From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Sun Jul  1 10:04:13 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 07:04:13 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] poetserv.com links page
Message-ID: <20010701140413.15539.qmail@web12103.mail.yahoo.com>

For what it's worth, I've revised and uploaded the links page at:

< http://www.poetserv.com/links.html>

Many thanks to those who have provided some of the urls.  The page will
evolve but I will *not* include personal homepages or specific
magazines - several of the indices and organizations listed provide
those.

- Jim (who will indeed get to Gioia but there's a stack of student
essays needing my attention at the moment)

=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/


From TerryP17 at aol.com  Sun Jul  1 13:23:41 2001
From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 13:23:41 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Academic blackballing
Message-ID: <105.58de8c9.2870b69e@aol.com>

I prefer not to get into this painful matter in very great detail. Suffice it to say that my experiences track Tad's pretty closely. Except that my initial offense had to do with the inability of a superstar prof to plank my spouse when I was absent one summer. The blackballing was done by his confederates after he failed to have both my wife and I fired from our teaching assistantships. Quota hiring systems, then gaining traction due to Federal mandates in the early 1970s, pretty much sealed my doom.

The rapacious villains of corporate America have treated me with far greater deference and courtesy over the past 30 years than my former idols in the professoriat ever did.

--Terry P


From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu  Sun Jul  1 15:25:07 2001
From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 15:25:07 -0400 
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: POETICAL CORRECTNESS
Message-ID: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE13F@ness.agnesscott.edu>

 
Well, if that's what some professor-poets did, could they vacate their
positions so that people who want to teach can have a better chance? I can
think of little worse in academia, from kindergarten to grad school, other
than a teaacher who does it for bread.

-Amber
-----Original Message-----
<snip>

Even this is a
little complicated. Some professor-poets started out as poets, realized
they'd starve, so got academic credentials and a teaching slot so they
could still do poetry and have a roof over their head. Other
professor-poets may have started out as profs and gotten into poetry.
It's hard to generalize. You could say, though, with reasonable
accuracy, that most folks who are "acknowledged" as poets today are
probably involved in teaching it, at least part-time.

<<I wonder where he'd put me? I was a full-time academic for about 4
years
after graduate school (Iowa), then I got blacklisted and my teaching
career
was ended. So I became a non-professor-poet, but not by choice -- I
would
have preferred to go on being a professor-poet. So what does that make
me? A
genuine non-professor-poet, or a sham? After 17 years of editing skin
magazines and business magazines, writing historical novels and
mysteries, I
went back to teaching part time, and writing non-fiction books on money
management. Last year, after about 17 years of that, I taught full time.
This fall...I don't know yet. Could Lind read my work and figure out
what
was professor-poetry and what was non-professor-poetry? Would he assume
that
the formal work was done when I was a non-professor, and the free verse,
or
loose accentual stuff, was done while I was professoring (which would be
a
faulty assumption)?:>>

I wasn't aware that you and I shared the academic blackballing
experience Tad, and I'm sorry to hear you got whacked, too. Your points
above are well-taken, and no, it would probably be difficult to discern
where your writings placed you just based on the writings alone. We
could maybe call you an ex-professor-poet. And that would make me an
ex-professor-former-poet because I don't write poetry anymore. No easy
categories here, I think, even though it looks easy to start with.
That's what I mean when I say Michael got lost. There was a potential
argument there but it never got developed.

--Terry P

_______________________________________________
New-Poetry mailing list
New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry


From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu  Sun Jul  1 15:42:46 2001
From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 15:42:46 -0400 
Subject: [New-Poetry] "widely accessible" Poet Laureate
Message-ID: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE140@ness.agnesscott.edu>

But is pulling a poet away from society necessarily a good idea? I suppose
it would depend on what the poet wrote. It might be easier to write poetry
about human relationships and struggle while in society trying to pull
together rent; it might be a bit harder to write poetry centered around
obscure philosophy while an ambulance blares and the El trundles by the
window. But so life goes. Everyone deserves a break for regular life, but
few people get it, so what makes poets entitled?. Even if free money and
shelter were available, they couldn't remove a poet from the normal noise
and pleasures of life found in husbands, wives, live-ins, crumbsnatchers
(Mommy, whatcha writin'?), and the people who gave out the money in the
first place, who more than likely would appreciate a tangible return.

I still don't understand 'advanced poetry' vs. non-advanced poetry.
'Advanced' sounds as if poetry's marching toward some sort of goal or is
some piece of technology; basically, it sounds as if just gets better and
better every new era, and that's a little too optimistic for me to believe.

From tadrichards at prodigy.net  Sun Jul  1 15:46:37 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 15:46:37 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: POETICAL CORRECTNESS
References: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE13F@ness.agnesscott.edu>
Message-ID: <005a01c10266$8ae70440$6401a8c0@hvc.rr.com>

Amber - the bread is always going to be a part of it.


  Tad Richards                       "Well said, old mole."
    The Old Mole                         Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet
    of the MoleNet                          Act I, Scene 5
          http://pages.prodigy.net/tadrichards
----- Original Message -----
From: "Amber Prentiss" <aprentiss at agnesscott.edu>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2001 3:25 PM
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Re: POETICAL CORRECTNESS


>
> Well, if that's what some professor-poets did, could they vacate their
> positions so that people who want to teach can have a better chance? I can
> think of little worse in academia, from kindergarten to grad school, other
> than a teaacher who does it for bread.
>
> -Amber
> -----Original Message-----
> <snip>
>
> Even this is a
> little complicated. Some professor-poets started out as poets, realized
> they'd starve, so got academic credentials and a teaching slot so they
> could still do poetry and have a roof over their head. Other
> professor-poets may have started out as profs and gotten into poetry.
> It's hard to generalize. You could say, though, with reasonable
> accuracy, that most folks who are "acknowledged" as poets today are
> probably involved in teaching it, at least part-time.
>
> <<I wonder where he'd put me? I was a full-time academic for about 4
> years
> after graduate school (Iowa), then I got blacklisted and my teaching
> career
> was ended. So I became a non-professor-poet, but not by choice -- I
> would
> have preferred to go on being a professor-poet. So what does that make
> me? A
> genuine non-professor-poet, or a sham? After 17 years of editing skin
> magazines and business magazines, writing historical novels and
> mysteries, I
> went back to teaching part time, and writing non-fiction books on money
> management. Last year, after about 17 years of that, I taught full time.
> This fall...I don't know yet. Could Lind read my work and figure out
> what
> was professor-poetry and what was non-professor-poetry? Would he assume
> that
> the formal work was done when I was a non-professor, and the free verse,
> or
> loose accentual stuff, was done while I was professoring (which would be
> a
> faulty assumption)?:>>
>
> I wasn't aware that you and I shared the academic blackballing
> experience Tad, and I'm sorry to hear you got whacked, too. Your points
> above are well-taken, and no, it would probably be difficult to discern
> where your writings placed you just based on the writings alone. We
> could maybe call you an ex-professor-poet. And that would make me an
> ex-professor-former-poet because I don't write poetry anymore. No easy
> categories here, I think, even though it looks easy to start with.
> That's what I mean when I say Michael got lost. There was a potential
> argument there but it never got developed.
>
> --Terry P
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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 halvard at earthlink.net  Sun Jul  1 17:17:53 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 2001 17:17:53 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: POETICAL CORRECTNESS
In-Reply-To: <005a01c10266$8ae70440$6401a8c0@hvc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEMADMAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

In fact, the bread should be a lot more of it. Were salaries for
teachers tripled or quadrupled, you'd see a *much* better
educational system in the US.

Hal     "metaphor--I use them. They keep me regular."
                         --Paul Violi

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson


> Amber - the bread is always going to be a part of it.
> 
> 
>   Tad Richards                       "Well said, old mole."


From JforJames at aol.com  Mon Jul  2 10:01:01 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 10:01:01 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] 2001 Poetry Super Highway Poetry Contest
Message-ID: <32.17347929.2871d89d@aol.com>

THE 2001 POETRY SUPER HIGHWAY POETRY CONTEST

this years contest is sponsored by:

AGiftToPoetry.com, Am Fonda Press, Ancient Wind
Press Publications,
Andrea Forbing, Ang?lique Jamail, Barbra
Nightingale, Bob Nelson/
Anthology Literary Magazine, Chocolate Waters,
Cider Press, Circle
Magazine, Dan Weinberg and U-Direct, Dennis
Ambrose, Drift Wood
Highway Poetry Anthology/Robt O'sullivan Schleith,
E-Pub2000,
Frances Lemoine, Gandy Creek Forum, Green Bean
Press, Hanover
Press, Humynpress Ink Publishing Company, Ibbetson
Street Press,
Inevitable Press, Thee Instagon Foundation, Jim
Bennett, John
Sokol, Katie O'loughlin, Karawane Magazine, Kitty
Litter Press,
Limestone Circle/Renee Carter Hall, Lizzie Wann,
Lummox
Publications, Marc Awodey, Muse's Kiss,
/noserialmice, Phony Lid
Books, Poem.x Poetry Series, Poesy Magazine,
Poetry At Suite101.com,
Poetry Society Of America/ Los Angeles, The Poet's
Porch
(PoetsPorch.com) Pointoflife.com,
Resourcesforwriters.com, Robert
Diskin, Sacred Beverage Press, Sick Puppy Press,
Stazja Mcfadyen,
and United Workers Press


It's our fourth annual Poetry Contest featuring
cash prizes and
almost 50 sponsors who've donated over 225
additional prizes.  Last
year we were able to send every contest entrant a
prize for
participating and with this years even longer
roster of prizes,
we're hoping to do the same.


Read below for all the Entry Guidelines, The
Complete Prize List, The Judges, and the 2001
Contest Calendar


__________________________________________________
____
ENTRY GUIDELINES

~ The Poetry Super Highway Poetry Contest Is Open
to all human beings
  on planet Earth. (except for the three judges)

~ Enter as many poems as you like.

~ Poems may be of any style, length, or subject
matter.

~ Poems must be e-mailed to
Contest at PoetrySuperHighway.com

~ We DO NOT ACCEPT ATTACHMENTS.  The text of your
poems must be
  pasted into the body of an e-mail

~ This contest is separate from weekly Poet of the
Week consideration
  though submissions for Poet of the week
consideration must be
  separate from Contest Submissions and the same
poems may not be
  submitted for both.

~ There is a One Dollar Per Poem entry fee.

~ Entry fee should be made payable and mailed to:

Rick Lupert
5336 Kester Ave. # 103
Sherman Oaks, CA 91411

~ Include with your entry fee, your

Name
Address
E-mail address,
and titles of poems you entered.

~ Deadline for postmarking entry fees is Saturday
September 15, 2001.

~ This is a not for profit contest. All of the
collected entry fees
  will be divided between the top three scoring
poems (minus postage
  for mailing out additional prizes. See Prize
List below)

~ Once your entry fee is received, your poems will
be sent with your
  name removed to the three judges who will score
them 0 - 5
  (5 being best).

~ Your poems will not be forwarded to the judges
until your entry fee
  is received.

~ If you have any questions or need any of the
contest details
  clarified, please e-mail
Contest at PoetrySuperHighway.com


__________________________________________________
____
COMPLETE SPONSOR AND PRIZE LIST

~ First Prize: 50% of the entry fees collected*
plus winning poem
  featured on the PSH

~ Second Prize: 30% of the entry fees collected*
plus winning poem
  featured on the PSH.

~ Third Prize: 20% of the entry fees collected*
plus winning poem
  featured on the PSH.

* (minus postage costs in mailing out additional
prizes)

Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, we are
able to supplement the cash prizes with an
impressive array of prizes which would be of
interest to poets and writers.

The following prizes will be used to bolster first
through third prize as well as distributed to
other contest entrants.

Our goal is to be able to send every singly person
who enters the contest something.

If you're interested in becoming a sponsor to this
years contest in exchange for promotional
consideration, please e-mail
sponsor at PoetrySuperHighway.com for the details.


Additional Prizes:
(alphabetical order)

A GIFT OF POETRY
http://agiftofpoetry.com/
5 Custom Poems

AM FONDA PRESS
http://www.PoetryUSA.com/
1 copy of the book "The New Now Now New Millennium
Turn On Anthology 2001 to 3000 & Beyond"  Edited
by HD Moe
1 copy of the book "The Human Face of Love" edited
by Mary Rudge

ANCIENT WIND PRESS PUBLICATIONS
5 copies of the book ?The Old Cowboy and Other
Selected Works? by Francis J. Whitby

ANDREA FORBING
1 Poetry WebPage with up to FOUR pieces of poetry
and up to TWO graphics and/or pictures
1 written critique of up to 5 poems not longer
than 40 lines each

ANG?LIQUE JAMAIL
10 copies of the book ?Gypsies? by Ang?lique
Jamail

BARBRA NIGHTINGALE
http://fs.broward.cc.fl.us/~bnightin/
1 copy of the book ?Singing in the Key of L? by
Barbra Nightingale
1 copy of the book ?Greatest Hits? by Barbra
Nightingale

BOB NELSON/ANTHOLOGY LITERARY MAGAZINE
http://www.anthologymagazine.com/
3 copies of the CD "The Best of Essenzaslam, Vol I
CD: the 2000 Slamoff"

CHOCOLATE WATERS
http://www.chocolatewaters.com/
1 signed copy of the book ?To the man reporter
from the Denver Post? by Chocolate Waters
1 signed copy of the book ?Take Me Like A
Photograph? by Chocolate Waters
1 signed copy of the book ?Charting New Waters? by
Chocolate Waters

CIDER PRESS
http://www.ciderpressreview.com/
2 one year subscriptions to the Cider Press Review

CIRCLE MAGAZINE
http://www.circlemagazine.com/
2 one year subscriptions to Circle Magazine

DAN WEINBERG AND U-DIRECT
5 vintage copies of 'u-direct' zine.

