:51:31 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 07:51:31 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mythic Mainstream Message-ID: >Moira--- > >but which Blake do you mean? >What you describe seems true of Songs of I and E, "marriage of h and h" and >some other short lyrics, but what Bill writes seems truer of "Milton" and >"Four Zoas" Although I was thinking more of the popular Blake, his epics seemed fairly straightforward narrative when I studied them with John Grant at the University of Iowa. The eye-crunching names were a bit reminiscent of some of the tougher parts of the Bible, but I think that was intentional on Blake's part, and once you get into the swing of his style I honestly do not think they are that difficult to read. In other words, I don't draw as much of a division between the lyric Blake and the epic Blake as you seem to. I think his epics look more difficult than they actually are.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Feb 22 11:54:36 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 07:54:36 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] ars poetica Message-ID: >I while back on the Mod Poetry List, we had a spate >of 'ars poetica' poems. Here are two sites in that vein... While hoping I don't sound miserably grumpy I think poems about poetry could be added to that List R.S. Gwynn began. The only poet whose poetry-about-writing-poetry I ever enjoyed was Alexander Pope (the silken nastiness of "the reader's threatened, not in vain, with sleep," probably). Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Zafano at aol.com Thu Feb 22 11:55:26 2001 From: Zafano at aol.com (Zafano at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 11:55:26 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Grackles swim in the Main? Message-ID: In a message dated 02/22/2001 10:43:48 AM Central Standard Time, poetmuse at swbell.net writes: << Where does the recently debated Forrest Gander fit into the categorizations (mainstream, langpo, ganderism?) >> Forrest Gander fits into no mere categorization. He is a serenely isolated genius whose towering art belongs only to the blinding beams that sparkle from the snowclad heights of poesy. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Feb 22 12:00:22 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 11:00:22 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Francis & transparency In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I love it that we're having a small Robert Francis fest. He's a perpetually underrated poet, I think. Few poets wrote as many direct and indirect ars poeticas, seems to me. Often in the guise of appreciating sports, Francis committed many memorable descriptions of the way language operates. For instance: Boy Riding Forward Backward Presto, pronto! Two boys, two horses. But the boy on backward riding forward Is the boy to watch. He rides the forward horse and laughs In the face of the forward boy on the backward horse, and he laughs Back and the horses laugh. They gallop. The trick is the cool barefaced pretense There is no trick. They might be flying, face to face, On a fast train. They might be whitecaps Hot-cool-headed, One curling backward, one curving forward, Racing a rivalry of waves. They might, they might-- Across a blue of lake, through trees, And half a mile away I caught them: Two boys, two horses. Through trees and through binoculars Sweeping for birds. Oh, they were birds All right, all right. Swallows that weave and wave and sweep And skim and swoop and skitter until The last trees take them. _________________________________ About the conclusion of this poem, David Young has rightly noted, "this is a celebration both of the way swallows behave and of the language's capacity for verbs." I would add that the poem is more interesting than that: it is also a simultaneous celebration of and lament for a solitary life, one in which the ordinary hijinks of society are viewed "through trees and through binoculars." The boy who rides backwards is indeed "the boy to watch," for he is one of the many oblique self-portraits that Francis paints. The horse-laughter here disguises an ars poetica uniting detachment with engagement. In light of the transparency argument swirling about lately, seems to me that no one could credibly call such a poem transparent. Nor do I think its presentation of either self or language is simplistic or naive. But the poem also obviously lacks the habits of syntactical disjunction, fragmentation, ellipsis, and so forth that have become so common in recent decades. Francis was well aware that, in the wake of the modernists especially, he was seen (like his mentor Frost) as riding backwards down the road of poetry's progress. His reply to such charges was to write poems like this one, and while he'll never displace Eliot or even Frost in the anthologies, I'm happy to have such work. David Graham _______________________________ >Someone mentioned Ted Kooser's language earlier today. At a conference a >few years ago, Kooser did offer the image of a glass-bottomed boat as a >model for poetry's transparency. I took issue with him, offering instead the >following poem by Robert Francis as a more accurate image of how poetry >works: > > Catch > >Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together, >Overhand, underhand, backhand, sleight of hand, every hand, >Teasing with attitudes, latitudes, interludes, altitudes, >High, make him fly off the ground for it, low, make him stoop, >Make him scoop it up, make him as-almost-as-possible miss it, >Fast, let him sting from it, now, now fool him slowly, >Anything under the sun to outwit the prosy, >Over the tree and the long sweet cadence down, >Over his head, make him scramble to pick up the meaning, >And now, like a posy, a pretty one plump in his hands. > > >Paul Lake __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From patrick at proximate.org Thu Feb 22 12:06:59 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 12:06:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Houlihan and the pathology of langpo Message-ID: With smart guys like you around, Bill, the arguments quickly become academic. Nice to hear from you over here. Thank you for responding. I agree with you on all points. I would say that Houlihan has an interesting imagination. Sheila Murphy as an archetypical langpo? Houlihan defines poetry as that which is not prose, or not everyday language, language that "communicates the complexity significance or profundity and ... [does] ... it precisely" However, despite the lack of polished details, or despite the ability of the article to posit a well-grounded argument, she does almost ask a couple of good questions that could set up revelatory answers. For instance Q Is langpo incoherent? A No/yes Q if no, show me why & if yes, is there something wrong with "negative capability" (without resorting to circular neurological arguments)? Q what is the difference between poetry and prose? A ... Q if prose poems are poems, what makes them poems? Q what is poetry, then, if it's not precise unusual language that's crisply understood? These questions I think can help us pass the "stranger" test. when someone completely naive of poetry asks sincere questions about poetry, and that person is intelligent and persistent, the above questions might be questions that a person wants to have answered before encountering this stranger. The biggest problem is exactly that: the article argues that poetry is not everyday language, but then langpo shows up with unusual language, not-everyday to the extreme, and then she argues that it isn't poetry because it's unusualness leads to incoherence (from which perhaps all unusual language suffers to one degree or another). I think another important question the article's existence begs (metaquestion) is, is there room for only one type of poetry? does poetry suffer from, well, certain types of poetry? or is there room for all types? (One could make a compelling biological argument--hee hee--for the necessity of diversity for the survival of a species). Etc. etc. I especially agree with you about attempts to bring in science to justify positions in arguments about aesthetics. I think someone should start collecting these arguments. I have a degree in biochemistry and was immersed in science most of my life and it is amazing how non-scientists think that science gives arguments a certain legitimacy or objectivity. Thanks Bill Patrick Patrick Herron patrick at proximate.org http://proximate.org/ getting close is what we're all about here! Message: 15 Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 09:16:05 -0500 From: Bill Freind To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Patrick, you provocateur, you... Actually, I don't really think these essays are all that divisive -- mostly because they're so lightweight. For instance, I agree with the general comment that much of contemporary poetry is getting prose-y, but there are a number of enormous problems with Houlihan's argument. First, she used the word "poetry" in an extraordinarily reductive way and seems to think the distiction between it and prose is obvious, although it was far from obvious to Wordsworth, who claimed that good prose is essentially poetry. She blows right past the advent of the prose poem in France and then misses the obvious Williams text: Spring and All. I'd expect better definitions from my students. Her piece on langpo is genuinely funny, since she manages to misunderstand its most basic tenets. She also trots out all the old ad hominems: langpo is radically "PC" (hey, somebody call Bruce Andrews), it's academically careerist (although almost none of its writers were in the academy in its heyday) and -- my favorite -- it's "unnatural," since "[t]he need for coherence appears to be basic, perhaps even neurological. Science has proved the human brain strives to find a pattern, an order, a meaning in chaos." So much for negative capabili ty, or "a poem should not mean, but be." So much for the love of absurdity that's at the heart of humor. "Science" has proved otherwise, although Houlihan still has good words for Dada. Go figure. To put it bluntly, Houlihan has no idea what she's talking about. Eliot Weinberger's anti-langpo diatribes in the late '80's were vastly more sophisticated. I don't even think she understands that langpo per se hasn't existed since the early '90's at the latest. You'd think with a decade to survey the scene she could have done a little more research. I'm particularly interested in the "langpo as pathology" trope. Jameson associates it with schizophrenia in _Postmodernism_, and Joe Lucia's thoughtful post mentions that Grossman associates meter with the hardwiring of the human brain (I haven't read the Grossman, so I might be butchering his argument). The appeal to science reminds me of those studies that suggested that playing Mozart to your baby makes her smarter. Those studies have now been debunked (big surprise) and I'm equally skeptical of these claims. More to the point, there's something anxious or even shrill about them, as if they were so uncertain of making their claims on aesthetics alone that they had to move to the realm of the human brain itself. Bill Freind Patrick Patrick Herron patrick at proximate.org http://proximate.org/ getting close is what we're all about here! From barr at mail.rochester.edu Thu Feb 22 12:13:43 2001 From: barr at mail.rochester.edu (Brandon Barr) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 12:13:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Does anyone know who the three judges (unnamed in the article) were? Brandon Barr barr at mail.rochester.edu >Louise Gluck has won the Bollingen Prize. > >http://www.williams.edu/News/NewsReleases/01022103.htm > > > >David Graham > >__________________ >David Graham >grahamd at mail.ripon.edu >__________________ > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From dwc8 at psu.edu Thu Feb 22 12:10:24 2001 From: dwc8 at psu.edu (David Clippinger) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 12:10:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Grackles swim in the Main? In-Reply-To: <3A953D57.B49741A6@swbell.net> Message-ID: <200102221714.MAA64310@f04n01.cac.psu.edu> Forrest Gander, a fine poet, raises the problem of the categorical imperatives upon which much of the debate of poetries depend. More, he can be defined only by what he is not: not language poet, not new york school, not mainstream, not iowa workshop, not concrete, not confessional, etc. He is, like many fine writers, a poet who defies the constraints that we (critics, readers, listmembers, scholars) wish to impose upon everyone and everything. David Clippinger At 10:24 AM 2/22/01 -0600, you wrote: >As a non-academic who enjoys following the discussions of poetry and >poets on the list, I have a question: > >Where does the recently debated Forrest Gander fit into the >categorizations (mainstream, langpo, ganderism?) > >Vicki Colker > >-- FREE Personalized Full-Color Suitable for Framing >TEXAS HEROES AWARD! >FREE... Makes a great gift for Texas Wannabes! > >Visit my website, Austin Tx Homefinder.com (www.austintxhomefinder.com). > >Take as many as you like! Pass them out to your friends! > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > David Clippinger, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English and American Studies Penn State University 100 University Drive Monaca, PA 15061 (724) 773-3884 www.clippinger.com/david ____________________________________________________________________ The thinker as reader reads what has been written. He hears the words he reads to look upon Within his being Wallace Stevens, "Things of August" ____________________________________________________________________ From Zafano at aol.com Thu Feb 22 12:52:49 2001 From: Zafano at aol.com (Zafano at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 12:52:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Mythic Mainstream Message-ID: <6f.117a61b9.27c6abf1@aol.com> The mainstream / knownstream or otherstream can be found within a poet's oeuvre. Wallace Stevens' poems in the mainstream would include "Sunday Morning," "The Emperor of Ice Cream," "The Snow Man," "The Idea of Order at Key West." But I love to explore (and to teach) the "otherstream" Stevens: "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle" (a major early poem, but seldom anthologized), "Academic Discourse at Havana" (a wonderful companion to "The Idea of Order at Key West," and I think a more interesting poem); also: "Martial Cadenza," "Yellow Afternoon," "Montrachet-le-Jardin," "The Dove in the Belly," "A Lot of People Bathing in a Stream," "Looking across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly," "The Old Lutheran Bells at Home," and "Holiday in Reality" (which ends with one of the most beautiful sentences in the English language). And on and on. I'd have all of those in my ideal anthology, to the exclusion of some of the "mainstream" pieces. This applies to many other poets. Frost's "Directive" (his greatest poem, I think) is not regularly anthologized. Yeats: "Under Saturn," "High Talk," "The Three Bushes." Etc etc. M. Heffernan From MerwinDame at aol.com Thu Feb 22 13:03:14 2001 From: MerwinDame at aol.com (MerwinDame at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 13:03:14 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Quotation du jour Message-ID: In a message dated 2/22/01 6:26:14 AM Pacific Standard Time, Zafano at aol.com writes: << That's right up there with the best Bushisms ever. God this is a great time to be alive. >> i could not agree more. to comfort my wretched self after the final outcome of the election, i only had to think of the extraordinary art and satire that inevitably arises under such political conditions. it is no secret that legions of writers wept inconsolably upon the presidential departure of richard nixon. :) the new list is marvelous, and i am enjoying myself no end. best -- muffy bolding From JforJames at aol.com Thu Feb 22 13:38:21 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 13:38:21 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Grackles swim in the Main? Message-ID: <3f.11084f23.27c6b69d@aol.com> I'm not certain what motivated Michael's facetious response. I'd like to think it was only the fact that categorizing isn's easy & and is often a flawed process, as David Clippinger suggested. But I would say that Forrest Gander could be considered a 'late adopter' to the post-modernist tendencies in contemporary poetry. C.D. Wright, Forrest's significant other, has also gone that route in her last two books, (see Deepstep Come Shining). Gillian Connolley, Alice Fulton and Donald Revell may be other examples of poets whose earlier work might be said to have had "indications of," but nothing particular, techniquewise, that would cause one to consider them to beyond the pale of the mainstream. Someone (Bill?) said language poetry was no more. Well, yes & no...because many of the techniques explored by language poets are now employed liberally by poets not originally thought to be of the same allegiance. Then, there is a younger crew; like Joshua Glover (out of Jorie Graham's Iowa, I believe), who are steeped in the post-modernist influences (including langpo) and whose work shows it, in spades. I believe the interest in post-mod techniques is genuine, in most cases. But there may be some poseur-postmodernism going on, as well. I liked what Ron Silliman said about Forrest Gander's selection and use of particular words. His word choices/placements seem to be precise and yet surprising. Note: New Directions did Forrest's last book, Science & the Steepleflower. Which I think is good sign for that press... because it seemed to be living off a yellowing list of dead & graying authors. As many may know, Forrest Gander & C.D. Wright are behind Lost Roads Books, which has published many fine books over the years. On that count alone they deserve high praise...whatever your taste in poetry. The have kept in print a number of Frank Stanford titles. And those interested in the American long poem will want to check out Stanford's long poem The Battlefield Where The Moon Says I Love You. (Confession: tho I admire much of Stanford's work, I haven't waded into the pages of this one yet.) Finnegan You can odd this title through www.spdbooks.org... THE BATTLEFIELD WHERE THE MOON SAYS I LOVE YOU by Stanford, Frank $18.00 Lost Roads Publishers Poetry | Paperback | 2000 ISBN 0918786509 Poetry. Frank Stanford was called by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Alan Dugan "a brilliant poet, ample in his work, like Whitman." He was the founder of Lost Roads Publishers and the author of a number of important works, among them the epic THE BATTLEFIELD WHERE THE MOON SAYS I LOVE YOU, now reprinted by Lost Roads, which is currently edited by Forrest Gander and C.D. Wright. "Frank Stanford said his purpose in his writing and with his press was to 'reclaim the landscape of American poetry'" - The Arkansas Times. Stanford ended his own life in 1978 when he was 29. The reprinting of this major book is a truly important, much anticipated literary event. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Feb 22 02:36:30 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 01:36:30 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Playing catch, transparency, difficulty In-Reply-To: <5f.113a41ac.27c607e8@aol.com> Message-ID: on 2/22/01 12:12 AM, Jandhodge at aol.com at Jandhodge at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 01-02-21 15:47:12 EST, you write: > > Paul Lake offered "the following poem by Robert Francis as a more accurate > image of how poetry works: > > Catch > > Two boys uncoached are tossing a poem together, . . . >> > > I mentioned Francis's poem "Glass" in a recent post. So let's make it a hat > trick, and add as a further poetic comment on what it is that [some] poets > [sometimes] do his "Pitcher": > > His art is eccentricity, his aim > How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at, > > His passion how to avoid the obvious, > His technique how to vary the avoidance. > > The others throw to be comprehended. He > Throws to be a moment misunderstood. > > Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild, > But every seeming aberration willed. > > Not to, yet still, still to communicate > Making the batter understand too late. > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > Thanks, Jan, for posting "Pitcher." I was thinking about posting it myself. I missed your earlier mention of "Catch" somehow. From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Feb 22 02:38:16 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 01:38:16 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Joe L. on dif. Message-ID: Thanks, Moira. I'll post things as the muse urges. Paul From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Feb 22 03:02:03 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 02:02:03 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan Message-ID: Thanks for the links to Houlihan. The second essay, on the language poets, has some funny lines like the following: "Language Poets, on the other hand, are obsessed with meaning in the same way an atheist is obsessed with God. Every poem is designed to disprove its existence." Paul Lake From jdavis at panix.com Thu Feb 22 14:17:08 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 14:17:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Funny In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Paul - Do you watch tv? Do you listen to radio programs? Could you give me some readily-available benchmark for what you find amusing? I have absolutely no idea what you could possibly _mean_ by using the adjective "funny" to describe Houlihan's description. And don't tell me "Frazier!" Jordan On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Paul Lake wrote: > Thanks for the links to Houlihan. The second essay, on the language poets, > has some funny lines like the following: > > "Language Poets, on the other hand, are obsessed with meaning in the same > way an atheist is obsessed with God. Every poem is designed to disprove its > existence." > > Paul Lake > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From antrobin at clipper.net Thu Feb 22 14:24:31 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 11:24:31 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Editors? References: Message-ID: <05ca01c09d05$181376e0$0facefd8@0021936706> Thom asks a good question. I'm wondering if any editors out there would care to weigh in. I'm new to the gig, but for the past two months have been on the editorial board of a tri-quarterly review, as an "associate poetry editor." We (I and the four other associate editors) technically work "under" the Editor, but when the six of us meet weekly to discuss current submissions, the process is extremely democratic--no editor's voice carries any more weight than the other, and the Editor does not have veto power. In fact, in a recent issue, one poem made it in despite staunch objections from the Editor. The idea is to form consensus, even if this means that eventually the hold-outs will break down--but any poem that makes it into the journal is "approved of" by at least 4 of the 6 editors involved. It's really too early to determine how this process affects the "type" of work we actually choose to publish. The magazine, on the whole, has no particular stated aesthetic, but if the poetry we eventually do publish seems a bit "safer" or more "mainstream" it has a lot to do with the fact that risky pieces tend to polarize, and if we deadlock on something, it gets rejected (along with a nice note, of course). But I'm rambling. I'm new at this. Perhaps further experience will yield enlightenment. Tony > I'm wondering to what degree editors (of poetry journals, magazines, > anthologies, presses, etc.) play in what makes or doesn't make it into the > "mainstream" or establishment or anti-establishment poetry, or whatever term > we want to use to describe what's being read or perceived as being "in" at > any given time. Unless poets self-publish, shouldn't we be asking journal > editors to talk about their choices? Aren't they the ones who are choosing to > print those poems instead of other poems, by nature of what they do as > editors? Perhaps editors who publish poems about grandmothers in the > kitchen/grandfathers in the garage are just as responsible for this phenomena > asthe writers, themselves. If editors wouldn't publish these poems, then > they wouldn't "enter" the stream (again, unless self-published). From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Feb 22 03:29:58 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 02:29:58 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Funny In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 2/22/01 1:17 PM, Jordan Davis at jdavis at panix.com wrote: > Paul - > > Do you watch tv? Do you listen to radio programs? Could you give me some > readily-available benchmark for what you find amusing? I have absolutely > no idea what you could possibly _mean_ by using the adjective "funny" to > describe Houlihan's description. > > And don't tell me "Frazier!" > > Jordan > > > > > On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Paul Lake wrote: > >> Thanks for the links to Houlihan. The second essay, on the language poets, >> has some funny lines like the following: >> >> "Language Poets, on the other hand, are obsessed with meaning in the same >> way an atheist is obsessed with God. Every poem is designed to disprove its >> existence." >> >> Paul Lake >> >> _______________________________________________ >> New-Poetry mailing list >> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry >> > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > The line I quoted sounded rather like a Woody Allen line. Not quite as good as, say, "I wonder if there's a heaven, and, if so, if they can change a twenty." Or something to that effect. Paul Lake From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Feb 22 03:54:40 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 02:54:40 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Science, art, and the brain Message-ID: The following paragraph is from *Frontiers of Complexity" by Peter Coveny and Roger Highfield. Dr. Peter Coveny is a senior research scientist at Cambridge University. Dr. Highfield is a science editor. Those on the list (like David Kellogg in the past) who insist that connections linking science and art made by me and others are off the mark, please take a look at some of the recent books on complexity science. In my essay "The Shape of Poetry" (recently quoted in part on this list) I drew comparisons between the poetry of Hopkins and discoveries in complexity science, chaos, and fractal geometry. In looking up the following quote, I just noticed that Coveny and Highfield preface their book on complexity with an epigraph by Hopkins: his poem "Pied Beauty." In my essay, I wrote, "Benoit Mandelbrot, the inventor of fractal geometry, in his rhapsodic description of the fractal shapes of nature, practically echoes Hopkins? poem ?Pied Beauty? when he writes of the ?. . . grainy, hydralike, in between, pimply, pocky, ramified, sea-weedy, strange, tangled, tortuous, wiggly, whispy, wrinkled? shapes that can now ?be approached in rigorous and vigorous fashion? through his fractal geometry. If we substitute the assonantally chiming word fractal for dappled in the first line of Hopkins? poem (?Glory be to God for fractal things?), its celebration of all that?s ?fickle, freckled (who knows how?)? sounds, in turn, remarkably like Mandelbrot." Here's the quote by Highfield and Coveny on the brain's--indeed, all neural networks'--predilection for symmetry and beauty: "Indeed, our disdain for the irregular, distorted, and lopsided seems to be inherent in the way our brains recognize patterns. We may at last understand why it is that we love the symmetry of a snowflake, a beautiful face, or William Blake's Tyger, with its 'fearful symmetry.' Subsequent work by Arak and Enquist, complemented by independent work by Rufus Johnstone, has shown that neural networks have an inherent preference for symmetry when trained to recognize visual patterns because symmetrical patterns are easier to ascertain from a variety of viewing angles--think of a sphere compared with a cube. These findings are corroborated by the discovery that our own love of symmetry is shared by other creatures--for instance, crows, monkeys." Paul Lake From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Thu Feb 22 15:31:34 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 15:31:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Science, art, and the brain References: Message-ID: <3A957726.513D49FD@lehigh.edu> Paul -- I still have to respond to your poem, which I find disturbing in a number of ways, not least it's ascription of an insidious amorality of character to a speaker with a particular critical stance that, I assume, you disavow. That strikes me as nastily reductive, though it certainly works as parody, I'll grant you that. I assume that I also am implicated in the comment below: > Those on the list (like David Kellogg in the past) who insist that > connections linking science and art made by me and others are off the mark, > please take a look at some of the recent books on complexity science. It's not that connections between science and art are off the mark. It's that claims about self-similarity as embodied most fully in specific formal practices -- the composition of metered verse, for instance -- seem mightily reductive. I'll bet one can find and elaborate patterns of self-similarity in many different elements of language without ever pointing to meter as the necessary aesthetic verification of fractality for poetic composition. It's the use of a particular scientific _figure_ (fractality, self-similarity) to underwrite a preference for a set of formal practices that's suspect and troubling, for me at least. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Feb 22 04:47:16 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 03:47:16 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Science, art, etc. Message-ID: Joe, I don't disagree with your statement, "I'll bet one can find and elaborate patterns of self-similarity in many different elements of language without ever pointing to meter as the necessary aesthetic verification of fractality for poetic composition." Indeed, different elements of language have self-similar patterns in all kinds of poetry, at various levels. In both of the essays I've linked to on this list, I talk about those levels--syntax, metaphor, etc.--as well as meter and poetic form. Meter allows an additional level of self-similarity in the poem--in the very spoken syllables of which words and lines are made. And poetic forms--like sonnets, quatrains, etc.--allow yet another level of self-similarity. They also add an overall symmetry that seems almost impossible to achieve in the more irregular nonce forms of free verse. As I argue in "Disorderly Orders," though, free verse poets like Eliot and Whitman often achieve metrical-like rhythmic effects--and forms that reflect the poem's theme (see my discussion of Whitman's "Quicksand Years.") Paul Lake From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Feb 22 16:00:08 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 12:00:08 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Editors? Message-ID: Thank you for the view from the other side....at least with rejection slips, they're usually not signed by a member of the editorial staff, so it does give the impression that the magazine is a bit monolithic. Nothing like "the Editor liked it but only 2 of the staff did and since 4 loathed it vehemently, sorry, here you go." It seems interesting that, aside from the specialty journals for formal poetry, language poetry, haiku, etc., the few big poetry magazines don't seem to have that specific an aesthetic -- Donald Justice could publish in either "The New Yorker" or "Poetry," I imagine, but you couldn't publish a "Parnassus" article in "The New Yorker," probably. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From TerryP17 at aol.com Thu Feb 22 16:16:11 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 16:16:11 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Science, art, and the brain Message-ID: <8.109e27d5.27c6db9b@aol.com> In a message dated 2/22/01 3:35:03 PM, jpl3 at lehigh.edu writes: >It's the use of a >particular scientific _figure_ (fractality, self-similarity) to >underwrite a preference for a set of formal practices that's suspect and >troubling, for me at least. Interesting thread developing here. Why "mightily reductive?" Why "suspect and troubling?" Sounds kind of like Thurn und Taxis in Pynchon. Would it really be surprising if the human organism possessed some innate organic preferences, specifically with reference to the ease with which its brain processes a certain type of written or spoken line or segment of information? You can certainly see that kind of preference, for example, in classical music. For the last 30 years, nearly without fail, any concert I've attended that has focused on Beethoven, Mozart, or Brahms will tend to be fully subscribed while a concert that's loaded with Webern or Elliot Carter will also be loaded with empty seats. One could say that people are not open to "challenging music." I would say that classical music fans clearly prefer tonal music. Neither theory could be proved, however, without a large scientific study--and even then, opponents might reject the winning theory anyway because it is disturbing to a set world-view. Turner and Poppel prove nothing in their essay per se. Their examination of this topic does not appear include a large-enough sampling of data to satisfy scientific skeptics. (Such cross-disciplinary studies are notoriously difficult to get funded for a long period if at all.) And yet the authors raise a provocative and interesting possibility for which there could conceivably be a proof, given the proper application of scientific rigor--and a budget. Their conclusion is by no means out of the question. It has just not been sufficiently proven. --Terry Ponick terryp17 at aol.com From kellogg at duke.edu Thu Feb 22 16:09:48 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 16:09:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo References: <3A951F23.746AB978@providence.edu> <3A952813.DC523F82@lehigh.edu> Message-ID: <3A95801C.A1B7F767@duke.edu> Joe Lucia wrote: > > > > I'm particularly interested in the "langpo as pathology" trope. Jameson > > associates it with schizophrenia in _Postmodernism_, and Joe Lucia's thoughtful > > post mentions that Grossman associates meter with the hardwiring of the human > > brain (I haven't read the Grossman, so I might be butchering his argument). > > It's not Grossman who associates meter with the hard-wiring of the > human brain -- that'd be Frederick Turner. Turner published an essay in > _Poetry_ back in the early '80s, I think, that rather infamously > advanced this argument. That's right. It was written with Ernst Poppel, called "The Neural Lyre," and republished in the first edition of _Expansive Poetry_. I attacked it in _American Poetry_, the now defunct academic journal of out New Mexico, in what turned out to be their last issue (coincidence?!) > Grossman's account of meter is more focused on > cultural construction of a particular kind of speaking self, and the > erosion of the predominance of the five-beat verse line in Enlgish > language poetry is related to the eroision of that construction of the > self. Grossman's arguments are deeply informed by an appreciation of > structural lingusitics, though; Emile Beneviste is cited frequently > early in his text. I do think that Grossman would hold with the notion > that different kinds of prosody have different sorts of cognitive > effects, but that's really something esle entirely -- it's not > quasi-scientific underwriting of legitimacy of a particular formalism. -- David Kellogg Assistant Director, University Writing Program Duke University (919) 660-4357; FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg From kellogg at duke.edu Thu Feb 22 16:19:15 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 16:19:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan References: Message-ID: <3A958253.38116048@duke.edu> Paul Lake wrote: > Thanks for the links to Houlihan. The second essay, on the language poets, > has some funny lines like the following: > > "Language Poets, on the other hand, are obsessed with meaning in the same > way an atheist is obsessed with God. Every poem is designed to disprove its > existence." Even if Houlihan were wrong about language poets, the line would still be OK if she were correct about atheists. But alas, she is wrong there too. Houlihan imagines that language poets are obsessed with meaning in the same way a Christian fantasizes an atheist is obsessed with God. David Kellogg Assistant Director, University Writing Program Duke University (919) 660-4357; FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg From jdavis at panix.com Thu Feb 22 16:36:29 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 16:36:29 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Funny In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > > readily-available benchmark for what you find amusing? > The line I quoted sounded rather like a Woody Allen line. Not quite as good > as, say, "I wonder if there's a heaven, and, if so, if they can change a > twenty." Or something to that effect. Common ground, here we come! I like Woody Allen (and S.J. Perelman) too - Hey, remember the scene in, is it Annie Hall? where while waiting on line for movie tickets (Triumph of the Will?), he's stuck behind a professor of media studies who butchers some basic theory, so to get the guy to pipe down he pulls Marshall McLuhan himself out from behind a potted plant - But seriously, don't you get a little vertigo when you look over the depths of vacuity in Houlihan's use of the word "meaning" (let alone her understanding of meaning in poetry)? Nausea usually keeps _me_ from laughing - Jordan Davis From Jandhodge at aol.com Thu Feb 22 16:49:00 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 16:49:00 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Science, art, and the brain Message-ID: Joe Lucia wrote: << I still have to respond to [Paul Lake's "Professing Rape"], which I find disturbing in a number of ways, not least it's ascription of an insidious amorality of character to a speaker with a particular critical stance that, I assume, you disavow. That strikes me as nastily reductive, though it certainly works as parody, I'll grant you that. >> Seems to me this might be making a few unwarranted assumptions. To argue that creating a [fictional] professor's familiarity with "a particular critical stance" who cleverly and amorally [or immorally] uses that stance to justify apparently amoral [or immoral] behavior is equivalent to implying that the critical stance itself is amoral [or immoral] is the same as accusing Moliere of arguing that Christianity is hypocrisy because of his depiction of Tartuffe. Come to think of it, that accusation was made, wasn't it? Jan D. Hodge From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Feb 22 16:50:50 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 12:50:50 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo Message-ID: David Kellogg wrote: >It was written with Ernst Poppel, called "The Neural Lyre," and >republished in the first edition of _Expansive Poetry_. I attacked it in >_American Poetry_, the now defunct academic journal of out New Mexico, in >what turned out to be >their last issue (coincidence?!) Well, so what did you say? Can you give excerpts or a URL for the curious? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Thu Feb 22 05:43:40 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 04:43:40 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Funny In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 2/22/01 3:36 PM, Jordan Davis at jdavis at panix.com wrote: >>> readily-available benchmark for what you find amusing? > >> The line I quoted sounded rather like a Woody Allen line. Not quite as good >> as, say, "I wonder if there's a heaven, and, if so, if they can change a >> twenty." Or something to that effect. > > Common ground, here we come! I like Woody Allen (and S.J. Perelman) too - > > Hey, remember the scene in, is it Annie Hall? where while waiting on line > for movie tickets (Triumph of the Will?), he's stuck behind a professor of > media studies who butchers some basic theory, so to get the guy to pipe > down he pulls Marshall McLuhan himself out from behind a potted plant - > > But seriously, don't you get a little vertigo when you look over the > depths of vacuity in Houlihan's use of the word "meaning" (let alone her > understanding of meaning in poetry)? Nausea usually keeps _me_ from > laughing - > > Jordan Davis > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > I'll have to go back and see how Houlihan employs the word _meaning_. But why have a couple of people complained that she's completely misconstruing language poetry and getting it all wrong when she supports her often witty remarks with the language poets' own critical theorizing? Paul From alsop at alsopreview.com Thu Feb 22 20:37:59 2001 From: alsop at alsopreview.com (Jaimes Alsop) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 17:37:59 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Snowed in in DE References: Message-ID: <3A95BEF7.C10350B9@alsopreview.com> As quickly as I subscribed to this list I took on a gruelling work schedule that gives me very little time on-line save for a few hours on weekends. Today I was snowed in and have had the time to read many of the messages posted within the past week. With any luck at all I'll be snowed in tomorrow too and will have the chance to read the rest of them. But I did want to take the opportunity to stop 'lurking' and say hello. The conversations have been fascinating and I am pleased to be here. Jaimes -- Jaimes Alsop The Alsop Review http://www.alsopreview.com From TerryP17 at aol.com Thu Feb 22 18:00:04 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 18:00:04 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo Message-ID: <77.1091e47b.27c6f3f4@aol.com> Moira-- In a message dated 2/22/01 4:51:52 PM, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: >>It was written with Ernst Poppel, called "The Neural Lyre," and >>republished in the first edition of _Expansive Poetry_. I attacked it >in >>_American Poetry_, the now defunct academic journal of out New Mexico, >in >>what turned out to be >>their last issue (coincidence?!) > >Well, so what did you say? Can you give excerpts or a URL for the curious? As I indicated in another post, the essay is again available in the reissue of "Expansive Poetry," entitled "New Expansive Poetry," published by Story Line in 1999, and edited by Sam Gwynn who often appears on this listserv. To my knowledge, it's not posted on a url, but I'm sure you could find this book in your college library, or you could warm publisher Bob McDowell's heart by ordering a copy. Other good stuff in there, too. --Terry Ponick terryp17 at aol.com From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Thu Feb 22 17:15:14 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 17:15:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mythic Mainstream References: <6f.117a61b9.27c6abf1@aol.com> Message-ID: <3A958F71.51CD@nut-n-but.net> >The mainstream / knownstream or otherstream can be >found within a poet's oeuvre. I'd substitute "some poets' oeuvres" for "a poet's oeuvre." > Wallace Stevens' poems > in the mainstream would include "Sunday > Morning," "The Emperor of Ice Cream," "The Snow Man," > "The Idea of Order at Key West." But I love to > explore (and to teach) the "otherstream" Stevens: > "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle" (a major early poem, > but seldom anthologized), Maybe, but I doubt that there are many English departments who don't have one or more teachers familiar with it--and certainly familiar with all it does. That makes it knownstream. > "Academic Discourse at Havana" (a wonderful > companion to "The Idea of Order > at Key West," and I think a more interesting > poem); also: "Martial Cadenza," > "Yellow Afternoon," "Montrachet-le-Jardin," > "The Dove in the Belly," "A Lot > of People Bathing in a Stream," "Looking > across the Fields and Watching the > Birds Fly," "The Old Lutheran Bells at Home," > and "Holiday in Reality" (which > ends with one of the most beautiful > sentences in the English language). And > on and on. I'd have all of those in my ideal > anthology, to the exclusion of > some of the "mainstream" pieces. > > This applies to many other poets. Frost's > "Directive" (his greatest poem, I > think) is not regularly anthologized. > Yeats: "Under Saturn," "High Talk," > "The Three Bushes." Etc etc. > > M. Heffernan I don't think a particular poem has to be known to the established experts to be considered knownstream, just the kind of things it does. But I agree that a poet who does some mainstream poems may also do otherstream poems. I have done very mainstream haiku, for instance--but also have done mathematical poems I consider otherstream. In any case, I always try to speak of mainstream/ knowstream or otherstream poetry, not poets. And, of course, since no category is perfect, there are specimens hard to pin down. I would put what I've seen of Gander's poetry unhesitatingly in the mainstream branch of the knowstream, by the way. --Bob G. From TerryP17 at aol.com Thu Feb 22 17:57:45 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 17:57:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo Message-ID: <64.b7c4f02.27c6f369@aol.com> In a message dated 2/22/01 4:51:52 PM, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: >>It was written with Ernst Poppel, called "The Neural Lyre," and >>republished in the first edition of _Expansive Poetry_. I attacked it >in >>_American Poetry_, the now defunct academic journal of out New Mexico, >in >>what turned out to be >>their last issue (coincidence?!) > >Well, so what did you say? Can you give excerpts or a URL for the curious? From tadrichards at prodigy.net Thu Feb 22 18:32:34 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 18:32:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen References: Message-ID: <0c7201c09d27$bc2faba0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Any thoughts on Gluck? A good choice? I think so...I's say she's as good a choice as any...certainly not the only possible choice, but a sound one. Although I do think that her essays and criticism are impenetrable. Speaking of impenetrable, any thoughts on this sentence from the Williams press release? ...is awarded biennially by the Yale University Library to an American poet for the best book published during the previous two years for lifetime achievement in poetry. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Graham" To: Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 11:19 AM Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen > Louise Gluck has won the Bollingen Prize. > > http://www.williams.edu/News/NewsReleases/01022103.htm > > > > David Graham > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From moira_russell at hotmail.com Thu Feb 22 18:42:00 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 14:42:00 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo Message-ID: There seems to be a bit of confusion here. I wasn't referring to "The Neural Lyre," but to someone's self-described "attack" on it. However, I didn't get any details, so naturally I was curious. Moira Russell Seattle, WA >Moira-- > >In a message dated 2/22/01 4:51:52 PM, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > > >>It was written with Ernst Poppel, called "The Neural Lyre," and > >>republished in the first edition of _Expansive Poetry_. I attacked it > >in > >>_American Poetry_, the now defunct academic journal of out New Mexico, > >in > >>what turned out to be > >>their last issue (coincidence?!) > > > >Well, so what did you say? Can you give excerpts or a URL for the >curious? > >As I indicated in another post, the essay is again available in the reissue >of "Expansive Poetry," entitled "New Expansive Poetry," published by Story >Line in 1999, and edited by Sam Gwynn who often appears on this listserv. >To >my knowledge, it's not posted on a url, but I'm sure you could find this >book >in your college library, or you could warm publisher Bob McDowell's heart >by >ordering a copy. Other good stuff in there, too. > >--Terry Ponick > terryp17 at aol.com >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Feb 22 18:55:43 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 15:55:43 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Science, art, and the brain In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010222235543.89893.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com> --- Paul Lake wrote: > The following paragraph is from *Frontiers of Complexity" by Peter > Coveny > and Roger Highfield. Dr. Peter Coveny is a senior research scientist > at > Cambridge University. Dr. Highfield is a science editor. > > Those on the list (like David Kellogg in the past) who insist that > connections linking science and art made by me and others are off the > mark, > please take a look at some of the recent books on complexity science. > In my > essay "The Shape of Poetry" (recently quoted in part on this list) I > drew > comparisons between the poetry of Hopkins and discoveries in > complexity > science, chaos, and fractal geometry. In looking up the following > quote, I > just noticed that Coveny and Highfield preface their book on > complexity with > an epigraph by Hopkins: his poem "Pied Beauty." In my essay, I wrote, > > "Benoit Mandelbrot, the inventor of fractal geometry, in his > rhapsodic > description of the fractal shapes of nature, practically echoes > Hopkins1 > poem 3Pied Beauty2 when he writes of the 3. . . grainy, hydralike, in > between, pimply, pocky, ramified, sea-weedy, strange, tangled, > tortuous, > wiggly, whispy, wrinkled2 shapes that can now 3be approached in > rigorous and > vigorous fashion2 through his fractal geometry. If we substitute the > assonantally chiming word fractal for dappled in the first line of > Hopkins1 > poem (3Glory be to God for fractal things2), its celebration of all > that1s > 3fickle, freckled (who knows how?)2 sounds, in turn, remarkably like > Mandelbrot." > > Here's the quote by Highfield and Coveny on the brain's--indeed, all > neural > networks'--predilection for symmetry and beauty: > > > "Indeed, our disdain for the irregular, distorted, and lopsided seems > to be > inherent in the way our brains recognize patterns. We may at last > understand why it is that we love the symmetry of a snowflake, a > beautiful > face, or William Blake's Tyger, with its 'fearful symmetry.' > Subsequent work > by Arak and Enquist, complemented by independent work by Rufus > Johnstone, > has shown that neural networks have an inherent preference for > symmetry when > trained to recognize visual patterns because symmetrical patterns are > easier > to ascertain from a variety of viewing angles--think of a sphere > compared > with a cube. These findings are corroborated by the discovery that > our own > love of symmetry is shared by other creatures--for instance, crows, > monkeys." Summary: We are doing what we were born to do. (?) - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices! http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From wasanthony at yahoo.com Thu Feb 22 19:14:10 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 16:14:10 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Editors? In-Reply-To: <05ca01c09d05$181376e0$0facefd8@0021936706> Message-ID: <20010223001410.17407.qmail@web12101.mail.yahoo.com> --- Anthony Robinson wrote: > Thom asks a good question. I'm wondering if any editors out there > would care > to weigh in. > I'm new to the gig, but for the past two months have been on the > editorial > board of a tri-quarterly review, as an "associate poetry editor." > > We (I and the four other associate editors) technically work "under" > the > Editor, but when the six of us meet weekly to discuss current > submissions, > the process is extremely democratic--no editor's voice carries any > more > weight than the other, and the Editor does not have veto power. In > fact, in > a recent issue, one poem made it in despite staunch objections from > the > Editor. The idea is to form consensus, even if this means that > eventually > the hold-outs will break down--but any poem that makes it into the > journal > is "approved of" by at least 4 of the 6 editors involved. > > It's really too early to determine how this process affects the > "type" of > work we actually choose to publish. The magazine, on the whole, has > no > particular stated aesthetic, but if the poetry we eventually do > publish > seems a bit "safer" or more "mainstream" it has a lot to do with the > fact > that risky pieces tend to polarize, and if we deadlock on something, > it gets > rejected (along with a nice note, of course). > > But I'm rambling. I'm new at this. Perhaps further experience will > yield > enlightenment. > Well, Tony, speaking from 6 years of print editing experience (Porch) and 3 or 4 (can't track this) years experience editing an online publication (The Salt River Review), and over 30 years or submitting and being accepted or rejected, I can say that, as editor and supplicant, I prefer the eccentric sole-editor m.o. precisely because of the reasons you outline above. Of course, one can tell when an autonomous decision made by a single editor (Poetry, for example) points directly at a bias or entrenched taste - this has already been elaborated upon in posts re mainstream etc. I, for one, love "discovering" new voices, even though they may turn out to be clones of a sort - at least they (the individual poems) were new to me when I encountered them, and I would also admit my biases toward a certain kind of poem that has little to do with meter or form or schools of poetry. Maybe I'm just a sucker for a certain kind of epiphany. Maybe I read too early in the a.m.. Maybe I haven't read enough to know what is considered this or that. My prime concern is to present a collection that achieves a cohesiveness based on a dialogue between works (in my head, admittedly) that pleases in some way. I don't always acheive that. I like to know which print publications edited according to a consensus so I can avoid them. Give me the sole editor anytime. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices! http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Thu Feb 22 20:21:52 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 20:21:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Houlihan References: Message-ID: <3A95BB2F.C49406A8@providence.edu> > > > > I'll have to go back and see how Houlihan employs the word _meaning_. But > why have a couple of people complained that she's completely misconstruing > language poetry and getting it all wrong when she supports her often witty > remarks with the language poets' own critical theorizing? Because she doesn't support her remarks and she has no idea what she's talking about. Look at the essays she cites and you'll see that none of the seminal langpo texts are there, except for a confusing reference to the new sentence. Neither Sheila Murphy, Mark Wallace, Ben Friedlander nor Bernadette Mayer are language poets. And she's absolutely wrong when she claims that every poem is designed to prove that meaning doesn't exist. Langpo is designed to do precisely the opposite, to open up the possibilities of meaning, to show that it is everywhere. The fact that she muffs such an obvious premise, one that is repeated continuously in Total Syntax, North of Intention and the Language Book, shows she hasn't even started to do her homework. Furthermore, she never defines "meaning" and in fact uses it in seemingly contradictory ways. The fact that she uses a word like that so unproblematically -- and the fact that she connects it to capital-G God -- suggests she hasn't even started to think through the most basic issues in poetics. How do Four Quartets "mean," especially since Eliot claimed meaning is the bone that distracts the watchdog while the poem burgles the house? This goes beyond langpo: Houlihan's unquestioned assumptions implicitly endorse an aesthetic which isn't all that different from William Bennett's. Bill Freind From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Thu Feb 22 20:19:27 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 19:19:27 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen In-Reply-To: <0c7201c09d27$bc2faba0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> References: Message-ID: The judges' citation awarding Gluck the Bollingen reads, in part: "In the work of no other contemporary American poet is the individual psyche so unsparingly portrayed in both the anguish and the humor with which it confronts its profound solitude and the twin darknesses which precede birth and follow life...[Gl?ck] deals with powerful emotions, expressed in a language of surpassing clarity and spareness, full of passion and devoid of sentiment." Though I can certainly assent to terms like "spareness," "clarity," "anguish," and "unsparingly portrayed," I admit I'm stopped short by "humor." Has anyone else failed, as I have, to find humor in Gluck's work? I keep thinking of what Vendler once called Gluck's "posthumous tone." And what in the world might "full of passion and devoid of sentiment" mean, exactly? I also cannot help but notice that Gluck is quoted in the article as saying "I especially like teaching undergraduates, provided they're gifted, and eccentric, and ardent, which the students at Williams by and large are." Is that some of her humor that I'm not recognizing, I wonder? Hell, even *I* don't mind teaching students who are gifted and ardent. And we're *all* eccentric. . . . David Graham ____________________ >Any thoughts on Gluck? A good choice? > >I think so...I's say she's as good a choice as any...certainly not the only >possible choice, but a sound one. Although I do think that her essays and >criticism are impenetrable. > >Speaking of impenetrable, any thoughts on this sentence from the Williams >press release? > >...is awarded biennially by the Yale University Library to an American poet >for the best book published during the previous two years for lifetime >achievement in poetry. > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From patrick at proximate.org Thu Feb 22 20:46:01 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 20:46:01 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Jordan, do you watch movies? Message-ID: Jordan, you sound like Joe Pesci's character in "Goodfellas": "Funny? How? Like a clown funny? Do I *amuse* you?" I hope Paul meant that Houlihan's statement was "funny" in the "dumbo" sense of the word, because there is neither a disavowal nor a rejection of meaning in langpo. Houlihan was being, uh, shall we say, an imaginative critic? Langpo is almost quite the opposite of what she describes, as it seems to involve an opening of meaning, as opposed to a constriction or limitation or dictation of meaning. Again, reading langpo requires that the reader can read with an imagination. If the reader fails to read imaginatively, s/he will fail to derive any sort of enjoyment from langpo. But if a reader fails to read Bunting or Prynne or Braithwaite or Eliot or Zukofsky or Duncan or Baraka or Ashbery or so many damned good poets *with an imagination,* the reader has missed oh so much poetry. Imagination is not a particular requirement of langpo, although it is more crucial for reading Coolidge's _At Egypt_ than it is for reading the latest Robert Pinsky collection, pejoratives aside. And let's not forget the amount of imagination it takes to recognize language that is beautiful in its own right without reference to the world. That language will still have meaning. here's some langpo: Rich heart, hard stitch, reach down, each word one thing covers many, multiplies out, surrounds clutter of the simplest desk in town, realtor sells insurance -- drowns, self service station: book breaks binding, kids leave home return, look sadder, haunted, stare over dinner, silent, sticks stalk, almond chicken, shoots, baby corn stereo choking one thin horn from Ron Silliman's _Lit_, part X. Is this *devoid* of meaning, in any stretch of the imagination? And, does it exactly fit some stereotype of langpo? Does it not only disavow meaning but also voice? It does neither, and I think this piece (as well as many other langpo pieces) expands the potential of meaning in language beyond just imagism or random connections or "precision" as Houlihan says. She probably meant "accuracy," a decidedly different aim in writing than precision. Anyway, so much for meaning... The connections of Silliman's piece above require large jumps, but the scene is painted by the words themselves and how they pace just as much as the meanings of the words dictated to us by dictionaries. those jumps and the colors of the language are poetic, and so too is the reasons for their employment. Patrick Patrick Herron patrick at proximate.org http://proximate.org/ getting close is what we're all about here! Message: 10 Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 14:17:08 -0500 (EST) From: Jordan Davis To: Subject: [New-Poetry] Funny Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Paul - Do you watch tv? Do you listen to radio programs? Could you give me some readily-available benchmark for what you find amusing? I have absolutely no idea what you could possibly _mean_ by using the adjective "funny" to describe Houlihan's description. And don't tell me "Frazier!" Jordan Patrick Patrick Herron patrick at proximate.org http://proximate.org/ getting close is what we're all about here! From mbales at cybergate.net Thu Feb 22 21:27:34 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 21:27:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Houlihan and the pathology of langpo In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > ... it is amazing how non-scientists > think that science gives arguments a certain legitimacy or > objectivity.<< Just so. mbales at cybergate.net From mbales at cybergate.net Fri Feb 23 06:48:23 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 06:48:23 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Houlihan In-Reply-To: <3A95BB2F.C49406A8@providence.edu> Message-ID: > And she's absolutely wrong when she claims that every poem is designed > to prove that meaning doesn't exist. Langpo is designed to do > precisely the opposite, to open up the possibilities of meaning, to > show that it is everywhere. The fact that she muffs such an obvious > premise, one that is repeated continuously in Total Syntax, North of > Intention and the Language Book, shows she hasn't even started to do > her homework.<< Well, in Houlihan's defense, it is often (though of course not always) the case that people (and whatever else one may want to say about them language poets are people) claim they are doing one thing while they are either really doing another, or that the effects of what they think they are doing are really other than what they claim, whether they recognize it or not. In short, just because language poets *claim* to be trying to open up the possibilities of meaning doesn't mean that that's what they are actually doing. I've long admired some of the prose rhetoric of the language poets but have equally long been baffled by the poetry and by the purported connection between the prose and the poetry. Frankly, it just doesn't seem as if there is the connection the theorists claim. Language poetry does in the artistic arena something like what the advocates for eliminating the estate tax are doing in the political arena right now. The anti-estate tax folks are claiming that they are altruistic and democratic-- out to save the small farmer's and the small businessperson's family from being devastated by the government in the form of ruinous taxes after his or her death. The anti-estate tax folks are simply claiming a small part of the problem with using taxes to foster social policy is the whole problem, and are claiming to be what they're not: disinterested. For what anti-estate tax advocates want is to preserve family wealth and ensure that the power that goes with wealth protects the wealthy families who hold both, and they are claiming they want to do this in order to protect the working and middle classes' paltry accumulations. Language poets, similarly, also seem to be claiming to be altruistic and democratic, seeking to save poetry from ruinously narrow inerpretations. But the language poets are simply claiming a small part of the problem with poetry's alienation from "the mainstream" of public and private lives is the whole problem, and they're claiming to be what they're not: disinterested. For language poetry, of all 20th century poetry, seems to me to be the least accessible, the least "meaningful" to the general public, and, in short, very alienating poetry. And yet they claim that they are writing this inaccessible and alienating poetry in order to try to save poetry for the masses. "It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it" is what it sounds like to me. mbales at cybergate.net From mbales at cybergate.net Fri Feb 23 06:48:24 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 06:48:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Jordan, do you watch movies? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > And let's not forget the amount of imagination it takes to > recognize language that is beautiful in its own right without > reference to the world. That language will still have meaning.<< Please tell me that you intended this to be amusing. mbales at cybergate.net From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Fri Feb 23 08:58:01 2001 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 07:58:01 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen Message-ID: Louise Gluck is the Maplethorpe of space cadet poetry from Iowa. From fmm1 at cornell.edu Fri Feb 23 08:58:00 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 08:58:00 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen In-Reply-To: References: <0c7201c09d27$bc2faba0$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010223084250.00a485c0@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Whatever Gluck's virtues or failings, this promo copy from the Bollingen judges is simply the usual Po-PR, of the sort one finds in blurbs of every new, shiny, slim volume of verse on Borders' shelves. (Can so many books really be "astonishing?" Can hundreds of poets really live up to the claim of being "the most important poet of his/her generation?") I often wonder at whom such copy is directed, given poetry's lack of popularity with the mass readership. Certainly not toward informed literary critics, and certainly not toward the savvy bunch of skeptics on this list. For all his abrasiveness, at least William Logan knows a naked emperor when he sees one. And David's right about Gluck's (lack of) humor; I heard her read around the time Ararat came out, and the persona that came across was strictly D.O.A. I'd also be hard put to find anything resembling humor in the 4-5 LG books I've read. -- Fred Muratori At 07:19 PM 2/22/01 -0600, you wrote: >The judges' citation awarding Gluck the Bollingen reads, in part: > >"In the work of no other contemporary American poet is the individual >psyche so unsparingly portrayed in both the anguish and the humor with >which it confronts its profound solitude and the twin darknesses which >precede birth and follow life...[Gl?ck] deals with powerful emotions, >expressed in a language of surpassing clarity and spareness, full of >passion and devoid of sentiment." > >Though I can certainly assent to terms like "spareness," "clarity," >"anguish," and "unsparingly portrayed," I admit I'm stopped short by >"humor." > >Has anyone else failed, as I have, to find humor in Gluck's work? I keep >thinking of what Vendler once called Gluck's "posthumous tone." > >And what in the world might "full of passion and devoid of sentiment" mean, >exactly? > >I also cannot help but notice that Gluck is quoted in the article as saying >"I especially like teaching undergraduates, provided they're gifted, and >eccentric, and ardent, which the students at Williams by and large are." >Is that some of her humor that I'm not recognizing, I wonder? Hell, even >*I* don't mind teaching students who are gifted and ardent. > >And we're *all* eccentric. . . . > >David Graham >____________________ > > > >Any thoughts on Gluck? A good choice? > > > >I think so...I's say she's as good a choice as any...certainly not the only > >possible choice, but a sound one. Although I do think that her essays and > >criticism are impenetrable. > > > >Speaking of impenetrable, any thoughts on this sentence from the Williams > >press release? > > > >...is awarded biennially by the Yale University Library to an American poet > >for the best book published during the previous two years for lifetime > >achievement in poetry. > > > >__________________ >David Graham >grahamd at mail.ripon.edu >__________________ > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Fri Feb 23 09:43:28 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 09:43:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Houlihan In-Reply-To: References: <3A95BB2F.C49406A8@providence.edu> Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010223094328.007b43d0@postoffice.providence.edu> At 06:48 AM 2/23/01 -0500, you wrote: >> And she's absolutely wrong when she claims that every poem is designed >> to prove that meaning doesn't exist. Langpo is designed to do >> precisely the opposite, to open up the possibilities of meaning, to >> show that it is everywhere. The fact that she muffs such an obvious >> premise, one that is repeated continuously in Total Syntax, North of >> Intention and the Language Book, shows she hasn't even started to do >> her homework.<< > >Well, in Houlihan's defense, it is often (though of course not >always) the case that people (and whatever else one may want to >say about them language poets are people) claim they are doing >one thing while they are either really doing another, or that the >effects of what they think they are doing are really other than what >they claim, whether they recognize it or not. Definitely, but that's not what Houlihan is saying. She simply misinterprets what is perhaps the most basic idea in most of langpo. >I've long admired some of the prose rhetoric of the language poets >but have equally long been baffled by the poetry and by the >purported connection between the prose and the poetry. Frankly, it >just doesn't seem as if there is the connection the theorists claim. I agree, for the most part. > >Language poets, similarly, also seem to be claiming to be altruistic >and democratic, seeking to save poetry from ruinously narrow >inerpretations. But the language poets are simply claiming a small >part of the problem with poetry's alienation from "the mainstream" >of public and private lives is the whole problem, and they're >claiming to be what they're not: disinterested. Geez, talk about loaded metaphors. Much of langpo arose out of an opposition to the Vietnam War (Hejinian has a great discussion of this in her new collection) and a Marxist or Marxian opposition to free-market capitalism. So to compare langpo to the anti-estate tax Republicans and the to the rationale for the atrocities in the Vietnam war is really a stretch. Anyway, I think this is a misreading of the langpo project (or projects). They never claim to be altruistic or democratic, and they throw out the notion of disinterstedness altogether. Let's say the words: in the industrialized West, the only poetry that's really "for the masses" is Jewel's. What are the sales of a typical Billy Collins volume? 10,000 copies? Maybe 20,000? I'm guessing here, but my point is that (as Spicer said) no one listens to poetry. And we're kidding ourselves if we think that's going to change any time soon. Poetry is irrelevant in the US. Of course, it's not like that in a lot of countries. I used to work with young Mexican dishwashers who could quote Neruda. But the US is an entirely different story. Bill Freind From kellogg at duke.edu Fri Feb 23 10:03:52 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 10:03:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Moira Russell wrote: > Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2001 14:42:00 -0900 > From: Moira Russell > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Houlihan and the pathology of langpo > > There seems to be a bit of confusion here. I wasn't referring to "The > Neural Lyre," but to someone's self-described "attack" on it. However, I > didn't get any details, so naturally I was curious. That was me. I'll dig up the review and try to post relevant passages this weekend. > >In a message dated 2/22/01 4:51:52 PM, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > > > > >>It was written with Ernst Poppel, called "The Neural Lyre," and > > >>republished in the first edition of _Expansive Poetry_. I attacked it > > >in > > >>_American Poetry_, the now defunct academic journal of out New Mexico, > > >in > > >>what turned out to be > > >>their last issue (coincidence?!) > > > > > >Well, so what did you say? Can you give excerpts or a URL for the > >curious? > > > >As I indicated in another post, the essay is again available in the reissue > >of "Expansive Poetry," entitled "New Expansive Poetry," published by Story > >Line in 1999, and edited by Sam Gwynn who often appears on this listserv. > >To > >my knowledge, it's not posted on a url, but I'm sure you could find this > >book > >in your college library, or you could warm publisher Bob McDowell's heart > >by > >ordering a copy. Other good stuff in there, too. > > > >--Terry Ponick > > terryp17 at aol.com > >_______________________________________________ > >New-Poetry mailing list > >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Fri Feb 23 10:28:52 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 09:28:52 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Perhaps, following Sam Gwynn's fine example of Shakespearean plot reductions, and using the following by Michael Karl Ritchie as a first line, we could compose a list sonnet (well, it wouldn't be iambic pentameter) with one-line slams on a variety of prominent poets. That way we could make sure and piss everyone off, not just a few. Extra points for compactness of cliche, stereotype, and animus. David Graham, the Don Quixote of Misplaced Civility >Louise Gluck is the Maplethorpe of space cadet poetry from Iowa. > > >_______________________________________________ __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From Jandhodge at aol.com Fri Feb 23 10:50:58 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 10:50:58 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen Message-ID: <67.101bf94a.27c7e0e2@aol.com> In a message dated 01-02-23 10:27:27 EST, you write: << David Graham, the Don Quixote of Misplaced Civility >> Ojbection! How about "The Sancho Panza of differential common sense"? Jan D. Hodge From wasanthony at yahoo.com Fri Feb 23 11:15:57 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 08:15:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010223161557.73727.qmail@web12101.mail.yahoo.com> --- David Graham wrote: > Perhaps, following Sam Gwynn's fine example of Shakespearean plot > reductions, and using the following by Michael Karl Ritchie as a > first > line, we could compose a list sonnet (well, it wouldn't be iambic > pentameter) with one-line slams on a variety of prominent poets. > > That way we could make sure and piss everyone off, not just a few. > Extra > points for compactness of cliche, stereotype, and animus. > > David Graham, the Don Quixote of Misplaced Civility > > > >Louise Gluck is the Maplethorpe of space cadet poetry from Iowa. close to the many suns of Sheila Murphy shining like scrambled eggs - Jim, who knows that's not great, but that's the point, isn't it? ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices! http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Feb 23 11:30:41 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 08:30:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen Message-ID: <20010223163041.C5C5F3ED3@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From JforJames at aol.com Fri Feb 23 11:36:38 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 11:36:38 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen Message-ID: <95.747d8b0.27c7eb96@aol.com> > > >Louise Gluck is the Maplethorpe of space cadet poetry from Iowa. > > Maybe it's not worth asking, Michael, but in what sense do your three elements attach themselves to Gluck &/or her poetry? 'Maplethorpe' 'space cadet' and 'Iowa' (I'm guessing she was a Iowa Writing Program grad...but she's not associated with Iowa the way teachers like Jorie Graham or Marvin Bell would be.) Finnegan From gmcvay at patriot.net Fri Feb 23 11:38:44 2001 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 11:38:44 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen In-Reply-To: <20010223163041.C5C5F3ED3@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: Oh, Cobb, how corny. (sorry, somebody had to, so it might as well be me) On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Robert R.Cobb wrote: > Jan, > > "Ojbection!"? How about "David Graham, the Wise Cracker who is never crumby." > > Robert R. Cobb > > --- Jandhodge at aol.com > > wrote: > >In a message dated 01-02-23 10:27:27 EST, you write: > > > ><< David Graham, the Don Quixote of Misplaced Civility >> > > > >Ojbection! How about "The Sancho Panza of differential common sense"? > > > >Jan D. Hodge > >_______________________________________________ > >New-Poetry mailing list > >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _____________________________________________________________ > ----- > Check out my portfolio at www.talent.com > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From Zafano at aol.com Fri Feb 23 11:39:28 2001 From: Zafano at aol.com (Zafano at aol.com) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 11:39:28 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Science, art, and the brain Message-ID: <5e.79664b7.27c7ec40@aol.com> In a message dated 02/22/2001 2:03:34 PM Central Standard Time, paul.lake at mail.atu.edu quotes Highfield and Coveny: << We may at last understand why it is that we love the symmetry of a snowflake, a beautiful face, or William Blake's Tyger, with its 'fearful symmetry.' >> I know a very beautiful face whose upper dentition is asymmetrical owing to a slightly crooked left canine, which I absolutely adore. I've so far managed to persuade its owner never to get it fixed. Happily she says she thinks it's too late. MH From kellogg at duke.edu Fri Feb 23 12:07:17 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 12:07:17 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Science, art, and the brain In-Reply-To: <5e.79664b7.27c7ec40@aol.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 23 Feb 2001 Zafano at aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 02/22/2001 2:03:34 PM Central Standard Time, > paul.lake at mail.atu.edu quotes Highfield and Coveny: > > << We may at last > understand why it is that we love the symmetry of a snowflake, a beautiful > face, or William Blake's Tyger, with its 'fearful symmetry.' >> > > I know a very beautiful face whose upper dentition is asymmetrical owing to a > slightly crooked left canine, which I absolutely adore. I've so far managed > to persuade its owner never to get it fixed. Happily she says she thinks > it's too late. Clearly your love of the asymmetrical is unnatural, pathological even. You should go see a doctor. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From kellogg at duke.edu Fri Feb 23 12:27:32 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 12:27:32 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Science, art, and the brain In-Reply-To: <20010222235543.89893.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, jcervantes wrote: > --- Paul Lake wrote: > > The following paragraph is from *Frontiers of Complexity" by Peter > > Coveny > > and Roger Highfield. Dr. Peter Coveny is a senior research scientist > > at > > Cambridge University. Dr. Highfield is a science editor. > > > > Those on the list (like David Kellogg in the past) who insist that > > connections linking science and art made by me and others are off the > > mark, > > please take a look at some of the recent books on complexity science. I'm really responding to Paul here, but I lost the original message. Paul, first, I am quite familiar with the literature on complexity and chaos, including some of the primary literature where the real science takes place as well as some of the books where the ideas are spun out to a more public audience. My scientific literacy is not the problem, I assure you. Second, I have never resisted making connections between science and art. I _have_ resisted using popularizations of science to underwrite particular artistic practices as more natural, real, normative, or compelling than other artistic practices because of the assumed convergence with those popularizations. > > In my > > essay "The Shape of Poetry" (recently quoted in part on this list) I > > drew > > comparisons between the poetry of Hopkins and discoveries in > > complexity > > science, chaos, and fractal geometry. In looking up the following > > quote, I > > just noticed that Coveny and Highfield preface their book on > > complexity with > > an epigraph by Hopkins: his poem "Pied Beauty." In my essay, I wrote, > > > > "Benoit Mandelbrot, the inventor of fractal geometry, in his > > rhapsodic > > description of the fractal shapes of nature, practically echoes > > Hopkins1 > > poem 3Pied Beauty2 when he writes of the 3. . . grainy, hydralike, in > > between, pimply, pocky, ramified, sea-weedy, strange, tangled, > > tortuous, > > wiggly, whispy, wrinkled2 shapes that can now 3be approached in > > rigorous and > > vigorous fashion2 through his fractal geometry. If we substitute the > > assonantally chiming word fractal for dappled in the first line of > > Hopkins1 > > poem (3Glory be to God for fractal things2), its celebration of all > > that1s > > 3fickle, freckled (who knows how?)2 sounds, in turn, remarkably like > > Mandelbrot." An interesting and insignificant coincidence. Benny M. is an anomalous kind of scientist and science writer, and books like _The Fractal Geometry of Nature_ are not, I would argue, representative of the field. So what if he sounds like Hopkins? > > Here's the quote by Highfield and Coveny on the brain's--indeed, all > > neural > > networks'--predilection for symmetry and beauty: Generalizing from computer networks is intriguing but dangerous (if, as I suspect, that's part of what's happening.) > > > > > > "Indeed, our disdain for the irregular, distorted, and lopsided seems > > to be > > inherent in the way our brains recognize patterns. Whose disdain? This is asserted, not established. The very fact that some of us _produce_ and some of us _willingly consume_ artistic work that is irregular, distorted, and lopsided shows that this assertion is simply wrong. Or perhaps such lovers of the lopsided are brain-damaged. Or perhaps seemingly irregular, distorted, and lopsided poetry contains other forms of symmetry and/or other sources of pleasure that are not as obvious as traditional metrics -- which would of course make the whole use of complexity to _authorize_ traditional (or other) metrics pointless. > > We may at last > > understand why it is that we love the symmetry of a snowflake, a > > beautiful > > face, or William Blake's Tyger, with its 'fearful symmetry.' > > Subsequent work > > by Arak and Enquist, complemented by independent work by Rufus > > Johnstone, > > has shown that neural networks have an inherent preference for > > symmetry when > > trained to recognize visual patterns because symmetrical patterns are > > easier > > to ascertain from a variety of viewing angles--think of a sphere > > compared > > with a cube. Is the work by Arak & Enquist and by Johnstone about the brain? From the Highfield and Coveny discussion of "training," it sure sounds like that work is about artificial neural networks in a computer system. > > These findings are corroborated by the discovery that > > our own > > love of symmetry is shared by other creatures--for instance, crows, > > monkeys." Monkey scan, monkey rhyme, I guess. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Feb 23 01:28:34 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 00:28:34 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Langpo and open meaning Message-ID: "Langpo is almost quite the opposite of what she describes, as it seems to involve an opening of meaning, as opposed to a constriction or limitation or dictation of meaning." Patrick, your statement above puts a finger on the problem. The rules of grammar and syntax, for example, are designed to restrict or limit how we we manipulate language so that communication takes place. When you break the rules in order to "open" meaning, you also increase distortion and "noise." Completely "open" language doesn't multiply meanings; it destroys it. An infinite number of possible readings in "open" writing means that nothing but static is coming through. You can use fragmentation and asyntactic strategies to jiggle language a little bit to produce some interesting effects; but the further you go along the spectrum produces diminishing returns. Those of us not enamored of language poetry feel that it frequently "opens" language too much,creating more nonsense than sense. I've got a new essay on this and related subjects that applies information theory (among other things) to the problem you address, but I don't want to post it till it's published. Paul Lake From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Feb 23 12:42:44 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 09:42:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen Message-ID: <20010223174244.99EF836F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Feb 23 01:37:55 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 00:37:55 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Science, art, and the brain In-Reply-To: Message-ID: on 2/23/01 11:07 AM, David Kellogg at kellogg at duke.edu wrote: > On Fri, 23 Feb 2001 Zafano at aol.com wrote: > >> In a message dated 02/22/2001 2:03:34 PM Central Standard Time, >> paul.lake at mail.atu.edu quotes Highfield and Coveny: >> >> << We may at last >> understand why it is that we love the symmetry of a snowflake, a beautiful >> face, or William Blake's Tyger, with its 'fearful symmetry.' >> >> >> I know a very beautiful face whose upper dentition is asymmetrical owing to a >> slightly crooked left canine, which I absolutely adore. I've so far managed >> to persuade its owner never to get it fixed. Happily she says she thinks >> it's too late. > > Clearly your love of the asymmetrical is unnatural, pathological even. > You should go see a doctor. > > Cheers, > David > > Actually, complexity science has already covered this idea. The term is "broken symmetry." That is, those slight irregularities in an otherwise symmetrical object (or face) that help give it its distinctive beauty. Hopkins and complexity scientists celebrate the fickle and freckled (who knows how). That canine tooth (and those freckles?) keep the symmetry from being too boringly perfect. Same thing with our heartbeat and brain waves: they have built in irregularities (part of their chaotic and complex nature). If they're perfectly regular, you're in trouble and you need to see that doctor. Paul Lake From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Fri Feb 23 13:03:19 2001 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 12:03:19 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen Message-ID: Too many flowers in Gluck = Maplethorpe's flowers Space cadet = logos effaced by an overload of feeling Iowa = natural habitat for all migrating space cadets From jdavis at panix.com Fri Feb 23 13:15:40 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 13:15:40 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Simplex Munditiis In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Still to be neat, still to be dressed, As you were going to a feast; Still to be powdered, still perfumed: Lady, it is to be presumed, Though art's hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound. Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace; Robes loosely flowing, hair as free: Such sweet neglect more taketh me Than all the adulteries of art; They strike mine eyes, but not my heart. Ben Jonson, 1609 From fmm1 at cornell.edu Fri Feb 23 13:19:11 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 13:19:11 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Langpo and open meaning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010223130746.00a4b760@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> At 12:28 AM 2/23/01 -0600, you wrote: >"Langpo is almost quite the opposite of what she describes, as it seems to >involve an opening of meaning, as opposed to a constriction or limitation or >dictation of meaning." > >Patrick, your statement above puts a finger on the problem. The rules of >grammar and syntax, for example, are designed to restrict or limit how we we >manipulate language so that communication takes place. When you break the >rules in order to "open" meaning, you also increase distortion and "noise." >Completely "open" language doesn't multiply meanings; it destroys it. An >infinite number of possible readings in "open" writing means that nothing >but static is coming through. You can use fragmentation and asyntactic >strategies to jiggle language a little bit to produce some interesting >effects; but the further you go along the spectrum produces diminishing >returns. Those of us not enamored of language poetry feel that it >frequently "opens" language too much,creating more nonsense than sense. >I've got a new essay on this and related subjects that applies information >theory (among other things) to the problem you address, but I don't want to >post it till it's published. > >Paul Lake And I thought one of the major characteristics of poetry is that it defines what may be the only linguistic space -- a preserve, if you will -- in which language CAN be "opened." Poets may take advantage of that opportunity to whatever extent they wish. When I approach a text that in some way identifies itself as a poem (through, for example, some form of lineation) I'm psychologically prepared for the possibility -- even the probability -- that its mode of communication will be different from that of any other genre of text. For me, that's what makes poetry poetry, and not the user manual that comes with my lawn mower. Nonsense is in the eye of the sensor. I'd suppose that many people would feel that the work of Dylan Thomas and Wallace Stevens -- even Father Hopkins -- is as filled with "noise" as anything by a so-called "Language poet," yet that work offers for many a compelling intellectual/emotional/aesthetic experience, regardless of its ability to communicate in any manner we'd recognize in other, more practical phases of our everyday lives. Language poets were of course hardly the first to open the language of poetry, and they won't be the last. The day I stop responding to poetry that does something other than "communicate" in a conventional sense will be the day I take up shuffleboard and stop using my turn signals. - Fred Muratori ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important." - John Ashbery From jdavis at panix.com Fri Feb 23 13:13:52 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 13:13:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Delight in Disorder In-Reply-To: Message-ID: A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness: A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction: An erring lace, which here and there Enthralls the crimson stomacher: A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribbands to flow confusedly: A winning wave (deserving note) In the tempestuous petticoat: A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility: Do more bewitch me, than when art Is too precise in every part. Robert Herrick, 1648 From kellogg at duke.edu Fri Feb 23 13:30:18 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 13:30:18 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Science, art, and the brain In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Paul Lake wrote: > on 2/23/01 11:07 AM, David Kellogg at kellogg at duke.edu wrote: > > > On Fri, 23 Feb 2001 Zafano at aol.com wrote: > > > >> In a message dated 02/22/2001 2:03:34 PM Central Standard Time, > >> paul.lake at mail.atu.edu quotes Highfield and Coveny: > >> > >> << We may at last > >> understand why it is that we love the symmetry of a snowflake, a beautiful > >> face, or William Blake's Tyger, with its 'fearful symmetry.' >> > >> > >> I know a very beautiful face whose upper dentition is asymmetrical owing to a > >> slightly crooked left canine, which I absolutely adore. I've so far managed > >> to persuade its owner never to get it fixed. Happily she says she thinks > >> it's too late. > > > > Clearly your love of the asymmetrical is unnatural, pathological even. > > You should go see a doctor. > Actually, complexity science has already covered this idea. The term is > "broken symmetry." That is, those slight irregularities in an otherwise > symmetrical object (or face) that help give it its distinctive beauty. > Hopkins and complexity scientists celebrate the fickle and freckled (who > knows how). Just a small point: When complexity scientists "celebrate" any kind of beauty -- regular, irregular, fickle or freckled, dimpled, hanging or pregnant -- they are no longer doing science. > That canine tooth (and those freckles?) keep the symmetry from > being too boringly perfect. Does that mean, then, that dog show judges should be judged mentally defective? (I haven't seen _Best in Show_ yet, but maybe there's a case to be made.) > Same thing with our heartbeat and brain waves: they have built in > irregularities (part of their chaotic and complex nature). If they're > perfectly regular, you're in trouble and you need to see that doctor. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From kellogg at duke.edu Fri Feb 23 13:39:07 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 13:39:07 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Langpo and open meaning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Sorry to keep harping on you, Paul, but my disagreements continue to be fundamental. On Fri, 23 Feb 2001, Paul Lake wrote: > "Langpo is almost quite the opposite of what she describes, as it seems to > involve an opening of meaning, as opposed to a constriction or limitation or > dictation of meaning." > > Patrick, your statement above puts a finger on the problem. The rules of > grammar and syntax, for example, are designed to restrict or limit how we we > manipulate language so that communication takes place. When you break the > rules in order to "open" meaning, you also increase distortion and "noise." > Completely "open" language doesn't multiply meanings; it destroys it. An > infinite number of possible readings in "open" writing means that nothing > but static is coming through. You can use fragmentation and asyntactic > strategies to jiggle language a little bit to produce some interesting > effects; but the further you go along the spectrum produces diminishing > returns. Those of us not enamored of language poetry feel that it > frequently "opens" language too much,creating more nonsense than sense. > I've got a new essay on this and related subjects that applies information > theory (among other things) to the problem you address, but I don't want to > post it till it's published. You've inadvertently identified the problem: "those of us not enamored of language poetry." What counts as information and what counts as noise are relative to a number of constraints, including the recipient(s) of the signal. Of course "diminishing returns" are the effect of radical disjunction to readers, like Houlihan, who don't even know what language poetry is. But there are readers who "make sense" of just such disjunction. For my part, for example, the work of Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten, and Lyn Hejinian is crammed full of information and richness, while to someone completely outside their tradition/community, it might seem like nonsense. On the other hand, Bruce Andrews's work is hard for me to fathom: much of it seems nonsensical to me, and I can "enjoy" it only when I am predisposed to have a generous attitude toward the non-informational. On the third hand, there are readers and listeners who get a great deal out of Bruce's work, and I'm not prepared to judge their response as somehow lacking simply because it fails to meet _my_ terms. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Fri Feb 23 13:47:32 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 13:47:32 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Delight in Disorder In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20010223134732.00898100@postoffice.providence.edu> At 01:13 PM 2/23/01 -0500, you wrote: >A sweet disorder in the dress >Kindles in clothes a wantonness: >A lawn about the shoulders thrown >Into a fine distraction: >An erring lace, which here and there >Enthralls the crimson stomacher: >A cuff neglectful, and thereby >Ribbands to flow confusedly: >A winning wave (deserving note) >In the tempestuous petticoat: >A careless shoe-string, in whose tie >I see a wild civility: >Do more bewitch me, than when art >Is too precise in every part. > >Robert Herrick, 1648 A. A violent order is a disorder; and B. A great disorder is an order. These Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.) II If all the green of spring was blue, and it is; If all the flowers of South Africa were bright On the tables of Connecticut, and they are; If Englishmen lived without tea in Ceylon,and they do; And if it all went on in an orderly way, And it does; a law of inherent opposites, Of essential unity, is as pleasant as port, As pleasant as the brush-strokes of a bough, An upper, particular bough in, say, Marchand. III After all the pretty contrast of life and death Proves that these opposite things partake of one, At least that was the theory, when bishops' books Resolved the world. We cannot go back to that. The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind, If one may say so . And yet relation appears, A small relation expanding like the shade Of a cloud on sand, a shape on the side of a hill. IV A. Well, an old order is a violent one. This proves nothing. Just one more truth, one more Element in the immense disorder of truths. B. It is April as I write. The wind Is blowing after days of constant rain. All this, of course, will come to summer soon. But suppose the disorder of truths should ever come To an order, most Plantagenet, most fixed. . . . A great disorder is an order. Now, A And B are not like statuary, posed For a vista in the Louvre. They are things chalked On the sidewalk so that the pensive man may see. V The pensive man . . . He sees the eagle float For which the intricate Alps are a single nest. Wallace Stevens, "Connoisseur of Chaos," 1942. From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Feb 23 14:00:45 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 11:00:45 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Science, art, and the brain Message-ID: <20010223190045.8BFB736F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Fri Feb 23 14:24:16 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 14:24:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Langpo and open meaning References: <4.2.0.58.20010223130746.00a4b760@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Message-ID: <3A96B8E0.474E7705@lehigh.edu> Fred Muratori wrote: > And I thought one of the major characteristics of poetry is that it defines > what may be the only linguistic space -- a preserve, if you will -- in > which language CAN be "opened." And let me add, since Fred is an old friend (hi, Fred! -- I owe you a phone call) and I know his earlier work and his more recent stuff, that Fred is someone who has written in both metrically rigorous traditional forms and in more fractured and experimental ones. I sometimes wonder if he's one of the few poets who published blank verse in the 1980s and went on to win a Gertrude Stein award in the 1990s for utterly different work organized around a non-metrical formalism. Sorry, Fred, just had to write that. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From JforJames at aol.com Fri Feb 23 14:47:54 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 14:47:54 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen Message-ID: In a message dated 2/23/01 1:02:27 PM Eastern Standard Time, michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu writes: > Too many flowers in Gluck = Maplethorpe's flowers > > Space cadet = logos effaced by an overload of feeling > > Iowa = natural habitat for all migrating space cadets Illuminating..."space cadet" is now part of the critical lexicon.; I'm so out of it. Finnegan From patrick at proximate.org Fri Feb 23 14:59:43 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 14:59:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Houlihan In-Reply-To: <200102231701.f1NH16v25834@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: Hi Marcus - I want to take the time and respond to much of your post passed in exchange with Bill Friend. > From: "Marcus Bales" > To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu, new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 06:48:23 -0500 > Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] More on Houlihan > Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > > And she's absolutely wrong when she claims that every poem is designed > > to prove that meaning doesn't exist. Langpo is designed to do > > precisely the opposite, to open up the possibilities of meaning, to > > show that it is everywhere. The fact that she muffs such an obvious > > premise, one that is repeated continuously in Total Syntax, North of > > Intention and the Language Book, shows she hasn't even started to do > > her homework.