DENNIS AMBROSE
5 copies of the book ?September Morning? by Dennis
Ambrose

DRIFT WOOD HIGHWAY POETRY ANTHOLOGY / ROBT
O'SULLIVAN SCHLEITH
http://poetryscenestealers.tripod.com
3 copies of the 2001 'Drift Wood Highway' Poetry
Anthology

E-PUB2000
http://go.to/E-Pub2000
10 electronic books (winners choose from E-Pub2000
catalogue)

FATES CREATION PRESS
5 copies of the chapbook "Passions Casualties" by
Elizabeth Iannaci

FRANCES LEMOINE
2 one year subscriptions to Flash!Point literary
journal

GANDY CREEK FORUM
http://pub21.ezboard.com/fgandycreekgandycreekpoet
ryforum
1 copy of the book ?Zen Poetry? by Stryk with 1
copy of the chapbook ?Autumn Reflections? by Gary
Blankenship

GREEN BEAN PRESS
http://home.earthlink.net/~gbpress
3 copies of the book ?North Beach Revisited? by
A.D. Winans
3 copies of the book ?People Everyday? by Daniel
Crocker
3 copies of the book ?do yu know. what distortion.
sowndz like? by joe r

HANOVER PRESS, Ltd.
http://faithvicinanza.writernetwork.com/custom2.ht
ml
20 copies of ?The Underwood Review? literary
magazine Volume 2, 136 pages edited by Faith
Vicinanza and Linda Claire Yuhas

HUMYNPRESS INK PUBLISHING COMPANY
http://angelfire.com/zine/HumynpressInkPubCo
3 one year subscriptions to HEART'S VOICE  monthly
poetry release

IBBETSON STREET PRESS
http://homepage.mac.com/rconte
2 subscriptions to Ibbetson
1 copy of the chapbook ?Poems From 42nd Street? by
Rufus Goodwin
2 copies of the chapbook ?Prayers From A Tenement
Rooftop? by Ed Galing
1 copy of the chapbook ?Poems For The Working Man?
by AD Winans
1 copy of the chapbook ?The Inaccessibility of the
Creator? by Jack Powers

INIVITABLE PRESS
2 chapbooks from the Laguna Poets Series

THEE INSTAGON FOUNDATION
prizes to be determined

JIM BENNETT
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/1127/
2 copies of the CD ?Down in Liverpool? by Jim
Bennett

JOHN SOKOL
2 copies of the chapbook ?Kissing the Bees? by
John Sokol

KATIE O'LOUGHLIN
3 copies of the chapbook "I can't pull it together
enough to look like my poster? by Katie O?Loughlin

KARAWANE MAGAZINE
http://www.karawane.org/
5 three issue subscriptions to Karawane Magazine

KITTY LITTER PRESS
http://www.kittylitterpress.com
2 copies of the chapbook "What's this about then?"
by Kevin Donihe
2 copies of the chapbook ?Reheated Coffee" Lindsay
Wilson

LIMESTONE CIRCLE/RENEE CARTER HALL
3 one-year (2-issue) subscriptions to Limestone
Circle
2 copies of the chapbook "The Way to Love" by
Renee Carter Hall
5 copies of the chapbook "Losing the Moon" by
Renee Carter Hall

LIZZIE WANN
http://www.meetinggrace.com
http://www.mp3.com/lizziewann
5 copies of the CD "A Wing & A Prayer" by Lizzie
Wann

LUMMOX PUBLICATIONS
http://members.tripod.com/~Raindog/
1 subscription to Lummox Journal
1 John Thomas - Lummox of the year 2001 T Shirt
(L)
1 copy each of 6 books from the Little Red Book
series

MARC AWODEY
4 copies of the  landmark treatise "95 theses: Art
and Machine" by Mark Awodey

MUSE'S KISS
http://members.aol.com/museskiss
2 copies of the book ?Suicide Pumpkins? by LB
Sedlacek

/NOSERIALMICE
http://www.noserialmice.com
1 copy of the book "Birthday Letters" by Ted
Hughes (hardcover)

PHONY LID BOOKS
http://www.fyuocuk.com
2 copies of the book ?Unborn Again? by S.A.
Griffin
2 copies of the book ?Erratic Sleep in a Cold
Hotel? by Marie Kazalia

POEM.X POETRY SERIES
1 copy of the book ?Celestial Burn? by Jeanette
Clough
1 copy of the book ?In the Bee Trees? by Jim Natal

POESY
http://www.geocities.com/bmorrise2/
1 one year subscription to Poesy Quarterly (4
issues)

POETRY AT SUITE101.COM
http://suite101.com/welcome.cfm/poetry
1 copy of the book ?Perfect Words? by Kay Day

POETRY SOCIETY OF AMERICA/LOS ANGELES
20 'Poetry In Motion' Posters

THE POET'S PORCH (POETSPORCH.COM)
http://Poetsporch.com/
1 Personal custom designed WEB site. With custom
graphics and limited 3D animation if wished.
(four max.) with personal E mail limited to 5
pages.   1 year.

POINTOFLIFE.COM
http://www.pointoflife.com
3 copies of the book ?Minds of Blue Souls? by
Michael Levy

RESOURCESFORWRITERS.COM
http://ResourcesForWriters.com/
3 $25 gift certificates to Amazon.com

ROBERT DISKIN
http://fp1.centurytel.net/ctn04863/a_falling_star.
htm
20 copies of the book ?A Falling Star? by Robert
Diskin

SACRED BEVERAGE PRESS
1 copy of the book ?The Ellyn Maybe Coloring Book"
by Ellyn Maybe
1 copy of the book ?Creve Coeur" by Richard Osborn
Hood
1 copy of the book ?Celestial Burn" by Jeanette
Clough
1 copy of the book ?Percy, Bob & Assenpoop" by
Elliott Baker
1 copy of the book ?Twisted Cadillac" by the Carma
Bums
1 copy of the book ?The Apocalyptic Kid" by Erica
Erdman

SICK PUPPY PRESS
http://www.sickpuppypress.com
15 copies of the chapbook ?Artifacts? by Scott C.
Holstad

STAZJA MCFADYEN
5 copies of the anthology "Spiraeas"

UNITED WORKERS PRESS
1 years membership/subscription to the United
Workers Press (Roughly two broadsides per month)



__________________________________________________
____
MEET YOUR JUDGES

ANGELIQUE JAMAIL (Houston, Texas)
Ang?lique Jamail earned her degree in English -
Creative Writing
from The University of Houston.  She lives and
writes poetry and
fiction in Houston most of the time.  Her first
book of poems,
Gypsies, came out in late 1998, and she expects to
complete her
second book, Barefoot on Marble, this summer.  She
counts librettos
and textbooks among her minor publications.  Her
poems have been
featured in various anthologies and journals.  One
of her favorite
things is to tell stories through poetry, and much
of her fiction
lives in the realm of magical realism.

CHRISTINE LENNON (Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia)
The poet presently resides in the foothills of the
Blue Ridge
Mountains of Virginia. She is also the editor of
"The Eclipse"
(http://theeclips.net), Verse Libre Quarterly
(http://thispoetgirl.com/VerseLibre/)  and Erosha
(http://artisanstudio.org/erosha).  She is a web
designer and
freelance artist/writer, and active in the
Confederate Air Force.
Previously, she has also been a magician's
assistant, an "extra" in
a few movies, a computer operator, a licensed
artist in New Orleans'
French Quarter, a soldier in this girl's U. S.
Army, a baker, and a
student of all things interesting. She is also a
Master Poet in
Ardeon's Poets Guild. Some of her publications
include Kota Press,
The 2River View, Friction Magazine, Niederngasse,
Free Zone
Quarterly, Countless Horizons, The Critical Poet,
Kookamonga Square,
and New World Poetry, Clean Sheets, and Beauty for
Ashes. Her
personal poetry sites are Allegory
(http://thispoetgirl.com/allegory/) and Pieces of
Me...
(http://thispoetgirl.com).

ALEX STOLIS (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is
a Drug and
Alcohol Counselor who works primarily with
adolescents and their
families. His poems have appeared in a number of
print journals as
well as on-line publications.  He took first place
in last years
Poetry Super Highway contest, spent some time as
Associate Editor of
Samsara (http://sundress.net/samsara/) and has
judged local poetry
slams (getting booed profusely for not
understanding angst-ridden,
angry poems about cats, the government and lousy
relationships) and
also has moderated poetry workshops. He took a ten
year hiatus from
writing after everything he wrote was lost in a
tragic boat
accident. Alex returned to writing in the fall of
1999, he does not
have a website and does not call himself a poet.


__________________________________________________
____
2001 CONTEST CALENDAR

June 28: Contest begins

July 2 - 8: Judges featured as Poets of the Week

July 8: 2pm (pacific) Chat Room Event "Meet the
Judges" contest entrants or people considering
entering are invited to chat with the contest
judges focusing on what they look for in poetry.


September 15: Final deadline for contest entries.
(Entry fees must be postmarked by September 15 or
they'll be returned.)

September 23: Judges deadline for returning scored
poems.

September 28: Second round scoring deadline (in
the event of tied scores.)

September 30: 2pm (pacific) Chat Room Event
"Winners Announced"

October 1 - 7: Contest Winners featured as Poets
of the Week.


__________________________________________________
____


Good luck to everyone!
--

Lupert: It's The Website - & - Poetry Super
Highway
          http://PoetrySuperHighway.com/


From TerryP17 at aol.com  Mon Jul  2 12:37:32 2001
From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 12:37:32 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetical Correctness
Message-ID: <38.185719e2.2871fd4c@aol.com>

Amber wrote:

<<Well, if that's what some professor-poets did, could they vacate their
positions so that people who want to teach can have a better chance? I can
think of little worse in academia, from kindergarten to grad school, other
than a teaacher who does it for bread.>>

Egad, Amber. Ask any of your teachers, grade school, high school, college, creative and "non-creative," math, lit, or shop, if they do it for bread. There is probably more altruism in the teaching profession than in many others--particularly amongst the underpaid trench warriors in the hideous American public high school system--but we all have to eat sometime.

Others on this board have already kicked in on this, but I'll add my two cents' worth. The short answer is, what are you going to live on if not bread? The longer answer is more complicated, but I'll try to be brief.

Today, in the U.S., if you want to be a "creative" writer of any kind, it is not, with few exceptions, going to keep you alive with a roof over your head. So you have two choices: you seek sponsorship, or you sponsor yourself. In the U.S. today, sponsorship seems to be most available in the university machine. The upside is that you are involved in a system that (sometimes allegedly) supports literature and surrounds you with it, with the price being that you usually have to teach in some way, shape or form. (But if you like students, that's not much of a price.) The downside is that this leads to quite a lot of uniformity of thought and approach, and a desire to please colleagues and academic publicatons rather than a wider readership--although some on this board may disagree with me on this.

If you support yourself outside such a system, the upside is that you can pretty much do what you want and the heck with what anyone says. Models in poetry might include Dana Gioia today. The downside is that you do not generally have easy access to the university and creative writing/publishing machinery, and, since you have to work for the corporate gods, the bulk of your quality time goes to them, and you write if and when you can. Gioia took sort of a "third way" by making enough money to endow himself, effectively, although he still has to get enough editing, writing, and workshop gigs (with the help of academic friends) to make ends meet.

Terry P.





From tadrichards at prodigy.net  Mon Jul  2 13:00:20 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 13:00:20 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetical Correctness
References: <38.185719e2.2871fd4c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <005401c10318$7a6dd000$6401a8c0@hvc.rr.com>

Why is Dana Gioia such an icon? I have nothing against him, but what the
hell. Most poets, in or out of the academy, write pretty much whatever they
want to.

Using myself as an example again, I've been in an out of the academy, and
it's never made a damn bit of difference in the way I write, or the access I
have to creative writing/publishing machinery.

And isn't the Gioia - Rebel Angels vs. professor/free verse/establishment
war pretty much over? Hasn't it, by this time, gone the way of the
Hall/Pack/Simpson vs. Donald Allen wars? Isn't the norm getting to be, more
and more, that poets use received forms as one arrow in the quiver, free
verse forms as another? Don't we all realize that all poetry is in form?

And speaking of the old New Poets of England and America/New American Poets
controversy, it really wasn't so very long ago that form was on the other
side of the academic fence, with Kenneth Koch sneering at professor-poets,
"Oh, what worms they are! They wish to perfect their form."


  Tad Richards                       "Well said, old mole."
    The Old Mole                         Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet
    of the MoleNet                          Act I, Scene 5
          http://pages.prodigy.net/tadrichards
----- Original Message -----
From: <TerryP17 at aol.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 12:37 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetical Correctness


> Amber wrote:
>
> <<Well, if that's what some professor-poets did, could they vacate their
> positions so that people who want to teach can have a better chance? I can
> think of little worse in academia, from kindergarten to grad school, other
> than a teaacher who does it for bread.>>
>
> Egad, Amber. Ask any of your teachers, grade school, high school, college,
creative and "non-creative," math, lit, or shop, if they do it for bread.
There is probably more altruism in the teaching profession than in many
others--particularly amongst the underpaid trench warriors in the hideous
American public high school system--but we all have to eat sometime.
>
> Others on this board have already kicked in on this, but I'll add my two
cents' worth. The short answer is, what are you going to live on if not
bread? The longer answer is more complicated, but I'll try to be brief.
>
> Today, in the U.S., if you want to be a "creative" writer of any kind, it
is not, with few exceptions, going to keep you alive with a roof over your
head. So you have two choices: you seek sponsorship, or you sponsor
yourself. In the U.S. today, sponsorship seems to be most available in the
university machine. The upside is that you are involved in a system that
(sometimes allegedly) supports literature and surrounds you with it, with
the price being that you usually have to teach in some way, shape or form.
(But if you like students, that's not much of a price.) The downside is that
this leads to quite a lot of uniformity of thought and approach, and a
desire to please colleagues and academic publicatons rather than a wider
readership--although some on this board may disagree with me on this.
>
> If you support yourself outside such a system, the upside is that you can
pretty much do what you want and the heck with what anyone says. Models in
poetry might include Dana Gioia today. The downside is that you do not
generally have easy access to the university and creative writing/publishing
machinery, and, since you have to work for the corporate gods, the bulk of
your quality time goes to them, and you write if and when you can. Gioia
took sort of a "third way" by making enough money to endow himself,
effectively, although he still has to get enough editing, writing, and
workshop gigs (with the help of academic friends) to make ends meet.
>
> Terry P.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry




From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu  Mon Jul  2 13:20:04 2001
From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 13:20:04 -0400 
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetical Correctness
Message-ID: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE141@ness.agnesscott.edu>

I am neither blind nor cloistered, and I resent being assumed to be so. I am
well-aware of low standards of pay among teachers and its effect on morale.
My mother's a school social worker. I can't throw a stone without hitting an
underpaid teacher (or a newspaper article about them), and I live in
*Georgia*, for chrissakes, have you seen our test scores lately? I
understand the correlation.

When I saw "Some professor-poets started out as poets, realized they'd
starve, so got academic credentials and a teaching slot so they could still
do poetry and have a roof over their head," I was troubled by the leap from
starving artist to professor as the most obvious means to keep a roof over
one's head and a supply of paper. The 'well, I can't make money doing this,
so I might as well teach' approach I saw implied in that statement seemed a
cavalier way to decide to get credentials for a teaching job. There's  work
out there a reasonably healthy and stable-enough writer could do in order to
keep one less person out of the shelters. Maybe I misinterpreted what you
said. Still, I was hardly suggesting that in this glamorous world of botched
printer copies and returned SASEs money is flowing like the Mississippi on a
rainy day.

-Amber


-----Original Message-----
From: TerryP17 at aol.com
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Sent: 7/2/2001 12:37 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetical Correctness

Amber wrote:

<<Well, if that's what some professor-poets did, could they vacate their
positions so that people who want to teach can have a better chance? I
can
think of little worse in academia, from kindergarten to grad school,
other
than a teaacher who does it for bread.>>

Egad, Amber. Ask any of your teachers, grade school, high school,
college, creative and "non-creative," math, lit, or shop, if they do it
for bread. There is probably more altruism in the teaching profession
than in many others--particularly amongst the underpaid trench warriors
in the hideous American public high school system--but we all have to
eat sometime.

Others on this board have already kicked in on this, but I'll add my two
cents' worth. The short answer is, what are you going to live on if not
bread? The longer answer is more complicated, but I'll try to be brief.

Today, in the U.S., if you want to be a "creative" writer of any kind,
it is not, with few exceptions, going to keep you alive with a roof over
your head. So you have two choices: you seek sponsorship, or you sponsor
yourself. In the U.S. today, sponsorship seems to be most available in
the university machine. The upside is that you are involved in a system
that (sometimes allegedly) supports literature and surrounds you with
it, with the price being that you usually have to teach in some way,
shape or form. (But if you like students, that's not much of a price.)
The downside is that this leads to quite a lot of uniformity of thought
and approach, and a desire to please colleagues and academic publicatons
rather than a wider readership--although some on this board may disagree
with me on this.

If you support yourself outside such a system, the upside is that you
can pretty much do what you want and the heck with what anyone says.
Models in poetry might include Dana Gioia today. The downside is that
you do not generally have easy access to the university and creative
writing/publishing machinery, and, since you have to work for the
corporate gods, the bulk of your quality time goes to them, and you
write if and when you can. Gioia took sort of a "third way" by making
enough money to endow himself, effectively, although he still has to get
enough editing, writing, and workshop gigs (with the help of academic
friends) to make ends meet.

Terry P.



_______________________________________________
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  Mon Jul  2 13:27:22 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 13:27:22 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] FYI to those in & around Boston: Poetry Marathon
Message-ID: <4f.dda62fa.287208fa@aol.com>

Boston Poetry Marathon
at  the Art Institute of Boston
(700 Beacon St. in Kenmore Square)

Thursday, July 19th ? 7pm to 10pm

Fred Moten  o  Wanda Phipps  o  Lori Lubeski  o  Anselm Berrigan  o  Andrew 
Schelling  o  Joseph Lease  o  Laura Mullen  o  John Yau


Friday, July 20th ? 7pm to 10pm

Prageeta Sharma  o  Donna de la Perri?re  o  Michael Franco  o  Edward Foster 
 o   Thomas Sayers Ellis  o  David Shapiro  o  Cole Swensen  o  Fanny Howe


Saturday, July 21st ? 12pm to 4pm 

Karen Wizer o  Sean Cole  o  Lisa Lubasch  o  Brendan Lorber  o  Maria Damon  
o  Devin Johnston  o  Brenda Iijima   o  John Mulrooney  o  Aaron Kiely  o  
Max Winter 


Saturday, July 21st ? 7pm to 10pm

Nicole Peyrafitte o  Pierre Joris  o  Heather Ramsdale  o  David Rivard  o   
Tom Sleigh  o  Lisa Jarnot  o  Franz Wright  o  Frank Bidart 


Sunday, July 22nd ? 12pm to 5pm

Jeni Olen o  Dana Ward  o  Elliza McGrand  o  Sam Cornish  o   Arielle 
Greenberg   o   Danielle Legros-Georges  o  Nathan Hauke  o  Beth Woodcome   
o  Jessie Stickler o  Jumper Bloom  o  Jordan Davis


Admission is free.  For more info: BoMa at zensearch.net  
                     ?2001?


From jdavis at panix.com  Mon Jul  2 13:46:38 2001
From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 13:46:38 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetical Correctness
In-Reply-To: <005401c10318$7a6dd000$6401a8c0@hvc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0107021342370.4553-100000@panix3.panix.com>

The groovy Tad R wrote:

> controversy, it really wasn't so very long ago that form was on the other
> side of the academic fence, with Kenneth Koch sneering at professor-poets,
> "Oh, what worms they are! They wish to perfect their form."

But this is to take that poem ("Fresh Air") out of context: when that poem
appeared in _Thank You and Other Poems_ Koch had already published
_Ko_, a book-length poem in ottava rima as indebted to Ariosto as to
Byron (and there were so-called formal poems in _Thank You_, too).

For what it's worth, I think the *real* target in that line is not "form"
but "They wish" --

Jordan Davis



From paul.lake at mail.atu.edu  Mon Jul  2 03:20:33 2001
From: paul.lake at mail.atu.edu (Paul Lake)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 02:20:33 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Academic blackballing
Message-ID: <B7658AF1.15C8%paul.lake@mail.atu.edu>


>But the irony of suppressing differing views in the
>service of multiculturalism was a particularly bitter one.

>Moira Russell
>Seattle, WA




            Tipu?s Tiger


A six-foot tiger, made to entertain
The sultan Tipu Sahib, rips the breast
Of a model Englishman, whose roars of pain
Amuse the sultan and his native guests,
Who, probing its French gears like vultures, all
Delight now in the multicultural.


Paul Lake



From tadrichards at prodigy.net  Mon Jul  2 14:39:59 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 14:39:59 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetical Correctness
References: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE141@ness.agnesscott.edu>
Message-ID: <007201c10326$9d2d0b20$6401a8c0@hvc.rr.com>

Amber -- you have to remember that "Some professor-poets started out as
poets, realized they'd starve, so got academic credentials and a teaching
slot so they could still do poetry and have a roof over their head" is
bullshit, a grotesque oversimplification by someone who has made up this
straw man called "the professor-poet."


  Tad Richards                       "Well said, old mole."
    The Old Mole                         Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet
    of the MoleNet                          Act I, Scene 5
          http://pages.prodigy.net/tadrichards
----- Original Message -----
From: "Amber Prentiss" <aprentiss at agnesscott.edu>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 1:20 PM
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetical Correctness


> I am neither blind nor cloistered, and I resent being assumed to be so. I
am
> well-aware of low standards of pay among teachers and its effect on
morale.
> My mother's a school social worker. I can't throw a stone without hitting
an
> underpaid teacher (or a newspaper article about them), and I live in
> *Georgia*, for chrissakes, have you seen our test scores lately? I
> understand the correlation.
>
> When I saw "Some professor-poets started out as poets, realized they'd
> starve, so got academic credentials and a teaching slot so they could
still
> do poetry and have a roof over their head," I was troubled by the leap
from
> starving artist to professor as the most obvious means to keep a roof over
> one's head and a supply of paper. The 'well, I can't make money doing
this,
> so I might as well teach' approach I saw implied in that statement seemed
a
> cavalier way to decide to get credentials for a teaching job. There's
work
> out there a reasonably healthy and stable-enough writer could do in order
to
> keep one less person out of the shelters. Maybe I misinterpreted what you
> said. Still, I was hardly suggesting that in this glamorous world of
botched
> printer copies and returned SASEs money is flowing like the Mississippi on
a
> rainy day.
>
> -Amber
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TerryP17 at aol.com
> To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> Sent: 7/2/2001 12:37 PM
> Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetical Correctness
>
> Amber wrote:
>
> <<Well, if that's what some professor-poets did, could they vacate their
> positions so that people who want to teach can have a better chance? I
> can
> think of little worse in academia, from kindergarten to grad school,
> other
> than a teaacher who does it for bread.>>
>
> Egad, Amber. Ask any of your teachers, grade school, high school,
> college, creative and "non-creative," math, lit, or shop, if they do it
> for bread. There is probably more altruism in the teaching profession
> than in many others--particularly amongst the underpaid trench warriors
> in the hideous American public high school system--but we all have to
> eat sometime.
>
> Others on this board have already kicked in on this, but I'll add my two
> cents' worth. The short answer is, what are you going to live on if not
> bread? The longer answer is more complicated, but I'll try to be brief.
>
> Today, in the U.S., if you want to be a "creative" writer of any kind,
> it is not, with few exceptions, going to keep you alive with a roof over
> your head. So you have two choices: you seek sponsorship, or you sponsor
> yourself. In the U.S. today, sponsorship seems to be most available in
> the university machine. The upside is that you are involved in a system
> that (sometimes allegedly) supports literature and surrounds you with
> it, with the price being that you usually have to teach in some way,
> shape or form. (But if you like students, that's not much of a price.)
> The downside is that this leads to quite a lot of uniformity of thought
> and approach, and a desire to please colleagues and academic publicatons
> rather than a wider readership--although some on this board may disagree
> with me on this.
>
> If you support yourself outside such a system, the upside is that you
> can pretty much do what you want and the heck with what anyone says.
> Models in poetry might include Dana Gioia today. The downside is that
> you do not generally have easy access to the university and creative
> writing/publishing machinery, and, since you have to work for the
> corporate gods, the bulk of your quality time goes to them, and you
> write if and when you can. Gioia took sort of a "third way" by making
> enough money to endow himself, effectively, although he still has to get
> enough editing, writing, and workshop gigs (with the help of academic
> friends) to make ends meet.
>
> Terry P.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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 tadrichards at prodigy.net  Mon Jul  2 14:42:20 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 14:42:20 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetical Correctness
References: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0107021342370.4553-100000@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <007901c10326$ba04c580$6401a8c0@hvc.rr.com>

Jordan -- I am properly rebuked.