<< > > Well, in Houlihan's defense, it is often (though of course not > always) the case that people (and whatever else one may want to > say about them language poets are people) claim they are doing > one thing while they are either really doing another, or that the > effects of what they think they are doing are really other than what > they claim, whether they recognize it or not. It may also be the case that certain aesthetics reach certain people and not others. That langpo (or Xavier Cugat, for that matter) works for some and not for others. Some people believe everything they read, and so when they read they want it dictated to them. if it's disorienting or confusing, then the dictation stops proceeding. or it could be simply that certain people are more skeptical of theoretical claims about art, doubtful about manifestoes. However, the differences do not have to be as polarizing as you seem to make them out to be, Marcus. In earnest i believe there are so many poets that have to be read with imagination, with leeway, with slip and slide for metaphor and grammatical restructuring. For example, some poetry readers can differentiate between and understand Latinate and Germanic grammatical forms, perhaps grammatically incorrect in English yet still meaningful, in poetry of renowned poets well outside the scope of langpo. It seems to enhance meaning, add dramatic effect to the poetry. Asyntactic or other-syntactic structures do not necessitate a lack of meaning. Use of diverse grammatical structures do make it difficult for some people to read and turn them off (or even offend them, though it's hard for me to imagine why). Others crave that challenge. And many people fall somewhere in between being charmed and being turned off. > > In short, just because language poets *claim* to be trying to open > up the possibilities of meaning doesn't mean that that's what they > are actually doing. > And it doesn't mean that it's NOT what they are doing either. > Language poets ... seem to be claiming to be altruistic > and democratic, seeking to save poetry from ruinously narrow > inerpretations. I must confess something before this moves ahead. I set up Houlihan as sort of a straw man, to see if people would actually even bite. i never did imagine that a straw man would be defended by creating another straw man. that other straw man is your image of the lang poets. they aren't really banded together anymore, writing theory together like they were in the 70s. but, for accuracy's sake, i will say that there's a *grain* of truth about langpo in what you say, that some langpos may individually believe some aspects of your distinction. but grains of truth are oh so misleading. because i do not think the general sweep was "democratic" in the purest sense of the word or ever intended to be that way. > But the language poets are simply claiming a small > part of the problem with poetry's alienation from "the mainstream" > of public and private lives is the whole problem, and they're > claiming to be what they're not: disinterested. this is frankly made of hay. Who is claiming to be "disinterested"? Also, I do not think the aim was to create a mass public movement. the efforts were experimental, and never really meant for large book sales (since that seems to be your underlying equivalent of democratic writing, at least as how you are describing things here). experimentalism is employed to search for things, to take risks in looking for certain things. many langpos took large risks, risks for which they are obviously still paying the price by the looks of things. with risks you sometimes fail. At least some people are willing to put their egos and book sales and careers on the line for risky artistic ideas. > For language poetry, of all 20th century poetry, seems to me to be > the least accessible, This you are entitled to > the least "meaningful" to the general public, why does this matter? budweiser "dude" commercials are extraordinarily meaningful to the general public. should poetry strive towards something like that, then? everyone should get on the commercial bandwagon? > and, in short, very alienating poetry. this, not exactly. just because you are alienated by it doesn't mean it is inherently alienating. there are people who are not alienated by it. i think psych professionals would refer to this as an externalization of psychological events. > And yet they claim that they > are writing this inaccessible and alienating poetry in order to try to > save poetry for the masses. This is quite an invention. Have you ever read de Toqueville's _Democracy in America_? You seem to be invoking an ugly part of democracy, namely, the tyranny of the majority. I don't understand why popularity in all conditions legitimizes something. particularly when so many people in the majority are hooked on that commercial methadone metronome some call a TV and not given proper educations, who are now being stripped of that right as we speak, and are being turned into animals through a crime-and-punishment profit-driven culture which says, "people aren't people... corporations are people, silly." i don't really respect popular beliefs if they are passively obtained, like the beliefs i seem to be hearing about langpo. they seem obtained so passively, without much analysis. it's why a number of people are shouting at other people to "do their homework." bottom line? from one point of view, langpo was responding to the fact that "natural speech," held in so high a regard by pound and eliot and other modernists, was completely subsumed, co-opted, by a recklessly commercial culture. this is not democratizing language, this is flipping the bird at capitalism. and capitalism is eating america alive. that may be altruistic, and in the end, might help rescue democracy from the current vogue of fascism in our institutions. (Note: of course, note that if you read the poems of eliot and pound, you will see that there is not much of the common parlance in their poems at all, and also note that despite this obvious gulf between stated purpose and result, the poetry appears beautiful to me. "The Waste Land" and the "Four Quartets" seem among the most beautiful of poems. my acceptance of their poetry despite this gulf between purpose and result creates no problems for me as a reader of poetry. this is a quintessentially poetic part of life.) Patrick Herron From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Feb 23 04:01:09 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 03:01:09 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wild civility, science, poetry. Message-ID: Fred, you write, "When I approach a text that in some way identifies itself as a poem (through, for example, some form of lineation) . . ." Exactly. The convention of lineation--the rule that poetry has lines--is one of the means by which a poem signals us how to construe its language. Likewise, grammar, syntax, rhyme, etc. I'm all in favor of playful language, for the "wild civility" and "sweet disorder" that sweeten the poem. . . or dress. "Too precise" is indeed boring--as for example unvaried meter, or precisely denotative language without connotations. Thanks to Jordan Davis for posting the Herrick poems. I love that "tempestuous petticoat." Lovely paradox there. What's more civilized than a petticoat--or wilder than a tempest? How interesting that Herrick can write of both "wild civility" and the adulteries of art in similar rhymed couples and artfully varied metrical lines! Why doesn't he just "open" his language and let us make our own meanings? As to the whole science and art thing, we've had this discussion before, so let me bring my end of it to a conclusion by saying that I don't believe there are absolute answers to be found in science, especially when discussing things like art or religion. But science does tell us things about our bodies and brains and what we make with them. It's interesting to learn what science has to say about how our humanity is encoded in our genes. Likewise, when scientists apply some of their insights to the codings of language and art,it might behoove us to occasionally listen. Paul Lake Paul Lake From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Fri Feb 23 04:17:40 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 03:17:40 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] A lopsided, asymmetrical beauty Message-ID: Robert, Your true love, then, would be Elephant Man . . . or Woman? Paul Lake "Perfect symmetry is a man-made concept which rarely, if ever, occurs in nature. Asymmetry, also a man-made concept, occurs with regularity in all things both man-made and natural. It is, in fact, one of the traits that makes things more unique and provides richness through its subtleties and deviations from what many people assume to be "the norm." People are not symmetrical, though, on the face of it, they may so appear. If two left sides of a face, or two right sides of a face are co-joined by flipping photo negatives that have been cut in half, the resulting photo prints may not look like one person, but two people, neither of which in likeness, though both are "symmetrically balanced," will bare more than a slight semblance to the original photo/person. Such is life. We all have imperfections, irregularities, deviations from the norm. Why should this not be expected, even desired to be found in our art forms? Things that are "asymmetrically balanced," "irregular, distorted, lopsided," I contend, are more "the norm" than those things felt or seen to be "symmetrical." "Perhaps such lovers of the lopsided are brain-damaged." If so, then I am one of those "lovers." I prefer to believe that, perhaps, I may be more perceptive, brain-damaged or not, than those who disdain anything that is not symmetrical, not metrical, not perfect. I like things that are not readily obvious." Robert R. Cobb From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Fri Feb 23 16:12:36 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 13:12:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] [New-Poetry]RE: A lopsided, asymmetrical beauty Message-ID: <20010223211236.43ABA36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From fmm1 at cornell.edu Fri Feb 23 16:23:29 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 16:23:29 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wild civility, science, poetry. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010223160858.00a48b90@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> At 03:01 AM 2/23/01 -0600, Paul Lake wrote: >Fred, you write, > >"When I approach a text that in >some way identifies itself as a poem (through, for example, some form of >lineation) . . ." > >Exactly. The convention of lineation--the rule that poetry has lines--is >one of the means by which a poem signals us how to construe its language. >Likewise, grammar, syntax, rhyme, etc. Well of course, but I have the feeling that my use of the word "lineation" in the context of my point is somewhat broader. I identified the line as one of the characteristics that triggers the immediate *visual* apprehension of text on the page as poem, long before any words have actually been read. (Maybe I'm driving at the inherently ideogrammatic dimension of the poem here.) Lines to my sensibilities include not only those arranged in familiar, symmetrical orders (as in quatrains, couplets, etc.), but those deployed in more unconventional configurations as well, (e.g., as in poems by Olson, Joan Retallack, Mac Low, Sobin, ). David Antin's improv talk-poems sometimes use odd spacings, rather than lines per se, to signal their difference, their invitation to be read differently. Susan Howe sometimes strives for a cut-up, pastiche effect, with overlapping lines in clusters at angles to each other. So yes, lineation (like "grammar, syntax, rhyme, etc.") is indeed a convention, but it need not be employed conventionally. -- Fred Muratori From Jandhodge at aol.com Fri Feb 23 16:50:02 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 16:50:02 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen Message-ID: <5a.1188818d.27c8350a@aol.com> In a message dated 01-02-23 10:52:30 EST, you write: << << David Graham, the Don Quixote of Misplaced Civility >> Ojbection! How about "The Sancho Panza of Differential common sense"? >> Oops, sorry. That was a typo. I really meant "objection" and "deferential." Honest. From Jandhodge at aol.com Fri Feb 23 17:01:54 2001 From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 17:01:54 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Science, art, and the brain Message-ID: <43.1119b890.27c837d2@aol.com> In a message dated 01-02-23 12:46:32 EST, you write: << Actually, complexity science has already covered this idea. The term is "broken symmetry." That is, those slight irregularities in an otherwise symmetrical object (or face) that help give it its distinctive beauty. >> Anything like Herrick's "Delight in Disorder" --"A sweet disorder in the dress"? From abramhall at isone.com Fri Feb 23 17:09:36 2001 From: abramhall at isone.com (Allen H. Bramhall) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 17:09:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen References: <20010223161557.73727.qmail@web12101.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <00e801c09de5$61be31a0$19810fce@tenacrewood> this sort of "waving of the virtual penis" really is interesting in terms of , say, a paper in psychology, but not much for list dynamics. beth garrison ----- Original Message ----- From: jcervantes To: Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 11:15 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Gluck Snags Bollingen > --- David Graham wrote: > > Perhaps, following Sam Gwynn's fine example of Shakespearean plot > > reductions, and using the following by Michael Karl Ritchie as a > > first > > line, we could compose a list sonnet (well, it wouldn't be iambic > > pentameter) with one-line slams on a variety of prominent poets. > > > > That way we could make sure and piss everyone off, not just a few. > > Extra > > points for compactness of cliche, stereotype, and animus. > > > > David Graham, the Don Quixote of Misplaced Civility > > > > > > >Louise Gluck is the Maplethorpe of space cadet poetry from Iowa. > close to the many suns of Sheila Murphy shining like scrambled eggs > > > - Jim, who knows that's not great, but that's the point, isn't it? > > > > ===== From languagethief at yahoo.com Fri Feb 23 18:23:36 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 15:23:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Simplex Munditiis In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010223232336.92532.qmail@web12208.mail.yahoo.com> Or how about, once again going back to Herrick, not being dressed at all? Or better yet, getting undressed? Whenas in silks my Julia goes, Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows That liquefaction of her clothes. Next, when I cast mine eyes, and see That brave vibration each way free, O how that glittering taketh me! Tad --- Jordan Davis wrote: > Still to be neat, still to be dressed, > As you were going to a feast; > Still to be powdered, still perfumed: > Lady, it is to be presumed, > Though art's hid causes are not found, > All is not sweet, all is not sound. > > Give me a look, give me a face, > That makes simplicity a grace; > Robes loosely flowing, hair as free: > Such sweet neglect more taketh me > Than all the adulteries of art; > They strike mine eyes, but not my heart. > > > > Ben Jonson, 1609 > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices! http://auctions.yahoo.com/ From JforJames at aol.com Fri Feb 23 18:49:50 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 18:49:50 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Langpo and open meaning Message-ID: > Paul Lake wrote: > > > "Langpo is almost quite the opposite of what she describes, as it seems to > > involve an opening of meaning, as opposed to a constriction or limitation > or > > dictation of meaning." > > > > Patrick, your statement above puts a finger on the problem. The rules of > > grammar and syntax, for example, are designed to restrict or limit how we > we > > manipulate language so that communication takes place. When you break the > > rules in order to "open" meaning, you also increase distortion and "noise." > > > Completely "open" language doesn't multiply meanings; it destroys it. An > > infinite number of possible readings in "open" writing means that nothing > > but static is coming through. You can use fragmentation and asyntactic > > strategies to jiggle language a little bit to produce some interesting > > effects; but the further you go along the spectrum produces diminishing > > returns. Those of us not enamored of language poetry feel that it > > frequently "opens" language too much,creating more nonsense than sense. > > I've got a new essay on this and related subjects that applies information > > theory (among other things) to the problem you address, but I don't want > to > > post it till it's published. > > You've inadvertently identified the problem: "those of us not enamored of > language poetry." What counts as information and what counts as noise are > relative to a number of constraints, including the recipient(s) of the > signal. Of course "diminishing returns" are the effect of radical > disjunction to readers, like Houlihan, who don't even know what language > poetry is. But there are readers who "make sense" of just such > disjunction. For my part, for example, the work of Ron Silliman, Barrett > Watten, and Lyn Hejinian is crammed full of information and richness, > while to someone completely outside their tradition/community, it might > seem like nonsense. On the other hand, Bruce Andrews's work is hard for > me to fathom: much of it seems nonsensical to me, and I can "enjoy" it > only when I am predisposed to have a generous attitude toward the > non-informational. On the third hand, there are readers and listeners > who get a great deal out of Bruce's work, and I'm not prepared to judge > their response as somehow lacking simply because it fails to meet _my_ > terms. > > Cheers, > David David, This discussion of language poetry and meaning provokes me to ask some questions: 1) Surrealism - Dadaism certainly were movements that broke from of the tyranny of conventional meaning. But weren't these movements to some extents dead ends? Not that they left no lingering influences, but inevitably the experience grew tired; boring even some of its practitioners. A process that reaches its endpoint in the work of someone like Hermann Boll? 2) For all the "gain" that is claimed for "opening language" (to multiple meanings...new meanings), isn't there a corresponding "dissipation" too? When language turns from the power of a "consensus of meaning" to one where "each reader experiences the text in his/her own way," isn't as much lost as is gained? 3) While many in the language/postmod camp have claimed that "official verse culture" and the "I-lyric" overvalue the poet's personal experience, hasn't the trade-off been that language poetry overvalues the individual reader's experience of the text? And if even the poet is not particularly concerned about whether the audience "gets" what he/she is saying... the poem becomes the ultimate in "personal experience poetry," perhaps? There may be a community of poetry readers who share an appreciation of Bruce Andrews' poetry, for example, but if each harbors a wholly different experience of what one of his poems is about or getting at, and if Bruce (presumed here for argument sake alone) doesn't really care whether there is a shared understanding or even a rough provisional consensus of opinion; if all are content with their own individual experiences rather than aggregating some semblance of a "consensus sense" of "aboutness," then you have writing that engenders isolation & even insularity of experience. Walter Benjamin made a statement that "the work is a death mask of its conception." Implying the flawed prospects of a poem ever being what you "wanted it to be for the reader"....but when the writer perceives he's created a "death mask," and the first readers sees a "honey dew melon" and another knows it as a "mortgage dead," etc., I'm wondering, again, if we are not at an endpoint. One could tilt further toward the infraverbal perhaps, but after that you run into Michaux's marks on paper (drawings/visual art, because he was frustrated with language as medium for his artistic conceptions. An absolute boundary, at last. 4) Language poetry has claimed certain political missions...anti-capitalist notions of freeing language from the taint & uses of commerce & dominion. Can poetry that is so "open" in regard to "meaning" move people? The efficacy of poetry of any kind as an effective political instrumentality is questionable in our times....but push the poetry so far away from any commonality of experience latent in conventional meaning, and you're really creating art for art's sake, ceding even the modest/slight political weight a writer's work might convey in contemporary society. Finnegan From mbales at cybergate.net Fri Feb 23 22:35:22 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 22:35:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Langpo and open meaning In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: > You've inadvertently identified the problem: "those of us not enamored > of language poetry." What counts as information and what counts as > noise are relative to a number of constraints, including the > recipient(s) of the signal.<< This is something like blaming the victim, to blame the reader, though, isn't it? > ... For my part, for example, the work > of Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten, and Lyn Hejinian is crammed full of > information and richness, while to someone completely outside their > tradition/community, it might seem like nonsense.<< This, too, seems to say that the problem isn't with the writer's ability to communicate but with the reader's ability to understand. On the other hand, > Bruce Andrews's work is hard for me to fathom: much of it seems > nonsensical to me, and I can "enjoy" it only when I am predisposed to > have a generous attitude toward the non-informational. On the third > hand, there are readers and listeners who get a great deal out of > Bruce's work, and I'm not prepared to judge their response as somehow > lacking simply because it fails to meet _my_ terms.<< Why not? Isn't that what judgment is all about in subjective cases? mbales at cybergate.net From alsop at alsopreview.com Sat Feb 24 02:13:36 2001 From: alsop at alsopreview.com (Jaimes Alsop) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 23:13:36 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Test References: Message-ID: <3A975F1F.E70A79AD@alsopreview.com> I posted a message to this listserv a day ago and never saw it. Doesn't this listserv copy to *all* recipients (including me)? Just checking. Jaimes -- Jaimes Alsop The Alsop Review http://www.alsopreview.com From cstroffo at earthlink.net Fri Feb 23 22:36:45 2001 From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (chris stroffolino) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 23:36:45 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Mythic Mainstream References: Message-ID: <3A972C4B.DB69E8C8@earthlink.net> Moira--- thanks----I don't necessarily draw more of a division between the lyric Blake and the "epic Blake" than you do---I am, however, aware that this division was a significant one for the New Critics (I always loved the way Berryman alludes to it in "Professor's Song"), for whom the former were acceptable but not so much the latter...though that started changing around the time of Bloom and Frye....Anyway, none of this is intrinsic to the poems. I also think that what you say about Blake here--- and once you get into the swing of his style I honestly do not think they are that difficult to read. In other words, I don't draw as much of a division between the lyric Blake and the epic Blake as you seem to. I think his epics look more difficult than they actually are.... can be applied to the differences between allegedly quite disparate styles of contemporary poetry too. In other words, I still think my analogy holds---- thanks again, chris Moira Russell wrote: > >Moira--- > > > >but which Blake do you mean? > >What you describe seems true of Songs of I and E, "marriage of h and h" and > >some other short lyrics, but what Bill writes seems truer of "Milton" and > >"Four Zoas" > > Although I was thinking more of the popular Blake, his epics seemed fairly > straightforward narrative when I studied them with John Grant at the > University of Iowa. The eye-crunching names were a bit reminiscent of some > of the tougher parts of the Bible, but I think that was intentional on > Blake's part, and once you get into the swing of his style I honestly do not > think they are that difficult to read. In other words, I don't draw as much > of a division between the lyric Blake and the epic Blake as you seem to. I > think his epics look more difficult than they actually are.... > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From halvard at earthlink.net Fri Feb 23 23:24:25 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 23:24:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Langpo and open meaning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Wouldn't it be lovely if responses came *above* screenful after screenful of messages we've already seen/read once or twice or thrice? Hal "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." --Albert Einstein Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > > Paul Lake wrote: > > > > > "Langpo is almost quite the opposite of what she describes, as it seems > to > > > involve an opening of meaning, as opposed to a constriction or > limitation > > or > > > dictation of meaning." > > > > > > Patrick, your statement above puts a finger on the problem. The rules of > > > grammar and syntax, for example, are designed to restrict or limit how > we > > we > > > manipulate language so that communication takes place. When you break the > > > rules in order to "open" meaning, you also increase distortion and > "noise." > > > > > Completely "open" language doesn't multiply meanings; it destroys it. An > > > infinite number of possible readings in "open" writing means that nothing > > > but static is coming through. You can use fragmentation and asyntactic > > > strategies to jiggle language a little bit to produce some interesting > > > effects; but the further you go along the spectrum produces diminishing > > > returns. Those of us not enamored of language poetry feel that it > > > frequently "opens" language too much,creating more nonsense than sense. > > > I've got a new essay on this and related subjects that applies > information > > > theory (among other things) to the problem you address, but I don't want > > to > > > post it till it's published. > > > > You've inadvertently identified the problem: "those of us not enamored of > > language poetry." What counts as information and what counts as noise are > > relative to a number of constraints, including the recipient(s) of the > > signal. Of course "diminishing returns" are the effect of radical > > disjunction to readers, like Houlihan, who don't even know what language > > poetry is. But there are readers who "make sense" of just such > > disjunction. For my part, for example, the work of Ron Silliman, Barrett > > Watten, and Lyn Hejinian is crammed full of information and richness, > > while to someone completely outside their tradition/community, it might > > seem like nonsense. On the other hand, Bruce Andrews's work is hard for > > me to fathom: much of it seems nonsensical to me, and I can "enjoy" it > > only when I am predisposed to have a generous attitude toward the > > non-informational. On the third hand, there are readers and listeners > > who get a great deal out of Bruce's work, and I'm not prepared to judge > > their response as somehow lacking simply because it fails to meet _my_ > > terms. > > > > Cheers, > > David > David, > This discussion of language poetry and meaning provokes me to ask > some questions: > 1) Surrealism - Dadaism certainly were movements that broke from > of the tyranny of conventional meaning. But weren't these movements > to some extents dead ends? Not that they left no lingering influences, > but inevitably the experience grew tired; boring even some of > its practitioners. A process that reaches its endpoint in the work > of someone like Hermann Boll? > 2) For all the "gain" that is claimed for "opening language" (to multiple > meanings...new meanings), isn't there a corresponding "dissipation" too? > When language turns from the power of a "consensus of meaning" > to one where "each reader experiences the text in his/her own way," > isn't as much lost as is gained? > 3) While many in the language/postmod camp have claimed that "official > verse culture" and the "I-lyric" overvalue the poet's personal experience, > hasn't the trade-off been that language poetry overvalues the individual > reader's experience of the text? And if even the poet is not particularly > concerned about whether the audience "gets" what he/she is saying... > the poem becomes the ultimate in "personal experience poetry," perhaps? > There may be a community of poetry readers who share an appreciation of > Bruce Andrews' poetry, for example, but if each harbors a wholly different > experience of what one of his poems is about or getting at, and if Bruce > (presumed here for argument sake alone) doesn't really care whether > there is a shared understanding or even a rough provisional consensus > of opinion; if all are content with their own individual experiences rather > than aggregating some semblance of a "consensus sense" of "aboutness," > then you have writing that engenders isolation & even insularity of > experience. > Walter Benjamin made a statement that "the work is a death mask of > its conception." Implying the flawed prospects of a poem ever being what > you "wanted it to be for the reader"....but when the writer perceives > he's created a "death mask," and the first readers sees a "honey dew > melon" and another knows it as a "mortgage dead," etc., I'm wondering, > again, if we are not at an endpoint. One could tilt further toward the > infraverbal perhaps, but after that you run into Michaux's marks on paper > (drawings/visual art, because he was frustrated with language as medium > for his artistic conceptions. An absolute boundary, at last. > 4) Language poetry has claimed certain political missions...anti-capitalist > notions of freeing language from the taint & uses of commerce & dominion. > Can poetry that is so "open" in regard to "meaning" move people? > The efficacy of poetry of any kind as an effective political instrumentality > is questionable in our times....but push the poetry so far away from any > commonality of experience latent in conventional meaning, and you're > really creating art for art's sake, ceding even the modest/slight political > weight a writer's work might convey in contemporary society. > Finnegan > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From patrick at proximate.org Sat Feb 24 00:09:54 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 00:09:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Uh, Herrick cannot do that now. He's dead. Message-ID: From patrick at proximate.org Sat Feb 24 00:26:53 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 00:26:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Langpo and open meaning Message-ID: Paul Lake new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Fri, 23 Feb 2001 00:28:34 -0600 I said: "Langpo is almost quite the opposite of what she describes, as it seems to involve an opening of meaning, as opposed to a constriction or limitation or dictation of meaning." Paul said: Patrick, your statement above puts a finger on the problem. The rules of grammar and syntax, for example, are designed to restrict or limit how we we manipulate language so that communication takes place. When you break the rules in order to "open" meaning, you also increase distortion and "noise." Patrick interjects: The rules of grammar, properly speaking, are descriptive, not normative. The revolution of computational linguistics started over 40 years ago. They are not really ever broken. They might be played around but not broken. Having said that, noise, science tells us, is why people are more likely to enjoy the sound of guitar than the sound of a Stradivarius. That's science. I don't have to spend any money on lab tests to tell you that noise is another word for more highly ambient and timbral domains. Distortion is such a loaded word. Because language was never pure, clean, in the first place. Even did not sully language when she placed the apple between her teeth. Paul continues: Completely "open" language doesn't multiply meanings; it destroys it. Patrick interrupts again: For you maybe. Speak for yourself. if you feel you have an objective and privileged insight, ok, but then our dialogue cannot continue. i have no place, no right, to argue with God. ;^) Paul: An infinite number of possible readings in "open" writing ... Patrick: Who said infinite? Who has the time for infinity? I'm in a hurry as it is. Paul: ... means that nothing but static is coming through. Patrick: Wha? This is a very, uh, noisy statement. Paul: You can use fragmentation and asyntactic strategies to jiggle language a little bit to produce some interesting effects; but the further you go along the spectrum produces diminishing returns. Patrick: Perhaps. Experimentation, not only in poetry but also in science, often leads to failures. That's not a problem for either poetry or science. For some reason lots of poets have problems with experiment and make it a point to bash langpo before they ever even see it for what it is. Even poets who respect scientific experiments cannot accept experiment in poetry, yet they'll prostrate art to science in a single titration. Some experimental efforts may not satisfy as much as others, sure, OK. Besides, that misses the point of langpo. Talk of "success" is naive in the face of art, for we have almost zero access to that info. Paul: Those of us not enamored of language poetry feel that it frequently "opens" language too much,creating more nonsense than sense. Patrick: As I said above about experiment.... Paul: I've got a new essay on this and related subjects that applies information theory (among other things) to the problem you address, but I don't want to post it till it's published. Patrick: Ooh, you tease! Patrick Patrick Herron patrick at proximate.org http://proximate.org/ getting close is what we're all about here! From patrick at proximate.org Sat Feb 24 01:11:42 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 01:11:42 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Four Steps Message-ID: In the wake of your post, Jim: >1) Surrealism - Dadaism certainly were movements that broke from of the tyranny of conventional meaning. But weren't these movements to some extents dead ends? Not that they left no lingering influences, but inevitably the experience grew tired; boring even some of its practitioners. All movements, of course, have beginnings and ends, and influences that endure beyond death. >2) For all the "gain" that is claimed for "opening language" (to multiple meanings...new meanings), isn't there a corresponding "dissipation" too? When language turns from the power of a "consensus of meaning" to one where "each reader experiences the text in his/her own way," isn't as much lost as is gained? Assuming there's a universe in balance, and that the forces of the entire universe are at play, then the answer is "yes." Otherwise this question is unanswerable. And it could be reasonably argued that perhaps langpo opens meaning to "consensus"-type definitions. I will defer to Fred's comments earlier on the subject, that, langpo is perhaps another link on a long chain of the poetic pursuit of new metaphor, and new metaphor always opens meaning. In order for a person to grasp a new metaphor, one must imagine, must make a leap, to understand the metaphor. And let's not forget that many metaphors that seem meaningless today will be crystalline to people in the future. That is, once those metaphors become anthologized and reused again and again. Herrick's metaphors seem so crystalline perhaps because they have had the time to crystallize in the English language. >3) While many in the language/postmod camp have claimed that "official verse culture" and the "I-lyric" overvalue the poet's personal experience, hasn't the trade-off been that language poetry overvalues the individual reader's experience of the text? It undervalues dictation, to whatever risk that may lead. >And if even the poet is not particularly concerned about whether the audience "gets" what he/she is saying... the poem becomes the ultimate in "personal experience poetry," perhaps? No. >4) Language poetry has claimed certain political missions...anti-capitalist notions of freeing language from the taint & uses of commerce & dominion. Actually, it seems to me it was an effort to get away from capitalism and/or contest it, & using language to do that. In actuality, I don't really hear langpos saying they are going to change the language. They're just going to change how they use it. (Please put down that Wittgenstein for now!) >Can poetry that is so "open" in regard to "meaning" move people? Does it matter? Do langpos propose to create a popular movement large enough to overthrow capitalism? Why didn't they just coopt the language of advertising, then? I think that there was no intent to create a popular movement in langpo. Poets of some accomplishment and drive try to find new ways of saying things, whether they be langpos or futurists or romantics. Unless we are talking about workshop poets, who are trained to write the expected & crystalline so as to avoid confusing the teacher, and we can imagine how detrimental to a grade a confused and befuddled teacher can be! >The efficacy of poetry of any kind as an effective political instrumentality is questionable in our times Aye. No, wait, I'm not sure. Czech Republic anyone? Why do the Spooks still spend so much money in Amerika even to screw with the poets and other writers? Counterintelligence operations are perhaps more common than you imagine (perhaps less common than you imagine, as I don't know you too well yet), especially when it comes to writers. Because writers say dangerous things that may actually entice others to action. >....but push the poetry so far away from any commonality of experience latent in conventional meaning, and you're really creating art for art's sake, ceding even the modest/slight political weight a writer's work might convey in contemporary society. Perhaps, perhaps not. If I look at my own actions and writing, I already agree with you here. But I am really not so sure. Langpo is subversive, and subverting capitalism is not a popular effort. I think forms that have the appearance of familiarity that are actually as removed as some langpo forms in terms of open meaning can be employed to move towards the same end. Patrick Patrick Herron patrick at proximate.org http://proximate.org/ getting close is what we're all about here! From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Feb 24 01:29:53 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 00:29:53 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Meanings of Meaning Message-ID: Been asking myself what I mean when I say or think "meaning," and gosh, I don't know. Ditto all the usual terms getting bandied about--communication, self, convention, coherence, innovation, openness, transparence, tradition. . . . Problematic as hell, every one of them. My own taste runs (sometimes gallops) fairly close to the conventional side of things--I doubt I will exhaust the riches of linear syntax in my poor lifetime, and nobody's ever been able to come close to convincing me that straightforward storytelling is outmoded as a literary strategy. I feel that my Self is scattered enough in the normal course of things, and obviously so in my poems: I don't need to make that point redundantly by exploding my punctuation or syntax. Yes, the "lyric-I" is problematic, but I suspect it was ever thus. Though I write mainly free verse myself, I have a deep love for poets old and new who write in conventional forms. And when faced with many "innovative" poems, I often feel like E. A. Robinson, who, when asked why he never attempted free verse, commented, "I write badly enough as it is." All of which is to say that given my limitations it's probably good for me to hear more from and about the langpo perspective. I do wish we could take a look at a text or two, because I could use a bit of help seeing how "open meaning" operates in practice, from an advocate's perspective. For instance, if I were to post a bit of John Ashbery which is close to gibberish to my eyes, I'm sure I would be told that I'm not looking for the right things, not asking the right questions, not open to various potentialities. But I'd rather be shown than told, if that's possible. There are many poems everyone would agree are "mainstream" that I will never fully understand. And I agree with Fred Muratori that part of why we go to poems is in search of language which is *not* ordinary utterance, which is [fill in blank here: heightened? artful? lovely? or, lord help me, problematized?]. But, to pick on John Ashbery as a convenient example, there are many places in his poetry where I seem to cross some hazy dividing line between compelling mystery, ambiguity, complexity (which I find in Shakespeare and most of the canonical figures) --and language which has no commonly apprehensible meaning which I can recognize. I already know *what* Ashbery's doing (the slippery syntax, nonexistent pronoun antecedents, vaguely sketched subjects, wildly careening diction, scrupulous avoidance of the anecdotal, deliberate tonal switch-backs, etc.)--but I'm less clear about *why*, and what people see to admire in all that. (Little JA's just an example, you understand--I don't mean to bash his work in particular.) David Graham ______________ __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From mbales at cybergate.net Sat Feb 24 07:56:22 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 07:56:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Houlihan In-Reply-To: <3.0.6.32.20010223094328.007b43d0@postoffice.providence.edu> References: Message-ID: > [Houlihan]'s absolutely wrong when she claims that every poem is > designed to prove that meaning doesn't exist....She simply > misinterprets what is perhaps the most basic idea in most of langpo.<< I can see how her presentation would irk the defenders of language poetry (how did such an ugly locution as "langpo" get accepted, btw? Ought we call light verse "lipo" and the process of removing it from general approval and anthologies as "liposuction"?). But it seems to me that the point she's making is that the *claim* that language poets make (that language poetry is trying to open language up to more meaning, or more meaning possibilities, by publishing experimental work) is not well-connected to the actual work because the actual work doesn't do what the theory claims, and not that she misunderstands the theory.. For my part, it seems to me that everyone who seriously claims to be a poet is trying to open language up to more meaning. Language poets are trying, it seems to me, as someone else here on this list has said, to increase the noise-to-signal ratio on the general theory that if there's more noise there must be more signal even if that signal is harder to find amid the increased noise. But isn't the process of writing poems (or making any art) roughly to *decrease* the noise-to-signal ratio by careful selection and ordering, in order to communicate *better* through a poem (or through the chosen art medium) than one could communicate through ordinary means? Further, though language poets claim to be reacting against capitalist market forces, the very process of their publishing higher noise-to-signal works, it seems to me, is a case of "letting the market decide": a participation in the very capitalist market forces they claimed to be reacting against. Essentially, they started an enterprise to provide something they thought was cool and discovered that the supply outstripped the demand. But perhaps I misunderstand what is being said, and language poets have nothing against the notion of a market *per se* but only against the market as it has come to exist in the US and Canada? > Geez, talk about loaded metaphors. Much of langpo arose out of an > opposition to the Vietnam War (Hejinian has a great discussion of this > in her new collection) and a Marxist or Marxian opposition to > free-market capitalism. So to compare langpo to the anti-estate tax > Republicans and the to the rationale for the atrocities in the Vietnam > war is really a stretch.<< I'm glad that the irony was not lost, even though it seems to have been misinterpreted as error. My point was, and is, that language poets, even in their theory, didn't get far enough away from the market they were criticizing to be even modestly revolutionary. They seem, rather, to have been doing something on the order of propounding marxian theory purportedly to support their libertarian practices. > Anyway, I think this is a misreading of the langpo project (or > projects). They never claim to be altruistic or democratic, and they > throw out the notion of disinterstedness altogether.<< Well, then, I misunderstood what was being said. I thought the language poets' defenders had implied, if not said, here that it was merely coincidence that language poets turned up in academia with jobs and long resumes and prospects for tenure if not tenure itself -- and that they were not aiming at such a result at all at all; that they were disinterested practitioners of a better way who somehow just happened to find themselves in positions from which to proselytize their theories and publish their practice. Did I get that wrong? > Let's say the > words: in the industrialized West, the only poetry that's really "for > the masses" is Jewel's.<< Oh, is Jewel the new standard? It used to be Rod McKuen. It seems to me that Jewel's success was of a different sort than McKuen's or Viorst's or Wyse's and others of that order. Jewel's book sold because she was a pop star, I think, and not because she touched any segment of the population with her poems. What baffles me is the notion that mere publication can be held to be *any* sort of standard for success, even if not a single volume is sold, when one is taking a marxian approach. Doesn't the willing participation in the marketplace undercut the critique of the market itself? > ... Poetry is irrelevant in the US.<< I think this is wrong. Poetry has been co-opted in many respects by the voraciousness of the market for creating meaning. Talented men and women seem to work tirelessly (or at least apparently unceasingly) to persuade us that by buying this thing or that service that our purchases will be meaningful, even fulfilling. What language poetry seems to have done, in reaction, is put its fingers in its ears and shout "La la la la la la la", relying on its pose to communicate its intent. mbales at cybergate.net From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Sat Feb 24 09:04:30 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 09:04:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] My honest-to-god last word on Houlihan References: Message-ID: <3A97BF6D.B318CBB5@providence.edu> Marcus Bales wrote: > But it > seems to me that the point she's making is that the *claim* that > language poets make (that language poetry is trying to open > language up to more meaning, or more meaning possibilities, by > publishing experimental work) is not well-connected to the actual > work because the actual work doesn't do what the theory claims, > and not that she misunderstands the theory.. Marcus, as I've said *she doesn't cite the theory.* She makes a passing reference to the new sentence and that's it. But let's give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she really does know the theory, even though she calls people language poets who were never associated with langpo. If you can show me one section that actually shows she understands that langpo is *trying* to open up meaning, then I'll shut up. I can save you some time: you won't find it. > .Language poets are trying, it seems to me, as someone else here > on this list has said, to increase the noise-to-signal ratio on the > general theory that if there's more noise there must be more signal > even if that signal is harder to find amid the increased noise. Patrick has already addressed this issue, but I'll put my two cents in. When you use a metaphor like "noise-to-signal ratio," you use a very restrictive definition of poetry. First, I have no idea what "noise" and "signal" are. What's the "signal" in Don Juan, a poem that rejects truth value, that willfully contradicts itself, that essentially is its own digressions? Wouldn't the "signal" in Don Juan be its "noise?" What about the Cantos -- Pound said he didn't want to exclude anything just because it didn't fit. James Laughlin says that many of Pound's odd intentations are there because Pound started typing before the carriage had returned. Furthermore, the "final" section of the Cantos has at least three different endings, none of which is definitive. Isn't that noise? Or isn't that the music that makes the Cantos so interesting? What about Pound's mistranslations, bogus etymologies, bizarre readings of Confucius? Is Ornette Coleman noise? Anthony Braxton? Public Enemy? John Cage? The Jesus and Mary Chain? What's the signal in Blake's Jerusalem? What's the signal in Breton and Soupault's _Magnetic Fields_? In the Arcades Project, isn't Benjamin actually courting noise, i.e., multiple readings, sudden insights, shocking juxtapositions? (As a side note: anybody ever notice how similar the Arcades are to the Cantos, Paterson and Maximus?) Don't we read the big Romantic fragments -- Keats' Hyperion and the Fall of Hyperion, Shelley's The Triumph of Life, Byron's DJ, Blake's The Four Zoas (not quite a fragment, but unfinished) -- precisely because their signals fail? What about those wonderful asterisks at the end of the Hyperions -- isn't that the sign of the poems going up in flames? (Okay, I ripped off that metaphor, but it's still a good one.) I'm perfectly willing to admit that langpo is difficult, frustrating and not-for-everyone. What I find so frustrating about these exchanges is not the fact that langpo is critiqued, but that the definitions and metaphors for poetry are so reductive that they would throw out a good chunk of the most interesting art of the last two centuries -- if not longer. And this is why I keep saying that the aesthetic in a good chunk of contemporary poetry is profoundly anti-modernist. Bill Freind From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Feb 24 09:13:12 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 06:13:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] "Lovely to look at..." Message-ID: <20010224141312.B61D3274B@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Sat Feb 24 09:23:38 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 09:23:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Karl Marx has left the building References: Message-ID: <3A97C3E8.A28A99B8@providence.edu> Marcus Bales wrote: > Further, though language poets claim to be reacting against > capitalist market forces, the very process of their publishing higher > noise-to-signal works, it seems to me, is a case of "letting the > market decide": a participation in the very capitalist market forces > they claimed to be reacting against. Essentially, they started an > enterprise to provide something they thought was cool and > discovered that the supply outstripped the demand. I have no idea what "letting the market decide" means. That last sentence loses me, too. My gut feeling is that you're operating from a pretty substantial misreading of both Marx and langpo. Besides, the clearest and most unambiguous signal in contemporary America is the advertisement. This, by the way, is one of the major reasons that Pound, Eliot, Olson and Benjamin all turn to a fragmented form: the allegedly unambigous message is the medium of a capitalist economy that they all oppose, albeit in very different ways. > My point was, and is, that language poets, even in their theory, > didn't get far enough away from the market they were criticizing to > be even modestly revolutionary. They seem, rather, to have been > doing something on the order of propounding marxian theory > purportedly to support their libertarian practices. I'm lost here, too. What would it mean to "get away from the market?" And what's libertarian about any aspect of langpo? > > What baffles me is the notion that mere publication can be held to > be *any* sort of standard for success, even if not a single volume is > sold, when one is taking a marxian approach. Doesn't the willing > participation in the marketplace undercut the critique of the market > itself? If you think that selling 1000 copies of a book is participation in the market, you've got to go read some Marx. All of the small presses that publish new poetry either barely break even because of grants and donations -- if they're lucky. > > ... Poetry is irrelevant in the US.<< > > I think this is wrong. Poetry has been co-opted in many respects > by the voraciousness of the market for creating meaning. Poetry hasn't been co-opted by anyone: it's too insignificant to be co-opted. The perfect example of that is the fact that serious novelists like Pynchon, Delillo McCarthy and Morrison can make the bestsellers when few people have even heard of Pinsky, Hass or Ashbery. Have you ever looked at the poetry section of a Waldenbooks? No one reads poetry. > Talented > men and women seem to work tirelessly (or at least apparently > unceasingly) to persuade us that by buying this thing or that > service that our purchases will be meaningful, even fulfilling. What > language poetry seems to have done, in reaction, is put its fingers > in its ears and shout "La la la la la la la", relying on its pose to > communicate its intent. Because the better option would be to unproblematically celebrate the unified lyric self that lies at the very heart of capitalism? Or to resuscitate 19th century verse forms? Or write nostalgic poems about dead grandparents? Bill Freind From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Feb 24 09:42:49 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 06:42:49 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Langpo and open meaning Message-ID: <20010224144249.B4C2036FA@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From gray at grayjacobik.com Sat Feb 24 13:21:45 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 13:21:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Robert Hass' "An Unnamed Flowing:The Cultures of American Poetry" Message-ID: <035401c09e8e$cb7dae50$1c293ccc@emilydickenson> Just want to say that I'm enjoying the discussion on this list very much and appreciate the many generous contributions so far . . . .and, away for a week, I'm still working through the huge backlog of "new poetry" posts.. The above book was advertized (APR, AWP, Poets&Writers) and I ordered a copy in advance of publication. A week ago I received the following message from Amazon.com: "We are sorry to report that the release of the following item [Hass's book] has been cancelled. Though we had expected to be able to sent this item to you, we've since found that it will not be released after all . . . " "not released at all"? Does anyone know the story? Gray Jacobik From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sat Feb 24 14:18:12 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 11:18:12 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Robert Hass' "An Unnamed Flowing:The Cultures of American Poetry" Message-ID: <20010224191812.E73633ECC@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From JforJames at aol.com Sat Feb 24 14:59:19 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 14:59:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Four Steps Message-ID: In a message dated 2/24/01 1:11:44 AM Eastern Standard Time, patrick at proximate.org writes: " And it could be reasonably argued that perhaps langpo opens meaning to "consensus"-type definitions. I will defer to Fred's comments earlier on the subject, that, langpo is perhaps another link on a long chain of the poetic pursuit of new metaphor, and new metaphor always opens meaning. In order for a person to grasp a new metaphor, one must imagine, must make a leap, to understand the metaphor. And let's not forget that many metaphors that seem meaningless today will be crystalline to people in the future. That is, once those metaphors become anthologized and reused again and again. Herrick's metaphors seem so crystalline perhaps because they have had the time to crystallize in the English language." Patrick, I'm not certain you get to have it both ways...if you're fracturing conventional meanings & manufacturing new ones, it is very hard to be working toward a poem that has a particular point of view or even a quasi-communicative mission. As for metaphors, more become dead metaphors, sapped of their underlying force, than are crystallized over time. The universal and archetypal metaphors are generally the more durable. " >And if even the poet is not particularly concerned about whether the audience "gets" what he/she is saying... the poem becomes the ultimate in "personal experience poetry," perhaps? No." Is that No, as in never? " Unless we are talking about workshop poets, who are trained to write the expected & crystalline so as to avoid confusing the teacher, and we can imagine how detrimental to a grade a confused and befuddled teacher can be!" The "workshop poem/poet" is often used as charicature rather than true characterization. I don't imagine that James Tate at UMass Amherst chides his students for confusing or befuddling him. The quality of the reader's experience of confusion/befuddlement is probably what the better teachers try to speak to. " Aye. No, wait, I'm not sure. Czech Republic anyone? " Granted in some countries poetry matters more politically. Muriel Rukeyser: "They say there is no penalty for poets. / There is no penalty for writing poems. / They say this. This is the penalty." I'd be reluctant to claim a political mission while at the same time being self-satisfied with a modest or even negligible impact, due in part to self-imposed strictures against conventional meaning making. A nice thing I've noticed on the list is that people are arguing by posting poems, so I'll close with something from Rukeyser's "Ballad of Orange and Grape": I ask him : How can we go on reading and make sense out of what we read?