  Tad Richards                       "Well said, old mole."
    The Old Mole                         Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet
    of the MoleNet                          Act I, Scene 5
          http://pages.prodigy.net/tadrichards
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jordan Davis" <jdavis at panix.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 1:46 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetical Correctness


> The groovy Tad R wrote:
>
> > controversy, it really wasn't so very long ago that form was on the
other
> > side of the academic fence, with Kenneth Koch sneering at
professor-poets,
> > "Oh, what worms they are! They wish to perfect their form."
>
> But this is to take that poem ("Fresh Air") out of context: when that poem
> appeared in _Thank You and Other Poems_ Koch had already published
> _Ko_, a book-length poem in ottava rima as indebted to Ariosto as to
> Byron (and there were so-called formal poems in _Thank You_, too).
>
> For what it's worth, I think the *real* target in that line is not "form"
> but "They wish" --
>
> Jordan Davis
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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  Mon Jul  2 17:40:32 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 17:40:32 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] wanted: translations, etc.
Message-ID: <e3.16f6c39d.28724450@aol.com>

From:    Molly Schwartzburg <molly1 at STANFORD.EDU> 
Subject:    wanted: translations, etc. 


Mantis, a journal of poetry, poetry translation, and poetry criticism at 
Stanford University is currently seeking submissions for its second issue, 
"Poetry and Translation." We are seeking translations, critical work, and 
poetry that addresses this theme, broadly conceived. Possible topics/themes 
include: 

POETRY IN MULTIPLE LANGUAGES, POETRY AND FORGERY, POETRY AND MANUSCRIPT, 
POETRY AND PROPAGANDA, POETRY AND PHONETIC LEGITIMACY, FALSE ORIGINALS, 
PASTICHE, ALLUSION, MACARONICS, ETC. 

Our current deadline for submissions is JULY 31, 2001. 

We welcome individual poetry submissions of up to four poems. Members of 
groups or writing collectives that submit work together are invited to send 
up to ten poems. Translators are requested to include copies of what they are 
translating in the original language, along with a brief statement about the 
original poet and his or her work; translations will be published with the 
original en face. Permissions for reprinting originals are the responsibility 
of the translator. Critical submissions should be no more than 5000 words 
(15-20 double-spaced pages), formatted according to the guidelines in the 
most recent edition of the MLA Manual of Style. 

We request that all submissions include a cover letter with a brief statement 
by the author about how his or her work addresses the relationships between 
poetry and translation. 

Please send contributions to us at 

Mantis Department of English Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-2087 

or e-mail your submission to mantispoetry at hotmail.com. 

We look forward to hearing from you soon. 

--Molly Schwartzburg 


From TerryP17 at aol.com  Mon Jul  2 17:53:22 2001
From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 17:53:22 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetically Correct
Message-ID: <c0.168dcb6a.28724752@aol.com>

Tad and Amber--

<<Why is Dana Gioia such an icon? I have nothing against him, but what the
hell. Most poets, in or out of the academy, write pretty much whatever they
want to.>>

Geez, Tad, exCUSE me! I used Gioia as an example of a certain kind of contemporary poet who does not live inside the academy, regardless of the Formal stuff. I know him personally and so he suffices as an example. I don't know you personally. I'm sure we'd enjoy a brew (perhaps several) together. Dana is probably an icon for some people, but I don't need icons. It's not an issue with me.

 
<<Using myself as an example again, I've been in an out of the academy, and
it's never made a damn bit of difference in the way I write, or the access I
have to creative writing/publishing machinery.>>

Was talking primarily to Amber's apparent proposal (see below) to move poet-professors out of their slots if they were only in it for the money. But since you raised the issue, being within the academy and having contact with the university publishing machinery is indeed an advantage of being an academic poet, at least if you're the kind who has a tenured rather than a "visiting" (read "gypsy") position. Poets outside the academy have accessed and do access this machinery, true. But their odds are poorer with regard to landing a book contract. I think, in general, that whomever you tend to hang out with does influence the kind of poetry you write and that academics tend to write inward-looking stuff. But in the humanities there are exceptions to every rule. 

<<And isn't the Gioia - Rebel Angels vs. professor/free verse/establishment
war pretty much over? Hasn't it, by this time, gone the way of the
Hall/Pack/Simpson vs. Donald Allen wars? Isn't the norm getting to be, more
and more, that poets use received forms as one arrow in the quiver, free
verse forms as another? Don't we all realize that all poetry is in form?>>

Your initial question implies an answer I can't agree with. Actually, the "war" isn't really over, although there seems to be a ceasefire of sorts in place. The New Formalist movement, whatever it is or was, has indeed appeared to have left its mark in that more people are considering the use of received and/or altered forms again. Contrariwise, some of the earlier New Formalists are writing stuff that looks pretty Informal these days, having apparently lost the taste for being "rebels."

It might interest you to know, BTW, that the established Formalistas are facing the loss of Story Line, their (sometimes) captive and non-university-affiliated press. The outfit is in trouble (see ECR's website or EP&M Online for details), and if it tanks, the Formalists will have a hard time promoting their books or keeping them in print. For the record, Story Line's "Rebel Angels" for me was a distasteful, Boomer-centric disaster. If it goes out of print, the world will not suffer much. New Formalism is moving into a new phase, which, I suspect, will be encouraged by different people now that Story Line seems to be losing its stranglehold on publishing this kind of stuff. New Formalism is a movement whose first impulse has probably been exhausted.

<<When I saw "Some professor-poets started out as poets, realized they'd
starve, so got academic credentials and a teaching slot so they could still
do poetry and have a roof over their head," I was troubled by the leap from
starving artist to professor as the most obvious means to keep a roof over
one's head and a supply of paper . . . There's  work
out there a reasonably healthy and stable-enough writer could do in order to
keep one less person out of the shelters. Maybe I misinterpreted what you
said. Still, I was hardly suggesting that in this glamorous world of botched
printer copies and returned SASEs money is flowing like the Mississippi on a
rainy day.>>

Amber--glad to read your last sentence here. If you will re-read your initial post, I think you will see why I interpreted it as I did, as did others. My main point in response is that, for whatever the reasons, poetry is largely supported by the academy in this country, and if you want to work in a field that is reasonably congenial to writing, teaching the academy seems the favored way to do this.

--Terry P.  



From yakub_beg at yahoo.com  Tue Jul  3 08:09:15 2001
From: yakub_beg at yahoo.com (K. Lorraine Graham)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 08:09:15 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: POETICAL CORRECTNESS
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEMADMAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <NFBBILBACLCBHDHEJCEJMEDHCFAA.yakub_beg@yahoo.com>

Yes indeed--or, full time, tenure track aside, how about if universities
started treating their adjuncts better?

-Lorraine

-----Original Message-----
From: new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu
[mailto:new-poetry-admin at wiz.cath.vt.edu]On Behalf Of Halvard Johnson
Sent: Sunday, July 01, 2001 5:18 PM
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Subject: RE: [New-Poetry] Re: POETICAL CORRECTNESS


In fact, the bread should be a lot more of it. Were salaries for
teachers tripled or quadrupled, you'd see a *much* better
educational system in the US.

Hal     "metaphor--I use them. They keep me regular."
                         --Paul Violi

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson


> Amber - the bread is always going to be a part of it.
>
>
>   Tad Richards                       "Well said, old mole."
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From MillB at aol.com  Tue Jul  3 09:57:00 2001
From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 09:57:00 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: POETICAL CORRECTNESS
Message-ID: <7f.16a6a7b4.2873292c@aol.com>

Greetings:

I've been in both positions: full time and adjunct, and I have to say that 
adjunct is not JUST part time; it's unfair.  

Here's an example.

As a full time instructor, Sheila taught four classes and was paid $55,000 a 
year.  She received an office, a phone, a key to the lunch room, copying 
privileges, insurance, etc.  Her salary was based on class time, prep time, 
grading, office hours, meetings, academic activities.

As an adjunct, she teaches four classes (at two to three different colleges) 
and earns $1,600 a month (ten months out of the year).  She is not paid for 
prep time, office hours, phone calls or grading. She has to pay for her own 
medical insurance, phone calls, photocopies, supplies, and retirement.  It's 
strongly implied that she should meet with students, attend meetings--on her 
own time.  She has the same teaching experience, the same education. . .yet, 
as an adjunct, she's treated VERY differently.

If this were the business world, the company would get sued for strongly 
encouraging employees to "take work home," on their own time.  For free.  Why 
is the academic world any different?

Toodles,

Mill


From TerryP17 at aol.com  Tue Jul  3 09:59:57 2001
From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 09:59:57 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetical Correctness
Message-ID: <24.15b9faea.287329dd@aol.com>

Tad--

You wrote:

<< . . . bullshit, a grotesque oversimplification by someone who has made up this
straw man called "the professor-poet.">>

Okay, I stand corrected. There is no such thing as a professor-poet.

--Terry P




From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Tue Jul  3 10:13:27 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 10:13:27 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Adjuncts
Message-ID: <a9.17c359b1.28732d07@aol.com>

Mill B Wrote:

Here's an example.

As a full time instructor, Sheila taught four classes and was paid $55,000 a 
year.  She received an office, a phone, a key to the lunch room, copying 
privileges, insurance, etc.  Her salary was based on class time, prep time, 
grading, office hours, meetings, academic activities.

As an adjunct, she teaches four classes (at two to three different colleges) 
and earns $1,600 a month (ten months out of the year).  She is not paid for 
prep time, office hours, phone calls or grading. She has to pay for her own 
medical insurance, phone calls, photocopies, supplies, and retirement.  It's 
strongly implied that she should meet with students, attend meetings--on her 
own time.  She has the same teaching experience, the same education. . .yet, 
as an adjunct, she's treated VERY differently.

If this were the business world, the company would get sued for strongly 
encouraging employees to "take work home," on their own time.  For free.  Why
is the academic world any different?

Toodles,

Mill

I agree whole-heartedly.  As a matter of fact, this is my life.  Academia seems to be this subculture where all the rules are different--I know that statement is a huge generalization, but by God, I'll say it.  I've never been treated equally during my time as an adjunct, and until very recently, didn't even have an office space where I could work.  Adjuncts teach the classes no one else wants to teach, the comps, the intro to lits, the professional writing classes.  We are not second-class citizens.

Hear, hear!  

Waving my Adjunct (note the capitalization) banner,

Jeff Newberry
University of West Florida



From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Tue Jul  3 10:55:36 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 10:55:36 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: POETICAL CORRECTNESS
Message-ID: <f6.c2da4a3.287336e8@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/3/2001 8:58:44 AM Central Daylight Time, MillB at aol.com 
writes:


> As an adjunct, she teaches four classes (at two to three different colleges) 
> and earns $1,600 a month (ten months out of the year).  She is not paid for 
> prep time, office hours, phone calls or grading. She has to pay for her own 
> medical insurance, phone calls, photocopies, supplies, and retirement.  
> It's 
> strongly implied that she should meet with students, attend meetings--on 
> her 
> own time.  She has the same teaching experience, the same education. . 
> .yet, 
> as an adjunct, she's treated VERY differently.
> 

The adjunct situation is indeed shameful.  Here at Lamar we used to have a 
three-year limit for lecturers but now keep them on continuing contracts, 
subject to yearly review. Since many of our lecturers have good reasons for 
wanting the jobs (several women with small children, retired public 
schoolteachers) they seem to be reasonably content with the low pay and heavy 
teaching loads.  It's not ideal, god knows, but it's better than the 
three-year-up-and-out situation.  Since all of our lecturers don't have 
Ph.D.s they don't qualify for tenure-track jobs.  They get full benefits, 
offices, computers, etc., and we do what we can to get their salaries raised 
(they are getting merit raises for the first time this year).  We don't hire 
adjuncts unless there's a real emergency, and most of those we hire want to 
be part-timers for various reasons.  I have heard too many horror stories 
about offices in the trunks of cars, offices shared with four or five others, 
and so on, and sooner or later there's going to be a real stink about this 
sort of academic sharecropping.  As one who sweated through two three-year 
"terminal contracts" (love that term), I know how demoralizing these 
situations can be.
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From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Tue Jul  3 12:55:11 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 08:55:11 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and Professors
Message-ID: <F64hT0vPqjn3cU87Fqa0001506e@hotmail.com>

While watching a "Voices and Visions" documentary on Frost, I was surprised 
to hear one of the interviewed say Frost was much more closely connected 
with universities, and certainly did more teaching, than some of his modern 
compatriots, Eliot, Pound, Crane, Stevens, etc.  Not exactly the typical 
poet-professor.

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Tue Jul  3 13:02:56 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:02:56 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and Professors
Message-ID: <e5.8835eb3.287354c0@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/3/2001 11:56:47 AM Central Daylight Time, 
moira_russell at hotmail.com writes:


> While watching a "Voices and Visions" documentary on Frost, I was surprised 
> to hear one of the interviewed say Frost was much more closely connected 
> with universities, and certainly did more teaching, than some of his modern 
> compatriots, Eliot, Pound, Crane, Stevens, etc.  Not exactly the typical 
> poet-professor.
> 
> 

Frost more or less cast the mold for the poet-in-residence.  Of all the poets 
in Voice and Visions he (with maybe the exception of Lowell) was most closely 
tied to the academy.  His teaching was informal, but he had sinecures of one 
kind or another for the last forty years of his life.
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From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Tue Jul  3 13:17:12 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 09:17:12 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and Professors
Message-ID: <F44XHzfAbPM1EhXTwpb00005535@hotmail.com>

>Frost more or less cast the mold for the poet-in-residence.  Of all the 
>poets in Voice and Visions he (with maybe the exception of Lowell) was most 
>closely tied to the academy.  His teaching was informal, but he had 
>sinecures of one kind or another for the last forty years of his life.

This was what interested me, as I'd never really heard of it.  I had heard 
of his readings and tours, but not of him teaching anywhere.  Being tied to 
the scholarly life really doesn't seem to fit his independent-Yankee-farmer 
persona.

Dana Gioia (I suppose he would be Chief Seraphim?) has an interesting 
article in "Can Poetry Matter?" about poets, poetry and making a living -- 
"Business in Poetry," I think it's called.  One of the reasons I fled 
academia was -- for me at least -- the difficulty I foresaw in writing 
poetry, or indeed writing anything.  It's much easier for me to have a job I 
can more or less leave at the office and write in evenings and weekends.  
Even the minimal teaching I did was an arduous and draining experience -- 
not to say it wasn't fun.  But sadly, if I can work fewer hours, earn more 
money, get more appreciation and have more time to write, if I don't teach, 
piecing together life as a "gypsy professor" -- as three or four friends of 
mine do -- is really not that appealing.

It would be nice if writing programs, and even Master's and Ph.D. programs, 
at least informed students about employment/career opportunities outside 
academia.  When I was in graduate school, the assumption was everyone was 
going to teach, and all career preparation was completely geared towards 
that, and as the market was extremely tight at that time (1995 or so) the 
preparation was rather unpleasant.

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

_________________________________________________________________
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From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Tue Jul  3 13:17:56 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 09:17:56 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and Professors
Message-ID: <F34l1KNFR1pIuRftYcs000050db@hotmail.com>

>Frost more or less cast the mold for the poet-in-residence.

Now that I think of it, doesn't a poet-in-residence differ from a 
poet-professor?  I would think a poet-in-residence only has to teach a few 
classes.  Anyone have more information?

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com



From jdavis at panix.com  Tue Jul  3 13:24:46 2001
From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:24:46 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets and Professors
In-Reply-To: <F44XHzfAbPM1EhXTwpb00005535@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0107031324310.2324-100000@panix3.panix.com>

The poet Murat Nemet-Nejat studied with Frost at Amherst, I'm told.

Jordan Davis




From archambeau at hermes.lfc.edu  Mon Jul  2 13:34:27 2001
From: archambeau at hermes.lfc.edu (Robert Archambeau)
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 12:34:27 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetical Correctness
References: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE141@ness.agnesscott.edu>
Message-ID: <3B40B0A3.8A38093C@lfc.edu>

Talk about perennial issues -- Terry and Amber's dialogue reminds me of Hart
Crane's correspondence with Yvor Winters re: the professionalizing of poetry.

Here's what Crane had to say about the issue (in a letter to Winters, 1927 --
Crane is steamed at Winters, and also at Edmund Wilson, who objected to
professionalism in poetry):

"You need a good drubbing for all yoru recent easy talk about "the complete
man" and the poet's place in society, etc.... It is so damned easy for such as
[Edmund Wilson], born into easy means, graduated from a fashionable university
into a critical chair overlooking Washington Square, etc., to sit tight and
hatch little squibs of advice to poets not to be so "professional" as he claims
they are, as though all the names he mentioned had been just as suavely
nourished as he -- as though 4 out of 5 of them hadn't been damned wel forced
the major part of their lives to grab -any- kind of work they could manage by
hook or crook or fear of hell to secure!  Yes, why not step into the State
Department and join the diplomatic corps for a change!  Indeed, or some other
courtley occupation which would bring you into wide and active contact with
world affairs....But the circumstances of one's birth, the conduct of one's
parents, the current economic structure of society and a thousand other local
factors have as much or more to say about successions to such occupations, the
naive volitions of the poet to the contrary."

Robert Archambeau,
draped in the fusty robes of academe



From tadrichards at prodigy.net  Tue Jul  3 14:57:52 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Tue, 3 Jul 2001 14:57:52 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: POETICAL CORRECTNESS
References: <7f.16a6a7b4.2873292c@aol.com>
Message-ID: <002901c103f2$0fc4a8c0$6401a8c0@hvc.rr.com>

My college announces - and celebrates - the retirement of any long-term
employee, from the business office to the janitorial staff. Last year, a
very highly regarded instructor- and adjunct in the English Dept. for close
to 20 years - decided to stop teaching. I say "stop teaching," and not
"retire," because you need to have an actual job to retire from.

What was done for her? Nothing. Some adjuncts paid out of their own pockets
for a retirement party for her.

My college? I don't know if that's true. I've been a adjunct there for 15
years. I've basically run the creative writing program, developed a number
of new courses, inclouding one that's been added to the curriculum as a
requirement for English majors. Last year I was full time. This year...I
still don't know. I know I won't come back as an adjunct. And if I'm not
back at all...I won't hold my breath waiting for any official recognition
that I was ever there.


  Tad Richards                       "Well said, old mole."
    The Old Mole                         Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet
    of the MoleNet                          Act I, Scene 5
          http://pages.prodigy.net/tadrichards
----- Original Message -----
From: <MillB at aol.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2001 9:57 AM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: POETICAL CORRECTNESS


> Greetings:
>
> I've been in both positions: full time and adjunct, and I have to say that
> adjunct is not JUST part time; it's unfair.
>
> Here's an example.
>
> As a full time instructor, Sheila taught four classes and was paid $55,000
a
> year.  She received an office, a phone, a key to the lunch room, copying
> privileges, insurance, etc.  Her salary was based on class time, prep
time,
> grading, office hours, meetings, academic activities.
>
> As an adjunct, she teaches four classes (at two to three different
colleges)
> and earns $1,600 a month (ten months out of the year).  She is not paid
for
> prep time, office hours, phone calls or grading. She has to pay for her
own
> medical insurance, phone calls, photocopies, supplies, and retirement.
It's
> strongly implied that she should meet with students, attend meetings--on
her
> own time.  She has the same teaching experience, the same education. .
.yet,
> as an adjunct, she's treated VERY differently.
>
> If this were the business world, the company would get sued for strongly
> encouraging employees to "take work home," on their own time.  For free.
Why
> is the academic world any different?
>
> Toodles,
>
> Mill
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From adead_poet at hotmail.com  Tue Jul  3 20:15:38 2001
From: adead_poet at hotmail.com (dead poet)
Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 19:15:38 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] eliot's wasteland
Message-ID: <F221InhdAHxNzFiPNl4000017f7@hotmail.com>

there are a lot of sites out there about eliot and 'the wasteland' could 
anyone direct me to a good one that annotates, both the poem and eliot's 
annotation.

thanks,
jason
_________________________________________________________________
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From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Thu Jul  5 17:52:48 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 13:52:48 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Glyn Maxwell Interview
Message-ID: <F47JTANZwwPcMFlF8HG00007de9@hotmail.com>

There is an interivew with Glyn Maxwell in "The Atlantic":

http://www.theatlantic.com/cgi-bin/o/unbound/poetry/maxwell.htm

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com



From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Fri Jul  6 10:01:29 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 10:01:29 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Glyn Maxwell
Message-ID: <10e.21ca357.28771eb9@aol.com>

I read _Time's Fool_, Maxwell's tale in verse, and depsite a good story, the poem itself (a huge, book-length affair in terza rima, ala Dante) is hard to read.  Maxwell is somewhat of a slipshod poet.  Let me clairfy--I think that he writes well; his images are tight and the story held me.  However, his handling of form and rhyme left me feeling rather flat.  His verbal backflips for the sake of rhyme, even off-rhyme, got tiresome.  He also frequently changes the order of a coherent sentence to make a rhyme.  I don't know much about Maxwell beyond _Time's Fool_, but I did like the work, despite its shortcomings.

The book made me think about rhyme more than I had in the past.  "What makes a good rhyme?" is a question I often asked myself as I read.  In grad school, professors stressed what they termed "freshness" when a poet rhymes, and at least one of my profs insisted that rhyme is dead.  I don't think so.  A good rhyme suprises, but not so much that it's jarring.  Maxwell is capable of fresh, new rhymes in _Time's Fool_, but often the rhymes were either a) boring and predictable; or b) jarring and distracting.  I'm in the office right now, and thus I don't have my copy of _Time's Fool_ or I would give some examples.

The list seems rather dead the last few days, so I'll post this query.  What makes a rhyme good?  What makes a rhyme fresh?  

I realize that I have probably just opened the queen mother of all cans of worms; but what the hey? It's summer.

Incidentally, is anyone on this list planning on attending the Christianity and Literature conference in Dayton, Ohio, this October?

Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English and Foreign Languages
University of West Florida
11000 University Parkway
Pensacola, FL 32514
850.473.7330 (office)
850.474.2923 (English Department)


From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Fri Jul  6 11:01:04 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 11:01:04 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Glyn Maxwell
Message-ID: <3e.e0b554e.28772cb0@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/6/2001 9:03:24 AM Central Daylight Time, 
JackKerouac25 at aol.com writes:


> 
> The list seems rather dead the last few days, so I'll post this query.  
> What makes a rhyme good?  What makes a rhyme fresh?  
> 
> 

I think some rhymes have to be less than fresh if you're working in a 
pattern; that is, some of them (maybe most of them) are going to be merely 
functional.  It's a matter of saving the good ones (and making them heard) 
for the right spot in the poem.  Unless, of course, you're writing light 
verse, when you can pull all the stops out (unless one opts out).  W. S. 
Gilbert was, in my opinion, the most brilliant rhymer who ever lived, better 
than Byron but obviously much less versatile.  Enjambment and sentence 
structure are as important as getting the rhyme and meter right.  It's all in 
the timing, this sort of rhyming.
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From halvard at earthlink.net  Fri Jul  6 11:26:44 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 11:26:44 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Glyn Maxwell
In-Reply-To: <3e.e0b554e.28772cb0@cs.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEGEPFDMAA.halvard@earthlink.net>



    The list seems rather dead the last few days, so I'll post this query.
    What makes a rhyme good?  What makes a rhyme fresh?

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From halvard at earthlink.net  Fri Jul  6 11:36:19 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 11:36:19 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Glyn Maxwell
In-Reply-To: <10e.21ca357.28771eb9@aol.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEPGDMAA.halvard@earthlink.net>


> The list seems rather dead the last few days, so I'll post this query.  
> What makes a rhyme good?  What makes a rhyme fresh?  

Better dead than read?

The only good rhyme's a dead rhyme?

Spare the rod and spoil the rhyme. Not sparing the rod?

High good spirits? Testosterone? Joie de vivre? 

Rhyme gid fresh wid me I slappa its face. (Or buy idda drink
if id's female?)

[Does summertime excuse everything?]

Hal           "If there is anyone here I have not
                 offended, I apologize."
                                  --Johannes Brahms

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson







From JforJames at aol.com  Fri Jul  6 12:40:57 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 12:40:57 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Some Notes on "Silent Poetry" for a Quiet List
Message-ID: <e.f318771.28774419@aol.com>

I've been away from work for a few days. Spending my time 
cutting into the piles of books I'd meant to read this past 
year. (Some of them started last summer.) This morning
I finished a beautiful little book: The Three Perfections:
Chinese Painting, Poetry & Calligraphy by Michael Sullivan
(George Braziller, revised edition '99). A taste:

"Writing and painting," said a Chinese historian of the ninth
century, "have different names but a common body." 
----
...no one would, or should have dared to write on a painting
unless his handwriting was accomplished, and the sentiments,
however conventional, were elegantly expressed. As the old
Chinese saying has it, "If you fall into the water you may still
be saved; but having fallen down on literary matters there is 
no life left for you."
----
A Song poet wrote of two eighth-century masters:
    
    The writings of Shao Ling are painting without forms;
    The painting of Han Gan are poems without words.
----
Painting is often called "silent poetry," _Wushengshi_,
and thought of as a way of releasing feelings that need not,
or sometimes could not, be put into words. Huang Tingjian,
a great eleventh-century calligrapher, wrote of painter
Li Gonglin:

    Duke Li has verses which he doesn't want to throw out,
    So with light ink he "writes" them down as silent poetry. 

---
Finnegan



From JforJames at aol.com  Fri Jul  6 13:14:26 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 13:14:26 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Glyn Maxwell
Message-ID: <6.1906e36e.28774bf2@aol.com>

In a message dated 7/6/01 11:02:24 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 
writes:
<<  
 > The list seems rather dead the last few days, so I'll post this query.  
 > What makes a rhyme good?  What makes a rhyme fresh?  
 
 I think some rhymes have to be less than fresh if you're working in a 
 pattern; that is, some of them (maybe most of them) are going to be merely 
 functional.  It's a matter of saving the good ones (and making them heard) 
 for the right spot in the poem.  Unless, of course, you're writing light 
 verse, when you can pull all the stops out (unless one opts out).  W. S. 
 Gilbert was, in my opinion, the most brilliant rhymer who ever lived, better 
 than Byron but obviously much less versatile.  Enjambment and sentence 
 structure are as important as getting the rhyme and meter right.  It's all 
in 
 the timing, this sort of rhyming. >>
I concur with Sam on this. I'd add that I cut the poet some slack when 
s/he's trying to carry off a longer work. A rime that might be inert/boring 
in a sonnet (other than placed in a concluding couplet) is not likely to 
annoy me in fourteen, forty or four hundred pages of quatrains. 
A pet peeve: breaking a word at the end of line to make a rime (unless 
in light verse) I read as awkward and unnecessarily obtrusive: 
Save the Hyphens 

for your fiction, 
my informal pal,
or risk my mal-
ediction.
--
Finnegan


From languagethief at yahoo.com  Fri Jul  6 13:56:20 2001
From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 10:56:20 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Glyn Maxwell
In-Reply-To: <6.1906e36e.28774bf2@aol.com>
Message-ID: <20010706175620.40350.qmail@web12206.mail.yahoo.com>

This may be as good a thread as any to put in a bit of
self-promotion.