-- How can they write and believe what they're writing, the young ones across the street, while you go on pouring grape into ORANGE and orange into the one marked GRAPE--? (How are we going to believe what we read and we write and we hear and we say and we do?) ---- Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Sat Feb 24 15:07:22 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 15:07:22 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Obit: Leo Connellan Message-ID: <1e.11c010ce.27c96e7a@aol.com> > A Working Man Who Wrote Poetry > By TARA WEISS > The Hartford Courant > February 24, 2001 > > Poet Leo Connellan was the emotionally abused son of a stoic Maine lawyer and > the grandson of an Irish immigrant who fled the famine. > > When Connellan's mother died, his father called up from the bottom of the > stairs to his 7-year-old son and said, "Your mother has gone to take care of > someone else who needs her more than we do." Each year Connellan and his > brother were taken to her grave site on her birthday, and his father assumed > they'd eventually figure out she had died. > > Leo Connellan, poet laureate, sits and waits to read his poetry at the Sunken > Garden poetry festival. > > > He never truly recovered from that difficult childhood, and that, say friends > and family, is what profoundly shaped Connellan's straightforward poetry, > renowned for its rich depictions of his own experiences and the lives of the > working class. It is also what kept him driving around the state working with > young people, even at the age of 72, visiting high schools, middle schools > and universities to lead workshops on writing. > > Connellan, Connecticut's state poet laureate since 1996, died Thursday night > at William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich, one week after suffering a massive > stroke in his Sprague home. He was 72. > > Connellan, who was raised in blue-collar Rockland, Maine, prided himself on > his working-class status and the fact that he was not part of the art world's > social and financial elite. "No, I'm not an academic," he told The Courant's > Northeast magazine in July 1998. "I'm not in the club. I'm a working man who > writes poems." > > He studied for three years at the University of Maine but left to serve for > 18 months in the Army. Connellan was fond of saying that he received his real > education while traveling across the country in the 1950s. He received a > doctorate of humane letters from the University of Maine in May 1998. > > Still, he craved the attention that was bestowed on him as a three-time > Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet and winner in 1983 of the Shelley Memorial > Award from the Poetry Society of America. That award, voted by his peers for > a body of work, puts him in the same category as Robert Penn Warren and e.e. > cummings. > > "The fact that Leo won it was important, because he didn't win a lot of other > awards; a lot of award-giving in the poetry world depends on who you know," > said fellow poet Marilyn Nelson, a professor of English at the University of > Connecticut. > > A friend, state Rep. Jack Malone, D-Norwich, recounted with a laugh > Connellan's frequent phone calls that were meant to keep the politician > updated on his awards and appearances. Recently, Connellan had called to tell > Malone that he was listed as one of the 100 most important writers from > Maine. > > "I just enjoyed Leo's flavor," Malone said. "He could not tolerate any > pretension. I introduced him before the legislature once, and that's the only > day I saw him in a tie." > > That need to "publicize himself" as his daughter, Amy Connellan, calls it, > came from his own father's obvious disapproval of his son. The elder > Connellan was known for telling friends that his son was "not a homosexual; > poetry is just a hobby." > > So Connellan did everything he could to encourage young writers. He > frenetically traveled around the state trying to meet as many students as > possible. > > "He was going to help children understand and create and use words as their > way of creating, and he wanted to teach them self-esteem," Amy Connellan said > Thursday. "He was determined that he was going to do what he could to have > children have confidence and believe in themselves. He believed that poetry > and art are for everyone, not just for the elite and the privileged - for the > kid in the barrio as much as the kid raised in a comfortable suburban home." > Scott Huff > Think tonight of sixteen > year old Scott Huff of > Maine driving home fell asleep at > the wheel, his car sprang awake > from the weight of his foot head on > into a tree. God, if you need him > take him asking me to believe in > you because there are yellow buttercups, > salmon for my heart in the rivers, > fresh springs of ice cold water running away. > You can have all these back for Scott Huff. > > > > He used his position as poet-in-residence for the Connecticut State > University system, which he had held since 1987, to teach writing workshops > at middle and high schools and universities and community colleges throughout > the state. Connellan averaged two to three schools per week, says William J. > Cibes Jr., chancellor of the system. > > "We have files and files of thank-you letters from students and parents who > had worked with Leo," Cibes said. "If there was one theme to those letters it > was that suddenly the students were able to understand poetry and used it to > express their feelings." > > Connellan told The New York Times in June 1996 that he rose each morning at 3 > a.m. to write from 4 to 6 a.m. before heading to work. The family, his wife > Nancy and daughter, lived in a house in Clinton while Connellan was a > salesman for 17 years for Old Town Corp., which sold typewriter ribbons and > carbon paper. But the company went out of business, and the family moved in > 1979 to a modest apartment in Norwich, where they lived until 1991. That's > when they moved into a townhouse in Sprague. Connellan worked as a substitute > teacher and swept apartment complexes. > > Connellan's wake is from 7 to 9 p.m. Sunday at Labenski Funeral Home, 107 > Boswell Ave. in Norwich, and the funeral is at 9 a.m. Monday at St. Patrick > Cathedral, 213 Broadway, Norwich. A reception will follow the service at the > Norwich Arts Council, 62 Broadway. > > "He was a very crotchety man, but when I sent news of his death people agreed > he was a difficult man but they loved him," Nelson said. "A lot of people > felt that way. A lot of people respected him. He was a poet; he was > dedicated." > > From mbales at cybergate.net Sat Feb 24 15:20:13 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 15:20:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Karl Marx has left the building In-Reply-To: <3A97C3E8.A28A99B8@providence.edu> Message-ID: > ... My gut feeling is that you're operating from a > pretty substantial misreading of both Marx and langpo.<< Well, I clearly am neither a language poet nor an advocate of language poetry, so it is entirely possible that I'm misreading language poetry. But of Marx I'm afraid I have a substantial understanding. I'd be happy to have you explain language poetry to me in words of one syllable so that I can understand them, but forbear, if you will, to try to elucidate Marx. > Besides, the clearest and most unambiguous signal in contemporary > America is the advertisement. This, by the way, is one of the major > reasons that Pound, Eliot, Olson and Benjamin all turn to a fragmented > form: the allegedly unambigous message is the medium of a capitalist > economy that they all oppose, albeit in very different ways.<< But if language poetry is poetry then surely there is no bar to advertising being poetry! Good heavens, man! I've read no small amount of language poetry and if THAT is poetry then *anything* is poetry -- including advertising. > What would it mean to "get away from the market?"<< Well, if language poets are going to hold a Marxian view then they have to get at least as far as Marx away from the market -- don't they? But it seems to me that language poets participate in the same traditional poetry and theory market as everyone else, and in almost exactly the same ways: they start magazines, they publish poetry and theory, they write books, they teach, they argue in coffee houses and at parties, they accept professorships and tenure. There is nothing in anything language poets do, that I can see, that is in the least Marxist except fail to persuade their listeners. > And what's libertarian about any aspect of langpo?< Well, there is that individualist pose, that sense of the Great Artist standing lonely against The World and being misunderstood. It's sort of ... romantic, too, isn't it. > If you think that selling 1000 copies of a book is participation in > the market, you've got to go read some Marx. All of the small presses > that publish new poetry either barely break even because of grants and > donations -- if they're lucky.<< But of course it's a participation in the market -- unless you're also going to tell me that my small business is not a participation in the market because ... well, because it is so small. Only three people work for me -- I must not be in business at all after all! Golly. Does this mean you'll make my payroll for me this week? > Poetry hasn't been co-opted by anyone: it's too insignificant to be > co-opted.<< I think this is wrong for the simple reason that there has been for the last 70 or 80 years a steady stream of talented literary people working in ad agencies and as radio, tv, and movie writers, getting paid pretty good money to apply their talents -- their poetic talents - - taking "poetry" in as broad a sense as language poets seem to take "meaning", to the task of selling and making products and services. Perhaps you've never worked for, or known anyone who's worked for, an ad agency, but the folks who haven't had a job in advertising before often submit, god help them, their poems and stories as writing samples to try to get ad-writing jobs. Odd as it may seem to a Marxist, people who want to write radio, tv and movie scripts also take their creative ideas and turn them into radio, tv and movie scripts instead of into poems and novels and such. These folks are co-opted by the market: because they can make money, make a living, writing ads and radio and tv and movie scripts and not at all or not as easily as poets and novelists. > The perfect example of that is the fact that serious > novelists like Pynchon, Delillo McCarthy and Morrison can make the > bestsellers when few people have even heard of Pinsky, Hass or > Ashbery. Have you ever looked at the poetry section of a Waldenbooks? > No one reads poetry.<< And if you read any Ashbery you can see why. Who would want to read that? Where's the interest, where's the joy, where's the promise of insight or wit, of meaning or laughter? And language poetry is even more inaccessible. The notion that the right way to enter the marketplace is to take an undervalued product and make it actually unwanted seems less than optimal. Even Marx recognized that the market *existed*. > Because the better option would be to unproblematically celebrate the > unified lyric self that lies at the very heart of capitalism?<< Because the better option would be to investigate the human condition as it exists in the present world, and communicate one's opinions and feelings about what one finds better through poetry than one can through political action or business or bar conversation or lectures -- better through poetry than through ordinary means of communication. mbales at cybergate.net From mbales at cybergate.net Sat Feb 24 15:31:45 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 15:31:45 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] My honest-to-god last word on Houlihan In-Reply-To: <3A97BF6D.B318CBB5@providence.edu> Message-ID: >>My honest-to-god last word on Houlihan<< I've been online for 20 years, give or take, one way or another, and I've always been amazed, and still am amazed, at the propensity, and the sheer nerve, of people who purport to conclude any discussion, but particularly any disagreement, with their own final definitive last word and testament on the subject as if that were what everyone else were waiting for. I'd be happy to continue the discussion and, I hope, learn something from you about language poetry, what it is *really* meant to do, what it *really* is, and the like if you'll persist in correcting me where you think I err, as you've done, and tolerate my questions and opinions so long as I can phrase them well enough to tickle a response. But the sort of pre-emptive conclusion to the discussion that you here propose seems to me to be evidence more of your impatience than of your authority. I have to go hunt the wily grocery in its lair so I haven't the time at the moment to reply to your last word; I suppose what I'm doing with this email is asking if it's your last word for real -- so that I can take a really good cheap unfair shot at your views, unimpeded by worries that you may reply and expose my errors, when I get back, or whether I should think about it a little more first! mbales at cybergate.net From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Feb 24 15:59:07 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 14:59:07 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Robert Hass' "An Unnamed Flowing:The Cultures of American Poetry" In-Reply-To: <035401c09e8e$cb7dae50$1c293ccc@emilydickenson> Message-ID: Gray, I noticed that that book was announced at least a year ago, probably longer, as being forthcoming. Since it never forthcame, I finally wrote to the publisher and asked what was up, and was told it was delayed, but would be published in due course. This was sometime last summer. Sorry to hear it was cancelled. Writer's block for Robert Hass? I've been eagerly awaiting a follow-up to *Twentieth Century Pleasures* for a long time--16 or 17 years, in fact. David Graham >Just want to say that I'm enjoying the discussion on this list very >much and appreciate the many generous contributions so far . . . .and, >away for a week, I'm still working through the huge backlog of "new >poetry" posts.. > >The above book was advertized (APR, AWP, Poets&Writers) and I ordered >a copy in advance of publication. A week ago I received the following >message from Amazon.com: > >"We are sorry to report that the release of the following item [Hass's >book] has been cancelled. Though we had expected to be able to sent >this item to you, we've since found that it will not be released after >all . . . " > >"not released at all"? Does anyone know the story? > >Gray Jacobik > > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sat Feb 24 17:35:52 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 16:35:52 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Carruth Appreciates Connellan Message-ID: Excerpt from Parnassus Poetry in Review - Volumes 17, No. 2 & 18, No.1 Article written by Hayden Carruth ...Another long poem I have returned to often - four times since it was published in 1985 and before then as the separate parts came out - is Leo Connellan's trilogy, The Clear Blue Lobster - Water Country. It is a Modernist poem in some respects. Its structure is random in appearance (though one knows it wasn't in composition), and its mode is lyrical persuasion. But it has a clear narrative content. In large part this content is autobiographical, or at least one assumes it is, but at the same time it has been fictionalized to such an extent that one can't tell where fiction leaves off and autobiography begins. Book One, "Coming to Cummington to Take Kelly," is the story of a trip to Cummington, Mass., where the poet Richard Wilbur lives, to seek a Kelly or Kelley who is mentioned in a poem by Wilbur and who may or may not be a person from the protagonist's childhood. Book Two, "Shatterhouse," is about a sojourn in a drying-out facility. Book Three, "The Clear Blue Lobster - Water Country," begins and ends with the protagonist, now working as a member of a peace group in an unspecified Latin American country, captured there by guerrillas and then rescued, while the central episodes return by flashback to the breakup of the protagonist's family during his childhood in the 1920s and 1930s in Portsmouth, Maine, and elsewhere. I say protagonist as if this weren't Connellan, but clearly, at least in these narratives of the past, it is. In the poem he is called Boppledock or Bop. His language is from the bop era in American culture, urban and hip, full of nervous rhythms - I know nothing quite like it in American poetry. This excerpt is from the stopover in Shatterhouse, which is otherwise known as Little Hope: Thinking this, deciding this excited Toothpick In Featherhat The Farter and Blud-geon like aggression, sometimes...how you goin't' feel gooud-n-enjoy whut y'do t'someone you know, make 'em do 'less you know whut it feel like an 'so no one in Th'Thrillers motorcycle gang or th'Fierce-White Bike Company c'd ever say, Bludgeon he "do it" but couldn't "take it!"...only thang y'caint "take" is bein' murdered ahaha! Yippie! Bludgeon he snuck to liquor store and now in "Group" Lucy Bubblegum looking at Bop and beautiful tiny Irish lady with vomit in her bland head.... Most of the poem is not in dialect, however. This is from Book One: Yet in a Nursing home you gave up a couple of skid row wine blasts to get him in away from those awful ones with squirrels running intimately up the arm of Smilin' Billy now he's got strokes, you sat with him alone by his bed in the dark hospital room and put your hand in his hand and he knew you.... What has always characterized Leo Connellan's work is his refusal of the oracular. In its ordinary sense Modernism has been, without arguing the term, elitist. It just has been. And it is. I've defended it often enough to be able to say this now. It has been internationalist also, and this in spite of the insistence of Williams and his followers on an "American language" and American themes; one cannot read Paterson without seeing its affinities not only with Pound, the expatriate, but with, e.g., Cocteau, the Frenchman. Internationalism and elitism have always gone hand in hand in the American arts. Connellan has resolutely distanced himself from this, while at the same time and just as resolutely he has denied any affiliation with prairie sentimentalism or proletarian utilitarianism. He is a poet of the American working class who is as sophisticated as any of the elite but who has retained working-class values as the nucleus of his program. He is close to Thomas McGrath in this, though his locus is the East Coast, the port towns of New England, Manhattan, not McGrath's midwestern farming environment. Some of Connellan's best poetry before his trilogy was in the collection titled Another Poet in New York, in which he experimented with his bop-like prosody and scathing critical attitudes in an urban setting and in which he acknowledged his debt to Lorca. All of Connellan's poetry, including the trilogy, is now available in his New and Collected Poems, published last year, certainly one of the liveliest, most accomplished books of poetry we've had recently. Like McGrath's work, however, Connellan's has not been much acknowledged by the Modernist critical establishment - elitist, internationalist, Vendlerist - until now. I hope this will change... Return to the Leo Connellan page : http://www.ctstateu.edu/connellan/index.html __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sat Feb 24 17:47:38 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 17:47:38 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Robert Hass' "An Unnamed Flowing:The Cultures of American Poetry" References: Message-ID: <3A983A0A.3F35@nut-n-but.net> Maybe someone finally pointed him toward how many more schools of consequential American poetry there are, and he was honest enough to realize his book was too narrow. Not that I much know what would have been in his book, I'm just going by its title and my knowledge of Hass as one of the Wilbur-all-the-way-to-Ashbery appreciators of the Poetry Scene in this country. --Bob G. From dzauhar at uic.edu Sat Feb 24 19:54:50 2001 From: dzauhar at uic.edu (David Zauhar) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 18:54:50 -0600 (CST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Leo Connellan, R.I.P. In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Thanks to Finnegan for posting the Connellan obit. Here's his poem, from _Provincetown_, called "The Treachery of Flame" Something has changed us, the wild grapes. Excitement is in other imaginations of our taste, to keep wish for us. Now we have been seen, fingered, and picked over. We have squirted whatever we had, the market is crowded, so to stand out one must be impossibly rare. We have merely been the new blossoms who come along, show, and our gone. And "An Image from Howard Coughlin." Thinking of lines I will not write joys my inner heart for poetry. None of us live long enough to think and inspiration rarely comes, it is in you or it isn't, but plagiarism permeates everywhere and those who would fail students do it. Recently talking with a brilliant learned friend I mentioned a terrible woman I know, evil, who destroys souls, to Doctor Howard Coughlin who instantly recognized the sort, responding "People like her like her" and I knew that if I work to find a line like that there will be someone I will never meet not yet born or conceived who will read. It's worth all the work, the hopeless depression. ------------------------------------------------ David Zauhar University of Illinois at Chicago "i have a city to cover with lines" --d.a. levy From jdavis at panix.com Sat Feb 24 23:11:10 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 23:11:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] calling the police the police In-Reply-To: Message-ID: There's the problem. We're stuck back at a definition of terms and a venn diagram of what is and isn't poetry, and everybody's going to feel injured no matter how the partition is drawn. I wondered all along why the poetry wars reminded me of India/Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, N Ireland, Lebanon, etc. I'm leaving. Bye! Jordan 2/24/01 3:20 PM, Marcus Bales at mbales at cybergate.net: > But if language poetry is poetry then surely there is no bar to > advertising being poetry! Good heavens, man! I've read no small > amount of language poetry and if THAT is poetry then *anything* is > poetry -- including advertising. From jdavis at panix.com Sat Feb 24 23:13:22 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 23:13:22 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] or the former jugoslavia, or kosovo, or cyprus In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Poetry refugees, follow me! Higher ground ... http://subsubpoetics.listbot.com/ Jordan From jdavis at panix.com Sat Feb 24 23:14:34 2001 From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis) Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 23:14:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] well, not higher ground -- in the middle of nowhere, actually In-Reply-To: Message-ID: sorry about the moralizing tone -- I just meant to say -- run for your lives Jordan From MillB at aol.com Sun Feb 25 00:12:34 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 00:12:34 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] AWP Message-ID: Greetings all: I'm giving a poetry reading at this year's AWP conference in Palm Springs--is anyone else going to be there? We've got a mini-suite--maybe we could have a newsgroup party? Cheers, Mill From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 25 06:23:02 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 06:23:02 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] calling the police the police References: Message-ID: <3A98EB16.201D@nut-n-but.net> Jordan Davis: "There's the problem. We're stuck back at a definition of terms and a venn diagram of what is and isn't poetry, and everybody's going to feel injured no matter how the partition is drawn. I wondered all along why the poetry wars reminded me of India/Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, N Ireland, Lebanon, etc." As a taxonomaniac, I have to butt in here. What should we do, not define things? The problem is NOT taxonomy, the problem is idiots who worry about names. In my own special field of verbo-visual art, there are those who are offended by my calling certain artworks NOT poetry because they contain no words (just letters, perhaps). I've named them "textual illumagery" ("illumagery" being my name for "visual art," invented mainly for this purpose). Okay, one can argue against my classification, and oppose my name--but the rage that some explode into because they want their work to be called "poetry" even though I constantly swear that I consider "visual illumagery" absolutely as important and good as "visual poetry," just different--and show it by often discussing the former, and doing so in a highly complimentary way. There is also the problem of idiots who say, for instance, "It's not poetry, THEREFORE it's no good! Instead of it's terrific, just not what I would call poetry." On the other hand, there IS a point at which work has to be called nonsense--and that IS a judgemental term. I claim that would-be poetry is nonsense if NO ONE can present what I call a pluraphrase of it that seems reasonable to the Consensus (eventually, for it might take years). A pluraphrase is something that says not just what the poem says but what it does. It is reasonable if based on what's there, explicitly, in the poem, and if what's there can be shown to do something artistically--look pretty, sound pretty, achieve a neat metaphor, etc. Subjectivity comes into play, no doubt, but the process is far from being all subjective. There's much more to the subject that I don't have time to get into. I suspect I've more than made my point, though. --Bob G. From languagethief at yahoo.com Sun Feb 25 08:52:20 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 05:52:20 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] AWP In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010225135220.73059.qmail@web12211.mail.yahoo.com> Mill - congratulations, and I'll be there in spirit. Whatever happened to your homepage? It seemed to disappear. Tad --- MillB at aol.com wrote: > Greetings all: > > I'm giving a poetry reading at this year's AWP > conference in Palm Springs--is > anyone else going to be there? We've got a > mini-suite--maybe we could have a > newsgroup party? > > Cheers, > > Mill > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu Sun Feb 25 10:25:43 2001 From: michael.ritchie at mail.atu.edu (Michael Karl Ritchie) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 09:25:43 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Noisy Signals Message-ID: The poetry you love defines what poetry can do. The "noise" that poetry's "signals" try to break through resemble static into which the lonely radio dj broadcasts, on the assumption anyone is listening or shares similar tastes in the tunes being played. And yet?is there anyone really out there? Anyone besides us other dj's? MKR From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Sun Feb 25 13:06:40 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 12:06:40 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry In-Reply-To: <3A97C3E8.A28A99B8@providence.edu> References: Message-ID: Two not entirely disconnected thoughts, first about contemporary poetry and second about list dynamics. 1. Bill Freind and others have lately trotted out the usual charge that "no one" reads poetry. For example, from Bill: >Poetry hasn't been co-opted by anyone: it's too insignificant to be >co-opted. The perfect example of that is the fact that serious novelists >like Pynchon, Delillo McCarthy and Morrison can make the bestsellers when >few people have even heard of Pinsky, Hass or Ashbery. Have you ever looked >at the poetry section of a Waldenbooks? No one reads poetry. What always strikes me about such statements is that they have been asserted repeatedly without much challenge, despite some embedded assumptions and considerable countervailing evidence. Any time when someone like Bill Freind agrees wholly with Dana Gioia is probably a time to examine conventional wisdom a little more closely. Judging by sales figures alone, poetry is not as popular as fiction. But just how popular *is* poetry? What *are* the sales figures? Is it true, as Dana Gioia and others have repeatedly asserted, that poetry has lost it audience, or that such palty audience as it has has retreated entirely to a subculture centered in the academy? When this sort of argument has cropped up previously, I have challenged folks to cite some concrete evidence. For instance, when I look at the poetry section in suburban chain bookstores, I always wonder why they stock so many volumes of contemporary verse, when as we all know no one reads poetry. Is Barnes and Noble showing a surprising civic mindedness in stocking, year after year, all those books by Gary Snyder, Adrienne Rich, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Bly, Sharon Olds, et al., even though no one ever buys them? Likewise, when I think about poetry's supposed diminishing popularity, I wonder about all sorts of things such as the Bill Moyers PBS shows, the slam movement, Pinsky's Favorite Poem project, National Poetry month, the prominence of poetic activity on the internet, and so forth--all of which seem to bring poetry out of the ivory tower in ways T. S. Eliot would have been surprised by. And all of which seem to complicate, at least, blanket statements about poetry's unpopularity. Whether any of that activity is good for our culture, or even significant, is another question. But let's reckon with that question separately. As I have before, I recommend Donald Hall's essay "Poetry, Popularity, and the Golden Age" (1982), now outdated in its figures but still relevant in its gist; and the title essay of his book *Death to the Death of Poetry* (1994)--which attempt to set the record straight at least regarding whether "anyone" actually reads poetry. Hall, unlike Dana Gioia and numerous others who rant about current poetry's decline, has actually troubled to look up some numbers. He is also careful to note that popularity is *not* the same thing as quality. He's not an idiot, and he knows that the millions of books that Ferlinghetti has sold do not make him a better poet than Hayden Carruth. But he's right in finding it revealing that the myth of poetry's declining popularity is so curiously persistent, despite being almost wholly without factual foundation. * * * * * * 2. Call me an optimist, but I would like it if this list were able to discuss competing aesthetics without too much wagon-circling, sniping, and name calling. I don't know if that's possible. Let me cite two posts from Bill Freind, though he's just convenient as example for something more widely prevalent, and which in my opinion had a lot to do with the decline of the old CAP-L. First: "What I find so frustrating about these exchanges is not the fact that langpo is critiqued, but that the definitions and metaphors for poetry are so reductive that they would throw out a good chunk of the most interesting art of the last two centuries -- if not longer." He has a very good point, I think. Second: "Because the better option would be to unproblematically celebrate the unified lyric self that lies at the very heart of capitalism? Or to resuscitate 19th century verse forms? Or write nostalgic poems about dead grandparents?" In which, I submit, Bill commits in reverse the reductiveness he decries in others. Bill's been notably civil about his arguments, unlike some, and I applaud him for that. But it seems to me that with such rhetorical flourishes, the vicious cycle continues, more and more subscribers get fed up and fall silent or leave, and we're soon back to square one. I made a similar complaint about CAP-L before it went belly-up, and interestingly, got a lot of back channel bravos, but not much of that spirit made it into public, unfortunately. It may be useless to try and influence the tone of something as inherently unruly as a discussion list, but since this is still a green and growing list, I thought I'd at least put my two cents out right from the start. David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Sun Feb 25 14:31:42 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 11:31:42 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry Message-ID: <20010225193142.278AE36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 25 16:43:54 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 16:43:54 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry References: <20010225193142.278AE36F9@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: <3A997C9A.5BCD@nut-n-but.net> The fact that one or two poets of talent (as I think Bukowski was) can make a fair amount of money at it in this country (eventually) does not mean that poetry in general will ever be popular here. Nor does the fact that entertainers can make money with their poetry as Jewel and McKuen have. --Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Sun Feb 25 17:05:37 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 17:05:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Louise Gluck (umlaut over the 'u') Message-ID: <13.11eb8e1d.27cadbb1@aol.com> The award announcement impelled me me to revisit Louise Gluck's poetry. _Ararat_ is my favorite collection out of the four I found on my bookcase. Her poetry is sparer than I'd remembered--not much embellishment in the language. But here's a section from "Celestial Music" that contains a strange, somewhat abstract, metaphor that segues abruptly into a very arresting simile: In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking on the same road, except it's winter now; she's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music: look up, she says. When I look up, nothing. Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees like brides leaping up to a great height-- Then I'm afraid for her; I see her caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-- --- And here's a poem that fits in that "Grandmom" category that was recently taken to task on this list. This poem I find very effective with its simple prose-like virtues: Saints In our family, there were two saints, my aunt and my grandmother. But their lives were different. My grandmother's was tranquil, even at the end. She was like a person walking in calm waters; for some reason the sea couldn't bring itself to hurt her. When my aunt took the same path, the waves broke over her, they attacked her, which is how the Fates respond to a true spiritual nature. My grandmother was cautious, conservative: that's why the she escaped suffering. My aunt's escaped nothing; each time the sea retreats, someone she loves is taken away. Still, she won't experience the sea as evil. To her, it is what it is: where it touches land, it must turn to violence. --- Maybe a little echo of Jeffers in that ending. Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Sun Feb 25 17:08:08 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 17:08:08 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: UN Reading Message-ID: <43.1129e423.27cadc48@aol.com> Free tickets are now available on our website to the reading at the United Nations featuring: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet Yusef Komunyakaa, Joyce Carol Oates and James Ragan. The event is on Thursday, March 29, 2001 from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm at the United Nations Building in New York City, Conference Room 4. There are only 600 tickets available and they will go by fast, so please reserve your tickets soon. To reserve tickets, go to http://www.dialoguepoetry.org ,then click "Reading at the UN" and click the link to reserve your tickets. Cheers, Ram Devineni Program Coordinator From JforJames at aol.com Sun Feb 25 17:14:03 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 17:14:03 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Book of Interest from BritPo List Message-ID: <6c.8172221.27caddab@aol.com> Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2001 20:13:26 -0800 From: Peter Quartermain It's almost impossible to extract, but here's a short bit from Lissa Wolsak's quite astonishing visionary poem, _Pen_Chants_, recently published by Roof (New York) [some list members may recall her equally astonishing talk at Robinson College in Cambridge a couple of years ago, _An_Heuristic_Prolusion_, still available from Runcible Spoon]: equal to palm is bamboo osier, sauvis, rhus no less esteemed than purplish-black stems of maidenhair endrenched rye-grass or lithops or old arborescence other illuminants osmium, tantalum, mercury parsimoniously, called qualia abony moths,wrapped around a thin column of space come wandering thius far.... lest now, under pleached limes between violence and contrition I eternalized half-hunger =================================== From tadrichards at prodigy.net Sun Feb 25 18:28:14 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 18:28:14 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Louise Gluck (umlaut over the 'u') References: <13.11eb8e1d.27cadbb1@aol.com> Message-ID: <007101c09f82$a0e68280$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Jim -- I don't ever like to generalize about subject matter, and I think grandmas have as much place in poetry as urns, linnets or roadsters (good lord -- it just occurs to me that I wrote one a couple of days ago - my first grandma poem!) But this one of Gluck's (umlaut) does strike me as a grandma poem, if we mean by that a poem where making us understand how the poet feels about urn, linnet, roadster or grandma is more important than the making of a poem. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 5:05 PM Subject: [New-Poetry] Louise Gluck (umlaut over the 'u') > The award announcement impelled me > me to revisit Louise Gluck's poetry. _Ararat_ > is my favorite collection out of the four I found > on my bookcase. Her poetry is sparer than > I'd remembered--not much embellishment in the > language. But here's a section from "Celestial Music" > that contains a strange, somewhat abstract, metaphor > that segues abruptly into a very arresting simile: > > In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking > on the same road, except it's winter now; > she's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial > music: > look up, she says. When I look up, nothing. > Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees > like brides leaping up to a great height-- > Then I'm afraid for her; I see her > caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-- > --- > > And here's a poem that fits in that "Grandmom" category > that was recently taken to task on this list. This poem > I find very effective with its simple prose-like virtues: > > Saints > > In our family, there were two saints, > my aunt and my grandmother. > But their lives were different. > > My grandmother's was tranquil, even at the end. > She was like a person walking in calm waters; > for some reason > the sea couldn't bring itself to hurt her. > When my aunt took the same path, > the waves broke over her, they attacked her, > which is how the Fates respond > to a true spiritual nature. > > My grandmother was cautious, conservative: > that's why the she escaped suffering. > My aunt's escaped nothing; > each time the sea retreats, someone she loves is taken away. > > Still, she won't experience > the sea as evil. To her, it is what it is: > where it touches land, it must turn to violence. > > --- > Maybe a little echo of Jeffers in that ending. > Finnegan > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 25 18:43:28 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 18:43:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] calling the police the police References: <3A98EB16.201D@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <3A9998A0.3C1F@nut-n-but.net> In the unlikely event that anyone read my previous to this thread, a correction: Okay, one can argue against my classification, and oppose my name--but the rage that some explode into because they want their work to be called "poetry" even though I constantly swear that I consider "TEXTUAL illumagery" absolutely as important and good as "visual poetry," just different--and show it by often discussing the former, and doing so in a highly complimentary way. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Sun Feb 25 19:39:36 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 19:39:36 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Houlihan References: <3A95BB2F.C49406A8@providence.edu> Message-ID: <3A99A5C8.505B@nut-n-but.net> I'm more on Bill Freind's side in this thread than against but wonder why he's sure Sheila Murphy, Mark Wallace, Ben Friedlander and Bernadette Mayer are language poets. By my standards, all of them sometimes are. How does one determine who is a language poet? --Bob G., trying to catch up on a discussion group that was really active for a while From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Sun Feb 25 20:10:30 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 20:10:30 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry References: Message-ID: <3A99AD05.18DAA8F0@providence.edu> David -- I'd love to be proved wrong about the irrelevance of poetry (which is not the same thing as death, since I think contemporary poetry is very much alive). Can you summarize some of Hall and Pinsky's numbers and arguments? Bill Freind From wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu Sun Feb 25 20:23:56 2001 From: wfreind at postoffice.providence.edu (Bill Freind) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 20:23:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] More on Houlihan References: <3A95BB2F.C49406A8@providence.edu> <3A99A5C8.505B@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <3A99B02B.F83CE3E8@providence.edu> "Language poet," like so many terms, was originally a pejorative which is why someone (Ron Silliman, maybe?) once said a language poet is anyone who's ever been accused of being a language poet. I'm using it to indicate the writers who published in journals such as This, Temblor, Tottel's, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, etc. in the 1970's and 1980's. That brings in some people who sometimes are excluded from the langpo cartel: Michael Palmer, Clark Coolidge, Rosmarie Waldrop, etc. We could argue about Mayer, but Wallace is definitely too young. But your general point is right: it's always a sloppy distinction. Bill Bob Grumman wrote: > I'm more on Bill Freind's side in this thread than against > but wonder why he's sure Sheila Murphy, Mark Wallace, Ben Friedlander > and Bernadette Mayer are language poets. By my standards, all > of them sometimes are. How does one determine who is > a language poet? > > --Bob G., trying to catch up on a discussion > group that was really active for a while > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From wjbat at conncoll.edu Sun Feb 25 20:33:27 2001 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 20:33:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010225203327.019018@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> David, Thanks for your diplomatic efforts here. I was happy to see that Finnegan had started this list (thank you, James,) but was too busy to follow it at first and filtered it all into a folder for future reference. I've been looking through it today; seeing that the old dance of mutual scorn was already in full swing, I was about to unsubscribe. But I asked a question on another list recently and got no very useful response: Is there a literary magazine that you look forward to, read cover to cover, otherwise rejoice in? Is there one you're especially glad to publish in? It's a practical question for me; I was out of the country for awhile and let all my subscriptions lapse, and I'm out in the boonies of CT now and can no longer browse in good bookstores. The responses I got elsewhere were all for old warhorses like Poetry, Georgia Review, Gettysburg, etc., which surprised me; I don't object to them, have published in them in the past, but can't say I'd await them with bated breath either. (If any of them has gotten really solid in the last few years while I wasn't looking, please let me know.) I realize the question is an invitation to more territory-marking behavior, and perhaps there aren't any print publications right now that rise above that. No laundry lists of correct mags, please, but real loves and their qualities and their editors and content. Wendy ====================== Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu Contemporary American Poetry Archive http://capa.conncoll.edu David Graham wrote: > >2. Call me an optimist, but I would like it if this list were able to >discuss competing aesthetics without too much wagon-circling, sniping, and >name calling. I don't know if that's possible. > >Let me cite two posts from Bill Freind, though he's just convenient as >example for something more widely prevalent, and which in my opinion had a >lot to do with the decline of the old CAP-L. > >First: "What I find so frustrating about these exchanges is not >the fact that langpo is critiqued, but that the definitions and metaphors >for poetry are so reductive that they would throw out a good chunk of the >most interesting art of the last two centuries -- if not longer." > >He has a very good point, I think. > >Second: "Because the better option would be to unproblematically celebrate >the >unified lyric self that lies at the very heart of capitalism? Or to >resuscitate 19th century verse forms? Or write nostalgic poems about dead >grandparents?" > >In which, I submit, Bill commits in reverse the reductiveness he decries in >others. > >Bill's been notably civil about his arguments, unlike some, and I applaud >him for that. But it seems to me that with such rhetorical flourishes, the >vicious cycle continues, more and more subscribers get fed up and fall >silent or leave, and we're soon back to square one. > >I made a similar complaint about CAP-L before it went belly-up, and >interestingly, got a lot of back channel bravos, but not much of that >spirit made it into public, unfortunately. It may be useless to try and >influence the tone of something as inherently unruly as a discussion list, >but since this is still a green and growing list, I thought I'd at least >put my two cents out right from the start. > > >David Graham > > > > > >__________________ >David Graham >grahamd at mail.ripon.edu >__________________ > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From mbales at cybergate.net Sun Feb 25 22:17:16 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 22:17:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry In-Reply-To: References: <3A97C3E8.A28A99B8@providence.edu> Message-ID: > What always strikes me about such statements is that they have been > asserted repeatedly without much challenge, despite some embedded > assumptions and considerable countervailing evidence.