I have a book-length poem in rhymed quatrains,
_Situations_, coming out later this summer from Ye
Olde Font Shoppe Press in Connecticut. It was a long
time in the making--I sent it out for a few years in
segments, as an "epic newsletter," to about 100
subscribers -- and I ended up feeling fairly proud of
what I'd done with rhyme. 

I'll let the list know when it's actually in print.

--- JforJames at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 7/6/01 11:02:24 AM Eastern
> Daylight Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 
> writes:
> <<  
>  > The list seems rather dead the last few days, so
> I'll post this query.  
>  > What makes a rhyme good?  What makes a rhyme
> fresh?  
>  
>  I think some rhymes have to be less than fresh if
> you're working in a 
>  pattern; that is, some of them (maybe most of them)
> are going to be merely 
>  functional.  It's a matter of saving the good ones
> (and making them heard) 
>  for the right spot in the poem.  Unless, of course,
> you're writing light 
>  verse, when you can pull all the stops out (unless
> one opts out).  W. S. 
>  Gilbert was, in my opinion, the most brilliant
> rhymer who ever lived, better 
>  than Byron but obviously much less versatile. 
> Enjambment and sentence 
>  structure are as important as getting the rhyme and
> meter right.  It's all 
> in 
>  the timing, this sort of rhyming. >>
> I concur with Sam on this. I'd add that I cut the
> poet some slack when 
> s/he's trying to carry off a longer work. A rime
> that might be inert/boring 
> in a sonnet (other than placed in a concluding
> couplet) is not likely to 
> annoy me in fourteen, forty or four hundred pages of
> quatrains. 
> A pet peeve: breaking a word at the end of line to
> make a rime (unless 
> in light verse) I read as awkward and unnecessarily
> obtrusive: 
> Save the Hyphens 
> 
> for your fiction, 
> my informal pal,
> or risk my mal-
> ediction.
> --
> Finnegan
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry


__________________________________________________
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Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
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From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Fri Jul  6 15:19:26 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2001 15:19:26 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Glyn Maxwell
Message-ID: <105.5c6485d.28776941@aol.com>

R.S. Gwynn wrote:

"It's all in 
the timing, this sort of rhyming."

My new email signature.  Thank you.  This is priceless.


Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English and Foreign Languages
University of West Florida

"It's all in the timing, this sort of rhyming."
--R.S. Gwynn






From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Fri Jul  6 16:00:34 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 13:00:34 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Glyn Maxwell
In-Reply-To: <10e.21ca357.28771eb9@aol.com>
Message-ID: <20010706200034.95786.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com>

--- JackKerouac25 at aol.com wrote:
> 
> 
> The list seems rather dead the last few days, so I'll post this
> query.  What makes a rhyme good?  What makes a rhyme fresh?  
> 

For a good rhyme, call W. S. Gilbert.
                 1-900-OME-0100

=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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From JforJames at aol.com  Fri Jul  6 17:17:10 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 17:17:10 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Mudlark Flash
Message-ID: <96.16945965.287784d6@aol.com>

Date:    Thu, 5 Jul 2001 14:03:13 -0400
From:    William Slaughter <wrs at UNF.EDU>
Subject: Mudlark Flash

New and On View: Mudlark Flash No. 12 (July 2001)

R. D. Girard | Four Poems

Leukemia In The Drinking Water
Tet Is Nice But It's Not Christmas
White On White | Priced To Move

"R. D. Girard lives in Washington and Los Angeles
and writes poems when he can't sleep at night."


White On White

In the neglected regions of capital
a gentle genetic tug arcs across the shift
from tactile to digital--
your face's cold fusion
persists across generations of bathtub marxists and pit bosses
and women wearing bespoke suits.

Many years later, as you find yourself teaching
in a barrio high school only to be fired
for telling your students that the difference
between poetry and rhetoric is the difference
between orgasm and ejaculation, you will
remember the day your father took you
to discover ragtime--production trading eights
with mechanical reproduction
at the dark end of the street.

The good old days live in the electric air
sucked over and over through the ones and zeros
punched into dusty piano rolls, in the ebbs and flows
between flaccid and tumescent, in the pinstriped spokes
of a spinning wheel when they begin to pinwheel backward.
Needs not your own wait
at the end of the end of representation.


Spread the word. Far and wide,

William Slaughter
_________________
MUDLARK
An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics
Never in and never out of print...
E-mail: mudlark at unf.edu
URL: http://www.unf.edu/mudlark


From JforJames at aol.com  Sat Jul  7 09:47:00 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 09:47:00 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Long Shot : "Gregory Corso Remembered"
Message-ID: <89.904e6a9.28786cd4@aol.com>

Date:    Tue, 3 Jul 2001 13:30:18 -0500
From:    Chris Hayden <belsidus at HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Long Shot Volume 24

The Spring, 2001 issue of LONG SHOT (volume 24) is available!

This is the "Gregory Corso Remembered" issue and features in the Gregory
Corso Tribute Section work by

Gregory Corso, Herschel Silverman, Sheri Langerman, Kay McDonough, Janine
Pommy Vega, Mikhail Horowitz, Ernie Hilbert, David Amram, Eliot Katz, Ken
Babbs, Ira Cohan, Annie Nocenti, Martin Matz, Anne Waldman, Laura Boss, Bob
Rosenthal, Mary Shanley, Kim Spurlock, Bob Holman, Steve Dalachinsky, Roger
Richards, Valery Oisteanu, Jack Hirschman, Diane di Prima, and Andy Clausen

Also includes work by

Jim Cohn, Nellie Wong, Amiri Baraka, Eliot Katz, Jackie Sheeler, Everett
Hoagland, Maria Gillan, Bruce Weber, Miriam Stanley, Hal Sirowitz, Tom
Obrzut, Robert Press, Danny Shot, Diana Hernandez, Mary Shanley, Chris
Hayden, Rick Pernod, Bruce Isaacson, Toni Blackman, Cristin Aptowicz, Diane
di Prima, Mark Riad Mikhael, Shiv Mirabito, Monica Mechling, Pablo Neruda,
Donald Gardner, Franz Wright, Nancy Mercado, Vivian Demuth, Tsaurah Litzky,
Wanda Coleman, felice belle, and Tuli Kupferberg.

Art from

Laurel Jensen, Ira Cohen, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Timothy
Green-field-Sanders, Valery Oisteanu, Michael McBride, Theodore Harris, Kurt
Nimmo, Eero Ruutila, Monica Mechling, Stepan Chapman, Celeste Fichter, Tuli
Kupferberg

$8.00 US
11.00 Canada

Contact
Long Shot Productions, Inc.
P.O. Box 6238
Hoboken, New Jersey 07030
(Danny Shot . . .Publisher /Editor
Nancy Mercado . . .Editor-in-Chief

website at http://www.longshot.org


From halvard at earthlink.net  Sat Jul  7 12:53:17 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 12:53:17 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Philip Lamantia, "Life Sciences"
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEPLDMAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

Life Sciences

Open the mirage that calls you.

The wind's embalming fluid
and the deserted shadow
      originating the flaw at outposts
      dovetailed
      into the transparent substance
          the absence of water
turned around in the mirrors

		*

My foot in the hair of spinning stars
      those curdles which limp through the shadows
In spite of the ducky corrals
stilettos wake up
and write out your names on the raving bark
which flows as the water of fire
to blot out the animal checkers computing your brows


--Philip Lamantia


Hal

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson



From DClemens at aol.com  Sat Jul  7 19:37:00 2001
From: DClemens at aol.com (DClemens at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 19:37:00 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry digest, Vol 1 #297 - 10 msgs
Message-ID: <125.159c28e.2878f71c@aol.com>

Can any of y'all identify the source (poem/book) of this line from Richard 
Wilbur: ?"I die of thirst, here at the fountainside."  Thanks.
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Sun Jul  8 01:11:28 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 01:11:28 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry digest, Vol 1 #297 - 10 msgs
Message-ID: <d7.8dd484f.28794580@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/7/2001 6:38:27 PM Central Daylight Time, 
DClemens at aol.com writes:


> 
> Can any of y'all identify the source (poem/book) of this line from Richard 
> Wilbur:  "I die of thirst, here at the fountainside."  Thanks. 
> 
> 

Ballade for the Duke of Orleans.
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From JforJames at aol.com  Sun Jul  8 10:57:02 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 10:57:02 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Songs Succeed as Poetry
Message-ID: <9b.178b4a85.2879cebe@aol.com>

 It's Only Rhyming Quatrains, but I Like It: Do
Songs Succeed as Poetry
>
> By JOHN LELAND
>
> In the last days of the Beatles, as things were
starting to come
> apart, the band formed a record label called
Zapple. The idea -- or
> lark, really -- was to record experimental music
and spoken word,
> starting with the poets who had become the
band's friends. The
> orbits of rock and poetry were pushing at each
other: musicians
> like Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell were starting to
claim the mantle
> of poets, and the Beats were hanging with rock
stars, enjoying a
> small piece of the reflected adulation. Why not
merge the two in
> one grand goof? It got off to a promising start.
Allen Ginsberg,
> Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Richard Brautigan and
Charles Olson put
> themselves on tape, and Michael McClure, the
West Coast poet,
> volunteered to play his autoharp -- a gift from
Bob Dylan -- behind
> the verses of a Hell's Angel named Freewheelin'
Frank. But Zapple
> folded after just two albums, and within a year,
the Beatles
> disbanded.
>
>  Paul McCartney, who had been the push behind
Zapple, finally
> invoked his own poetic license earlier this year
with the
> publication of "Blackbird Singing: Poems and
Lyrics 1965-1989."
> Always considered less writerly than John
Lennon, McCartney joins a
> procession of pop stars who have loosed their
song lyrics on the
> poetry sections of bookstores in recent years.
Bob Dylan, Joni
> Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Patti Smith,
Suzanne Vega and
> Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead have all
published big
> collections of their song lyrics and other
writings. A volume of
> Richard Hell's work is due out in the fall.
Henry Rollins, Jewel
> and Tupac Shakur have published volumes of their
poetry.
>
>  What does it mean for a select group of pop
songwriters, in the
> wane of their careers, to be repositioned as
poets? Norman Mailer
> once snorted that "if Dylan's a poet, I'm a
basketball player." The
> books are a serious publishing endeavor but an
odd one, seeking not
> an audience or even a lasting imprint -- the
musicians already have
> that -- but a claim to legitimacy. They revive
the old question of
> how rock or rap lyrics, removed from the roar
and theater of the
> music, fare as poetry. On the cold black and
white of the page, do
> they still sing?
>
>  The worst of the fighting has long been
settled. Poetry is
> thriving -- on the Internet, in slams and public
readings -- but
> for most of us, song lyrics now do the work of
modern verse: they
> organize the truths that rattle around in our
skulls. As
> universities trim their studies of Coleridge or
Eliot, English
> majors read Dylan or Tupac for credit. The
lyrics and their
> supporters have won, if only for outlasting
their critics. Of
> course the lyrics are poetry. No populist
definition could exclude
> the lyrics of rock songs, any more than it could
exclude the songs
> of Sappho or the "hey nonny nonny" nonsense of
Shakespeare; any
> high-culture guardians who would exclude rock
have lost the
> authority to do so. The books of lyrics are the
spoils of victory
> -- not an aspirant's claim but a victory lap.
>
>  But the value of this victory is questionable.
After living so
> long under these songs' caterwauling sway, I
recently spent a month
> inside the ruminative pages of the printed
lyrics, without the
> alimentary boost of the music. It is a quiet
neighborhood, filled
> with nice finds: the mature lyricism of later
Joni Mitchell songs,
> the economy McCartney hewed to in the Beatles.
Yet these seem like
> dry satisfactions. There are some fine verses in
these books, but
> the power and poetry forged by McCartney,
Mitchell and the rest lie
> in a far more complicated and scurrilous set of
connections.
>
> On a brilliant afternoon in the spring, Bob
Holman, a poet and
> believer, piled the books of lyrics on the desk
of his TriBeCa
> loft. An original member of the raucous
Nuyorican Poets Cafe on the
> Lower East Side, he has done more than anyone to
restore the rattle
> and dissonance to poetry, the sweaty ambition of
performance and
> rant. He wears rectangular tortoise-shell
glasses and has a shock
> of hair cresting from the top of his head, as if
it's pulling him
> up from above. He jabbed a finger happily at a
bridge in
> McCartney's "When I'm 64":
>
>
>  You'll be older too,
>  And if you say the word -
>  I could stay with you.
>
>
>  It was a
> formal element, a haiku -- well, almost --
illustrating what Holman
> thought was wrong with drawing a line between
poems and songs,
> isolating poetry from the stream of popular
culture. "We make these
> distinctions so we have something to talk about
other than the
> poems themselves," he said. He started piling up
a second round of
> poetry books -- pamphlets called chapbooks that
are sold at slams.
> "These people are writing great rock 'n' roll
poetry," he said,
> spitting the "hair-flinging anarchy" of rock 'n'
roll. He meant
> this as a compliment, but it was also a
recognition of how poetry
> and pop music have shifted their public roles in
the last few
> decades: how poets are now happy to seek
legitimacy in the vulgar
> swagger of rockers rather than the other way
around. The
> alternative is the quiet cloister of the
academy.
>
>  Song lyrics have no obligation to work as
poetry. Though poetry
> began in song (lyric poems, for example, were
set to the lyre), by
> now, the two serve different needs. To
oversimplify, poems shape
> the public language -- words, meter, what have
you -- to reveal
> interior truths. Songs, by contrast, have to
unite audiences in
> collective truths. Great lyrics, even fancy
ones, do not
> necessarily aspire to poetry. For example, John
Lennon's song "Give
> Peace a Chance" scans neatly:
>
>
>  Ev'rybody's talking about
>  Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism,
>  Ragism, Tagism
>  This-ism,
> that-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m.
>  All we are saying is give peace a chance
>
>  But the song's
> yearnings and remedies are all exterior, and its
persuasion lies in
> melody and timbre; it succeeds as song, not as
verse. This is not a
> lesser victory, just a different one. As Yeats
wrote, "We make out
> of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the
quarrel with
> ourselves, poetry."
>
>  Yet nothing prevents songs from taking on this
other, interior
> quarrel. If poetry is, as Leonard Cohen
contends, a verdict and not
> an intention, rock has long extended itself as
an opportunity, a
> soapbox for poets and pseuds. Lou Reed studied
with Delmore
> Schwartz.
>
>  Cohen and Patti Smith were published poets well
before they
> recorded songs. Richard Hell, then Richard
Meyers, ran away from
> home at age 17 to come to New York and be a
poet -- a romantic
> journey, tied as much to vices as verses. "It's
interesting how you
> put that, 'The romance of poetry,' taking for
granted that it's
> about a whole sexy way of life," Hell said in a
recent e-mail
> exchange. As a teenager, he idolized Dylan
Thomas; he slid from
> poetry to what became punk rock, gaining and
losing something along
> the way. "I thought I'd have fun bringing things
I'd learned
> reading and writing poems into music lyrics, but
I ended up mostly
> writing just way more spicy versions of the
classic lyric styles."
>
>  In the quiet of print, rock lyrics are often
less than meets the
> ear. Rock has always found meaning in nonsense,
whether the
> exuberant whoop of Little Richard's "wop bop a
loo bop," or the
> portentous non sequiturs of the alternative band
Pavement:
>
>
>  Life is a forklift.
>  Now my mouth is a forklift,
>  This I ask:
> that you serve as a forklift too.
>
>
>  These puzzlements are diffusely utopian: they
promise the
> existence of another world in which life can be
anything and all
> confusions melt away. Salman Rushdie, in his
novel "The Ground
> Beneath Her Feet," writes of this vision: "Song
shows us a world
> that is worthy of our yearning, it shows us our
selves as they
> might be, if we were worthy of the world."
>
>  The embrace of nonsense and non sequiturs is an
inheritance from
> rural folk music and the blues, which use
absurdism to face a
> capriciously hard world. Dylan adapted this
trope for a rock 'n'
> roll world grappling with Vietnam and the
destruction of the civil
> rights heroes. Applying old truths to a fiercely
modern form, he
> conjured anachronistic landscapes of hard rain
and darkness at the
> break of noon, biblical justice and sorrows.
Songs like "Desolation
> Row" poked at truths using language that was
rambling, funny and
> resolutely poetic, whether sung or sprawled
across the pages of
> Dylan's "Lyrics, 1962-1985":
>
>
>  They're selling postcards of the hanging
>  They're painting the
> passports brown
>  The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
>  The circus is in town
>  Here comes the blind commissioner
>
> They've got him in a trance
>  One hand is tied to the tightrope walker
>  The other is in his
> pants
>
>
>  This was a literary play, evoking one vision of
desolation to
> critique or exorcise another. You didn't have to
follow all his
> allusions; Dylan's power lay in creating
mystery, not resolving it.
> Audiences that once screamed through Beatles
shows hung rapt on his
> words. And after Dylan, it is fair to say, the
deluge.
>
>  But the import of rock songs often lies in the
gaps between the
> words, inviting the guesswork and reflection and
temporary epiphany
> that are the richest part of listening. The real
lyrics to "Louie,
> Louie," for example, could never signify like
the rumor and
> innuendo. And unlike the words of Cole Porter or
Stephen Sondheim
> or the other pop or cabaret writers compiled in
the recent book
> "Reading Lyrics," which deliver the same message
whether sung or
> read, the rock songs need the blur of the music
to fill in the
> meaning. Even vacant rock songs -- say, "Pretty
Vacant" by the Sex
> Pistols -- promise not a vacuity of meaning but
a surfeit. It has
> been a tenet of the rock era that those
three-minute songs, pored
> over by their adherents, carry deeper truths
than the institutions
> around them. This may be a vanity, but it has
been a powerful one.
> The words are just the way in. As Pete Townsend
of the Who once
> said, discussing MTV, "You can speak a language
there where nothing
> you say needs to make sense, but everyone
understands you anyway."
>
>  The persistence of this shared meaning points
to one of the
> poetic limits of song lyrics. They communicate
collectively; they
> preach to the in crowd. The words to songs,
however idiosyncratic,
> do not direct us to recognize an intelligence
independent from and
> outside our own. Instead, they give novel shape
to our points of
> agreement, what Richard Hell called "the classic
lyric styles."
> Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man," for example,
about the hopelessly
> square Mr. Jones, would be lost on its central
character. Decades
> later, when Dylan began writing as a born-again
Christian,
> hectoring his audience -- which is to say,
moving away from any
> points of agreement -- he ceased to communicate
as a songwriter.
> Poetry is not obliged to these communal ties.
>
>  Rock lyrics are by nature overheated and
fragmented; they generate
> more good lines than coherent works. Some of the
most compelling
> believe in revelation or transcendence but stop
short of trying to
> show it (this is perhaps low art's privilege: to
defer to a higher
> art for the details). Lou Reed's "Some Kinda
Love," for example,
> hints at revelation through sexual
transgression, walking only as
> far as the edge without looking over:
>
>
>  Put jelly on your shoulder
>  Let's do what you fear most
>  That
> from which you recoil
>  But still makes your eyes moist
>
>
>  The lyrics, the jelly, get you halfway there.
The music -- Reed's
> flinty voice, the erotic curl of the guitar
notes -- suggests
> enough of the rest.
>
>  Many of these evocative fragments do not seem
so pretty on the
> page. As poems, even good song lyrics often feel
beholden to easy
> rhymes or predictable formulas. Taken out of
context, these
> songwriting conventions often feel exposed and
mannered. Music is a
> soft lyric's best friend, and a lot of the
verses here can use the
> companionship. But there are also some
revelations on the pages.
> Leonard Cohen, who published his first book of
poetry a decade
> before his first album, reads as darkly funny on
the page, a quiet
> smolder in a neatly tailored suit. In a
typically corrosive twist
> on the cliche of the tormented artist, he
writes,
>
>
>  I said to Hank Williams, "How lonely does it
get?"
>  Hank Williams
> hasn't answered yet
>  but I hear him coughing all night long
>  a hundred floors above me in the tower of song.
>
>
>  The biggest
> surprises are McCartney's. John Lennon's 1964
book "In His Own
> Write" bills its author as "The Writing Beatle!"
"Blackbird
> Singing" is McCartney's revenge. Instead of
mooning about poetic
> stuff like misty weather and limpid eyes or
reaching for the grand
> statements favored by Lennon, McCartney at his
best is all
> business, compact and plain-spoken. His
characters have names, like
> Lovely Rita or Father Mackenzie, and perform
bold, funny actions:
> they came in through the bathroom window or,
like Joan in
> "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," they got "quizzical,
studied
> pataphysical/Science in the home," a reference
to the Dadaist
> playwright Alfred Jarry's science of imaginary
solutions. His
> "Eleanor Rigby," which I find maudlin as a song,
shows its hardness
> on the page, as flawless a poem as rock has
produced:
>
>
>  Father Mackenzie,
>  Wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks
> from the grave.
>  No one was saved.
>
>
>  McCartney's lyrics are taut and polished; it's
nice to have the
> leisure to crack them.
>
>  Even on the page, the lyrics do not escape the
accidents and
> textures of performance. Robert Pinsky, the
former poet laureate,
> has long argued for the centrality of voice in
poetry, whether
> written or sung. "Poetry, for me, is written
with the poet's voice
> and intended for the reader's voice," he said.
"The point for me is
> not 'the page.' Rather, the test is how
beautiful or exciting the
> language sounds when it is spoken. Great poetry
sounds great in any
> interested reader's voice." Fans constantly give
their voice to the
> lyrics lodged in their heads; the books of
lyrics are formal
> invitations to let loose -- a primal karaoke.
Pinsky welcomes the
> books with the competitive warmth of a poet at a
slam. "The cheese
> department," he said, "should offer many things
between Velveeta
> and an exquisite goat cheese."
>
> So far, publishers seem less eager to enshrine
the lyrics of
> hip-hop, which on record often move too quickly
to be counted.
> Except among the truly committed, there is not
much place in the
> culture now for all-night bullcrit sessions to
peel the layers of
> meaning and nonsense in the lyrics of the
Notorious B.I.G. or
> Eminem. Yet the era's most beguiling, word-drunk
songwriting has
> come from writers like Tupac Shakur, who was
killed in 1996. Lauryn
> Hill, an Ivy Leaguer from New Jersey, laced her
rap with a running
> commentary on how to read her:
>
>
>  I treat this like my thesis
>  Well-written topic
>  Broken down into pieces
>  I introduce then
> produce
>  Words so profuse
>  It's abuse how I juice up this beat
>  Like I'm deuce
>
>
>  Like the lyricists of the 1960's, hip-hoppers
> write against a backdrop of social crisis, often
exaggerating it
> with mordant humor. In the early days of N.W.A.,
Ice Cube
> introduced himself,
>
>
>  I'm expressing with my full capabilities,
>  And now I'm living in correctional facilities
>
>
>  This is another
> wry take on the tortured artist as outlaw,
isolated not in Leonard
> Cohen's tower of song but in Los Angeles's
county blues. Rappers
> have often defended the excessive violence,
sexuality, materialism
> and psychopathology in some lyrics as a kind of
journalism,
> unpretty dispatches from the front. But with
their vivid
> sensationalism and the creative chaos of their
language, they
> function much better as poetry than journalism.
The words can be
> redundant or contradictory -- or throwaway, like
the formulas Homer
> used to make his lines scan. The Notorious
B.I.G. raps,
>
>
>  My life is played out like a Jherri Curl,
>  I'm ready to die
>
>
>
> How to reconcile the radically divergent tones
of the two lines,
> the dirty-dozens humor of the first, the bleak
fatalism of the
> second? Except maybe to recognize both as
survival postures and
> B.I.G. as running through the various cultural
currents flooding
> his life. The poetry lies in the sum of the two
lines, not in their
> reduction.
>
> If rock or rap lyrics have usurped the role of
poetry, it's not very
> likely that many know enough to miss it. A few
years ago, an
> English professor named David Pichaske asked
several groups of
> people to identify a poem or line from the works
of 25 recent
> Pulitzer Prize-winning poets. Then he asked
again, using 25 popular
> songwriters. The results were exactly as you
would expect. The
> books of lyrics function as souvenirs of this
ascendancy.
>
>  The collected writings of, say, Patti Smith may
not leap off the
> shelf, but they mark out her place in our public
and private lives.
> For fans squinting toward middle age with their
copies of her album
> "Horses," the existence of such a book can mean
that we haven't
> outgrown her triumphal squall, even if we're no
longer braving the
> sodden toilets of CBGB to get close to it. If
you wanted to put a
> value on this glow, you might consider Jewel's
publishing advance
> for "A Night Without Armor," reported to be more
than $1 million,
> compared with the usual $10,000 to $20,000 for
books by name poets.
> The book's introduction, which cites Jewel's
influences, misspells
> Bukowski.
>
>  Rock music has long settled into genteel, adult
ambitions. But if
> the books of song lyrics are intended to breach
the canon, they are
> too late; that battle is over. Writers like
Dylan, McCartney,
> Lennon, Mitchell, Tupac and the rest triumphed
by embedding their
> poetic intelligence in the rhythm and noise and
commerce that make
> up our modern lives. These books distill one
part of that
> intelligence, but they are, as Pete Seeger once
described the
> printed lyrics of folk songs, like a photograph
of a bird in
> flight. They capture the verbs and nouns, but
not the power that
> upended the rules of gravity that existed
before.
>
>  John Leland is a reporter for the Style
department of The New York
> Times.
>
>
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/08/magazine/08LYRIC
S.html?ex=995610900&ei=1&en=68dddc6fd90a52ec
>
> Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
>
>


From administration at presbykids.com  Thu Jul  5 15:11:07 2001
From: administration at presbykids.com (Elaine Rexdale)
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 15:11:07 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] The 2001 Lady MacDuff Poetry Contest
Message-ID: <00d001c10586$75ce5ea0$d459580c@worldnet.att.net>

Dear Editor:

Below is information which you may find of interest for your newsletter, e-zine or website.  Please feel free to use it as you feel appropriate.