<< What evidence? Based on talking to my customers, about 300 different people a year, for the past 15 years, about 4000 people, allowing for the few repeat customers, there have been only about 10 or 15 each year who say they've read a poem at all, much less bought a book of them or subscribed to a magazine that publishes poems predominantly. My customers are mostly professional, college-educated, over 45, with half million dollar houses and quarter million dollar household incomes and whose children have graduated college. But they don't read poetry. I am on the board of a local poets' organization for which I raise money by asking my clients for donations, so I have a pretty good segue into asking the about their poetry-reading. But most of them, though they are interested in the art by which we make architectural art glass, they aren't interested in the art of poetry. What are we to make of the health of poetry if middle- and upper- middle-class well-educated professionals with the means and interest to buy glass art but not poetry -- or even read it? And if these folks don't read poetry -- well, what other audience are you suggesting is likely to? mbales at cybergate.net From patrick at proximate.org Sun Feb 25 22:33:15 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 22:33:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: Very Sad News: Archie Ammos Died This Morning Message-ID: Sadly to say, acclaimed poet A.R. Ammons passed away this morning. More on Ammons: Archie Randolph Ammons was born outside Whiteville, North Carolina, in 1926. He started writing poetry aboard a U. S. Navy destroyer escort in the South Pacific. After completing service in World War II, he attended Wake Forest University. He went on to work as a real estate salesman, an editor, and an executive in his father's glass company before he began teaching at Cornell University in 1964. Ammons is the author of nearly thirty books of poetry, among them Glare (W. W. Norton, 1997); Garbage (1993), which won the National Book Award and the Library of Congress's Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry; A Coast of Trees (1981), which received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; Sphere (1974), which received the Bollingen Prize; and Collected Poems 1951-1971 (1972), which won the National Book Award. His many other honors include the Academy's Wallace Stevens Award, the Poetry Society of America's Robert Frost Medal and the Ruth Lilly Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Ithaca, New York, where since 1971 he has been Goldwin Smith Professor of Poetry at Cornell. Patrick Patrick Herron patrick at proximate.org http://proximate.org/ getting close is what we're all about here! -----Original Message----- From: po_po_pr-owner at clarkson.edu [mailto:po_po_pr-owner at clarkson.edu]On Behalf Of gwg6 at cornell.edu Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 9:25 PM To: BRITISH-POETS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK Cc: subsubpoetics at listbot.com; po_po_pr at clarkson.edu Subject: Very Sad News: Archie Ammons Died This Morning To: English Department Faculty, Staff, Grads, Friends It is my sad duty to inform you that Archie Ammons died this morning. At the moment I have no details about a service, or calling hours. As soon as I have more information, I will let you know right away. From wjbat at conncoll.edu Sun Feb 25 22:57:09 2001 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 22:57:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010225225709.009483@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Marcus, What do they read? I'd have guessed 20 years ago that they'd be displaying the latest John McPhee on their coffee tables, and that wouldn't be a bad thing if they actually read it. But I don't think the demographic you're describing has ever been much of an audience for poetry. Wendy, in Mystic CT, where your consumer-base is thriving. Marcus Bales wrote: >Based on talking to my customers, about 300 different people a >year, for the past 15 years, about 4000 people, allowing for the few >repeat customers, there have been only about 10 or 15 each year >who say they've read a poem at all, much less bought a book of >them or subscribed to a magazine that publishes poems >predominantly. > >My customers are mostly professional, college-educated, over 45, >with half million dollar houses and quarter million dollar household >incomes and whose children have graduated college. But they don't >read poetry. > >I am on the board of a local poets' organization for which I raise >money by asking my clients for donations, so I have a pretty good >segue into asking the about their poetry-reading. But most of them, >though they are interested in the art by which we make >architectural art glass, they aren't interested in the art of poetry. > >What are we to make of the health of poetry if middle- and upper- >middle-class well-educated professionals with the means and >interest to buy glass art but not poetry -- or even read it? And if >these folks don't read poetry -- well, what other audience are you >suggesting is likely to? ====================== Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu Contemporary American Poetry Archive http://capa.conncoll.edu From alsop at alsopreview.com Mon Feb 26 02:04:51 2001 From: alsop at alsopreview.com (Jaimes Alsop) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 23:04:51 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry References: <3A97C3E8.A28A99B8@providence.edu> Message-ID: <3A9A0013.79121B03@alsopreview.com> (Coming into the conversation a bit late) It seems to me there's ample evidence that people buy and read poetry books. Why else would Barnes & Boble and the others carry them? Why would the publishers publish them? If there was no money to be made I don't believe a single book of poetry (outside of the University presses) would get published. Publishers are not of an altruistic bent, by nature or inclination. They';re publishing them -and making money- because someone is *buying* them. Quite a lot of someones. What of the countless smaller magazines that sell regularly? What of the visitors to the on-line poetry sites? The Alsop Review gets over a thousand unique visitors a day (very small potatoes in light of some other independent e-zines I could mention - not including the "big boys", Poets & Writers and such) Where do *they* come from? As well ask where all the fuschia society people come from (and there's a lot of them too, nation-wide!) the doll collectors? the philaletists? I think it's hard if not well-nigh impossible to come up with acceptable demographics - there aren't any. But people do buy poetry - and read it. The evidence is everywhere. -- Jaimes Alsop The Alsop Review http://www.alsopreview.com From wjbat at conncoll.edu Sun Feb 25 23:09:26 2001 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 23:09:26 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: Very Sad News: Archie Ammons Died This Morning In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010225230926.006103@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> This is this second time I've heard this kind of news via internet first. Archie was my first teacher. Wendy Patrick Herron wrote: >Sadly to say, acclaimed poet A.R. Ammons passed away this morning. > >More on Ammons: > >Archie Randolph Ammons was born outside Whiteville, North Carolina, in 1926. >He started writing poetry aboard a U. S. Navy destroyer escort in the South >Pacific. After completing service in World War II, he attended Wake Forest >University. He went on to work as a real estate salesman, an editor, and an >executive in his father's glass company before he began teaching at Cornell >University in 1964. Ammons is the author of nearly thirty books of poetry, >among them Glare (W. W. Norton, 1997); Garbage (1993), which won the >National Book Award and the Library of Congress's Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt >National Prize for Poetry; A Coast of Trees (1981), which received the >National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; Sphere (1974), which received >the Bollingen Prize; and Collected Poems 1951-1971 (1972), which won the >National Book Award. His many other honors include the Academy's Wallace >Stevens Award, the Poetry Society of America's Robert Frost Medal and the >Ruth Lilly Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the >MacArthur Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives >in Ithaca, New York, where since 1971 he has been Goldwin Smith Professor of >Poetry at Cornell. > >Patrick > >Patrick Herron >patrick at proximate.org >http://proximate.org/ >getting close is what >we're all about here! > >-----Original Message----- >From: po_po_pr-owner at clarkson.edu [mailto:po_po_pr-owner at clarkson.edu]On >Behalf Of gwg6 at cornell.edu >Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 9:25 PM >To: BRITISH-POETS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK >Cc: subsubpoetics at listbot.com; po_po_pr at clarkson.edu >Subject: Very Sad News: Archie Ammons Died This Morning > > > >To: English Department Faculty, Staff, Grads, Friends > >It is my sad duty to inform you that Archie Ammons died this morning. >At the moment I have no details about a service, or calling hours. >As soon as I have more information, I will let you know right away. > > > > > >_______________________________________________ >New-Poetry mailing list >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry ====================== Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu Contemporary American Poetry Archive http://capa.conncoll.edu From patrick at proximate.org Sun Feb 25 23:50:21 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 23:50:21 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Four Steps In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Jim - Just wanted to say "thanks" for challenging me. So, thanks. I also want to add to the crew that I regret to witness the passive-aggressive judgments passed in public about those who have chosen the "pro-language poetry" side of the argument. Since Bill Friend was exonerated from such charges, I fear that finger is pointed at me. If you have issues with my way of saying things, if you feel that I am rude or out of line, I humbly ask you to please direct those comments to me back-channel. I am not above admonition, but I like admonitions to be instructive and compassionate, not "othering." Beside, we all love the same formless mass we call poetry, and aren't we supposed to be courageous with our tongues? > > [New-Poetry] Four Steps > new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > Sat, 24 Feb 2001 14:59:19 EST > > > In a message dated 2/24/01 1:11:44 AM Eastern Standard Time, > patrick at proximate.org writes: > " And it could be reasonably argued that perhaps langpo opens > meaning to "consensus"-type definitions. I will defer to Fred's comments > earlier on the subject, that, langpo is perhaps another link on a long > chain > of the poetic pursuit of new metaphor, and new metaphor always opens > meaning. In order for a person to grasp a new metaphor, one > must imagine, > must make a leap, to understand the metaphor. And let's not forget that > many metaphors that seem meaningless today will be crystalline > to people in > the future. That is, once those metaphors become anthologized and reused > again and again. Herrick's metaphors seem so crystalline perhaps because > they have had the time to crystallize in the English language." > > Patrick, I'm not certain you get to have it both ways...if you're > fracturing > conventional meanings & manufacturing new ones, it is very hard > to be working toward a poem that has a particular point of view or > even a quasi-communicative mission. I'm not saying that any fracturing is happening. I'm talking about the construction of new ones solely. there's always a degree of trade off between communication (the delivery of information) and the use of novel phrasings. I do not see the transmission of information of poetry as essential to poetry. The effect of mood can often be transferred without information passed at all. I am using the non-trivial definitions of information and communication (non-trivial in the logical sense). Given that, would you call abstract painting (leaving aside its merits) a form of communication? No. So, admitting that communication is a way of passing information, and that information is one person telling another person deliberately in whatever fashion, poetry can often get across without the directness. Sometimes the poetry pops out of its very condition. Sometimes people can tell me they're happy without saying, "I'm happy," without communicating it. If my wife gets angry at me but stomps off out of the room, I wouldn't call that communication. There's a lot of ways to impart that feeling to another, and sometimes it cannot be constructed deliberately or communicated in the informational sense. Sometimes it's best to leave it to the elements, so-to-speak, to do that. I have a hard time imagining that a poem in inventing new ways of saying things destroys old ways. The old ways still remain and will remain, and the new ways should not be construed as a threat to old meanings or to old aesthetics. Consider them another addition to our world. > As for metaphors, more become > dead metaphors, sapped of their underlying force, than are crystallized > over time. Sure, absolutely. But in Herrick's case, there may have been a time when people did not get some of the metaphors (though the problems with language poetry people have largely regard form, not metaphor, and this mistaken movement of focus to metaphor is my poor doing). Herrick: Some asked me where the rubies grew, And nothing I did say; But with my finger pointed to The lips of Julia. We English speakers alive today find it easy to figure out that the rubies are Julia's lips. But perhaps we do not catch the metaphor, we do not make the leap. Perhaps we lived in a world where no one ever said "ruby red lips," etc. We might actually think that the "me" of the poem was pointing to Julia's lips because she could tell us the answer instead of the main character. And it could be argued that the association of "ruby" and "lips" has become stronger since the Herrick poem. Likely the association has been around longer than Herrick's poem, but I think the point still stands. A poem can introduce a new association, and that association will only continue and/or grow depending on its acceptance and subsequent usage and prevalence. > The universal and archetypal metaphors are generally the > more durable. I doubt that any metaphor can approximate universality, though I get your point. But durable ones get stale. I'm not going to use the metaphor of lips as rubies because it is so durable it's like tough bread, like Hallmark. It's lost its spark, its flash, its mystery. At least for me. > > " >And if even the poet is not particularly > concerned about whether the audience "gets" what he/she is saying... > the poem becomes the ultimate in "personal experience poetry," perhaps? > > No." > Is that No, as in never? My apologies. I did not intend to be so bloodily terse with you. It was an oversight that I did not go beyond one word. I wanted to answer something else farther down the page and forgot to return to it. No, as in, "not necessarily." This opens up a huge can of philosophical worms that have eaten at many people, the profoundest result of which perhaps exists in Hume's work. His bundle theory, to be precise. the experience of poetry I think, if I am to put this in conventional terms, can be "beyond" the individual. I'm trying to avoid the word "transcendental," since that word is inaccurate, namely because it assumes the very existence of selves. I'm not convinced of the existence of selves despite all common sense. Even if the person "rewrites" a poem when reading it, in his or her own peculiar imagination, that is not some purely personal experience. This has never been a problem for poetry or art of any kind in the past and I do not think it is suddenly one now. Why? Because in the two-entity model of "poet-poem-reader" there are still other people involved and perhaps even some sort of poetic voice involved in the exchange. And all kinds of great things happen upon accident. Science, for you science lovers out there, would be absolutely zilch in this world without happenstance, chance, accident. The idea of "personal poetry" also creepily gets into issues of cause and effect and I'd rather not reduce poetry, as I'm sure you can sympathize. I like poetry to remain magical despite the efforts of some including myself. > > " Unless we are talking about workshop poets, who are trained to write the > expected & crystalline so as to avoid confusing the teacher, and we can > imagine how detrimental to a grade a confused and befuddled teacher can > be!" > > The "workshop poem/poet" is often used as charicature rather > than true characterization. I don't imagine that James Tate at > UMass Amherst chides his students for confusing or befuddling him. > The quality of the reader's experience of confusion/befuddlement is > probably what the better teachers try to speak to. I've done a workshop with Tate. He likes things from the left field actually, much more left than what he reflects in his writing. As an editor he has very strange tastes all over the poetic map. Is he above chiding a student for being confusing? Absolutely not. My barb at workshoppo was cheap perhaps, but there's something altogether true in that workshops do present a pressure to conform and the quality of any work created or evaluated in a workshop needs to be judged quickly and with a discrete value attached as a representation of that judgment. this is not to say this is true of all teachers and their workshops; i know of quite a few examples of exceptions, and i know quite a few university writing teachers that feel that I what I said is true. As a matter of fact I heard at least three admit these problems. Experienced teachers know that there are big limitations to the workshop. > I'll close with > something from Rukeyser's "Ballad of Orange and Grape": > > I ask him : How can we go on reading > and make sense out of what we read?-- > How can they write and believe what they're writing, > the young ones across the street, > while you go on pouring grape into ORANGE > and orange into the one marked GRAPE--? > (How are we going to believe what we read and we write and we > hear and we say and we do?) I ask him, how can we go on reading and make sense out of what we read? How can they write and believe what they're writing, the young ones across the street, while you go on pouring grape into ORANGE and orange into the one marked GRAPE--? (How are we going to believe what we read and we write and we hear and we say and we do?) what is the "one" is it a juice container? oh how to make sense of any poetry if it's poetry. but even this poem is challenged with that problem, *despite* its use of common language, despite its effort to communicate. And the only things that make this poetry are: (1) its relative poetic visual "gestalt," the way it looks like a poem with it's line breaks, and (2) the distant metaphor of fruit-pouring; it's lack of clarity provokes our imagination and requires us to engage with the poem, to make a leap towards understanding. And common language is just frozen common metaphor, i don't want those lemons in my tea. Has its positives and negatives. Don't like it too much in my tea, though. How are we going to believe what we read? How are we going to believe what we write? How are we going to believe what we hear? How are we going to believe what we say? How are we going to believe what we do? Properly in compressing these separate questions in one running line, the subject conveys her anxiety in her need to ask these separate questions. Fair enough. The answer is always based on faith. Your faith rests at least in part upon at least some minimum standard of communication for poetry. My faith rests elsewhere when it comes to poetry. I don't dare use poetry to answer these questions; at least here, in this excerpt, I don't get the sense that Rukeyser is either (though she may later on as I do not know the piece). I strongly feel that telling people the correct answers to these questions is to proselytize a particular and biased sort of faith & it seems we humans are not endowed with a faculty to answer them; instead we are given faith or skepticism, the gut-formed "yea we can, we just can" or "nay, no way in hell we can". I leave that work to the local clergy. As for language poetry, I cannot answer those questions, but I don't think langpo necessitates a crisis of faith in the language. there's always room for another music even if someone tells me the sound "isn't welcome here." i can think of a large number of things more dangerous to the English language than language poetry. like traffic accidents, for instance. Thanks, Patrick From antrobin at clipper.net Mon Feb 26 00:01:58 2001 From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 21:01:58 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons References: <20010225230926.006103@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Message-ID: <009601c09fb1$4224a720$7facefd8@0021936706> Very sad news. One of our best. Tony __ On the Death of A.R. Ammons Only this afternoon I wanted to write you a letter, seven days after your seventy-fifth to ask about your debt to romanticism, to Emerson, to Whitman, to ask what you meant in Gravelly Run when you urged the reader to "hoist your burdens," and I would be the fan who becomes a friend, and you would mentor me, a body animated by a straining mind, one who can't quite make like the others, who feels more at home with the hills, the animals and ideas of animals than the people with their crying and carrying on, with their expectations: this old (prematurely) skinbag can't comply with the demands of the city, but alas, never learned to be self-sufficient, can't catch a fish, or shoot a bear, or pin any significance upon a shooting star, except to say "it's pretty" and get on down the next dusty road, to stop and rest against the birch that looks like a physician in a lab coat, and hum an off-key song for what can't be embraced, for what I can't endure, and to know, as you've assured me, that death could never end it: From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Feb 26 00:05:03 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 00:05:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: Very Sad News: Archie Ammons Died This Morning References: <20010225230926.006103@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Message-ID: <00bf01c09fb1$aebca400$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Wendy...Any reminiscences you'd like to share? Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wendy Battin" To: Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 11:09 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] FW: Very Sad News: Archie Ammons Died This Morning > This is this second time I've heard this kind of news via internet first. > Archie was my first teacher. > > Wendy > > Patrick Herron wrote: > > > >Sadly to say, acclaimed poet A.R. Ammons passed away this morning. > > > >More on Ammons: > > > >Archie Randolph Ammons was born outside Whiteville, North Carolina, in 1926. > >He started writing poetry aboard a U. S. Navy destroyer escort in the South > >Pacific. After completing service in World War II, he attended Wake Forest > >University. He went on to work as a real estate salesman, an editor, and an > >executive in his father's glass company before he began teaching at Cornell > >University in 1964. Ammons is the author of nearly thirty books of poetry, > >among them Glare (W. W. Norton, 1997); Garbage (1993), which won the > >National Book Award and the Library of Congress's Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt > >National Prize for Poetry; A Coast of Trees (1981), which received the > >National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry; Sphere (1974), which received > >the Bollingen Prize; and Collected Poems 1951-1971 (1972), which won the > >National Book Award. His many other honors include the Academy's Wallace > >Stevens Award, the Poetry Society of America's Robert Frost Medal and the > >Ruth Lilly Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the > >MacArthur Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives > >in Ithaca, New York, where since 1971 he has been Goldwin Smith Professor of > >Poetry at Cornell. > > > >Patrick > > > >Patrick Herron > >patrick at proximate.org > >http://proximate.org/ > >getting close is what > >we're all about here! > > > >-----Original Message----- > >From: po_po_pr-owner at clarkson.edu [mailto:po_po_pr-owner at clarkson.edu]On > >Behalf Of gwg6 at cornell.edu > >Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 9:25 PM > >To: BRITISH-POETS at JISCMAIL.AC.UK > >Cc: subsubpoetics at listbot.com; po_po_pr at clarkson.edu > >Subject: Very Sad News: Archie Ammons Died This Morning > > > > > > > >To: English Department Faculty, Staff, Grads, Friends > > > >It is my sad duty to inform you that Archie Ammons died this morning. > >At the moment I have no details about a service, or calling hours. > >As soon as I have more information, I will let you know right away. > > > > > > > > > > > >_______________________________________________ > >New-Poetry mailing list > >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > ====================== > Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu > Contemporary American Poetry Archive http://capa.conncoll.edu > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Feb 26 00:35:32 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (OTIS RICHARDS) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 00:35:32 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry References: <20010225203327.019018@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Message-ID: <00d101c09fb5$f0d10120$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Wendy, Don't give up on the list yet. If it stays healthy, if we get a wider range of people posting, and wider range of subjects, it'll be possible to pick and choose threads, to follow the ones that interest us, to start threads that discuss individual poets or even individual poems, to ask questions instead of always feeling we to give (even pontificate) answers. We can even start threads that treat this world of poetry that we love with humor and a laid-back approach. And yeah, we can share tips on good magazines (I don't have any at the moment...sorry). We don't all have to follow every thread. I don't mean to be snide about pontificators. I've been one myself. I don't feel it's a bad quality. I like the threads that have challenged orthodoxies, and set forth the arguments of opposing schools. Just trying to encourage people who want to take a different approach. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wendy Battin" To: Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 8:33 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry > David, > Thanks for your diplomatic efforts here. I was happy to see that > Finnegan had started this list (thank you, James,) but was too busy to > follow it at first and filtered it all into a folder for future > reference. I've been looking through it today; seeing that the old dance > of mutual scorn was already in full swing, I was about to unsubscribe. > > But I asked a question on another list recently and got no very useful > response: Is there a literary magazine that you look forward to, read > cover to cover, otherwise rejoice in? Is there one you're especially > glad to publish in? It's a practical question for me; I was out of the > country for awhile and let all my subscriptions lapse, and I'm out in the > boonies of CT now and can no longer browse in good bookstores. The > responses I got elsewhere were all for old warhorses like Poetry, Georgia > Review, Gettysburg, etc., which surprised me; I don't object to them, > have published in them in the past, but can't say I'd await them with > bated breath either. (If any of them has gotten really solid in the last > few years while I wasn't looking, please let me know.) > > I realize the question is an invitation to more territory-marking > behavior, and perhaps there aren't any print publications right now that > rise above that. No laundry lists of correct mags, please, but real > loves and their qualities and their editors and content. > > Wendy > ====================== > Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu > Contemporary American Poetry Archive http://capa.conncoll.edu > > David Graham wrote: > > > > >2. Call me an optimist, but I would like it if this list were able to > >discuss competing aesthetics without too much wagon-circling, sniping, and > >name calling. I don't know if that's possible. > > > >Let me cite two posts from Bill Freind, though he's just convenient as > >example for something more widely prevalent, and which in my opinion had a > >lot to do with the decline of the old CAP-L. > > > >First: "What I find so frustrating about these exchanges is not > >the fact that langpo is critiqued, but that the definitions and metaphors > >for poetry are so reductive that they would throw out a good chunk of the > >most interesting art of the last two centuries -- if not longer." > > > >He has a very good point, I think. > > > >Second: "Because the better option would be to unproblematically celebrate > >the > >unified lyric self that lies at the very heart of capitalism? Or to > >resuscitate 19th century verse forms? Or write nostalgic poems about dead > >grandparents?" > > > >In which, I submit, Bill commits in reverse the reductiveness he decries in > >others. > > > >Bill's been notably civil about his arguments, unlike some, and I applaud > >him for that. But it seems to me that with such rhetorical flourishes, the > >vicious cycle continues, more and more subscribers get fed up and fall > >silent or leave, and we're soon back to square one. > > > >I made a similar complaint about CAP-L before it went belly-up, and > >interestingly, got a lot of back channel bravos, but not much of that > >spirit made it into public, unfortunately. It may be useless to try and > >influence the tone of something as inherently unruly as a discussion list, > >but since this is still a green and growing list, I thought I'd at least > >put my two cents out right from the start. > > > > > >David Graham > > > > > > > > > > > >__________________ > >David Graham > >grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > >__________________ > > > > > >_______________________________________________ > >New-Poetry mailing list > >New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > >http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From griffinbaker at home.com Mon Feb 26 02:35:19 2001 From: griffinbaker at home.com (Mark Baker) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 23:35:19 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Louise Gluck (umlaut over the 'u') References: <13.11eb8e1d.27cadbb1@aol.com> <007101c09f82$a0e68280$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: <3A9A0736.561CF631@home.com> The whole book's a feast for dead dad-and-clan poems (it's not enough to know how she feels; there's mom, aunt, sister, kid, sister's kid--they all feel bad). A whole book of poetry named after a cemetery--Gluck's signature comic touch!. A silly question: how does she (or the sad clan) get 'Glick' from an umlaut over the 'u'? Mark Baker theoldmole wrote: > Jim -- I don't ever like to generalize about subject matter, and I think > grandmas have as much place in poetry as urns, linnets or roadsters (good > lord -- it just occurs to me that I wrote one a couple of days ago - my > first grandma poem!) But this one of Gluck's (umlaut) does strike me as a > grandma poem, if we mean by that a poem where making us understand how the > poet feels about urn, linnet, roadster or grandma is more important than the > making of a poem. > > Tad > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: > To: > Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2001 5:05 PM > Subject: [New-Poetry] Louise Gluck (umlaut over the 'u') > > > The award announcement impelled me > > me to revisit Louise Gluck's poetry. _Ararat_ > > is my favorite collection out of the four I found > > on my bookcase. Her poetry is sparer than > > I'd remembered--not much embellishment in the > > language. But here's a section from "Celestial Music" > > that contains a strange, somewhat abstract, metaphor > > that segues abruptly into a very arresting simile: > > > > In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking > > on the same road, except it's winter now; > > she's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial > > music: > > look up, she says. When I look up, nothing. > > Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees > > like brides leaping up to a great height-- > > Then I'm afraid for her; I see her > > caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-- > > --- > > > > And here's a poem that fits in that "Grandmom" category > > that was recently taken to task on this list. This poem > > I find very effective with its simple prose-like virtues: > > > > Saints > > > > In our family, there were two saints, > > my aunt and my grandmother. > > But their lives were different. > > > > My grandmother's was tranquil, even at the end. > > She was like a person walking in calm waters; > > for some reason > > the sea couldn't bring itself to hurt her. > > When my aunt took the same path, > > the waves broke over her, they attacked her, > > which is how the Fates respond > > to a true spiritual nature. > > > > My grandmother was cautious, conservative: > > that's why the she escaped suffering. > > My aunt's escaped nothing; > > each time the sea retreats, someone she loves is taken away. > > > > Still, she won't experience > > the sea as evil. To her, it is what it is: > > where it touches land, it must turn to violence. > > > > --- > > Maybe a little echo of Jeffers in that ending. > > Finnegan > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > New-Poetry mailing list > > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 26 05:35:44 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 05:35:44 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry References: <3A99AD05.18DAA8F0@providence.edu> Message-ID: <3A9A3180.73D4@nut-n-but.net> Poetry is not a popular art. You don't have to do surveys to prove that. Consider the number of popular magazines devoted to music versus the popular magazines devoted to poetry. Movies. TV shows. Sports. Note how much airtime on television is devoted to poetry or discussions of poetry--even on that channel devoted to books. How much space in mass magazines is devoted to poetry? How many people who might discuss novels would discuss poetry? How many bookstores, especially outside big cities, have books of poetry prominently displayed in their windows? As for the four or five shelves a lot of bookstores have for poetry, I do think it's mostly out of a sense of duty--and for students, and because every town has a few people who buy poetry books. And they mostly stock books of poetry by dead poets and/or celebrities--and by the few well-known poets like Rita Dove. As for the web, we must remember that hits do not equal visitors, but visits. My own experience of a couple of years on the web is that few visit poetry sites except those with work at them. The problem with web figures, too, is that it's not like buyers of small magazines who have to be assumed serious; most web visitors are no more interested in poetry than people in bookstores who glance at the stuff on the poetry shelves once in a while. --Bob G. From mbales at cybergate.net Mon Feb 26 06:36:16 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 06:36:16 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry In-Reply-To: <20010225225709.009483@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> References: Message-ID: > What do they read? mostly professional, college-educated, over > 45, with half million dollar houses and quarter million dollar > household incomes and whose children have graduated college. > But they don't read poetry.<< > ... I don't think the demographic you're describing has ever been > much of an audience for poetry.<< A) What is the demographic for poetry, then? B) Is dominating its demographic the criterion for "success" for poetry? mbales at cybergate.net From mbales at cybergate.net Mon Feb 26 06:36:15 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 06:36:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry In-Reply-To: <3A9A0013.79121B03@alsopreview.com> Message-ID: > What of the countless smaller magazines that sell regularly?<< Countless? Sell? Really? In a Greater Metropolitan Area of nearly three million people the local poets' group, funded by the state arts council and other grants and incomes for a budget of about $70,000 a year, has a donor list of about 300 subscribers who'll give $10 a year to get a weekly list of almost all the poetry-related events going on within the city (and all the ones whose sponsors make the deadline), and a thousand more who don't write back to say "Stop sending me that list for free". So, even counting all of those subscribers as "interested in poetry", that's 1300 out of 3,000,000. The weekly poetry workshop sponsored by this organization, on-going for 25 continuous years now, attracts the staggering total of between 12 and 20 people, mostly the same people, each week. Would you say that that's success? > What of > the visitors to the on-line poetry sites? The Alsop Review gets over a > thousand unique visitors a day (very small potatoes in light of some > other independent e-zines I could mention - not including the "big > boys", Poets & Writers and such) Where do *they* come from?<< Where indeed? Are you saying that your thousand unique visitors are different from the thousand the previous day or only unique to the day? Is it the same thousand people coming back each day, in other words, or are there 365,000 different people a year viewing the Alsop site? Irrespective of who they are, how long does each one stay? What does each one look at? > I think it's hard if not well-nigh impossible to come up with > acceptable demographics - there aren't any. But people do buy poetry - > and read it. The evidence is everywhere.<< Perhaps we have a standards of evidence problem, here. Just how many books of poetry are sold, total, in a year? Wasn't Ms Battin involved for a while in a project that acquired unsold poetry texts in order to save them from the pulper? Perhaps she can give us some insight into how many books of poetry go *unsold* each year, and go "out of print" because the publisher simply doesn't want to pay inventory costs and taxes on an unwanted product? mbales at cybergate.net From trbell at home.com Mon Feb 26 06:10:47 2001 From: trbell at home.com (trbell at home.com) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 05:10:47 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Metaphor/Metonym for Health Message-ID: <030301c09fe4$c5f68040$737c0218@ruthfd1.tn.home.com> Excuse cross-posting: Alan Sondheim's "Cancer, Mourning, and Loss" has been added to Metaphor/Metonym for Health for February as it came to me through the internet. It has been edited to be read as it deserves to be read rather than for ease of reading and linking. http://trbell.tripod.com/metaphor/sond.htm The full text is available from Alan. For the next issue I am seeking work that explores _Altered egos: how the brain creates the self_ and self-healing and repair and it would be nice if it came from a masculine perspective for a change. tom bell -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Mon Feb 26 09:25:15 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 09:25:15 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: Very Sad News: Archie Ammons Died This Morning References: <20010225230926.006103@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> <00bf01c09fb1$aebca400$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: <002001c09fff$f1347e40$f119f7a5@compaqcomputer> Archie was my teacher, too. He was an amazing poet and an amazing man, generous with his time, his knowledge, his friendship. What struck me most strongly about him was the way he combined a really odd and original brilliance--and he could absolutely dazzle you with an offhand remark--with a comic and unpretentious appreciation of himself and the height to which he'd risen. He grew up on a farm in North Carolina during the Depression. And in his gait, his way of talking, his way of taking the world, you never forgot that. I remember one time walking by the graduate library at Cornell with him and Archie saying, mischievously, "They oughta just shut that thing down and sell hot dogs out of it." He was a great reader, of course, would quote Chaucer to you or Dante or Wordsworth without warning. (And he could be acidic about famous poets he didn't like. He'd read a passage from Stevens and point out all the weak verbs, "is, is, is, was, was, was, like a bunch of fuckin' bees buzzing around in there.") But he always seemed connected to a world larger than academia. "The problem with academia," he once told me, "is that everyone is always explaining things. Nothing is allowed to go uninterpreted. Nothing is allowed to remain mysterious. There's always this filmy guaze of words between you and the rest of the world." But he loved Cornell and he was, I'm sure, the most beloved teacher on that campus. I could go on and on. There's no poet I would have rather known and learned from than Archie. We're all lucky, I think, that he left us so much. John Brehm From gmcvay at patriot.net Mon Feb 26 09:25:55 2001 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 09:25:55 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Louise Gluck (umlaut over the 'u') In-Reply-To: <3A9A0736.561CF631@home.com> Message-ID: >>>A silly question: how does she (or the sad clan) get 'Glick' from an umlaut over the 'u'? Mark, I've pondered that myself and my best guess is it's what non-deutschophiles hear from umlaut-u. I know whenever I pronounce it with the umlaut, my husband assumes I've burped. Gwyn-rhymes-with-skin From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Feb 26 09:30:48 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 09:30:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Karl Marx has left the building In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Sat, 24 Feb 2001, Marcus Bales wrote: [snip] > But if language poetry is poetry then surely there is no bar to > advertising being poetry! Good heavens, man! I've read no small > amount of language poetry and if THAT is poetry then *anything* is > poetry -- including advertising. I don't have much of a comment about this passage. I just thought this little undies-in-a-twist expression of Victorian ("Good heavens, man!") cultural horror -- preferably spoken with a neat Scotch in the hand and one's manservant close by for a refill -- deserved to be reposted. I know, I know, let's be nice. As for the tone of this list, I neither expect nor desire consensus. But like Patrick, I'm happy to be corrected if need be. Cheers, David ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Kellogg Assistant Director kellogg at acpub.duke.edu University Writing Program (919) 660-4357 Duke University FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/ From shaden at ulster.net Mon Feb 26 09:38:53 2001 From: shaden at ulster.net (Shari Doherty) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 09:38:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] favorite pubs Message-ID: <4.3.0.20010226091617.00a9f730@pop.ulster.net> I can't say there's anything I wait for with bated breath, but there are some things I'm always happy to see. I'm especially fond of local endeavors and rooting for people I'm likely to bump into at the video shop. Around here(Mid-Hudson Valley) that would include HUNGER MAGAZINE, which also pulls in some well-known figures, e.g., Baraka, Eshelman(in fact, I ran into the publisher, J.J. Blickstein, at the bakery the other day and he showed me Eshelman's new book that he's bringing out. Will buy.). Then there's a funkier labor of love, THE TINKER, put out by my ex-office mate that the local kids scarf up. Bradley Strahan--VISIONS and BLACK BUZZARD REVIEW--is a really responsible editor who responds consistently quickly, and the quality is consistently good, and, I think, egalitarian. VISIONS contains a section of translations from one language each issue(Celtic, Icelandic, Bulgarian, etc.). Synchronously, while butting heads with students resistant to trying their hands at forms, or ever formal aspects of poetry(they feel so betrayed when they realize that I might not be so cool), I came across a villanelle called "Formalist Highway" that repeats the line "formalists are so fucking doctrinaire." Shared that one with them. And it's always a pleasant surprise when FREE LUNCH pops up in the mailbox. Dennis Doherty From gray at grayjacobik.com Sun Feb 25 09:40:39 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 09:40:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Robert Hass' "An Unnamed Flowing:The Cultures ofAmerican Poetry" References: Message-ID: <046a01c0a004$3d8da420$1c293ccc@emilydickenson> Thanks, David for your courteous reply. It's precisely because I too was looking forward to a follow-up to "Twentieth Century Pleasures" that I ordered the book. Perhaps it is that the book's not written or ready . . . I hope it's not a publication battle or that there's any kind of crisis in Hass's life. Since I'm always interested to see how any one critic or poet/critic struggles to get a handle on the multiplivocalities, multivalances, and over-whelmingness of the scene of contempoary poetry, I can see now that my curiosity at what's behind this news comes from an ever-longing for more guidence on this front. Gray Jacobik ----- Original Message ----- From: David Graham To: Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2001 3:59 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Robert Hass' "An Unnamed Flowing:The Cultures ofAmerican Poetry" > Gray, I noticed that that book was announced at least a year ago, probably > longer, as being forthcoming. Since it never forthcame, I finally wrote to > the publisher and asked what was up, and was told it was delayed, but would > be published in due course. This was sometime last summer. > > Sorry to hear it was cancelled. Writer's block for Robert Hass? I've been > eagerly awaiting a follow-up to *Twentieth Century Pleasures* for a long > time--16 or 17 years, in fact. > > David Graham > > > > > >Just want to say that I'm enjoying the discussion on this list very > >much and appreciate the many generous contributions so far . . . .and, > >away for a week, I'm still working through the huge backlog of "new > >poetry" posts.. > > > >The above book was advertized (APR, AWP, Poets&Writers) and I ordered > >a copy in advance of publication. A week ago I received the following > >message from Amazon.com: > > > >"We are sorry to report that the release of the following item [Hass's > >book] has been cancelled. Though we had expected to be able to sent > >this item to you, we've since found that it will not be released after > >all . . . " > > > >"not released at all"? Does anyone know the story? > > > >Gray Jacobik > > > > > > __________________ > David Graham > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu > __________________ > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From gray at grayjacobik.com Mon Feb 26 10:14:08 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 10:14:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What we talk about when we talk about poetry Message-ID: <04b401c0a006$c4ae7770$1c293ccc@emilydickenson> Wendy, and others interested in this topic -- I subscribe to, look forward to and read Third Coast, a publication produced by the Department of English, Western Michigan University. The poetry is different from that published in the major journals such as Gettysburg, Georgia, Kenyon, Poetry (which I also subscribe to) -- the writers seem to be in their 20s and 30s (I'm guessing based on comments in the Contributors notes) and there seems to be a definite aesthetic at play. Poems tend to be mosaic, disjunctive, full of linguistic play, disruptive narrative, mixed modes, etc., but not at the far extreme, not so disjunctive such that I feel taxed to the degree of weariness. I almost always end up writing a poem or two myself as a consequence of reading through an issue -- no wonder I look forward to it. To subscribe: $11 annually, $6 for a sample: Third Coast Department of English Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan 49008-5092 Current poetry editors are Karen Carcia, James D'Agostino, and Alexander Long (editors seem to be creative writing students -- there is a creative Ph.D. program here, so the editors change frequently). I'd characterize Third Coast as lively and interesting, not average. Gray Jacobik From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Sun Feb 25 23:35:58 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 22:35:58 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Eve's apple, not Message-ID: Bob Cobb, I did not write the following sentence which you have attributed to me. I don't know who did. "Paul Lake wrote: Even did not sully language when she placed the apple between her teeth." Paul Lake From jpl3 at lehigh.edu Mon Feb 26 10:48:53 2001 From: jpl3 at lehigh.edu (Joe Lucia) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 10:48:53 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts References: <4.3.0.20010226091617.00a9f730@pop.ulster.net> Message-ID: <3A9A7AE5.2E036DC@lehigh.edu> 1) I think this list has actually been pretty good thus far, and not just because I've felt comfortable posting to it. I don't think the tone has been at all acrimonious -- contentious, sure, but not inflammatory or inflamed. Of course, more voices would always be good. Too many lists turn into in-jokey monologue contests. Jordan's recent "escape" nothwithstanding, what goes on over at the "subsub" list if often mind-numbingly self-indulgent, though there are occasional really brilliant things said. But the saying only comes from a few, and that itself is problematic. I think that the promise of this list is that it appears that it will be more open. I hope it remains active. 2) One of the great challenges to American poetry at this moment, I think, is for us to find civil ways to talk about competing poetics, about the character and fate of the work we do with language. That is no simple task, and there's a lot of emotional / libidinal investment in the stances we take, so people quite naturally get upset when other don't see the value system of poetry the way they do -- especially when (most often the case) those _other_ perspectives implicitly question or critique one's own investments. 3) If L-po (I almost wrote Alpo, and not as a dismissive joke, since I'm someone whose own work has profited by careful attention to L-po though my range of interests range well beyond that narrow frame), OK, so if L-po has served no other function it has assumed significant value, regardless of the artistic success or failure of the work gathered under that awkward rubric, as a heuristic device for clarifying assumptions and predilections with regard to the practice of poetry. And in part that's what some of the early practitioners of L-po set out to do. The fact that some 20 years later there's still heated talk about this means that they were on to something, I think. 4) Poetry s important to people who care for poetry. It's that simple. If you invest something in it, it accrues personal value. Let's face it: in many ways, poetry is a vestigial art form. For decades now, pop songs have done for most people what love poems, protest poems, identity-formation poems, any-kind-of-thing-you-want-to-name poems once did for what was always a small sample of our American population; Whitman's bardic yawp always sound rather lonely. Pop songs work with different means and to different ends than lyric poetry, but they do seem to have become the most generally adequate vehicle for the cultural statement of basic emotional states. And in some ways, because of this change, poetry has been thrown back upon investigating its character and value as an expressive practice. I personally don't feel a need to defend poetry or laments its lack of audience. If we care for it and pass it along to those who will later share that care, it will survive where and as it needs to survive. To my mind, crusades to bring poetry to the masses, who neither want nor understand it, are always doomed to reduce poetry to the sort of thing that can be posted on billboards and subway signs. I don' think that statement is elitist, because I'm not condescending to those who have no hunger for what poetry offers. It's just the way it is. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: jpl3.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 337 bytes Desc: Card for Joe Lucia URL: From DICK at watson.ibm.com Mon Feb 26 10:44:58 2001 From: DICK at watson.ibm.com (DICK at watson.ibm.com) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 01 10:44:58 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] A.R. Ammons Message-ID: <200102261559.KAA36780@sp1n189at0.watson.ibm.com> I went to my first poetry workshop 12 or so years ago one summer week at Cornell. The leader brought Archie in for one session. Archie spoke to us, listened to us and responded, and read to us. It was wonderful to experience his intelligence and grace. I heard him read again some years later at the 92nd St. Y, one of the few public readings he gave, I understand. He was perhaps the best reader I've ever heard, and I've heard very very many. His timing was superb. I wrote one of my first poems after hearing him read, and had the nerve to send it to him. He responded to me in a very gracious note which I cherish. Here is the poem. For A. R. Ammons Twisting half-eights Along warm currents The hawk times his dive To his gopher's rise And lives another day. The cheetah's dash, The gazelle's smoother scamper: Start time is all To decide the winner's fate. Man's timings are less essential I think. An off-swing may sting thumbs and elbows. Coming not together Is not bad. .sp And yet when I hear his voice, Timbre, pitch, and rhythms Singing his poem's sense He touches the sweet spot of my soul. Richard From fmm1 at cornell.edu Mon Feb 26 11:01:51 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 11:01:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons In-Reply-To: <002001c09fff$f1347e40$f119f7a5@compaqcomputer> References: <20010225230926.006103@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> <00bf01c09fb1$aebca400$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010226102531.00a73b60@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Just echoing John Brehm's appreciation of Archie. I wasn't a student of his, but got to know him after I'd reviewed The Really Short Poems and Garbage. What always impressed me -- in this age of connections, networking, institutionalized creativity, or whatever you call the marketing strategies and personal favor-giving/granting by which poets promote themselves -- is that Archie essentially earned his reputation through the force of his poetry alone. I remember once a few years ago someone asking him "Who did you hang out with? Who was in your clique?" Archie thought for a while and said "Why, nobody, I guess." He mentioned visiting Williams a few times in New Jersey, having brief acquaintances with Levertov and John Logan, but there was no school (a la Langpo, New York School, Beats, Confessionals, etc.) or movement that served as a vehicle for his work, no Iowa Writer's Workshop Class of '65. He chose to live outside of poetry's social web (we like to call Ithaca, NY "centrally isolated") and almost never gave public readings. He loved to arrive on campus every morning before eight, grab some coffee and a muffin, and kept his door open to anyone who felt like dropping by and saying hello. Even after his health declined and he stopped formally teaching classes a couple of years ago, he would conduct small impromtu workshops with students, friends, visitors -- whoever asked his opinion. His absence leaves a huge hole in upstate NY today, a palpable dimming. I'm writing this from the graduate library John mentions, within sight of Goldwin Smith Hall. While we're not planning to sell hot dogs any time soon, we are opening a small cafe/coffee bar in the former periodical room next month. I'm only sorry that Archie won't be here to say, with a wry smile "Looks like they're finally getting the message." -- Fred Muratori At 09:25 AM 2/26/01 -0500, you wrote: >Archie was my teacher, too. He was an amazing poet and an amazing man, >generous with his time, his knowledge, his friendship. What struck me most >strongly about him was the way he combined a really odd and original >brilliance--and he could absolutely dazzle you with an offhand remark--with >a comic and unpretentious appreciation of himself and the height to which >he'd risen. He grew up on a farm in North Carolina during the Depression. >And in his gait, his way of talking, his way of taking the world, you never >forgot that. I remember one time walking by the graduate library at Cornell >with him and Archie saying, mischievously, "They oughta just shut that thing >down and sell hot dogs out of it." He was a great reader, of course, would >quote Chaucer to you or Dante or Wordsworth without warning. (And he could >be acidic about famous poets he didn't like. He'd read a passage from >Stevens and point out all the weak verbs, "is, is, is, was, was, was, like a >bunch of fuckin' bees buzzing around in there.") But he always seemed >connected to a world larger than academia. "The problem with academia," he >once told me, "is that everyone is always explaining things. Nothing is >allowed to go uninterpreted. Nothing is allowed to remain mysterious. >There's always this filmy guaze of words between you and the rest of the >world." But he loved Cornell and he was, I'm sure, the most beloved teacher >on that campus. I could go on and on. There's no poet I would have rather >known and learned from than Archie. We're all lucky, I think, that he left >us so much. > >John Brehm ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important." - John Ashbery From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 26 11:23:57 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 07:23:57 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry Message-ID: I would agree with these very good sentiments....and add that the more people who leave, the less likely we are to have diverse viewpoints or come up with different discussion topics. Since the 2 sides on the langpo debate seem unable to agree, perhaps the thread could be clearly marked with "langpo debate" for those who don't want to follow it, and to make it easier for those who do. To those who are thinking of unsubscribing -- Why not try to start a new topic, or join in a different discussion? Don't go, not just yet. Moira Russell Seattle, WA >Wendy, >Don't give up on the list yet. If it stays healthy, if we get a wider range >of people posting, and wider range of subjects, it'll be possible to pick >and choose threads, to follow the ones that interest us, to start threads >that discuss individual poets or even individual poems, to ask questions >instead of always feeling we to give (even pontificate) answers. We can >even start threads that treat this world of poetry that we love with humor >and a laid-back approach. And yeah, we can share tips on good magazines (I >don't have any at the moment...sorry). We don't all have to follow every >thread. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 26 11:27:28 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 07:27:28 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry Message-ID: Bob Grumman wrote: >Poetry is not a popular art. You don't have to do >surveys to prove that. Not to sound rude, but I'm getting a little tired of the arguments over whether or not poetry is popular/how popular it is. It's popular _here,_ so why not discuss some of the aspects we like instead of haggling over sales figures and bookstore shelf space? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 26 11:30:54 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 07:30:54 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Karl Marx has left the building Message-ID: David Kellogg wrote: >On Sat, 24 Feb 2001, Marcus Bales wrote: > > But if language poetry is poetry then surely there is no bar to > > advertising being poetry! Good heavens, man! I've read no small > > amount of language poetry and if THAT is poetry then *anything* is > > poetry -- including advertising. >I don't have much of a comment about this passage. I just thought this >little undies-in-a-twist expression of Victorian ("Good heavens, man!") >cultural horror -- preferably spoken with a neat Scotch in the hand and >one's manservant close by for a refill -- deserved to be reposted. I think there's a difference between profitable disagreement and discussion (which can certainly be heated), and personal slamming, which doesn't add anything to the discussion and is likely to drive more people off the list. Is this kind of personal attack really necessary in an argument? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 26 11:43:12 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 07:43:12 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts Message-ID: Thank you, Joe, for your very interesting post. This paragraph reminded me of something: >To my mind, crusades to bring poetry >to the masses, who neither want nor understand it, are always doomed to >reduce poetry to the sort of thing that can be posted on billboards and >subway signs. I don' think that statement is elitist, because I'm not >condescending to those who have no hunger for what poetry offers. It's >just the way it is. Does anyone know whatever happened to Brodsky's plan to have a book of poetry in every hotel room (I _think_ that's what it was), like the Gideon Bible? Does anyone remember this particular crusade? There was an article in a magazine somewhat recently (it may have been the "New Yorker") questioning how much _good_ having poetry in, say, New York City public buses does -- are people who read a Richard Wilbur poem on the bus going to go out and then buy a book of his poems? OTOH, I have always thought poems about jobs (Philip Levin, L.E. Sissman, off the top of my head) would be welcome additions to commuter buses. Isn't the official job of the Poet Laureate nowadays more or less to try to spread poetry to the masses? And what do people think about there having been no inaugural poet this year? Just a few questions, not setting up any strawmen or traps, just wondering if there will be a few answers. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From tadrichards at prodigy.net Mon Feb 26 11:42:57 2001 From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 11:42:57 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry References: Message-ID: <01e901c0a013$2c33f800$6501a8c0@hvc.rr.com> Moira -- thanks for articulating so well what I was thinking. Tad ----- Original Message ----- From: "Moira Russell" To: Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 11:27 AM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry > Bob Grumman wrote: > > >Poetry is not a popular art. You don't have to do > >surveys to prove that. > > Not to sound rude, but I'm getting a little tired of the arguments over > whether or not poetry is popular/how popular it is. It's popular _here,_ so > why not discuss some of the aspects we like instead of haggling over sales > figures and bookstore shelf space? > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Feb 26 12:13:39 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 11:13:39 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons Message-ID: I love to see the Ammons reminiscences. At my rapidly advancing age, I've managed to see in person just about all the poets from that generation that I wish to--but never Ammons, alas, though he's pretty good on tape. Many years ago James Tate told me about giving a reading at Cornell, which he was delighted to see that Ammons attended. Afterward, ARA remarked to him, "you know, this is the first night in 8 years I haven't tucked my son into bed." Tate was duly flattered, of course, though he did remark "now *there's* a man lives a dangerous life!" When I was in grad school in the late 70s, I once asked Tate who he thought were likely to be the major poets of our time, and his reply was Ashbery and Ammons. I wouldn't have guessed his high opinion of Ammons, at least at that point. One of the great things about Ammons's work is its abundance. That's perhaps one of its flaws, too, or at least a daunting factor. But I love to discover or re-discover little lyrical gems as I wander about the outskirts, beyond the usual anthology set-pieces. He's one of those poets, like Stevens or Williams, whose weaker efforts are genuinely fun to read. In fact, I love some of his little throw-aways very much, and generally have not responded too heartily to his book-length poems. For me the best of Ammons is in the shorter work, from the brief nature lyrics on up to the Tintern-Abbey-length meditations. One of my favorites is from *Sumerian Vistas*. I take it this one is a comment on his own profligacy, among other things, couched in a typically self-deprecating, strange humor:: Tertiaries A starving man dreams of more than enough and the thirsty man does not conceive a drop: in a roomy, almost flawless nothingness, I've made my abundance and, look, I still have next to nothing, heaps of verbal glitterment, rushes of feeling overrushing feeling: you, well-founded in yourselves, have no need of my show: keep away from it, it folds: but how almost a true shower illusion is for me and others of us, the perishing: we enter into word-rain and so closely think we live, we nearly live. ----------------------------------------------------- And here's what I would call one of his throw-aways, also from *Sumerian Vistas*, my favorite single volume. You could say it's not about much of anything, just a blurt of description, one of his endless string of metaphysical weather reports. But what relish in the describing, what palpable pleasure in mouthing the sounds, what a quirky, humorous tone: Abstinence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder Midnight moonlight chisels the eaves' icicles blue but it's so parched cold and late, the moon shriveled sharp, the light splits into a dozen dazzles per eaves-tooth-- the raccoon waggles through the hedge tunnel and on off gritty over the glittery snow crust checking out the garbage routes, his head down in a trance of cold, lacking scent: it's time to give the spectral magic up, let the eaves' jewel-work go to waste: it's into Sunday morning and not a can is out. ----------------------------------------------------- David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From ffff at u.washington.edu Mon Feb 26 12:17:39 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 09:17:39 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry In-Reply-To: <3A9A0013.79121B03@alsopreview.com> Message-ID: Thanks to everyone discussing this--I appreciate the comments made by people so far, in so far as I'm interested in the topic from a librarian's perspective. I don't expect my research to matter one way or the other to anyone other than librarians (and even here I'm not so sure, except where collection development is concerned), but what I'm doing is taking Gioia's subculture and the whole no one reads poetry thing, and putting it into a statement Pinsky made at an ALA convention, while poet laureate,: "the ideal setting for poetry is the public library." So I'm collecting quantitative and qualitative data in Washington State public libraries on the demand of contemporary poetry by library users, why people use it, etc. I believe that people who can't afford to "buy" books are indeed utilizing the library, but I'll have to wait 'till National poetry month is over to put everything together. I'd be interested in comments about Pinsky's statement, if anyone has any. Also, Hall's "Death to the Death" (the essay) criticizes Epstein's "Who killed poetry." Gioia in "can poetry matter" states that "No recent essay (Epstein) on American poetry has generated so many immediate responses in literary journals"--but fails to cite any of these responses. Can anyone point me to anymore of these articles? Thanks in advance, Debbie Dale Library science U of Wash From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Mon Feb 26 12:40:27 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 09:40:27 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts Message-ID: <20010226174028.A9F1536F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 26 12:45:24 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 08:45:24 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Brief Comments on Poetics by Louise Gluck Message-ID: Was snooping around on the Net looking for information on Glick, and rna across these brief excerpts from some of her essays. Since we've been tossing her name around a bit, I thought it would be interesting to pass them on -- I'm NOT agreeing, or even disagreeing, with what she says here; just thought it would be interesting and perhaps enlightening to read even these brief excerpts. I heard Gluck read at the University of Iowa from the then-unpublished "Wild Iris" in about 1992. What we mainly noticed was she tends to read almost in a _monotone,_ very little inflection or emotion, almost no variation of tone, no sense of different speakers at all (although they were clearly there in the poems). After a while, once you began to get used to it, this method of reading did allow you to focus a lot more on the _words_ rather than the persona, face, dress, etc., of the poet. I feel about her poetry the way I do about a lot of modern poetry -- there are a lot of startling, even genius-type, images and turns of phrase, but after a while the first-person extremely subjective voice gets monotonous and with the lack of formal structures, every poem starts to sound the same. (I know, we're drifting back into the Beirut of poetry again....but it just strikes me that without forms, it seems a lot of poets are forced to find one or two modes of expression and just write within them, rather than write a lot of varied poetry.) "Wild Iris" is probably my "favorite" of her books (it's the only one I bought a copy of) but I'm not sure how much of that is because of the personal connection. I do have, as a bookmark for that book, the envelope I scribbled a lot of phrases on from the reading. Moira Russell Seattle, WA *** The axiom is that the mark of poetic intelligence or vocation is passion for language, which is thought to mean delirious response to language?s smallest communicative unit: to the word. The poet is supposed to be the person who can?t get enough of words like "incarnadine." This was not my experience. From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 26 13:01:10 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 09:01:10 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts Message-ID: We do indeed have a program in Seattle ("the poetry buses") where original poetry submitted to the Metro program by Northwest residents is "published" in the places where advertisements usually go. Such a form pretty much demands the poetry be "transparent," very short, and it usually seems to have themes connected to travel. No langpo. No formalism neither. The trouble is, I usually don't see anyone looking up to read the poetry; most commuters are sunk in their headphone-enhanced trances communing with magazines, newspapers, books, textbooks, etc. At least if you are going to put poetry in the New York City subways, there is a chance people (standing commuters at least) will be eye-level with it. I'd agree with an earlier poster (sorry, I forgot your name) that a lot of the uses popular poetry used to serve have been taken over by pop music/rock'n'roll/rap. That's where a lot of the energy and personal connection to poetry people used to feel seemed to go. _I_ first encountered a lot of poetry through one of those Golden Poetry or Golden Treasures Anthologies, where I encountered "The Old Oaken Bucket" and "The Hound of Heaven" and "The Face on the Bar-Room Floor" and "Excelsior" (the last 3 of which I used to be able to melodramatically recite). I wolfed up everything in it right along with my father's 2 prized copies of Yeats' complete poems (this was _before_ the Ellman versions) and the complete Tennyson (both of which I stole). This did give me at least a little window into the world which had stopped existing just a bit before I came into the picture -- where people could recite "Crossing the Bar" and "If" and "Charge of the Light Brigade" and possibly even "Evangeline," etc. etc. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 26 13:02:53 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 09:02:53 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts Message-ID: I forgot to mention this to Bob in my earlier post: my father taught me many of the Burma-Shave jingles and indeed I had a little book of them when a child (now lost). Hence the REAL roots of my interest in formalism, no doubt. I do not think advertising (even rhymed witty advertising) qualifies as poetry though. No doubt you disagree. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 26 13:13:05 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 09:13:05 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry Message-ID: What a nice project to find going on right at my own University (so to speak; I don't attend or teach, just work there). I may be in the minority on this, since I don't do as much reviewing as some on the list, but I rarely buy a book of contemporary poetry unless it's on sale or unless I know it's a book I'm really going to like -- I just can't afford it. If I hear about someone I may like, even if it's a really glowing recommendation, I nearly _always_ check out the library book first; then, if I really like it, I buy it. Although then there are those curiosities you just stumble on at library sales, like when I bought a volume by e. e. cummings' daughter for a buck. What about a mini-survey on the list to determine how many people cruise the library for new poetry? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Feb 26 13:41:59 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 13:41:59 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Karl Marx has left the building References: Message-ID: <3A9AA377.A26BBA55@duke.edu> Moira Russell wrote: > David Kellogg wrote: > > >On Sat, 24 Feb 2001, Marcus Bales wrote: > > > > But if language poetry is poetry then surely there is no bar to > > > advertising being poetry! Good heavens, man! I've read no small > > > amount of language poetry and if THAT is poetry then *anything* is > > > poetry -- including advertising. > > >I don't have much of a comment about this passage. I just thought this > >little undies-in-a-twist expression of Victorian ("Good heavens, man!") > >cultural horror -- preferably spoken with a neat Scotch in the hand and > >one's manservant close by for a refill -- deserved to be reposted. > > I think there's a difference between profitable disagreement and discussion > (which can certainly be heated), and personal slamming, which doesn't add > anything to the discussion and is likely to drive more people off the list. > Is this kind of personal attack really necessary in an argument? Moira, I'm sorry my intent wasn't clear. I didn't post this as a personal attack but rather an observation on some aspects of the rhetoric of cultural disgust. Nevertheless, if you or anyone else viewed it as _ad hominem_, I apologize. David Kellogg Assistant Director, University Writing Program Duke University (919) 660-4357; FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg From barr at mail.rochester.edu Mon Feb 26 13:55:24 2001 From: barr at mail.rochester.edu (Brandon Barr) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 13:55:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Responses to Epstein In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: There were a lot of responses in the AWP Chronicle issue in which it was republished (21.4), I believe. As far as I can tell, Gioia was the editor, so that might explain his awareness of "immediate responses." I don't have the issue in front of me (just the index from the AWP), but I believe responses came from a variety of working poets and critcs--Creeley, Simic, Hall, Hirsch, Kumin, Pinsky, et. al. Try looking in that issue and maybe the next few after it.... Brandon Barr barr at mail.rochester.edu >Also, Hall's "Death to the Death" (the essay) criticizes >Epstein's "Who killed poetry." Gioia in "can poetry matter" states that >"No recent essay (Epstein) on American poetry has generated so many >immediate responses in literary journals"--but fails to cite any of these >responses. Can anyone point me to anymore of these articles? >Thanks in advance, > >Debbie Dale >Library science From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Mon Feb 26 14:03:24 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 11:03:24 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts Message-ID: <20010226190324.7564636F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From moira_russell at hotmail.com Mon Feb 26 14:12:02 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 10:12:02 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Karl Marx has left the building Message-ID: David Kellogg wrote: >Moira, >I'm sorry my intent wasn't clear. I didn't post this as a personal attack >but rather an observation on some aspects of the rhetoric of cultural >disgust. Nevertheless, if you or anyone else viewed it as _ad hominem_, I >apologize. Ah. Whups....sorry about that. (The rhetoric of cultural disgust. I suppose that field would be 99.99/100s% the study of the Dunciad?) Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Mon Feb 26 14:44:01 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 14:44:01 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts References: <4.3.0.20010226091617.00a9f730@pop.ulster.net> <3A9A7AE5.2E036DC@lehigh.edu> Message-ID: <004b01c0a02c$79d6cf60$5032f7a5@compaqcomputer> Joe, I agree that campaigns to get folks interested in poetry are embarassing. Poetry, more perhaps than any other art, has to be written and approached with a passion, and in many ways, I think, a privacy, that needs no encouragment. As Frank O'Hara once said, "If people don't need poetry, bully for them," though I think W.C. Williams' statement is also true: "People die every day for lack of what is found there." John Brehm From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 26 14:43:35 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 14:43:35 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts Message-ID: <74.81e299e.27cc0be7@cs.com> In a message dated 2/26/01 10:44:08 AM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > Isn't the official job of the Poet > Laureate nowadays more or less to try to spread poetry to the masses? I think Pinsky did a good job with this. I doubt that Kunitz will be able to do anything of the sort. And > what do people think about there having been no inaugural poet this year? A custom more honored in the breach than the observance. > From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 26 14:45:50 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 14:45:50 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts Message-ID: <6e.81d599b.27cc0c6e@cs.com> In a message dated 2/26/01 11:41:17 AM Central Standard Time, CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com writes: > A lot of people, for better or worse, cut their poetic teeth while traveling > the highways and by-ways that featured the _Burma_Shave_ signs. That was > something that brought poetry to the masses, ending about the time of Lady > Bird's "Highway Beautification" program. On this subject, a friend of mine just showed me a book (c. 1970) that collects all of the Burma Shave jingles. Long out of print, though. From halvard at earthlink.net Mon Feb 26 15:05:25 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 15:05:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts In-Reply-To: <6e.81d599b.27cc0c6e@cs.com> Message-ID: Burma Shave signs were a big chunk of reading matter for me (along with X miles to Wall Drug) when my family started traveling west back when I was a kid. There's a hefty bunch of Burma Shave jingles at http://www0.delphi.com/callahan/wall/bs/burma_shave01.html Hal "You are not thinking. You are merely are merely being logical." --Niels Bohr to Albert Einstein Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > > A lot of people, for better or worse, cut their poetic teeth while > traveling > > the highways and by-ways that featured the _Burma_Shave_ signs. That was > > something that brought poetry to the masses, ending about the time of Lady > > Bird's "Highway Beautification" program. > > On this subject, a friend of mine just showed me a book (c. 1970) that > collects all of the Burma Shave jingles. Long out of print, though. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Mon Feb 26 15:43:06 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 12:43:06 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Eve's apple, not Message-ID: <20010226204306.97E6836F9@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From languagethief at yahoo.com Mon Feb 26 15:48:57 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 12:48:57 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010226204857.90078.qmail@web12201.mail.yahoo.com> Moira - I'm enjoying your reminiscences. Someone said here, earlier in this discussion, asked why we're arguing so much about how many people care about poetry, when one thing that's clear is, we all care about it. And I'd like to hear more. What's the early experience of poetry that makes a Bill Freind, or a Gray Jakobik, or a Ron Silliman, or a Moira Russell, or a Dennis Doherty? Is there something in what poetry gave us that we can give back, or that we can reach others with? Tad --- Moira Russell wrote: > I forgot to mention this to Bob in my earlier post: > my father taught me > many of the Burma-Shave jingles and indeed I had a > little book of them when > a child (now lost). Hence the REAL roots of my > interest in formalism, no > doubt. I do not think advertising (even rhymed > witty advertising) qualifies > as poetry though. No doubt you disagree. > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA > _________________________________________________________________ > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at > http://explorer.msn.com > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 26 16:13:40 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 16:13:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry References: Message-ID: <3A9AC703.5FBA@nut-n-but.net> > Bob Grumman wrote: > > >Poetry is not a popular art. You don't have to do > >surveys to prove that. Moira responded: > Not to sound rude, but I'm getting a little > tired of the arguments over whether or not > poetry is popular/how popular it is. It's > popular _here,_ so why not discuss some of > the aspects we like instead of haggling over > sales figures and bookstore shelf space? A point well taken. On the other hand, a central problem for many on this list is gaining visiblity. So if there is such a thing a popular poetry, and one wants to be popular (at least in the sense of capturing more readers for one's own poetry or one's own type of poetry), it's worth discussing what poetry is popular and why it is, etc. If no poetry is popular, then it's equally worthwhile, it seems to me, to discuss why that is so--and perhaps work out a way to make our own more popular, if that's what we want. Aside from that, it seems a legitimate question on its own, like what good is poetry, what's the difference between popular and serious art, how cultured is our country, etc. Anyway, there's no reason we can't use this location to discuss subjects Moira prefers to discuss (and, to be truthful, I do, too) and questions like the one whether poetry is popular or not here which I dint start, I'll have you know). --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 26 16:22:43 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 16:22:43 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts References: Message-ID: <3A9AC923.1EF1@nut-n-but.net> I think one small good of having poetry in buses, etc., is that it suggests to poets that they are not totally valueless. I don't think it is possible to make poetry-lovers of the masses, but I feel serious poetry's social function (along with serious music, painting, philosophy, plays, etc.) is to improve World Culture at the top, to start the ol' trickle-down. So poets should be encouraged. --Bob G. From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Mon Feb 26 16:49:07 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 16:49:07 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons References: Message-ID: <008701c0a03e$242fc1e0$5032f7a5@compaqcomputer> David, I don't know if others will be interested but since you said you enjoyed the anecdotes about Ammons I'm going to post more as they occur to me. This one has to do with his way of writing and his response to some of the poets who read at Cornell. Archie was famous for not revising most of his work. He said he wrote"Corsons Inlet," his most famous and most anthologized poem, in a single sitting. I remember a reading Robert Kelly gave at Cornell, during which Kelly talked a lot about revision and even said at one point that he really only wrote so that he'd have an excuse to revise. Afterwards, Archie suggested to him that "If you get it right the first time, you don't have to revise. But you have to burn at a pretty high heat to do that." Tate was indeed lucky to get such a warm response. Archie was generous and forgiving with students but with big names it was another story. Often he would sit at the back of the auditorium with his head in his hands staring at the floor, as if in physical pain. After Robert Bly gave one of his flamboyant performances, replete with lute-playing, masks, and singing, Archie commented: "That man should have been a preacher." You mention Tate's assessment of Ashbery and Ammons as the two major poets of their generation, and Archie's own feeling--surprising, to me anyway--was that Ashbery was the best. "Ashbery's the one who's got us all by the balls," was how he expressed it. Johh Brehm From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 26 16:32:27 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 16:32:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts References: Message-ID: <3A9ACB6B.3BA7@nut-n-but.net> > I do not think advertising (even rhymed witty > advertising) qualifies as poetry though. No > doubt you disagree. (Moira, to another Bob-- as far as I know--but I gotta answer, anyway, because it's into my taxonomania.) I agree. In my taxonomy, there are three kinds of verbal expression: literature, advocature and informrature. Burma shave rhymes are advocature and thus not poetry. a name and address lineated onto a post card is informrature and thus not poetry. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Mon Feb 26 16:46:47 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 16:46:47 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Karl Marx has left the building References: Message-ID: <3A9ACEC7.3166@nut-n-but.net> > I think there's a difference between profitable > disagreement and discussion (which can certainly > be heated), and personal slamming, which doesn't add > anything to the discussion and is likely to drive > more people off the list. I think one major problem with poetry is that too few POETS seem to give a damn about it--and hence skitter away from any discussion that gets ill-mannered (as the best discussions often do--Einstein versus Bohr, from what I hear, for example). Not that I think Moira would, from what I've read of her posts, nor that it isn't legitimate to rip someone who has been gratuitously hostile to a foolish extreme. But in the final analysis I'm for percussion sections. --Bob G. From languagethief at yahoo.com Mon Feb 26 16:49:19 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 13:49:19 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons In-Reply-To: <008701c0a03e$242fc1e0$5032f7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: <20010226214919.83787.qmail@web12207.mail.yahoo.com> John -- I'm loving this. By all means keep them coming. Tad --- john brehm wrote: > David, > > I don't know if others will be interested but since > you said you enjoyed the > anecdotes about Ammons I'm going to post more as > they occur to me. This one > has to do with his way of writing and his response > to some of the poets who > read at Cornell. > > Archie was famous for not revising most of his work. > He said he > wrote"Corsons Inlet," his most famous and most > anthologized poem, in a > single sitting. I remember a reading Robert Kelly > gave at Cornell, during > which Kelly talked a lot about revision and even > said at one point that he > really only wrote so that he'd have an excuse to > revise. Afterwards, Archie > suggested to him that "If you get it right the first > time, you don't have to > revise. But you have to burn at a pretty high heat > to do that." Tate was > indeed lucky to get such a warm response. Archie was > generous and forgiving > with students but with big names it was another > story. Often he would sit at > the back of the auditorium with his head in his > hands staring at the floor, > as if in physical pain. After Robert Bly gave one of > his flamboyant > performances, replete with lute-playing, masks, and > singing, Archie > commented: "That man should have been a preacher." > > You mention Tate's assessment of Ashbery and Ammons > as the two major poets > of their generation, and Archie's own > feeling--surprising, to me anyway--was > that Ashbery was the best. "Ashbery's the one who's > got us all by the > balls," was how he expressed it. > > Johh Brehm > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Mon Feb 26 17:18:01 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 14:18:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts Message-ID: <20010226221801.AE8172758@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Feb 26 06:13:06 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 05:13:06 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons and Ashbery Message-ID: This story is most likely apocryphal, but I read somewhere that one of Ammons' writing classes, after hearing him praise Ashbery, put together a pastiche of lines cut from newspapers and presented them to Ammons as a new Ashbery poem. Supposedly, Ammons took the piece as authentic and praised it. Does anyone know if this really happened? Paul Lake From fmm1 at cornell.edu Mon Feb 26 17:36:10 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 17:36:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry, Popularity, Gioia In-Reply-To: <3A9AC703.5FBA@nut-n-but.net> References: Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010226163649.00a4d7d0@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> I had a fairly lengthy debate-through-correspondence with Dana Gioia when his essay "Can Poetry Matter?" first appeared in _The Atlantic_ (and, if memory serves, I think the list's own Michael Heffernan had published a letter of response in a subsequent issue). Like others here, I faulted DG for failing to recognize the manifestations of poetry in the popular culture (rap music's strict meters and complex rhymes, the Cowboy poetry gatherings out west, the phenomenon of poetry slams, the persistence of every American college town's Beatnik townies, poetry on buses, open mic readings in coffee shops...). But by popularity he meant the common canonical knowledge of the presumed average, educated American. An example of this perhaps vanishing breed might have been the father of an old girlfriend, who, when he heard I was studying with W.D. Snodgrass in the mid-1970's said "Oh yes, I have a copy of _Heart's Needle_, and damned if he couldn't name his favorite poems from it. The guy had a B.S. in economics from NYU and was a businessman (in textiles) with no special interest in poetry: it was just one of the areas, along with politics, philosophy, sociology, etc., he assumed a college-educated person should keep in touch with and take pleasure from. While this cohort of intellectuals-sans-tenure still exists, Gioia felt it was becoming ever more exclusively tied to the university and no longer widely seeded throughout American society as it once was -- especially where an interest in poetry is concerned. I'm not so sure, since the _Partisan Review_ reader of the past is probably the NPR listener of the present, and NPR does do a poetry story once per week or so. The real quandary, perhaps, is the lack of a clear contemporary canon the uninitiated can glom onto, as there may have been 40 years ago and more when Lowell and Ginsberg could make news by getting arrested, Eliot could glower from the cover of _Time_, and Frost could read poetry at a presidential podium. When a non-poet asks me "Who are the most important American poets in 2001? Which poets should I be reading now?" I have a hard time answering. There are so many. And so few. I can name some interesting poets who aren't given any attention at all, and some boring ones who are given plenty. But it's a judgment call, based on my subjective opinions and my assumptions of what the person might or might not enjoy, and it would be fruitless to ask, "Well, do you prefer traditional formalism or linguistic experimentation? Clear referentiality or cascading indeterminacy?" This quandary, I suspect, is not unique to poetry. It's probably difficult to single out 2-3 figures in any subject area or art form and say, with confidence, "read the latest books by X, Y, and Z, and you'll have the gist of what's going on in the field." Understand, I think this multiplicity is a good thing; it's just going to take a lot longer than a generation or two to sort out. --- Fred Muratori ************************** Fred Muratori, Reference Librarian Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 From alsop at alsopreview.com Mon Feb 26 20:59:36 2001 From: alsop at alsopreview.com (Jaimes Alsop) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 17:59:36 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry References: Message-ID: <3A9B0A08.4D302491@alsopreview.com> We'll have to agree to disagree, Marcus. Point: If you seriously think publishers produce books of poetry for any other reason than profit, if you seriously think bookstores give uip valuable shelf space out of a "sense of duty" I don't think there's any common ground we can meet on. I withdraw. -- Jaimes Alsop The Alsop Review http://www.alsopreview.com From kellogg at duke.edu Mon Feb 26 18:02:52 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 18:02:52 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons and Ashbery References: Message-ID: <3A9AE09C.F3B4A6CC@duke.edu> Paul Lake wrote: > This story is most likely apocryphal, but I read somewhere that one of > Ammons' writing classes, after hearing him praise Ashbery, put together a > pastiche of lines cut from newspapers and presented them to Ammons as a new > Ashbery poem. Supposedly, Ammons took the piece as authentic and praised > it. > > Does anyone know if this really happened? I bet not, but if it's a poetry "urban legend," I'm curious what the point is. It probably was meant to say something about Ashbery's poetry, but it could equally well have been directed at ARA's abilities as a reader. :-) Not to speak ill of the dead, of course. In any event, I think Ammons was right about Ashbery having us all by the _huevos_. Ammons was one of the first living poets I read; probably because he was a Wake Forest graduate, he was discussed too much in my WFU undergraduate education, and I never took a shine to him. He seemed like a fine poet, capable of great things from time to time, often uneven but sort of generous in his unevenness. _Garbage_ is a poem full of garrulousness and BS, but that's part of its charm. I was discussing him with a colleague earlier today and she said poems like _A Tape for the Turn of the Year_ might have been better as ideas for poems that were never written, like Yoko Ono's early art pieces that were really instructions for creating works of art. David Kellogg Assistant Director, University Writing Program Duke University (919) 660-4357; FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Mon Feb 26 06:56:30 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 05:56:30 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry, popularity, Gioia Message-ID: Fred, don't know if it was your letters or serendipity, but Dana Gioia's been writing and talking about Cowboy poetry, rap and the like in recent years, and including examples of both in his Intro to Poetry text. I got some firsthand experience at the last AWP convention when I went out drinking after a cowboy poetry reading with Dana G. and the featured cowboy poet, Paul Zarzysky--probably mispelled that last name. Ouch, what a hangover. By the way, we came close to being classmates, it seems. In 1977, I was all set to go to Syracuse U. to study with Snodgrass--my wife and I had already secured a campus apartment--when another offer came along and I went off to California instead. Paul Lake From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 26 18:10:06 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 18:10:06 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry, Popularity, Gioia Message-ID: <6f.11ac3424.27cc3c4e@cs.com> In a message dated 2/26/2001 4:35:57 PM Central Standard Time, fmm1 at cornell.edu writes: > Like others here, I faulted DG > for failing to recognize the manifestations of poetry in the popular > culture (rap music's strict meters and complex rhymes, the Cowboy poetry > gatherings out west, the phenomenon of poetry slams, the persistence of > every American college town's Beatnik townies, poetry on buses, open mic > readings in coffee shops...). Interestingly, Dana's essay appears in Cowboy Poetry Matters, Robert McDowell's anthology of cowboy poetry and essays that touch on it. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Mon Feb 26 18:11:55 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 18:11:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons and Ashbery Message-ID: I was wondering if anyone had enough time and skill to collect all of these brief Ammons memoirs into a single file? I would like to have them for reference. From mackechnie at email.msn.com Mon Feb 26 19:18:39 2001 From: mackechnie at email.msn.com (Russ MacKechnie) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 19:18:39 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What Poetry Is (or Isn't) In-Reply-To: <004b01c0a02c$79d6cf60$5032f7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: John Brehm writes, in part: > . . . though I think W.C. Williams' statement is also > true: "People die > every day for lack of what is found there." I prefer Stevens's aphorism: "After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption." Russ MacKechnie From patrick at proximate.org Mon Feb 26 19:20:34 2001 From: patrick at proximate.org (Patrick Herron) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 19:20:34 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Eve's chompers Message-ID: Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 22:35:58 -0600 From: Paul Lake To: Subject: [New-Poetry] Eve's apple, not Reply-To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu Bob Cobb, I did not write the following sentence which you have attributed to me. I don't know who did. "Paul Lake wrote: Even did not sully language when she placed the apple between her teeth." Paul Lake **************************************** The quote was, I believe, "Eve did not sully language when she placed the apple between her teeth." Language never fell from some state of elevated grace. Perhaps it came from outer space but seemingly not from some perfect porcelain world. The quote was mine. Never trust a man who quotes himself. Patrick Patrick Herron patrick at proximate.org http://proximate.org/ getting close is what we're all about here! From mbales at cybergate.net Mon Feb 26 21:19:40 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 21:19:40 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry In-Reply-To: <3A9B0A08.4D302491@alsopreview.com> Message-ID: > We'll have to agree to disagree, Marcus. Point: If you seriously think > publishers produce books of poetry for any other reason than profit, > if you seriously think bookstores give uip valuable shelf space out of > a "sense of duty" I don't think there's any common ground we can meet > on.<< We may have to agree to disagree, but perhaps it would be useful first to agree on where we do in fact disagree, if we disagree. The notion that bookstores, or any stores, have to make a profit on every single item sold or on every single sale is a notion held mostly by people who have never run a store or been a salesman. Grocery stores, for example, sell eggs at a loss in most cases just because if they have eggs (or milk or bread or any of several other items) then when you stop there for eggs you find it convenient to buy AAA batteries for your Palm Pilot from the display in the checkout line -- for a great deal more, percentage-wise, then you'd have paid had you gone down the street and stopped again at the discount place; a place that doesn't have eggs, though. So, sure -- I think bookstores carry titles and even whole sections just because they're expected to have a little poetry (or whatever) in the store so that Aunt May can buy Robert Frost's Collected Poems for a favorite nephew. It's a species of "loss-leader" in one of the terms of art of retailing. Aunt May may also buy half a dozen romance novels for her niece and a couple of books on military aircraft for the nephew's younger brothers, and the like. But without that poetry section Aunt May goes down the street to the drugstore and buys a squirtgun and some dolls' clothes instead. The same sort of thing happens with manufacturers (and publishers are, in the end, manufacturers): they are expected to make and carry some kinds of stock for specialty requests even though the cost of making and carrying that stock may be higher than the profit they can expect to make on it -- but they carry it anyway because they don't want their customers who buy the profitable stuff to learn to buy the profitable stuff from the guy who DOES carry the unprofitable stuff if they do not. Convenience counts in wholesaling as well as retailing. So, in other words, it's perfectly possible that publishers publish poetry so that their retailers have poetry to put on the shelves, and the retailers put the poetry on their shelves, as a combination of loss-leader and status-item, all at a loss, in order to make sure that you, when you're in there looking at the poetry shelf, buy a map of the city on your way out -- or a magazine or a newspaper or a cup of coffee or a best-seller or whatever else they *can* make money on. My understanding, from talking to the actual owners of actual bookstores, and the managers of others, is that that is pretty much what does happen in the real world. Do we disagree? mbales at cybergate.net From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Mon Feb 26 22:36:27 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 21:36:27 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, Gioia In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.20010226163649.00a4d7d0@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> References: <3A9AC703.5FBA@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: I would second everything Fred says here about poetry's popularity, the splintered canon, etc. I am not yet convinced that the non-academic common reader of poetry was *ever* as widely distributed through society as Gioia seems to think. Conversely, neither am I ready to agree with Gioia and others that such readers are utterly vanished from the land. They may be diminished in number or retreated into their ivory towers (may, but I've seen no concrete evidence from Gioia to support that claim), but they certainly aren't completely gone, for the reasons Fred and others have cited: regular poetry blips on NPR, the slam scene, the Favorite Poem project, etc. When Garrison Keillor reads a poem every day on the radio, are *all* his listeners academics? As for poetry sales, Bill Freind asked for some specifics, so delete now if you would rather talk--as I would, most of the time--about poems and poetry, not statistics. The articles by Hall that I cited earlier do mention some numbers. His slant is that, while of course poetry does not sell as much as other things (and never has) it has sold more and more in the past half century than previously. What's remarkable is that no one seems to believe that fact, no matter what. Hall reports an anecdote in which a *publisher* disputed Hall's numbers about one of his firm's poets, but then had to come back and admit that Hall was correct. Hall's suggestion is that we're always looking back at a golden age when things were better, even when they weren't. The myth of declining readership is persistent, and probably has little to do with numbers, finally. Yet the numbers are out there, if you care to look. For example, Hall mentions that a 3rd book by a prominent poet in 1950 would usually appear in edition of a thousand hardbound copies, which the publisher would be happy to sell out in 3 or 4 years. The same publisher in 1989 would print an equivalent book in an edition of 5 thousand, hard and soft, and have a reasonable expectation of reprinting. Poets such as Ashbery, Bly, Ginsberg, Kinnell, Creeley, Snyder, & Levertov routinely sell tens of thousands of copies. Kinnell had sold over 50,000 of his *Book of Nightmares* as of 1989, when Hall's "Death to the Death of Poetry" was first printed. Ferlinghetti's *Coney Island of the Mind* had sold over a million. I once heard an introducer at an AWP conference mention that Rich has also sold in the millions. Molly McQuade's 1999 book of essays *Stealing Glimpses* has a fascinating piece called "The Cost of Poetry," in which she also mentions some further numbers. In 1997, for example, National Poetry Month seems to have helped produce a 30% increase in poetry sales at the Barnes & Noble chain stores. Sales are generally up in recent years (up from not much to a little more than not much, maybe, but still)--McQuade cites specific percentages from various stores, both chains and independents. McQuade notes that Farrar Straus prints books in an initial print run of 5000, which they expect to sell out within a year. Hayden Carruth's *Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey* sold 20,000 copies in its first year--and Carruth is hardly a household name or even an undisputed Major Poet even within the fractured, contentious poetry world. Jane Kenyon's *Otherwise*, along with her earlier collections, had sold a combined total of nearly 70,000 copies for Graywolf by the end of 1998. Such is the power, perhaps, of Bill Moyers. Now of course these numbers are peanuts next to Grisham novels, and everyone knows that numbers don't equate with quality. I know, I know, I know. . . . But these *are* numbers that Williams, Stevens, and Eliot never really knew at equivalent points in their careers, even adjusting for population growth; and they make poets of Hall's generation, who were happy to put out their first collections in runs of maybe 700, blink with amazement. Somebody's buying and reading poetry, it seems. Granted, the majority of poets do not make it into the sales stratosphere with Gary Snyder or Maya Angelou. *Most* books of poetry, just like most books period, probably don't make much if any money for their publishers. (Profitability, though, is not the same thing as readership.) I myself, a persistently unknown poet, sell in the hundreds if I'm lucky, not the thousands. But how many other unknowns are there like me, all perhaps selling their hundreds? We know that well over a thousand new books appear *each year*, most of them not by Seamus Heaney. It does add up, in terms of total national readership, I would argue, even when the majority of these copies may eventually end up in the remainder bins. In any case, these and many other considerations previously noted seem to point to a rather notable surge of interest in poetry in recent decades: more books and journals published than ever, and all sorts of associated activities, not all of it confined to the academy. So it seems bizarre, in the fact of such facts, for people to keep repeating the mantra about poetry's diminished and diminishing audience. David Graham >I had a fairly lengthy debate-through-correspondence with Dana Gioia when >his essay "Can Poetry Matter?" first appeared in _The Atlantic_ (and, if >memory serves, I think the list's own Michael Heffernan had published a >letter of response in a subsequent issue). Like others here, I faulted DG >for failing to recognize the manifestations of poetry in the popular >culture (rap music's strict meters and complex rhymes, the Cowboy poetry >gatherings out west, the phenomenon of poetry slams, the persistence of >every American college town's Beatnik townies, poetry on buses, open mic >readings in coffee shops...). > >But by popularity he meant the common canonical knowledge of the presumed >average, educated American. An example of this perhaps vanishing breed >might have been the father of an old girlfriend, who, when he heard I was >studying with W.D. Snodgrass in the mid-1970's said "Oh yes, I have a copy >of _Heart's Needle_, and damned if he couldn't name his favorite poems from >it. The guy had a B.S. in economics from NYU and was a businessman (in >textiles) with no special interest in poetry: it was just one of the areas, >along with politics, philosophy, sociology, etc., he assumed a >college-educated person should keep in touch with and take pleasure from. >While this cohort of intellectuals-sans-tenure still exists, Gioia felt it >was becoming ever more exclusively tied to the university and no longer >widely seeded throughout American society as it once was -- especially >where an interest in poetry is concerned. I'm not so sure, since the >_Partisan Review_ reader of the past is probably the NPR listener of the >present, and NPR does do a poetry story once per week or so. > >The real quandary, perhaps, is the lack of a clear contemporary canon the >uninitiated can glom onto, as there may have been 40 years ago and more >when Lowell and Ginsberg could make news by getting arrested, Eliot could >glower from the cover of _Time_, and Frost could read poetry at a >presidential podium. When a non-poet asks me "Who are the most important >American poets in 2001? Which poets should I be reading now?" I have a hard >time answering. There are so many. And so few. I can name some interesting >poets who aren't given any attention at all, and some boring ones who are >given plenty. But it's a judgment call, based on my subjective opinions and >my assumptions of what the person might or might not enjoy, and it would be >fruitless to ask, "Well, do you prefer traditional formalism or linguistic >experimentation? Clear referentiality or cascading indeterminacy?" This >quandary, I suspect, is not unique to poetry. It's probably difficult to >single out 2-3 figures in any subject area or art form and say, with >confidence, "read the latest books by X, Y, and Z, and you'll have the gist >of what's going on in the field." Understand, I think this multiplicity is >a good thing; it's just going to take a lot longer than a generation or two >to sort out. > >--- Fred Muratori > __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From Thom424 at aol.com Mon Feb 26 23:29:36 2001 From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 23:29:36 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry, Popularity, Gioia Message-ID: <48.1200d7b1.27cc8730@aol.com> In a message dated 2/26/01 4:35:57 PM, fmm1 at cornell.edu writes: << But by popularity he meant the common canonical knowledge of the presumed average, educated American >> RE: Fred's (and others') recent posts/discussions of the popularity of poetry in American. What if we substitute "photographers" or "dancers" or "painters" or "sculptors" or "singers" or "musicians" for "poets." Do other arts have clearly defined "common canonical knowledge," or is it just poetry that doesn't? Do photographers or painters have the same kinds of conversations about their arts that we poets do about ours (the lack of audience and the small market for poetry)? In fact, will it ever be possible again, given the technologies of publishing and they ways to disseminate that which gets published, to have, as Fred said, a "clear contemporary canon the uninitiated can glom onto[?]" Thom Tammaro From mbales at cybergate.net Mon Feb 26 23:38:55 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 23:38:55 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > I do not think advertising (even rhymed witty > advertising) qualifies as poetry though.<< Why not? mbales at cybergate.net From mbales at cybergate.net Mon Feb 26 23:38:56 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 23:38:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts In-Reply-To: <3A9ACB6B.3BA7@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: > ... In my taxonomy, there are three kinds of > verbal expression: literature, advocature and informrature. > Burma shave rhymes are advocature and thus not poetry. > a name and address lineated onto a post card is > informrature and thus not poetry.<< What if the writer *says* they are poetry? mbales at cybergate.net From mbales at cybergate.net Mon Feb 26 23:38:56 2001 From: mbales at cybergate.net (Marcus Bales) Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 23:38:56 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, Gioia In-Reply-To: References: <4.2.0.58.20010226163649.00a4d7d0@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> Message-ID: > The articles by Hall that I cited earlier do mention some numbers. > His slant is that, while of course poetry does not sell as much as > other things (and never has) it has sold more and more in the past > half century than previously.<< And, of course, there are a lot more people and a much better distribution system. The notion of "more" can be a slippery one: more in sheer numbers in the numerator is not necessarily significant when there is also more in sheer numbers in the denominator. mbales at cybergate.net From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 27 01:00:00 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 01:00:00 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, Gioia Message-ID: <8d.2ee3346.27cc9c60@cs.com> I don't want to get heavily into this argument, for most people who have responded have said some intelligent things. Still, I believe that if you had asked most people in this country fifty years ago to name a living American poet you might have got a fairly extensive list. I don't believe that is the case today. When I ask my beginning creative writing students to list their five favorite living poets I'm lucky to come up with more than three or four (out of a class of twenty-five). I would ask other people who teach creative writing to try the same experiment on the first day of class. I recently read a book on 19th century taste in America (can't find the title right now). Opera, to cite one example, was an art form that crossed all kinds of class lines over a century ago. Now it is strictly an elitist art form (and, please, no counter-arguments about how the masses are flocking to the Met). This does not mean that it is not a viable art form; only that it has passed out of the consciousness of mainstream America (and, yes, I know that PBS still broadcasts Live from the Met on Saturdays). Ask the average man or woman on the street to name: 1. a living painter 2. a living sculptor 3. a living composer of "serious" music 4. a living poet How many would be able to answer all four questions? From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Tue Feb 27 01:16:57 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 00:16:57 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry, Popularity, Ammons In-Reply-To: <8d.2ee3346.27cc9c60@cs.com> Message-ID: Combining two topics currently under discussion, the popularity of poetry and the death of A.R. Ammons, I thought the following paragraph from a _New York Times_ obituary notice in this morning's edition might be of interest. The quoted individual is Roger Gilbert, a friend of Ammons and a professor of English and American poetry at Cornell. For all his literary success, Mr. Ammons still measured his achievements by his book sales. "I think he felt a little isolated in Ithaca, and he had a very dedicated, but smaller following than other poets," Mr. Gilbert said. "His poetry did not sell as well as other poets'. I think he appreciated the awards, but what really mattered to him is having as many people as possible read his work." -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Feb 27 04:46:13 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 04:46:13 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry References: Message-ID: <3A9B7765.7A78@nut-n-but.net> The idea of having poetry in a book-store as a loss-leader occurred to me, too. It is also true that MANY merchants sell things to ease their consciences and/or to try not to look like 100% bottom-liners--like the tv networks with their low-audience "high-culture" programs Sunday mornings, etc. It is possible, too, for a bookstore owner or manager to actually think it a duty of his to stock a few good books besides his money-makers. In short, I doubt that many merchants care ONLY about making money. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Feb 27 05:05:10 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 05:05:10 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, Gioia References: <3A9AC703.5FBA@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <3A9B7BD6.2195@nut-n-but.net> I found the sales statistics fascinating and, I admit, a very big surprise to me. I would continue to hold that poetry is not very popular, though (though I have never argued that is is on the decline). Anecdotal evidence I find hard to discount is from my personal experience talking to high school teachers, many of the English teachers, casually during our lunch breaks: all kinds of topics have come up, but poetry only once or twice--when I said I wrote it. --Bob G. From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Feb 27 05:13:50 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 05:13:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts References: Message-ID: <3A9B7DDE.A41@nut-n-but.net> > What if the writer *says* they are poetry? Says that of a burma shave jingle? Well, I would say that by MY standards, which he needn't accept, he was wrong. The jingle's intention is commercial, not literary, so is not a poem. I would add that common sense would not support the notion that any artwork is what its maker says it is. On the other hand, if he could present a plausible argument that his jingle was intended to give aesthetic pleasure, and had no significant utilitarian function, it's possibly I'd change my mind about it. Context would count--such a jingle on a highway sign will have trouble not seeming more utilitarian that a poem should; in a book by a poet known to use popular jingles to make aesthetic points it could be different. Like everything, there are all kinds of complexities involved, and the need much of the time to go into a case by case mode. --Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 27 08:32:45 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 08:32:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, Gioia Message-ID: <3d.7fbabc9.27cd067d@aol.com> Another factoid: In a summer/fall '99 issue of the BOA Editions newsletter, the press was touting the fact that Li-Young Lee's _Rose_ was in its 14th printing. It was his first book in fact. Finnegan From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Feb 27 08:46:36 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 05:46:36 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, Gioia Message-ID: <20010227134636.716BD3ECD@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From bardo at optonline.net Tue Feb 27 08:48:31 2001 From: bardo at optonline.net (Daniel Zimmerman) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 08:48:31 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts References: Message-ID: <009b01c0a0c3$f8fbeae0$c530be18@win98> Good question, Marcus. Some of the BurmaShave signs have a lovely OgdenNashical feel, and the addition of the name of their sponsor as a tag line doesn't strike me as much different from the publisher's name appearing on a book of poems [usually as, in part, an inducement to the reader to buy more books from the same publisher]. Dan Zimmerman ----- Original Message ----- From: Marcus Bales To: ; Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 11:38 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts > > ... In my taxonomy, there are three kinds of > > verbal expression: literature, advocature and informrature. > > Burma shave rhymes are advocature and thus not poetry. > > a name and address lineated onto a post card is > > informrature and thus not poetry.<< > > What if the writer *says* they are poetry? > > > mbales at cybergate.net > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Tue Feb 27 09:02:20 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 09:02:20 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons , readings, etc. References: Message-ID: <004a01c0a0c5$e9b923c0$1b2bf7a5@compaqcomputer> Tad, I'm glad these posts about Ammons aren't too wearying. It's good, for me anyway, to write them. So just a few more things that stand out right now. Ammons was a strange mixture of humility and overarching ambition, if I may be forgiven that Ammonsian word play. During one of the rare readings he gave over the last ten years, he read an older piece and asked the audience how many of them owned a copy of his Collected Poems. A few hands went up. "Well," he said, "it's been out of print since God created the earth--approximately." (This is about to change, by the way, as a new Collected Poems is being published this summer). "I wish to God you all had a copy." He had a voracious appetite for readers, for praise, for attention, that was never really satisfied, even after all the awards and honors. As I've said, Archie had an oblique and humorous way of approaching just about everything. He could take the air out of a faculty meeting with a single sentence. In the early eighties Cornell was considering whether to offer a PhD in creative writing. Arguments and counter-arguments were tossed back and forth and no one could build a consensus either way. Finally Archie, who had been silent for the entire meeting, said: "Doctor of Fine Arts, that's kind of a wussy degree, isn't it?" And that was the end of that. No further discussion was necessary. He hated all forms of pretentiousness and posturing, which is one of the reasons he gave so few readings (not that his were pretentious) and probably hated attending them, especially the ones where the poet is given a windy and hyperbolic introduction, where whole poems are quoted and commented on and every one of the poet's achievements is trotted out to impress the audience into submission. When I was a visiting writer at Cornell in 1996, I gave a reading and Archie introduced me. I didn't know quite what to expect, as there wasn't a lot to say achievement-wise on my behalf, though I should have seen what was coming based on the questions he'd asked me the week before. "John Brehm was born in 1955," Archie began, "and a year later he was a one-year-old baby." He then went on to talk about what grade-school I went to, my high-school years in Lincoln, Nebraska, where I "was a football player and a lover of Keats," and so on, ending with "And we're lucky to have him while he's still pretty." It was a hilarious parody of the standard introduction and I've never faced an audience more warmed-up than that one. John Brehm From wasanthony at yahoo.com Tue Feb 27 09:22:17 2001 From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 06:22:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, NOT Gioia In-Reply-To: <3d.7fbabc9.27cd067d@aol.com> Message-ID: <20010227142217.56106.qmail@web12108.mail.yahoo.com> Vis a vis the "popularity of poetry' (or not), here are the line-ups for a couple of local events. Phoenix also has a book festival during April, though the visiting writers for that have not been announced yet. Chances are good, however, that some of the writers and poets below will be included in that event. At the Flagstaff Book Festival, March 30 - April 1 (a handful of locals in this line-up): Sherwin Bitsui. Jill Divine, Simon Ortiz, Denis Johnson, Ofelia Zepeda, Denise Chavez, Scott Simon, Arthur Sze, Carol Moldaw, Tim Seibles, Dagoberto Gilb, Gary Nabhan, Yxta Maya Murray, Alison Deming, Rick Bass, Ann Cummins, Sunny Dooley, Susan Lang, Luci Tapahonso, Ellen Winter, Mary Sojourner, Jim Simmerman, Luis Rodriguez. At the Tucson Poetry Festival, April 5 - April 8: Ana Castillo, Russell Edson, Donald Hall, Myung Mi Kim, Maxine Kumin, David Ray, Sonia Sanchez. Dunno about you, but I can't discern a particular slant in the choices above, except perhaps for an obvious attempt to have minority representation and Tucson's reliance on the "mainstream," something they don't usually do. I had thought I would attend all days of both, but have reconsidered and will go to Flagstaff mainly to meet up with Denis Johnson, who I knew during his days here in the late 70s/early 80s, and go to Tucson mainly to hear Russell Edson. Though these events are happening in the cultural wasteland that is Arizona, I can say from attending both for many years that almost all readings, panels, and workshops that occur during these events are s.r.o.. Such is not the case with readings held at the academic venues. - Jim ===== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com or jvcervantes at earthlink.net Poetserv: Salt River Review: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/users/cervantes/SRR/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Feb 27 09:23:35 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 06:23:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, Gioia Message-ID: <20010227142338.3FA583ECC@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From MillB at aol.com Tue Feb 27 09:34:13 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 09:34:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry, Popularity, Gioia Message-ID: Thom: My boyfriend is a figurative painter and he does not have these "cannon" discussions. . . instead, we talk about PoMo and what comes next. As far as publishing goes, painters have a similar problem: how to get a gallery show. Which is the equalivalent of a first book? A book? A group show being an anthology. The heirarchy seems to look forward rather than backward. . . with art. I cannot speak for dance or music, though. Mill From barr at mail.rochester.edu Tue Feb 27 09:37:28 2001 From: barr at mail.rochester.edu (Brandon Thomas Barr) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 09:37:28 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] What We Talk About When We Talk About Poetry In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, Marcus Bales wrote: > We may have to agree to disagree, but perhaps it would be useful > first to agree on where we do in fact disagree, if we disagree. > Not to discredit your response in any way Marcus (I agree). But I want a T-shirt with this quote on it. Brandon Barr barr at mail.rochester.edu From MillB at aol.com Tue Feb 27 09:38:43 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 09:38:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, Gioia Message-ID: In a message dated 2/27/01 1:01:23 AM Eastern Standard Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes: << When I ask my beginning creative writing students to list their five favorite living poets I'm lucky to come up with more than three or four (out of a class of twenty-five). >> When I ask my students to name their favorite writers, I get the following list: Stephen King Anne Rice Shakespeare In a given semester, if I'm lucky, I may get one Yeats or Whitman. I think in the 1950's the average "Joe" could name a number of poets. It's not true today. Mill From MillB at aol.com Tue Feb 27 09:48:37 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 09:48:37 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, NOT Gioia Message-ID: <97.11c05d2c.27cd1845@aol.com> In a message dated 2/27/01 9:23:31 AM Eastern Standard Time, wasanthony at yahoo.com writes: << Arthur Sze >> Is great. Don't miss him! Mill From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Tue Feb 27 09:56:02 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 08:56:02 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons recommendations Message-ID: I'd love to hear about favorite Ammons poems or books from those who know his work better than I do. Strikes me that, given his voluminousness, he's sometimes a hard poet to get a handle on. Critically speaking, he resembles Ashbery in that responses to his work seem to range regularly from worshipful to snickering. The Academy of American Poets site, by the way, has some good Ammons information and links: http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=49 David Graham __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From TerryP17 at aol.com Tue Feb 27 10:19:45 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 10:19:45 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, Gioia Message-ID: <93.76a94f6.27cd1f92@aol.com> All-- A couple of riffs and rambles on this topic, with reference to David G's comments on poetry book sales and Fred M's comments on intelligent readers. Fred first-- I would agree with Fred that there was at one time an assumption among many folks with at least high school and maybe one college degree that a continued side-interest in the arts--no matter whether you were an engineer or an attorney--was the sign of a well-rounded individual, and that there was no problem in and indeed great pleasure in reading prose and poetic works by recognized, canonical authors. My 82-year old former attorney dad can quote plenty of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Longfellow (yes, Longfellow) to me--still. Learned this stuff by heart in an Appalachian high school in the 1930s, and so did his classmates. Got plenty more at Western Reserve College (now Case-Western Reserve) after the War. My old Ph.D. advisor, Matt Bruccoli, at U of South Carolina, for years has had an imprint (Bruccoli-Clark Books) that sells literary oddities (a facsimile of Scott Fitzgerald's ledger, a slim volume of Raymond Chandler's early poetry (!)) to this kind of market, and he's consistently done rather well in these endeavors. But herein lies the problem. These are older guys from another generation. The educational system today seems, at least in some quadrants, to believe that the formerly "received" canons are now obsolete and elitist, and there's no longer any agreement on what an acceptable canon of authors is. And so the consensus has splintered, and it's much tougher now to find commonality. Without a generally-accepted canon in high school and college, literature has slipped off the radar screens of a lot of educated people who, a couple of generations ago, would've avidly read this stuff as part of leading a well-rounded life. Reading is becoming a lot less directive and/or proscriptive than it used to in the educational environment. Every college English department seems to have its own spin or specialty. I realize fully that one can only generalize on this stuff to a point, but still, there is far less consensus on what the canon is, or even if there is a canon, than there was a couple ge! nerations ago. Icing on the cake here is also the fact that kids entering college are more and more likely to do coursework in subjects that are going to make them the next Bill Gates. Lit and kulcha are bloody unlikely to do this and kids know it, and are less likely than formerly to take courses in literature and the arts as "free electives." They are driven (sometimes by their parents) to study stuff that makes money, and literature does not. This doesn't help the general knowledge pool either. Now add the ongoing high culture/low culture argument to the mix, and it's not tough to see why there's no longer any accepted general literary knowledge. And thus there's less of a ready non-academic market for these kinds of books than there used to be. With reference to David G's numbers stuff on poetry books, hey, let's add another random (or not-so-random) variable to the mix. I know editors, publishers, etc., have corresponded with many for many years, although a number of my old correspondents have now gone to meet their makers. At any rate, all of them have told me that, at least in a commercial publishing environment, poetry books in general do not make money. No way. Too much overhead, not enough volume to cover it. Poetry books don't really sell in what publishers would regard as acceptably large quantities. Even a book with a big push from a major publisher like Michael Lind's uneven epic, "The Alamo," reviewed by all the big papers, sold less than 4,000 hard copies in its initial run. Most of the reasons cited on this board for publishing all these poetry books are, in fact, good observations. Publishers put them out partially out of a sense of duty, partially out of not wanting people to think of them as mass-marketing robber barons (which the big ones are anyway), and partially to give bookstores a "mix." But with rare exceptions, the only books that really move in quantity, aside from the Rod McKuens of the world, are--important--books professors are pushing in the classroom as primary or secondary texts. I can't imagine that a poet like Ashbery, for example, would sell to the general public in the quantities that he does. This stuff is moving on college campuses. I think when one looks at numbers, one also has to look at classroom adoptions before becoming too impressed with the numbers. Classroom adoptions, whether of poetry collections or anthologies, has a huge, huge impact on the number of poetry books sold. And I haven't seen that pop up here in this discussion. Observations, anyone? Terry Ponick terryp17 at aol.com From gray at grayjacobik.com Tue Feb 27 10:31:09 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 10:31:09 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Favorite Pubs Message-ID: <063801c0a0d2$7bc5a2a0$1c293ccc@emilydickenson> The Prose Poem: An International Journal has just gone belly-up . . . a letter in yesterday's mail tells me. Peter Johnson, it's editor for 10 plus years, says it was for "lack of needed resources." This was one I enjoyed reading and looked forward to, a journal that filled a definite need, I think. I'll miss it. Gray Jacobik From gray at grayjacobik.com Tue Feb 27 10:44:33 2001 From: gray at grayjacobik.com (Gray Jacobik) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 10:44:33 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Ammons Message-ID: <064801c0a0d4$4084cd90$1c293ccc@emilydickenson> Thank you to John and Fred and David and others who have spoken about their personal and literary expereince of Archie Ammons. I value, and will keep, what you've written. I just want to say that my favorite poem of Ammons' is probably not one of his best, and an early one. I can't read "Nelly Myers" without my voice cracking. I know it's sentimental, but darn if it isn't one of the tenderest poems I know; a true love poem. I teach "Corson's Inlet" from time to time, and a few others, but can't close class without sharing Nelly. Gray Jacobik From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 27 11:35:24 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 07:35:24 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, Gioia Message-ID: During an extremely brief stint as a TA at the University of New Mexico I taught a beginning expository class. Many of the students had no favorite author, and when asked to list the books they had read in the previous year, most of them put down Stephen King, Anne Rice, or true-crime books. The beginning creative writing students I taught had read a wider variety of books, but I think it is obvious that there was once a huge body of shared knowledge -- although obviously not everyone knew _exactly_ the same things, if that makes sense -- which has now dissipated. In an upper-level undergraduate course on postcolonialism the teacher was very surprised that no one knew the references to Tennyson in Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse." "Can it be the canon is _dead_?" she wondered aloud. She didn't sound that unhappy about it. Moira Russell Seattle, WA ><< When I ask my beginning creative writing students to > list their five favorite living poets I'm lucky to come up with more than >three or four (out of a class of twenty-five). >> >When I ask my students to name their favorite writers, I get the following >list: > >Stephen King >Anne Rice >Shakespeare _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From sd at debris.org.uk Tue Feb 27 11:50:41 2001 From: sd at debris.org.uk (steve duffy) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 16:50:41 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] twain log Message-ID: <20010227163233.F198.SD@debris.org.uk> . TWAIN_32.DLL - MESSAGE - CTwunk ::AppInitialize - Reset Log TWAIN_32.DLL - MESSAGE - CTwunk ::OpenServer - Starting Thunker TWUNK_16.EXE - MESSAGE - Twunk --WinMain - Posting Startup Complete To Twain TWAIN_32.DLL - MESSAGE - CTwunk ::OpenServer - Received Startup Complete From Thunker TWAIN_32.DLL - MESSAGE - CTwunk ::CloseServer - Posting Close To Thunker TWUNK_16.EXE - MESSAGE - Twunk --WinMain - Posting Shutdown Complete To Twain TWAIN_32.DLL - MESSAGE - CTwunk ::CloseServer - Received Shutdown Complete From Thunker From sd at debris.org.uk Tue Feb 27 11:50:42 2001 From: sd at debris.org.uk (steve duffy) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 16:50:42 GMT Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts In-Reply-To: <3A9B7DDE.A41@nut-n-but.net> References: <3A9B7DDE.A41@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <20010227163620.F19B.SD@debris.org.uk> >> I would add that common sense would not support the notion that any >> artwork is what its maker says it is. at this point someone usually asks if the artwork itself can tell you what it is. question is it a poem because it doesn't go all the way across the page or is it a poem because it does whatever it is poems do is that a wrapped building over there or has someone stolen the sandblasting contractor's scaffolding? regards, steve on Tue, 27 Feb 2001 05:13:50 -0500 Bob Grumman wrote: >> > What if the writer *says* they are poetry? >> >> Says that of a burma shave jingle? Well, I would >> say that by MY standards, which he needn't accept, >> he was wrong. The jingle's intention is commercial, >> not literary, so is not a poem. I would add that >> common sense would not support the notion that any >> artwork is what its maker says it is. On the other >> hand, if he could present a plausible argument that >> his jingle was intended to give aesthetic pleasure, >> and had no significant utilitarian function, it's >> possibly I'd change my mind about it. Context would >> count--such a jingle on a highway sign will have trouble >> not seeming more utilitarian that a poem should; in a >> book by a poet known to use popular jingles to make >> aesthetic points it could be different. Like everything, >> there are all kinds of complexities involved, and the >> need much of the time to go into a case by case mode. o + . o dEbRiS <>< e sd at debris.org.uk . ><[[[[?> web http://www.debris.org.uk scattered_fragMents.l0ose_materiALs.etc o . / . . ||| . / .*-|/-* delete? |||||||||1|||||||||2|||||||||3|||||||||4|||||||||5|||||||||6||||||||7|| exit From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 27 11:51:45 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 07:51:45 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] What Poetry Is (or Isn't) Message-ID: >I prefer Stevens's aphorism: "After one has abandoned a belief in god, >poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption." > Russ MacKechnie Although T. S. Eliot of course would strike that and reverse it.... Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu Tue Feb 27 11:55:24 2001 From: Edward.Byrne at valpo.edu (Edward Byrne) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 10:55:24 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, Gioia In-Reply-To: <93.76a94f6.27cd1f92@aol.com> Message-ID: I had been thinking the same thing. I wonder if there is some way to find separate sales figures on books adopted for classroom use. --Edward Byrne > But with rare exceptions, the only books that really move in quantity, > aside from the Rod McKuens of the world, are--important--books > professors are pushing in the classroom as primary or secondary texts. > I can't imagine that a poet like Ashbery, for example, would sell to > the general public in the quantities that he does. This stuff is moving > on college campuses. I think when one looks at numbers, one also has to > look at classroom adoptions before becoming too impressed with the > numbers. Classroom adoptions, whether of poetry collections or > anthologies, has a huge, huge impact on the number of poetry books > sold. And I haven't seen that pop up here in this discussion. > Observations, anyone? > > Terry Ponick -------------------------------------------------- Edward Byrne Department of English 322 Huegli Hall Valparaiso University Valparaiso, IN 46383-6493 E-mail: edward.byrne at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/home/faculty/ebyrne/homepage/ Editor, Valparaiso Poetry Review E-mail: vpr at valpo.edu http://www.valpo.edu/english/vpr/ Office Phone: (219) 464-5278 Fax: (219) 464-5511 -------------------------------------------------- From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 27 12:00:37 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 08:00:37 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, Gioia Message-ID: >My old Ph.D. advisor, Matt Bruccoli, at U of South Carolina, for years has >had an imprint (Bruccoli-Clark Books) that sells literary oddities (a >facsimile of Scott Fitzgerald's ledger, a slim volume of Raymond Chandler's >early poetry (!)) to this kind of market, and he's consistently done rather >well in these endeavors. Not to quibble with this obviously thoughtful post, but I think there's a difference between literary oddities and these sorts of publications, which are mainly directed at scholars and purchased by university libraries. I think a better example of the kind of thing you may be thinking of is the published facsimilie of "The Wasteland," with faithfully transcribed annotations and typos, which was published in a softback edition which I was able to pick up fairly easily at a local used bookstore (I do live in a university district). I wouldn't say the same for Fitzgerald's "Ledger" which I have only ever seen in university libraries. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 27 12:16:39 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 12:16:39 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] twain log--For David Kellogg Message-ID: <4f.800392e.27cd3af7@cs.com> In a message dated 2/27/01 10:51:28 AM Central Standard Time, sd at debris.org.uk writes: > TWAIN_32.DLL - > MESSAGE - > CTwunk > ::AppInitialize - > Reset Log > > TWAIN_32.DLL - > MESSAGE - > CTwunk > ::OpenServer - > Starting Thunker > > TWUNK_16.EXE - > MESSAGE - > Twunk > --WinMain - > Posting Startup Complete To Twain > > TWAIN_32.DLL - > MESSAGE - > CTwunk > ::OpenServer - > Received Startup Complete From Thunker > > TWAIN_32.DLL - > MESSAGE - > CTwunk > ::CloseServer - > Posting Close To Thunker > > TWUNK_16.EXE - > MESSAGE - > Twunk > --WinMain - > Posting Shutdown Complete To Twain > > TWAIN_32.DLL - > MESSAGE - > CTwunk > ::CloseServer - > Received Shutdown Complete From Thunker > > > > Prof. Kellogg should be able to shed some light on this poem about the early life of Samuel Clemens. From ffff at u.washington.edu Tue Feb 27 12:58:37 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 09:58:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Palindrome In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I found this yesterday on an intellectual freedom listserv (thought it kind of cute): Palindrome of the Century Dubya won? No way bud. _______ Because I unsubbed from cap-l eons ago, I don't really know what the purpose of this new list is, whether "new-poetry" means new poems by known poets only or whether various degrees of unknownness, including total unknowness is apropo. I gather there will be a considerable amount of discussion, regardless. Will the poets on this list ever be posting their own new poems? Debbie Dale From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com Tue Feb 27 13:28:17 2001 From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 10:28:17 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Palindrome Message-ID: <20010227182819.533EE36FA@sitemail.everyone.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 27 14:13:29 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 14:13:29 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] NewPoetry List: Report after 2 Weeks Message-ID: <3c.8065a09.27cd5659@aol.com> We started out with 160 email accounts. After net gains & losses, we now have 180+ email addresses on the list. Quantitatively positive. Qualitatively, I do hope this list will be a very open and 'open-minded' forum for discussing poetry of various persuasions. Would any of us bother to be subscribed if we were all in perfect agreement as to what constituted worthy poetry? That being said, we should all try to make our points known while recognizing we're not always going to be able "to win" the argument or "to make a convert" to our view. More than any other reason, I believer a listserv discussion format can be subject to outbreaks of harsh or overbearing tones because it's faceless space. At times we respond by posting "at the other's words" without stopping to think its "a person behind the words." And that person, like any one of us, is just a bundle of his/her own learning, experience, temperament, biases and idiosyncrasies. I think it's worth remembering that on this list there are people with rhino skin and others covered by gossamer. Most are somewhere in between. Always better to press one's points by degrees; gauging as you go just how sharp your retorts can be before they are likely to cause some "real pain." Tad Richards suggested trying to get an exchange of book reviews going. Specific suggestions on how this might initiated and sustained are welcome. And any other thoughts/suggestions for making this a worthwhile and satisfying discussion space. Finnegan From JforJames at aol.com Tue Feb 27 14:53:41 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 14:53:41 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons recommendations Message-ID: <9c.c0afc7c.27cd5fc5@aol.com> > Strikes me that, given his voluminousness, he's > sometimes a hard poet to get a handle on. > David, I didn't know Ammons the person. I know him only through the poetry. And it did seem to me that late long poems got voluminous and more slack...like the mind was not pressing very hard to make poetry; but just letting the words/thoughts flow out as they may. I've had a my issues with long Ashbery at times, too...yet even at his laxest, Ashbery's seems the better poet. One poet (Ammons) resigned to drown in his own oceanic outflow, at times as though beyond caring, and the other poet still twisting & turning in the expansive waters of thought, trying to catch hold of at least a bit of feliciticous flotsam (Ashbery). Finnegan From cstroffo at earthlink.net Tue Feb 27 14:23:18 2001 From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (chris stroffolino) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 15:23:18 -0400 Subject: [New-Poetry] Yartsa! I led a deli astray References: Message-ID: <3A9BFEA4.61CF7538@earthlink.net> I like "Do not let Elton OD" Actually, does anybody remember in the late 80s early 90s, a poet named Lydia Tomkiw (who was from Chicago, and also in a rock band called "Algebra Suicide") used to publish a lot of palindrome poems---one was in one of the best american anths-- sometimes each line would be a palindrome; other times the whole poem would be--- I found some of these pieces quite interesting (they worked on a meaning level as well), but I don't think she's gathered them in book form yet--- Chris Deborah Dale wrote: > I found this yesterday on an intellectual freedom listserv > (thought it kind of cute): > > Palindrome of the Century > > Dubya won? No way bud. > _______ > > Because I unsubbed from cap-l eons ago, I don't really know what the > purpose of this new list is, whether "new-poetry" means new poems by known > poets only or whether various degrees of unknownness, including total > unknowness is apropo. I gather there will be a considerable amount of > discussion, regardless. Will the poets on this list ever be posting their > own new poems? > > Debbie Dale > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 27 15:23:30 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 11:23:30 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Yartsa! I led a deli astray Message-ID: Ah, now you've given me an excuse to throw in my favorite palindromic poem: Flee to me, remote elf--Sal a dewan desired; Now is a Late-Petal Era. We fade: lucid Iris, red Rose of Sharon; Goldenrod a silly ram ate. Wan olives teem (ah, Satan lives!); A star eyes pale Roses. Revel, big elf on a mayonnaise man-- A tinsel baton-dragging nice elf too. Lisp, Oh Sibyl, dragging Nola along; Niggardly bishops i loot. Fleecing niggard notables Nita names, I annoy a Man of Legible Verse. So relapse, ye rats, As evil Natasha meets Evil On a wet, amaryllis-adorned log. Norah's foes' orders (I ridiculed a few) are late, pet. Alas, I wonder! Is Edna wed? Alas--flee to me, remote elf. From kellogg at duke.edu Tue Feb 27 16:20:51 2001 From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 16:20:51 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] twain log--For David Kellogg References: <4f.800392e.27cd3af7@cs.com> Message-ID: <3A9C1A33.E1EE472D@duke.edu> Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/27/01 10:51:28 AM Central Standard Time, > sd at debris.org.uk writes: > > > TWAIN_32.DLL - > > MESSAGE - > > CTwunk > > ::AppInitialize - > > Reset Log > > > > TWAIN_32.DLL - > > MESSAGE - > > CTwunk > > ::OpenServer - > > Starting Thunker > > > > TWUNK_16.EXE - > > MESSAGE - > > Twunk > > --WinMain - > > Posting Startup Complete To Twain > > > > TWAIN_32.DLL - > > MESSAGE - > > CTwunk > > ::OpenServer - > > Received Startup Complete From Thunker > > > > TWAIN_32.DLL - > > MESSAGE - > > CTwunk > > ::CloseServer - > > Posting Close To Thunker > > > > TWUNK_16.EXE - > > MESSAGE - > > Twunk > > --WinMain - > > Posting Shutdown Complete To Twain > > > > TWAIN_32.DLL - > > MESSAGE - > > CTwunk > > ::CloseServer - > > Received Shutdown Complete From Thunker > > > > > > > > > > Prof. Kellogg should be able to shed some light on this poem about the early > life of Samuel Clemens. Well, it ain't Bruce Andrews. Seems like a simple tragic love-murder ballad to me. Twain, a lothario ("Reset Log"), initiates a relationship with the ingenue Thunker ("Starting Thunker"), then breaks it off abruptly ("Posting Close To Thunker"). Thunker responds by murdering Twain ("Posting Shutdown Complete To Twain"). Sort of like "The Banks of the Ohio," but with gender roles reversed, and without the sheriff at the end or the mandolin accompaniment. David Kellogg Assistant Director, University Writing Program Duke University (919) 660-4357; FAX (919) 660-4372 http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Tue Feb 27 16:11:18 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 16:11:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Some random thoughts References: <3A9B7DDE.A41@nut-n-but.net> <20010227163620.F19B.SD@debris.org.uk> Message-ID: <3A9C17F6.49C4@nut-n-but.net> I said: > >> I would add that common sense would not support the notion that any > >> artwork is what its maker says it is. I apparently left out a "necessarily." Steve Duffy answered: > at this point someone usually asks if the artwork > itself can tell you what it is. Yes, that and the consensus of informed opinion. > question > > is it a poem because it doesn't go > all the way across the page > or is it a poem because it does > whatever it is poems do My definition of what I think poetry is, is at my website, URL below. > is that a wrapped building over there or has someone stolen the > sandblasting contractor's scaffolding? I need to know the context to answer. --Bob G. -------------- next part -------------- Bob Grumman BobGrumman at Nut-N-But.Net http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1492 Comprepoetica, the Poetry-Data-Collection Site From halvard at earthlink.net Tue Feb 27 16:36:08 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 16:36:08 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] RIP: C. W. Truesdale Message-ID: I was just informed that Bill Truesdale died last night or early this morning. He was the founder and, for many years, the publisher of New Rivers Press, which began back in the late 60s on a press in the basement of Bill's home in Nyack, New York. The press's later wanderings took it to New York City and then on to Minneapolis/ St. Paul. In its early years New Rivers published poetry collections by Charles Baxter, Charles Simic, John Knoepfle, Margaret Randall, Roger Mitchell and others, including myself. Bill Truesdale was himself a poet. Astronaut after the operation ashes a full moon a light wintery and blurred evidence of some natural disaster after the operation he dreamed of walking like a moon in the dust of dead planets though he cared nothing for gravity or distinction after the operation he was lying in a cloud when the others came into the room he could still see how they shaped themselves around a name and certain mechanical expressions the word 'shadows' stuck in his mind like a feather after the operation he thought of ears and words walking into them trying and trying to find a connection was it honey or balm they would offer at the heart of the maze? but long long before they fell down exhausted and dried into nothing like the eye of a lizard after the operation he went gladly into exile from himself and I could control him without difficulty even to Jupiter and beyond Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Tue Feb 27 18:31:17 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 18:31:17 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] twain log--For David Kellogg Message-ID: <32.1130b851.27cd92c5@cs.com> In a message dated 2/27/01 3:14:43 PM Central Standard Time, kellogg at duke.edu writes: > > Well, it ain't Bruce Andrews. Seems like a simple tragic love-murder ballad > to > me. Twain, a lothario ("Reset Log"), initiates a relationship with the > ingenue > Thunker ("Starting Thunker"), then breaks it off abruptly ("Posting Close To > Thunker"). Thunker responds by murdering Twain ("Posting Shutdown Complete > To > Twain"). Sort of like "The Banks of the Ohio," but with gender roles > reversed, > and without the sheriff at the end or the mandolin accompaniment. > Stanley Fish would be proud! From mackechnie at email.msn.com Tue Feb 27 18:36:50 2001 From: mackechnie at email.msn.com (Russ MacKechnie) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 18:36:50 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] TSE Strike and Counterstrike In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > >I prefer Stevens's aphorism: "After one has abandoned a > > belief in god, > >poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption." > > Russ MacKechnie > > Although T. S. Eliot of course would strike that and reverse it.... > > Moira Russell It would seem so, I suppose---the elder Eliot, anyway. (A prime reason, I think, for the weaker segments of "Four Quartets," trumped nicely some 20 years earlier by Stevens's "Sunday Morning"---"There is not any haunt of prophesy . . . . that has endured/ As April's green endures.") Despite the fact that he closes the last great poem of his career with pentecostal "tongues of flame . . . in-folded" and the pyrotechnics of wedded fires and roses, I prefer to believe that Parson Possum's soul forever resides at that wondrously quiet point of poetry's "turning world"---where Stevens's palm at the end of the mind slowly stirs and his bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down---that still point bathed in a "white light still and moving" without which even TSE was compelled to acknowledge "[t]here would be no dance, and there is only the dance." Redemptive essence, indeed. . . . ~ Russ ~ From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 27 18:46:51 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 14:46:51 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] TSE Strike and Counterstrike Message-ID: Welll, I freely admit I was more or less trying to be funny....but I think someone who chooses to turn from aesthetic dandy with green facepowder (according to Virginia Woolf, anyway) to sober deliberate Christian is finding something in his faith which he personally wasn't able to find in the devotion to Art as Art. Moira Russell Seattle, WA > > >I prefer Stevens's aphorism: "After one has abandoned a > > > belief in god, > > >poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption." > > > Russ MacKechnie > > Although T. S. Eliot of course would strike that and reverse it.... > > Moira Russell It would seem so, I suppose---the elder Eliot, anyway. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Tue Feb 27 19:52:54 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 15:52:54 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] What is Poetry For Message-ID: I was having a really horrible day at work, so awful if I could have afforded it at all I would have magnificently slammed my way out in a way that put Nora to shame (well if I could afford freedom I wouldn't be here. But that's another story). I went to lunch instead with a library copy of "Night Music" by L.E. Sissman, with its rather switchback editing by Peter Davison between exuberant young poems and sober mature poems, and felt so much better by the end of the lunch period I think some kind of equanimity had been restored. One of the poems I read was "December 27, 1966" Night sweat: my temperature spikes to 102 At 5 AM -- a classic symptom -- and, Awake and shaken by an ague, I Peep out a western window at the worn Half-dollar of the moon, couched in the rose And purple medium of air above The little, distant mountains, a black line Of gentle ox humps, flanked by greeny lights Where a still empty highway goes. In Christmas week, The stars flash ornamentally with the Pure come-on of a possibility Of peace beyond all reason, of the spheres Engaged in an adagio saraband Of perfect mathematic to set an Example for the earthly, who abide In vales of breakdown out of warranty, The unrepairable complaint that rattles us To death. Tonight, though, it is almost worth the price -- High stakes, and the veiled dealer vends bad cards -- To see the moon so silver going west, So ladily serene because so dead, So closely tailed by her consort of stars, So far above the feverish, shivering Nightwatchman pressed against the falling glass. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From ffff at u.washington.edu Tue Feb 27 22:43:29 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 19:43:29 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Clue In-Reply-To: <20010227182819.533EE36FA@sitemail.everyone.net> Message-ID: > Deborah, > > I am a new-comer, but the word is, no more than one poem per month. > > Bob Well, then, out of the depths of the so totally (un)known: allusions to three of poets, and I made sure I put a library in! Clue --for Heather McHugh In the town of good company where folks who live there know what woods have stood for years next to the quiet of an unseen village the little horse walks forever away from. "Perhaps on a snowy evening..." the tourists in their haste pass too quickly, so that the body in the library goes unnoticed in the cold ring of your breath, while the man who told-- so much about time and roses really wanting to grow, goes back to that "cave of making." Really a villanelle would leave one without doubt. But let's assume daylight has struck the mountain and the windows of their cars. This far down the tourists are delirious for deer, but so certain of bear by now, obviously stuck "in the bird's irregular babble" in the mire of it all up to everyone's knees you smile you tell them to come out, come walk. From wjbat at conncoll.edu Tue Feb 27 22:51:35 2001 From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 22:51:35 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons , readings, etc. In-Reply-To: <004a01c0a0c5$e9b923c0$1b2bf7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: <20010227225135.026023@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> That's the Archie I remember, John. Thanks for that and all the other stories. I can't add much. I was an undergrad back in the '70's when I worked with him, and his presence and voice have stayed with me more insistently than anything else I might have learned in his classes. It was enough to be in the same room with someone who could give a word its weight just by saying it; I could go elsewhere for the fiddling technicalities, which he didn't much bother with. I do recall his telling me how he used to get paid royalties for his first book in postage stamps, since they weren't worth cutting a check for. I keep meaning to suggest that to my publishers. BTW, David K., _Tape for the Turn of the Year_ has some wonderful goofy moments. Wendy ====================== Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu Contemporary American Poetry Archive http://capa.conncoll.edu john brehm wrote: >When I was a visiting writer at Cornell in 1996, I gave a >reading and Archie introduced me. I didn't know quite what to expect, as >there wasn't a lot to say achievement-wise on my behalf, though I should >have seen what was coming based on the questions he'd asked me the week >before. "John Brehm was born in 1955," Archie began, "and a year later he >was a one-year-old baby." He then went on to talk about what grade-school I >went to, my high-school years in Lincoln, Nebraska, where I "was a football >player and a lover of Keats," and so on, ending with "And we're lucky to >have him while he's still pretty." It was a hilarious parody of the standard >introduction and I've never faced an audience more warmed-up than that one. From ffff at u.washington.edu Tue Feb 27 22:58:05 2001 From: ffff at u.washington.edu (Deborah Dale) Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 19:58:05 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Yartsa! I led a deli astray In-Reply-To: <3A9BFEA4.61CF7538@earthlink.net> Message-ID: > I like "Do not let Elton OD" This one had me laughing, too. Forgot to mention the Dubya one was written by someone in Washington D.C.. Seemed funnier after knowing where the poem came from. Debbie From gmcvay at patriot.net Wed Feb 28 01:23:25 2001 From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 01:23:25 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Yartsa! I led a deli astray In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Plan no damn Madonna LP. Yawn--Madonna fan? No damn way. -- Gwyn, trailing musical dislikes From fmm1 at cornell.edu Wed Feb 28 09:03:41 2001 From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 09:03:41 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] A Small, Last Ammons In-Reply-To: <20010227225135.026023@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> References: <004a01c0a0c5$e9b923c0$1b2bf7a5@compaqcomputer> Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010228084940.00a4a5e0@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu> I'll refrain from posting any more ARA anecdotes since I'm sure that there are as many of you who are weary of them as appreciative of them (and besides, in retrospect they're you-hadda-be-there stories, funnier in the telling than in the writing). But I did want to share the following "really short" poem that comes from a small chapbook titled, I kid you not, _Fucking Right_, published last year by the Harvard Review in an edition of 300 copies. As someone who has wasted far too much of his life regretting all the things he's never done rather than just going ahead and doing them, this poem means quite a bit to me, and in the light of Archie's passing it deepens all the more. BAD GOODS All my life I've been saving myself for something: I wdn't go here, do that: hello, death, I've brought you everything. For all the bulging self-indulgences he allowed to surface in his later work, Archie still knew how to cut with the thinnest, sharpest of blades. -- Fred Muratori ******************************************************** Fred Muratori (fmm1 at cornell.edu) Reference Services Division Olin * Kroch * Uris Libraries Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 WWW: http://fmref.library.cornell.edu/spectra.html ********************************************************* "The spaces between things keep getting bigger and more important." - John Ashbery From johnbrehm at mindspring.com Wed Feb 28 10:24:48 2001 From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 10:24:48 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons , readings, etc. References: <20010227225135.026023@oak.cc.conncoll.edu> Message-ID: <001e01c0a19a$979da360$5d2af7a5@compaqcomputer> Wendy, I feel much the same way as you about Archie in the classroom. He wasn't a great close reader, as you say, and I don't think I got a lot of really useful specific responses to my poems from him. But his presence was a force I'll never forget. He seemed to live inside of poetry rather than to be talking about it. And his occasional offhand remarks about poetry and poets have become permanent fixtures in the way I think about writing. We were talking about Emily Dickinson once and he said how much he admired her, what a poweful poet she was: "She's just like a Mack truck comin' down the road." When I said I imagined her as a quiet, even fragile woman, he said "In her life maybe, but in her poems she just runs right over you." And his description of Wordsworth's Prelude, a poem he returned to often: "It's the umbrella we're all still living under." I also want to second Fred Muratori's sense of Archie's detachment from the poetry scene. He certainly never talked to us about how and where we might publish our poems, or how to apply for grants, or work the system for jobs, or schmooze with poets who might help us, etc. He didn't do that himself and I realize now how unusual he was in that respect, how unlike most of the game-players and favor-traders who currently rule the poetry world. John Brehm ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wendy Battin" To: Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 10:51 PM Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Ammons , readings, etc. > That's the Archie I remember, John. Thanks for that and all the other > stories. > I can't add much. I was an undergrad back in the '70's when I worked with > him, and his presence and voice have stayed with me more insistently than > anything else I might have learned in his classes. It was enough to be > in the same room with someone who could give a word its weight just by > saying it; I could go elsewhere for the fiddling technicalities, which he > didn't much bother with. I do recall his telling me how he used to get > paid royalties for his first book in postage stamps, since they weren't > worth cutting a check for. I keep meaning to suggest that to my publishers. > > BTW, David K., _Tape for the Turn of the Year_ has some wonderful goofy > moments. > > Wendy > ====================== > Wendy Battin wjbat at conncoll.edu > Contemporary American Poetry Archive http://capa.conncoll.edu > > > > john brehm wrote: > > >When I was a visiting writer at Cornell in 1996, I gave a > >reading and Archie introduced me. I didn't know quite what to expect, as > >there wasn't a lot to say achievement-wise on my behalf, though I should > >have seen what was coming based on the questions he'd asked me the week > >before. "John Brehm was born in 1955," Archie began, "and a year later he > >was a one-year-old baby." He then went on to talk about what grade-school I > >went to, my high-school years in Lincoln, Nebraska, where I "was a football > >player and a lover of Keats," and so on, ending with "And we're lucky to > >have him while he's still pretty." It was a hilarious parody of the standard > >introduction and I've never faced an audience more warmed-up than that one. > > > > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry From TerryP17 at aol.com Wed Feb 28 10:48:32 2001 From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 10:48:32 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, and oddities Message-ID: <96.10ad2584.27ce77d0@aol.com> Moira-- <>> Fair observation. However, I should elaborate further, as what I consider an "oddity" might be someone else's mainstream, and that wasn't exactly where I was going with this. First, Bruccoli specifically intended that these types of books be marketed to laymen and collectors (he told me), so I don't think they were or are exclusively aimed at libraries. In fact, I myself own the Chandler and Fitzgerald books, and the Fitgerald ledger, aside from being a "coffee table" type book (the old-style ledgers were pretty large and this is a facsimile)is pretty educational insofar as one is interested in seeing how a writer who actually lives by his craft makes that living--in dollars and cents. The Chandler book is ephemera, youthful, derivative poetry from his early life, much of which was actually spent in England. But the volume includes a late poem that's a very touching elegy on the death of his wife Cissie, who was many years his senior. My point in this post, though, was that books like these, aimed at educated readers and collectors who are not specialists but have a few bucks, as well as other more mainstream items such as the one you pointed out, while having a market, are finding that market diminish over time due to a lack of consensus as to who the "greats" are as well as a general (apparent) diminution in the importance of a humanities education in a society that generally regards as useful only those elements of an education that result in the generation of dollars. BTW, on a vaguely-related note, a recent production of Prof. Bruccoli and his wife Arlyn, published last fall by the University of South Carolina Press, is "O Lost," the reconstructed original version of Thomas Wolfe's first novel, which under the hands of Max Perkins became known as "Look Homeward, Angel." Why talk of a novelist on a poetry listserv? Well, Wolfe, although people seem not to read him as much as they used to, has often been cited as one of America's greatest prose poets. I personally don't believe in the concept of prose poetry. But then, when I read passages from Wolfe that describe train journeys across America or the details of a huge Southern-style feast, I begin to wonder why I don't believe in prose poetry. Terry Ponick terryp17 at aol.com From sondheim at panix.com Wed Feb 28 10:41:51 2001 From: sondheim at panix.com (Alan Sondheim) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 10:41:51 -0500 (EST) Subject: [New-Poetry] .echo poem for month until 3/28/2001 In-Reply-To: <200102281520.f1SFK2x01102@wiz.cath.vt.edu> Message-ID: if "if you want to make a world, fun for boys and girls, things and spaces whirled, salute the flag unfurled, so fun for boys and girls!" if you want to make a world .echo if you want to make a world make some things just lying around .echo make some things just lying around look at them, check them out .echo look at them, check them out try a flyover and in-between .echo try a flyover and in,between try a flyover and in-between .echo try a flyover and in-between make sure there's plenty of light .echo make sure there's plenty of light change the colours all around .echo change the colors all around change the colours all around .echo change the colors all around change the colors all around .echo change the colors all around make place to put things in .echo make place to put things in make a great big sphere .echo make a great big sphere put it around all the lamps and things .echo put it around all the lamps and things ------------------ - Alan Internet Text at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt Partial at http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/internet_txt.html Trace Projects at http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm CDROM of collected work 1994-2000/1 available: write sondheim at panix.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Feb 28 11:55:39 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 07:55:39 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, and oddities Message-ID: >First, Bruccoli specifically intended that these types of books be marketed >to laymen and collectors (he told me), so I don't think they were or are >exclusively aimed at libraries. I don't doubt that's what he intended....however, a quick search for Fitzgerald's "Ledger" brings up the following (these are the first 3 stores I usually hit when I am looking for a book. I buy most from abebooks.com): Amazon.com -- special order, $150. Powells.com -- not available. Abebooks.com -- from $150 to $235 to $250. I would buy the "Ledger" at the drop of a hat if I could, having studied Fitzgerald for some years...but at that price it's going to take a long while for that hat to drop. The only place I can afford to get it is at a library, and the only place I have ever seen it is in a library. I have _never_ seen it in a used bookstore. >My point in this post, though, was that books like these, aimed at educated >readers and collectors who are not specialists but have a few bucks, as >well as other more mainstream items such as the one you pointed out, while >having a market, are finding that market diminish over time due to a lack >of consensus as to who the "greats" are as well as a general (apparent) >diminution in the importance of a humanities education in a society that >generally regards as useful only those elements of an education that result >in the generation of dollars. I don't think Fitzgerald's "Ledger" is really of interest to people who are not really, really interested in Fitzgerald. I could be wrong, but such a specialized document, like the variorium drafts of "Tender is the Night," is going to be very important to a very small segment of the reading public, but the majority will pass it by. This is why I think your example doesn't actually work. I think "O Lost" may be more popular than Fitzgerald's "Ledger," because "Look Homeward Angel" is such a popular novel, and there are a lot of Wolfe fans and hence a better example of "books aimed at educated readers and collectors." Eliot and Wolfe are still fairly well-established in the canon. As a number of others have pointed out, the lack of consensus as to who the "greats" are has much more to do with modern poets. I would wager everyone who has been to college has probably been dragged through "The Love Song of J.S. Prufrock," in the same way you get dragged through about the first third of the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales." But when you start talking about A.R. Ammons, John Ashbery, even Wallace Stevens, the percentages go down a fair amount -- at least this is what I've found anecdotally. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 28 12:29:16 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 12:29:16 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, and oddities Message-ID: In a message dated 2/28/01 9:52:11 AM Central Standard Time, TerryP17 at aol.com writes: > > BTW, on a vaguely-related note, a recent production of Prof. Bruccoli and > his wife Arlyn, published last fall by the University of South Carolina Press, > is "O Lost," the reconstructed original version of Thomas Wolfe's first > novel, which under the hands of Max Perkins became known as "Look Homeward, > Angel." Why talk of a novelist on a poetry listserv? Well, Wolfe, although > people seem not to read him as much as they used to, has often been cited as > one of America's greatest prose poets. I personally don't believe in the > concept of prose poetry. But then, when I read passages from Wolfe that > describe train journeys across America or the details of a huge Southern- > style feast, I begin to wonder why I don't believe in prose poetry. > I give my poetry students a passage or prose from Wolfe, tell them (lie to them) that it was originally verse, and ask them to restore the line breaks. The results are always very interesting. From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 28 12:32:21 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 12:32:21 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Bruccoli's books . . . Message-ID: <5e.7d28dc0.27ce9025@cs.com> Those who aren't familiar with them might want to check the titles in the "documentary series" of the Dictionary of Literary Biography (Bruccoli Clark Layman). These are too expensive for personal purchase but many libraries have them. The documentary series volumes contain miscellaneous stuff from/about writers. I wish I could afford a set. They're wonderful browsing places, kind of like poking through a trunk in Hemingway's attic. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Feb 28 12:49:30 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 11:49:30 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, and oddities In-Reply-To: Message-ID: When we move in workshop from meter to free verse, I regularly do the same sort of exercise with Joyce's prose, and yes, it's always interesting. A good way into the discussion of what free verse can be, I think, is to argue over linebreaks. And with a passage of prose, no one can get distracted by comparing the student versions to original verse versions. Just curious, Sam: why do you lie to the students? Do they take the exercise more seriously that way, do you think? David Graham > >I give my poetry students a passage or prose from Wolfe, tell them (lie to >them) that it was originally verse, and ask them to restore the line breaks. >The results are always very interesting. __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From mbaker at langara.bc.ca Wed Feb 28 13:20:37 2001 From: mbaker at langara.bc.ca (Mark Baker) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 10:20:37 -0800 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wolfe the Poet Message-ID: <3A9D4175.8A951538@langara.bc.ca> I have a book--The Hills Beyond (can't find it right now, bought it eons ago when I actually read Look Homeward, but I think that's the title)--that does reset Wolfe in lines of verse, perhaps from the fabled era when publishers believed they could profit on a book of poetry, especially if the poems were posthumously factitious. Mark Baker From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 28 13:29:10 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 13:29:10 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, and oddities Message-ID: <88.2fe9b31.27ce9d76@cs.com> In a message dated 2/28/01 11:49:58 AM Central Standard Time, grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > Just curious, Sam: why do you lie to the students? Do they take the > exercise more seriously that way, do you think? > Well, "lie" is inaccurate. Actually, I give them several pages of passages--some prose, some verse originally. Some are printed in their original form; others are altered (prose into verse, or vice versa). The exercise is first to determine whether the passage was originally prose or verse; then, if they decide that the prose passage was originally verse, to restore the line breaks. The first example is the passage from Pater's prose that Yeats printed as verse as the first poem in his Oxford anthology. If you are anyone would like a copy of the exercise I can send it as an attachment. From JNB17 at aol.com Wed Feb 28 13:31:46 2001 From: JNB17 at aol.com (JNB17 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 13:31:46 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Yartsa! I led a deli astray Message-ID: Don't get me started... Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas I madam, I made radio. So I dared. Am I mad? Am I? Ah, Satan piss. Sip, Natasha. John Burdick From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Feb 28 13:37:43 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 09:37:43 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wolfe the Poet Message-ID: >I have a book--The Hills Beyond (can't find it right now, bought it >eons ago when I actually read Look Homeward, but I think that's the >title)--that does reset Wolfe in lines of verse, perhaps from the >fabled era when publishers believed they could profit on a book >of poetry, especially if the poems were posthumously factitious. Actually, "The Hills Beyond" is a posthumous collection of prose. I believe you are thinking of a book called "A Stone, A Leaf, An Unfound Door," which posthumously arranged some of Wolfe's famous "dithyrambs" (as Maxwell Perkins called them) into verse. The latest biography of Wolfe, by David Herbert Donaldson (I think that's his name) uses these verse arrangements when discussing Wolfe's poetic qualities. Along the same lines I believe the penultimate draft of "The Great Gatsby" has been published by the admirably indefatigable Matthew Bruccoli (I love his biography of Fitzgerald) with the awful title "Trimalchio in West Egg." I can't imagine there would be a huge audience for this, although "The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Romance," Bruccoli's re-editing of Wilson's editing of "The Last Tycoon" manuscript, is selling fairly well in trade paperback, I think. It seemed to be marketed as a regular book rather than something exclusively for scholars or college students. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Feb 28 13:38:39 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 09:38:39 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, and oddities Message-ID: >If you are anyone would like a copy of the exercise I can send it as an >attachment. It does sound interesting....would there possibly be a way to send it to the list? Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu Wed Feb 28 02:39:23 2001 From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 01:39:23 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, and oddities In-Reply-To: <88.2fe9b31.27ce9d76@cs.com> Message-ID: on 2/28/01 12:29 PM, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com at Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote: > In a message dated 2/28/01 11:49:58 AM Central Standard Time, > grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes: > >> Just curious, Sam: why do you lie to the students? Do they take the >> exercise more seriously that way, do you think? >> > Well, "lie" is inaccurate. Actually, I give them several pages of > passages--some prose, some verse originally. Some are printed in their > original form; others are altered (prose into verse, or vice versa). The > exercise is first to determine whether the passage was originally prose or > verse; then, if they decide that the prose passage was originally verse, to > restore the line breaks. The first example is the passage from Pater's prose > that Yeats printed as verse as the first poem in his Oxford anthology. > > If you are anyone would like a copy of the exercise I can send it as an > attachment. > _______________________________________________ > New-Poetry mailing list > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry > I'd be happy to take one of them there poetry-to-prose exercises. Paul Lake From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 28 13:52:16 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 13:52:16 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, and oddities Message-ID: <32.113b0dd4.27cea2e0@cs.com> In a message dated 2/28/01 12:41:21 PM Central Standard Time, moira_russell at hotmail.com writes: > >If you are anyone would like a copy of the exercise I can send it as an > >attachment. > > It does sound interesting....would there possibly be a way to send it to the > > list? > > Moira Russell > Seattle, WA Anyone can email me, and I'll send it as an .rtf attachment. From schro047 at tc.umn.edu Wed Feb 28 14:22:05 2001 From: schro047 at tc.umn.edu (Steve Schroer) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 13:22:05 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Palindromes Message-ID: <3A9D4FDD.46061806@tc.umn.edu> I've always loved palindromes; and I have a penpal in Barcelona who informs me that Spanish, with its much simpler patterns of spelling, is a much better language than English for palindromes. Unfortunately I don't "habla Espanol" -- we correspond in "Ingles" -- and so my friend is unable to share his favorite Spanish palindromes with me. Can anyone recommend a volume of palindromes in translation? Steve Schroer From JackKerouac25 at aol.com Wed Feb 28 15:00:02 2001 From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 15:00:02 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Reading Poetry Message-ID: <21.80f8893.27ceb2c2@aol.com> I teach introductory poetry classes to freshmen and sophomores, and I've found that the absolute same student who sits in class and debates the themes in Marquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" will become so quiet that I think he's died when I read the very first poem that I always teach: Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." I've asked my students time and again why, when they are willing to talk about fiction and debate it openly, do they suddenly lose their tongues when I teach poetry? No one ever answers me clearly, but what I can deduce is that when most of my students read poetry, they start to distrust themselves and their opinions. Recently, I had a student tell me that "poetry just doesn't make sense." This same student wrote a paper on the subjugation of women in Updike's "A&P," a very well-written intelligent essay. When something is broken into line lengths on a page, people start distrusting it for some reason. My theory is that poetry has some sort of stigma around it--"It's poetry, you're not supposed to understand it" kind of thing. Either that or we're all fooling ourselves here.... Jeff Newberry Adjunct Instructor Department of English and Foreign Languages University of West Florida Pensacola, FL 32514 850.474.2923 850.473.7330 From JackKerouac25 at aol.com Wed Feb 28 15:09:49 2001 From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 15:09:49 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Glyn Maxwell _Time's Fool_ Message-ID: I'm reading an interesting book right now, Glyn Maxwell's _Time's Fool_. It's a Dante-esque little tale about a guy trapped on a train for eternity. He's able to return home once every seven years--on Christmas Eve. The book has our doomed hero telling his story to a poet, named Glenn, no less. It's a wonderful book, written in (what I think is) rather good terza rima (though some of the lines do some verbal calisthenics to make the rhyme). Has anyone read this book? I haven't read Maxwell's collected poems, _The Boys at Twilight_ I think it's called. Jeff Newberry Adjunct Instructor Department of English and Foreign Languages University of West Florida 11000 University Parkway Pensacola, FL 32514 850.474.2923 850.473.7330 From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 28 15:14:05 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 15:14:05 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Reading Poetry Message-ID: <9f.11d25cc8.27ceb60d@cs.com> Sometimes I make the students read the poems out loud themselves, instead of my reading them. This helps a bit, I think. I also find that they do a lot better job of analyzing poems (identifying tropes, for example) in discussion groups rather than in the individual q & a format. I also make my students memorize and recite. They don't much like it, but I sweeten the assignment with a few extra points if they recite by a deadline. I don't think that memorizing a poem for recitation ever did anyone permanent damage. From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu Wed Feb 28 15:47:36 2001 From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 14:47:36 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reading Poetry In-Reply-To: <21.80f8893.27ceb2c2@aol.com> Message-ID: It is a real problem, this common attitude that "I just don't get poetry." In my intro classes I tend to start very simple, and work from there. For example, a first class day on poetry for freshpeople might have us comparing Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" to Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays." I prime the pump with the softball question, "which boy is having more fun?" (Or, if we just have the Roethke before us, I might ask "is this a fun dance, or child abuse?") Everyone's usually got an opinion on such matters, and I let them get unruly with their disagreements for a while, before trying to urge the conversation around to evidence and particulars. We don't talk about iambics yet, but I certainly do read aloud and comment on rhythms, as with Roethke's line "he beat time on my head," where the rhythmic effect is obvious to everyone. My point with all this is to start, at least, without too much intimidating terminology, demonstrating by example that poems concern humanly important issues, and that it's not too hard to support their gut feelings with concrete evidence from the text. By the end of the class, we've shown ourselves how two poems on the "same" theme are utterly distinct, and that the differences have to do with such things as images, metaphors, rhythms, tone, connotations, etc.--though those terms get defined more fully later. Having said all this, teaching poetry to undergrads can sometimes be like pushing rope uphill. Had a freshman boil down his entire insight into Shakespeare a couple years ago with the title of his final exam essay, "The Use of Words." That's my second favorite, after a long-gone student's summary of symbolic meaning as: "Symbolism: Don't Worry About It." David Graham, worry-free in Wisconsin -------------------------------------- >I teach introductory poetry classes to freshmen and sophomores, and I've >found that the absolute same student who sits in class and debates the themes >in Marquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" will become so quiet that I >think he's died when I read the very first poem that I always teach: Yeats' >"The Lake Isle of Innisfree." I've asked my students time and again why, >when they are willing to talk about fiction and debate it openly, do they >suddenly lose their tongues when I teach poetry? > >No one ever answers me clearly, but what I can deduce is that when most of my >students read poetry, they start to distrust themselves and their opinions. >Recently, I had a student tell me that "poetry just doesn't make sense." >This same student wrote a paper on the subjugation of women in Updike's >"A&P," a very well-written intelligent essay. > >When something is broken into line lengths on a page, people start >distrusting it for some reason. My theory is that poetry has some sort of >stigma around it--"It's poetry, you're not supposed to understand it" kind of >thing. Either that or we're all fooling ourselves here.... > > >Jeff Newberry __________________ David Graham grahamd at mail.ripon.edu __________________ From MillB at aol.com Wed Feb 28 16:02:43 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 16:02:43 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetry, Popularity, and oddities Message-ID: Greetings all: I do exercises with three other poems; I tell my students to arrange line breaks. . . They usually hate the exercise at first and then attack it as if it were a puzzle. I use Merwin's "The Heart" and "Adultery" And "The Red Wheelbarrow" We have the best student-discussion with the Red Wheelbarrow and the most frustration with "The Heart." I teach mostly first and second year creative writing students. Cheers, Mill From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 28 16:06:24 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 16:06:24 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Reading Poetry In-Reply-To: Message-ID: This runs just about opposite to my recent endeavors in the classroom, David. Last term (no classes, this term), I started them with a perfect poem not to get--Bernadette Mayer's "Gay Full Story"--and proceded from there. Once we got past the idea that "Gay Full Story" was something to be "got," an interesting discussion began as students started to look at what they found on the page. The question that primed the pump, so to speak, was "Does this look like it's totally random--like it happened by accident?" They never fully exhausted Mayer's poem, but they found a lot there to consider and enjoy. Not "getting it" just didn't come up. Hal "Between the manifold splendors of anger, I watch a door slam like the corsage of a flower or the erasers of schoolchildren." --Andre Breton Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson > It is a real problem, this common attitude that "I just don't get poetry." > > In my intro classes I tend to start very simple, and work from there. For > example, a first class day on poetry for freshpeople might have us > comparing Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" to Robert Hayden's "Those Winter > Sundays." I prime the pump with the softball question, "which boy is > having more fun?" From MillB at aol.com Wed Feb 28 16:14:41 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 16:14:41 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons Message-ID: Dear Group: I know you're probably sick of the Ammons thread, but I wanted to share this one last story. . .especially since I lost my mom during the same time that Ammons passed away. Richie Rich (yes, it's a nickname), a friend of mine from grad school (USC 93) for a time was taken to telephoning poets he admired. . . and one of those that he called was Ammons. . . out of the blue, he dialed his number and got his wife. . . on the phone. . .(no publicist, no call screener) It seems that Ammons was out in the yard, pruning roses. . .my friend said that he could hear the screen door close and one gardening glove come off. . .and then he answered the phone. . Ammons talked with him (an unknown admirer) for close to an hour. . .such a generous and kind man. This same friend of mine--to cheer me up, sent me the following poem that I'd like to share as well. I don't mean to clutter up the list. Mill by Mark Strand: Elegy for My Father (Robert Strand, 1908-1968) 1. The Empty Body The hands were yours, the arms were yours, But you were not there. The eyes were yours, but they were closed and would not open. The distant sun was there. The moon poised on the hill's white shoulder was there. The wind on Bedford Basin was there. The pale green light of winter was there. Your mouth was there, But you were not there. When somebody spoke, there was no answer. Clouds came down And buried the buildings along the water, And the water was silent. The gulls stared. The years, the hours, that would not find you Turned in the wrists of others. There was no pain. it had gone. There were no secrets. There was nothing to say. The shade scattered its ashes. The body was yours, but you were not there. The air shivered against its skin. The dark leaned into its eyes. But you were not there. 2. Answers Why did you travel? Because the house was cold. Why did you travel? Because it is what I have always done between sunset and sunrise. What did you wear? I wore a blue suit, a white shirt, yellow tie, and yellow socks. What did you wear? I wore nothing. A scarf of pain kept me warm. Who did you sleep with? I slept with a different woman each night. Who did you sleep with? I slept alone. I have always slept alone. Why did you lie to me? I always thought I told the truth. Why did you lie to me? Because the truth lies like nothing else and I love the truth. Why are you going? Because nothing means much to me anymore. Why are you going? I don't know. I have never known. How long shall I wait for you? Do not wait for me. I am tired and I want to lie down. Are you tired and do you want to lie down? Yes, I am tired and I want to lie down. 3. Your Dying Nothing could stop you. Not the best day. Not the quiet. Not the ocean rocking. You went on with your dying. Not the trees under which you walked, not the trees that shaded you. Not the doctor Who warned you, the white-haired young doctor who saved you once. You went on with your dying. Nothing could stop you. Not your son. Not your daughter Who fed you and made you into a child again. Not your son who thought you would live forever. Not the wind that shook your lapels. Not the stillness that offered itself to your motion. Not your shoes that grew heavier. Not your eyes that refused to look ahead. Nothing could stop you. You sat in your room and stared at the city And went on with your dying. You went to work and let the cold enter your clothes. You let blood seep into your socks. Your face turned white. Your voice cracked in two. You leaned on your cane. But nothing could stop you. Not your friends who gave you advice. Not your son. Not your daughter who watched you grown small. Not fatigue that lived in your sighs. Not your lungs that would fill with water. Not your sleeves that carried the pain of your arms. Nothing could stop you. You went on with your dying. When you played with children you went on with your dying. When you sat down to eat, When you woke up at night, wet with tears, your body sobbing, You went on with your dying. Nothing could stop you. Not the past. Not the future with its good weather. Not the view from your window, the view of the graveyard. Not the city. Not the terrible city with its wooden buildings. Not defeat. not success. You did nothing but go on with your dying. You put your watch to your ear. You felt yourself slipping. You lay on the bed. You folded your arms over your chest and you dreamed of the world without you, Of the space under the trees, Of the space in your room, Of the spaces that would now be empty of you, And you went on with your dying. Nothing could stop you. Not your breathing. Not your life. Not the life you wanted. Not the life you had. Nothing could stop you. 4. Your Shadow You have your shadow. The places where you were have given it back. The hallways and bare lawns of the orphanage have given it back. The Newsboys Home has given it back. The streets of New York have given it back and so have the streets of Montreal. The rooms in Belem where lizards would snap at mosquitoes have given it back. The dark streets of Manaus and the damp streets of Rio have given it back. Mexico City where you wanted to leave it has given it back. And Halifax where the harbor would wash its hands of you has given it back. You have you shadow. When you traveled the white wake of your going sent your shadow below, but when you arrived it was there to greet you. You had your shadow. The doorways you entered lifted your shadow from you and when you went out, gave it back. You had your shadow. Even when you forgot your shadow, you found it again; it had been with you. once in the country the shade of a tree covered your shadow and you were not known. Once in the country you thought your shadow had been cast by somebody else. Your shadow said nothing. Your clothes carried your shadow inside; when you took them off, it spread like the dark of your past. And your words that float like leaves in an air that is lost, in a place no one knows, gave you back your shadow. Your friends gave you back your shadow. Your enemies gave you back your shadow. They said it was heavy and would cover your grave. When you died your shadow slept at the mouth of the furnace and ate ashes for bread. It rejoiced among ruins. It watched while others slept. It shone like crystal among the tombs. It composed itself like air. It wanted to be like snow on water. It wanted to be nothing, but that was not possible. It came to my house. It sat on my shoulders. Your shadow is yours. I told it so. I said it was yours. I have carried it with me too long. I give it back. 5. Mourning They mourn for you. When you rise at midnight, And the dew glitters on the stone of your cheeks, They mourn for you. They lead you back into the empty house. They carry the chairs and tables inside. They sit you down and teach you to breathe. And your breathe burns, It burns the pine box and the ashes fall like sunlight. They give you a book and tell you to read. They listen and their eyes fill with tears. The women stroke your fingers. They comb the yellow back into your hair. They shave the frost from your beard. They knead your thighs. They dress you in fine clothes. They rub your hands to keep them warm. They feed you. They offer you money. They get on their knees and beg you not to die. When you rise at midnight they mourn for you. They close their eyes and whisper your name over and over. But they cannot drag the buried light from your veins. They cannot reach your dreams. Old man, there is no way. Rise and keep rising, it does no good. They mourn for you the way they can. 6. The New Year. It is winter and the new year. Nobody knows you. Away from the stars, from the rain of light, You lie under the weather of stones. There is no thread to lead you back. Your friends doze in the dark Of pleasure and cannot remember. Nobody knows you. You are the neighbor of nothing. You do not see the rain falling and the man walking away, The soiled wind blowing its ashes across the city. You do not see the sun dragging the moon like an echo. You do not see the bruised heart go up in flames, The skulls of the innocent turn into smoke. You do not see the scars of plenty, the eyes without light. It is over. It is winter and the new year. The meek are hauling their skins into heaven. The hopeless are suffering the cold with those who have nothing to hide. It is over and nobody knows you. There is starlight drifting on the black water. There are stones in the sea no one has seen. There is a shore and people are waiting. And nothing comes back. Because it is over. Because there is silence instead of a name. Because it is winter and the new year. From halvard at earthlink.net Wed Feb 28 16:30:25 2001 From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 16:30:25 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] NEA eligibility In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I've been giving Lynda a bit of help with her NEA grant application (due Mar. 15 or thereabouts), and I started looking ahead to next year's poetry round. Suddenly, it struck me that neither Emily Dickinson nor Walt Whitman would have been eligible to apply. Please, correct me if I'm wrong. Hal "What, should we get rid of our ignorance, the very substance of our lives, merely in order to understand each other?" --R. P. Blackmur Halvard Johnson =============== email: halvard at earthlink.net website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Feb 28 16:51:18 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 16:51:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wolfe the Poet References: <3A9D4175.8A951538@langara.bc.ca> <3A9D71E4.404E@nut-n-but.net> <3A9D727C.207A@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <3A9D72D6.6538@nut-n-but.net> >I have a book--The Hills Beyond (can't find it right now, bought it >eons ago when I actually read Look Homeward, but I think that's the >title)--that does reset Wolfe in lines of verse, perhaps from the >fabled era when publishers believed they could profit on a book >of poetry, especially if the poems were posthumously factitious. I was a big fan of Wolfe the novelist when I was young, and I believe he helped me appreciate poetry almost as much as any poet. I, too, read the book of prose made poetry his publisher put out (yes, A stone, etc.) I was disappointed--it didn't work nearly as well done as poetry as it did as prose. The line-breaks, I think, sabotaged it by slowing the read into verse-read; taking it out of context worked against it (for me), too. Good lesson in the difference between poetry and prose, though. (For those of us who have trouble with solid liquids, wave/particles, etc.) But the "poems" weren't bad. --Bob G. From klvarnes at home.com Wed Feb 28 17:47:21 2001 From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 16:47:21 -0600 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Dear Ammons posters: I'm loving these posts & think of them as your generosity rather than clutter or bragging or guess-you-had-to-be-theres, as some of you have apologized. Some of us will never meet him & are grateful that you have & say so clearly what you value. So thanks. Kathrine Varnes From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Feb 28 17:55:27 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 17:55:27 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons References: Message-ID: <3A9D81DF.60F1@nut-n-but.net> I agree with what Kathrine Varnes. I thought Ammons one of our best poets but love hearing about just about ANY poets. --Bob G. > Dear Ammons posters: > > I'm loving these posts & think of them as your generosity rather than > clutter or bragging or guess-you-had-to-be-theres, as some of you have > apologized. Some of us will never meet him & are grateful that you have & > say so clearly what you value. So thanks. > > Kathrine Varnes From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Feb 28 18:03:03 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 18:03:03 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wolfe the Poet References: <3A9D4175.8A951538@langara.bc.ca> <3A9D71E4.404E@nut-n-but.net> <3A9D727C.207A@nut-n-but.net> <3A9D72D6.6538@nut-n-but.net> Message-ID: <3A9D83A7.60C0@nut-n-but.net> After writing my previous post to this thread, I thought of one important difference between Wolfe's "dithyrambs" as they were in his novels and as they were lineated and treated as discrete poems: the translation costs them their side-matter, the highly impassioned persona of Eugene. In the novels we're living as Eugene, so can experience the poetic passages as both beautiful in themselves and as poems about Eugene's exaltation upon experiencing whatever it is the poems are about. That is, they celebrate the world AND Eugene. As discrete poems, they don't connect us to Wolfe, their author, the way they connect us to Eugene, whom they're really happening in, in the novels (which, anyway, also allow us to connect to Wolfe). Just off-the-cuff thoughts I haven't had time to get too right, but I thought I'd let them out before I forgot about them. Do they make sense to anyone? --Bob G. From JforJames at aol.com Wed Feb 28 18:02:13 2001 From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 18:02:13 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons Message-ID: <41.80606f7.27cedd75@aol.com> In a message dated 2/28/01 5:49:39 PM Eastern Standard Time, klvarnes at home.com writes: > m loving these posts & think of them as your generosity rather than > clutter or bragging or guess-you-had-to-be-theres, as some of you have > apologized. Some of us will never meet him & are grateful that you have & > say so clearly what you value. So thanks. > > Kathrine Varnes Me too. Sort of an impromtu listserv Festschrift for Ammons. Finnegan From moira_russell at hotmail.com Wed Feb 28 18:14:40 2001 From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 14:14:40 -0900 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wolfe the Poet Message-ID: >After writing my previous post to this thread, I >thought of one important difference between Wolfe's >"dithyrambs" as they were in his novels and as >they were lineated and treated as discrete poems: >the translation costs them their side-matter, >the highly impassioned persona of Eugene. DHD makes a similar point in his biography of Wolfe: most of the dithyrambs were originally written as part of a first-person manuscript. One thing Maxwell Perkins regularly insisted Wolfe do was change this to third person; therefore the thoughts no longer become part of a narrator's consciousness, but are detached from the narrative, and seem to be the thoughts or at least the products of an omniscient narrator. Moira Russell Seattle, WA _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com Wed Feb 28 18:58:19 2001 From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 18:58:19 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Wolfe the Poet Message-ID: <97.11d4713f.27ceea9b@cs.com> I'm from North Carolina, so you can imagine what kind of Wolfe indoctrination I got while growing up. Does anyone still read Look Homeward, Angel? I taught it a few years back and was happy to revisit it. His lyrical passages, taken in small doses, are very beautiful, but he had a tendency to overdo them (as he overdid almost everything). I don't think anyone--poet or fiction writer--has written better on the subject of food, and some of his most potent lyricism comes when he's describing a family feast. From languagethief at yahoo.com Wed Feb 28 18:58:41 2001 From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 15:58:41 -0800 (PST) Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20010228235841.28500.qmail@web12205.mail.yahoo.com> Mill -- my condolences for your mom. And Strand's elegy is an appropriate choice; I've always liked it. Tad --- MillB at aol.com wrote: > Dear Group: > > I know you're probably sick of the Ammons thread, > but I wanted to share this > one last story. . .especially since I lost my mom > during the same time that > Ammons passed away. > > Richie Rich (yes, it's a nickname), a friend of mine > from grad school (USC > 93) for a time was taken to telephoning poets he > admired. . . and one of > those that he called was Ammons. . . out of the > blue, he dialed his number > and got his wife. . . on the phone. . .(no > publicist, no call screener) It > seems that Ammons was out in the yard, pruning > roses. . .my friend said that > he could hear the screen door close and one > gardening glove come off. . .and > then he answered the phone. . Ammons talked with him > (an unknown admirer) for > close to an hour. . .such a generous and kind man. > > This same friend of mine--to cheer me up, sent me > the following poem that I'd > like to share as well. I don't mean to clutter up > the list. > > Mill > > by Mark Strand: > > Elegy for My Father > (Robert Strand, 1908-1968) > > 1. The Empty Body > > The hands were yours, the arms were yours, > But you were not there. > The eyes were yours, but they were closed and would > not open. > The distant sun was there. > The moon poised on the hill's white shoulder was > there. > The wind on Bedford Basin was there. > The pale green light of winter was there. > Your mouth was there, > But you were not there. > When somebody spoke, there was no answer. > Clouds came down > And buried the buildings along the water, > And the water was silent. > The gulls stared. > The years, the hours, that would not find you > Turned in the wrists of others. > There was no pain. it had gone. > There were no secrets. There was nothing to say. > The shade scattered its ashes. > The body was yours, but you were not there. > The air shivered against its skin. > The dark leaned into its eyes. > But you were not there. > > 2. Answers > > Why did you travel? > Because the house was cold. > Why did you travel? > Because it is what I have always done between sunset > and sunrise. > What did you wear? > I wore a blue suit, a white shirt, yellow tie, and > yellow socks. > What did you wear? > I wore nothing. A scarf of pain kept me warm. > Who did you sleep with? > I slept with a different woman each night. > Who did you sleep with? > I slept alone. I have always slept alone. > Why did you lie to me? > I always thought I told the truth. > Why did you lie to me? > Because the truth lies like nothing else and I love > the truth. > Why are you going? > Because nothing means much to me anymore. > Why are you going? > I don't know. I have never known. > How long shall I wait for you? > Do not wait for me. I am tired and I want to lie > down. > Are you tired and do you want to lie down? > Yes, I am tired and I want to lie down. > > 3. Your Dying > > Nothing could stop you. > Not the best day. Not the quiet. Not the ocean > rocking. > You went on with your dying. > Not the trees > under which you walked, not the trees that shaded > you. > Not the doctor > Who warned you, the white-haired young doctor who > saved > you once. > You went on with your dying. > Nothing could stop you. Not your son. Not your > daughter > Who fed you and made you into a child again. > Not your son who thought you would live forever. > Not the wind that shook your lapels. Not the > stillness that offered itself > to your motion. > Not your shoes that grew heavier. > Not your eyes that refused to look ahead. > Nothing could stop you. > You sat in your room and stared at the city > And went on with your dying. > You went to work and let the cold enter your > clothes. > You let blood seep into your socks. > Your face turned white. > Your voice cracked in two. > You leaned on your cane. > But nothing could stop you. > Not your friends who gave you advice. > Not your son. Not your daughter who watched you > grown small. > Not fatigue that lived in your sighs. > Not your lungs that would fill with water. > Not your sleeves that carried the pain of your arms. > Nothing could stop you. > You went on with your dying. > When you played with children you went on with your > dying. > When you sat down to eat, > When you woke up at night, wet with tears, your body > sobbing, > You went on with your dying. > Nothing could stop you. > Not the past. > Not the future with its good weather. > Not the view from your window, the view of the > graveyard. > Not the city. Not the terrible city with its wooden > buildings. > Not defeat. not success. > You did nothing but go on with your dying. > You put your watch to your ear. > You felt yourself slipping. > You lay on the bed. > You folded your arms over your chest and you dreamed > of the > world without you, > Of the space under the trees, > Of the space in your room, > Of the spaces that would now be empty of you, > And you went on with your dying. > Nothing could stop you. > Not your breathing. Not your life. > Not the life you wanted. > Not the life you had. > Nothing could stop you. > > 4. Your Shadow > > You have your shadow. > The places where you were have given it back. > The hallways and bare lawns of the orphanage have > given it back. > The Newsboys Home has given it back. > The streets of New York have given it back and so > have the > streets of Montreal. > The rooms in Belem where lizards would snap at > mosquitoes > have given it back. > The dark streets of Manaus and the damp streets of > Rio have > given it back. > Mexico City where you wanted to leave it has given > it back. > And Halifax where the harbor would wash its hands of > you has > given it back. > You have you shadow. > When you traveled the white wake of your going sent > your > shadow below, but when you arrived it was there > to greet > you. You had your shadow. > The doorways you entered lifted your shadow from you > and > when you went out, gave it back. You had your > shadow. > Even when you forgot your shadow, you found it > again; it had > been with you. > === message truncated === __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ From HntrRos at aol.com Wed Feb 28 19:39:55 2001 From: HntrRos at aol.com (HntrRos at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 19:39:55 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons Message-ID: <61.bd3bf86.27cef462@aol.com> I love a lot of his early work, but later on he faded out in one not-so-great pseudo-existential "blah"... just mildly amusing and provocative. That quote of his about having to "burn at a high heat" seems interesting, given one part of "Garbage" (love the title): "here I am writing my flattest poem yet -- the fire line, that's just too hard to control, the poem that speaks softly has real tears in it" Or something like that, since the linebreaks are bullshit. (Interestingly, the way I misremembered it, it almost scans as loose blank verse. Is "real tears" a reference to Moore's appropriation of whoever's "real toads"? Probably not. I have to admire the assonance and consonance, too: "fire line", "real tears". But it's weak compared with his early work, which was full of firebreathing and exhilirating rhythms: the prophet became a typist. The ideas behind his later poems had balls, but didn't pass them on to their offspring. Not that ladies can't have balls, many do. Not that they need be masculinized. O fuck it all, all this our mind stinks....) From MillB at aol.com Wed Feb 28 20:46:23 2001 From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 20:46:23 EST Subject: [New-Poetry] NEA eligibility Message-ID: <6d.1015ca23.27cf03ef@aol.com> Halvard: I was an NEA fellow in 1997 and so, therefore am sympathetic to the cause. . . it seems that in this day and age, eligibility factors seem to be important. . . it IS one way of weeding out folks (I don't mean to sound jaded, just practical). I sure know that I needed that grant when I got it. . .and I waited a long time to apply, before I had the "required" publications. Most grants (unlike NEA) ask for at least one book, sometimes more--as a prerequisite. To my knowledge, the NEA did not exist in Emily and Walt's time, and so therefore they would not even have been able to apply. Is your point that they didn't have the required publications or the education? I guess I'm not sure of your point. It sounds sort of like asking the price of tea in China. During that time, as a woman, Emily couldn't vote either! Never mind a government grant for poetry. Mill From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net Wed Feb 28 21:38:18 2001 From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman) Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 21:38:18 -0500 Subject: [New-Poetry] Wolfe the Poet References: Message-ID: <3A9DB61A.50D7@nut-n-but.net> > DHD makes a similar point in his biography of Wolfe: > most of the dithyrambs were originally written as > part of a first-person manuscript. One thing > Maxwell Perkins regularly insisted Wolfe do was > change this to third person; therefore the thoughts > no longer become part of a narrator's > consciousness, but are detached from the narrative, > and seem to be the thoughts or at least the > products of an omniscient narrator. Right, but for me they remained part of the viewpoint of the POV character, Eugene. The first two novels, at least to me, always seemed effectively first person. --Bob G.