Rexdale Publishing Company of Hackensack, NJ invites all poets, published and unpublished to enter The 2001 Lady MacDuff Poetry Contest.  The winner will receive $500 and 12 copies of his/her published poetry book.  Deadline for entry is November 30, 2001.  Details may be found at http://www.RexdalePublishing.com.

Thank you,
Elaine Rexdale
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From crismartin at mail.com  Sun Jul  8 16:28:17 2001
From: crismartin at mail.com (cristobal martin)
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 04:28:17 +0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetry Prize
Message-ID: <20010708202817.15885.qmail@mail.com>

Dear Sir/Madam:

Please be advised of the following literary event:

RULES FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL AWARD OF THE
FERNANDO RIELO WORLD PRIZE FOR MYSTICAL POETRY

The FERNANDO RIELO FOUNDATION is sponsoring and announcing the Twenty-First World Prize for Mystical Poetry, which shall be governed by the following Rules.

1.	Previously unpublished works of poetry originally written in either Spanish or English or translated into one of these two languages shall be eligible for the Fernando Rielo World Prize for Mystical Poetry.

2.	Each entry must be presented by its author.  The minimum length for entries shall be 600 lines, and the maximum length, 1300 lines.  The text of the entry may be a single poem or a collection of poems.  A given work of poetry may be presented only once for this yearly award.

3.	The Prize shall be awarded for mystical poetry expressing the profound religious significance of man's spiritual values.

4.	The Prize shall consist of 6,000 euros ($7,000) and the publication of the entry selected.

5. 	The Prize is indivisible and shall be awarded for single entry.  It may not be awarded in the absence of suitable candidate.

6.	A single printed or typed copy of each entry, securely bond, shall be presented.  If possible, entries should also be sent in an electronic version on a diskette or as an email attachment.  The cover or first page shall bear the title of the work and the author's name, street address, telephone number, and email address, where applicable.  The use of sealed entries and pseudonyms is thus prohibited.

7.	The deadline for submitting entries shall be October 15, 2001, and all entries postmarked on or before that date shall be accepted.  Entries should be sent to the following address:

FUNDACI?N FERNANDO RIELO
Jorge Juan, 102 ? 2? B
28009 MADRID - Spain
	(34) 915  75 40 91

The identification ?Mystical Poetry Prize (21st Annual Award)? should be added in the lower left-hand corner of the envelope.  The e-mail address for the Prize is frielo at adenle.es, and the Foundation's website is www.rielo.com.

8. 	The founder of the Prize, Fernando Rielo, shall constitute and chair the Jury.

9. 	The Jury's decision shall be made before December 15, 2001, and both the winner and the media shall immediately be informed thereof.
 
10.	There shall be no correspondence with the authors of entries, and the entries themselves shall not be returned, but shall be destroyed ten days after the Jury's decision.

11. 	The decision of the Jury is final.                                                                                                                    

12. 	The sending of entries for consideration signifies full acceptance of these Rules for the Prize.



BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FERNANDO RIELO WORLD PRIZE OF MYSTICAL POETRY
The World Prize was created by Fernando Rielo in 1981 with the aim of promoting mystical poetry and finding and making known those poets that unite an elevated spirituality to an authentic literary expression. When this double-premise is not fulfilled, the Prize is awarded, rather than declaring it void, to true poets who, though they cannot be considered mystics in a strict sense, contribute a work worthy of note.
The works submitted to the World Prize of Mystical Poetry must be written in Spanish or English or translated to one of these two languages. The entries must be unpublished and have an extension which is not to be less than 600 verses nor longer than 1,300. The Prize is awarded annually, and is endowed with 1,000,000 ptas., and the publication of the winning work.
The worldwide renown enjoyed by this Prize has made it possible for the awards ceremony to be celebrated in prestigious international settings such as the United Nations in New York, the Senate of France and UNESCO in Paris, the Municipality of Rome, The Gothic Hall of Cologne, the Museum of El Prado, the Municipality of Madrid, The Council Chambers of the Province of Bologna, and the Embassy of Spain before the Holy See.
Former editions of the Prize have been, among others, awarded to: Blanca Andreu, Manuel ?lvarez Ortega, Jos? Garc?a Nieto, Montserrat Maristany, Luis L?pez Anglada, and Miguel de Santiago (Spain); Marin Sorescu (Romania); Alain Bosquet (France); Charles Carr?re (Senegal); Daniel Ben Rafael Stawski (Israel); Takis Varvitsiotis (Greece); Laureano Alb?n (Costa Rica); Mateja Matevski (Macedonia); and Liubomir Levtchev (Bulgaria).

FERNANDO RIELO?S CONCEPTION OF MYSTICAL POETRY

I understand mystical poetry under two aspects.

a)	The specific or full sense consists of conveying with sufficient poetic skill the different modes of the soul's intimate personal experience of union with God in love and pain-in the case of the Christian poet, in relation to the Most Holy Trinity; in that of the non-Christian poet, in relation to God alone.  The fullest exclusive consecration to Supreme Love, insofar as possible in this life, is what distinguishes mystical poetry from other poetic genres.  If religious poetry and, along with it, the remaining poetic genres are not formed by this union of love with the Absolute, they are reduced to a religere which is deformed, rather than merely formless.  This deformation is the departure point for what I term "antimystical poetry" and ?antireligious poetry.? It is quite certain that this deformity cannot totally annihilate the transcendence which defines the poet: all poetry is openness to the mystery of suffering that is man.

b)	The general or incipient sense consists of conveying with supreme mastery the intimate experience of love with the Absolute in the various modes of searching presented by the human being's spiritual cor inquietum.  In this regard, I consider mysticism to be open-that is, incipient in all human beings because of the ontological fact that, rather than rational, political, or symbolic animals, they are "mystical beings." On account of their mystical or ontological status, human beings, from the first instant of their conception, are betrothed to God-that is, united, constituted, and related.  Mystical life, in keeping with this definition of man, is the incrementing, by way of grace, of the immanent constitutive presence of the Divine Persons in the human person: this is what the elevation of mystical life to its greatest possible intimacy consists of.

The aim of mystical poetry is to confess one's faith.  The human word, as the image and likeness of the divine word, with a mystical brushstroke must trace out a language of hidden perfumed essences summoning up man's heavenly destiny unevasively.

Mystical poetry is not at all reductive; eminently creative, it is capable of engendering new stylistic recourses, new forms, and, in general terms, inexhaustible wealth for conveying the soul's mystical union with the Creator by means of the aesthetic image.  Mystical poetry is also a universal, transcendental vision of a humanity journeying towards its celestial goal.  Nature and the cosmos are added to this mystical march, offering themselves to human beings for the purpose of illuminating the noblest sense of their unitive experience of love.

Mystical poetry differs from religious poetry in that, unlike the latter, it possesses a vast horizon through which it passionately recreates the multiform values of human spirituality.  So-called "religious poetry"-often mixed up with "antimystical or antireligious poetry," which is ranting, brazen, condemnatory, and even blasphemous-generally exhibits the traits of searching and feeling on a cultural level, rather than creative inner experience.  What poet has not posed the subject of religion, even if only tangentially?  The property defining mystical poetry is not to deal with God as a theme, as an "existential" description, as a stylistic recourse, or as a kind of experimental choice, but rather to raise loving union with the Absolute to art to such a degree that the constant of that poetry must evoke this mystical union in a most lofty manner.

The experience of the union of love with God is so intimate, so vital, and so definitive that the mystical poet, as opposed to the so-called religious poet, will never wonder about the existence or non-existence of God, not even as an aesthetic recourse, just as the existence or non-existence of the air one breathes is never questioned.

Fernando Rielo

-- 

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From JforJames at aol.com  Mon Jul  9 11:24:50 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 11:24:50 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] New titles from Green Integer
Message-ID: <44.ff49b62.287b26c2@aol.com>

FYI: These Green Integer books are very nicely produced, small format
pocket books; w/ many wonderful titles on the list....
http://www.greeninteger.com/

Subj:    New titles from Green Integer
Date:   7/7/01 5:56:44 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From:   djmess at greeninteger.com (kiwi)
To: djmess at greeninteger.com

Dear Friends,

It's been a long while now that I've been slightly incognito, with numerous 
e-mail problems.
But that has finally been corrected and Douglas Messerli and Green Integer 
are back on
line. My new e-mail address is djmess at greeninteger.com although my older 
e-mails
will still be forwarded.

Green Integer has been very busy this year, with about 20 new titles to date. 
The most recent
(published in the past few weeks) are those listed below. As usual, 
individuals on this list receive
a 20% discount. So when you order, please include $1.25 for postage and 
subtract 20% for
the list price. All checks for Green Integer should be made out to me, 
Douglas Messerli. We
are still awaiting our dba status, so the bank will not recognize Green 
Integer yet.

Here are some of our new titles:

To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays by Gertrude Stein  paper $9.95 list

To Do, published previously only in the Yale edition (500 copies) in 1957, is 
now available for
the first time in a separate book edition. Meant originally for children, 
Stein planned this book
as an orderly progression through the alphabet with four names for each 
letter. But things quickly
developed, spiraling out of silmple childlike progression, so that by the 
time she reached the letter
H, Henriette de Dactyl, a French typewriter (who exchanges typed messages 
with Yetta von Blickens-
dorfer, a German typewriter, and Mr. House, an American typewriter), wants to 
live on Melon Street
and eat radishes, salads, and fried fish and soup. By the time Stein had 
completed this charming
book, friends and editors thought it inapporopriate for children because of 
its lack of episode.
Stein refused to alter it, and it remained unpublished until the Yale edition.


Operratics by Michel Leiris, translated from the French by Guy Bennett  
paperback $12.95 list

This book, never before published in English, is a study of opera by the 
great French poet, art
critic, and anthropologist Michel Leiris. Leiris began his writing career as 
a poet associated with
the Surrealist group, but he later made major contributions as a art critic 
and anthropologist, as well
as through his great autogiobraphical confession, L'Age d'Homme (Manhood). In 
Operratics Leiris
turns his brilliant mind to one of his major loves, opera. Approaching the 
subject as a lover of music
without any formal musical training, he discerns fascinating patterns in 
cultural movements in opera
and reveals his personal tastes in this genre.



Aurelia by Gerard de Nerval  Translated from the French by Monique DiDonna  
paperback $11.95 list

Throughout Nerval's tempestuous life that ended with suicide by hanging, this 
French Romantic poet 
journeyed to distant parts of the globe in order to comprehend and articulate 
the demons that assailed
his innermost being. The culmination of Nerval's quest was Aurelia, a 
masterful surrealistic prose
dissection of mind and soul, completed only a year before his death in 1855. 
The partly autobiographical
work, with Nerval as both narrator and protagonist, is a mind rending odyssey 
of cultural and spiritual
exploration, shared by its tormented author and his spellbound readers. 
Nerval's search for the ideal
woman, his fountainhead of grace and salvation, is personified in the distant 
Aurelia, based on his
real-life obsession with the performer Jenny Colon.


A Wanderer Plays on Muted Strings by Knut Hamsun, Translated from the 
Norwegian by Oliver and Gunnvor Stallybrass  paperback $10.95 list

Related to and sometimes paired with Hamsun's Under the Autumn Star, this 
beautifully lyric novel picks up with the same characters as the other book, 
but is set in time six years later. The central character
of the former fiction, Knut Pedersen (Hamsun's real name), is little more 
than an observer in this work.
His former friend Grindhusen has grown from stubborn independence to a shifty 
and vacillating man;
and his companion Lars Falkenberg has dwindled into a small land-holder with 
a perpetually pregnant
wife from whom is is deeply estranged. These two comedians play out a 
tragi-comedy that is painful
through the very irony and humaneness with which Hamsun paints his figures.


Antilyrik and Other Poems by Vitezslav Nezval. Translated from the Czech by 
Jerome Rothenberg and
Milos Sovak   paperback  $10.95 list

Vitezslav Nezval (1900-1958) was an active participant in the European 
avant-garde between the two world  wars. In the 1920s, he was the founding 
figure of "poetism," a movement of poets and artists centered in Prague. Like 
other major innovators, he worked through a prolific sweep of modes and 
genres: open and closed forms of verse, experimental plays and novels, 
numerous translations of his modern counterparts and predecessors, and forays 
as composer, painter, journalist, and social commentator. In the foreground 
of avant-garde activity in Prague, Nezval forged an alliance with Andre 
Breton and his Paris circle in the 1930s, founding the first Surrealist group 
and magazine outside of France. Antilyrik and Other Poems brings together, 
for the first time in English, a sampling of some of Nezval's major poems 
from the 1920s and 1930s, revealing the extraordinary depth and breadth of 
his poetic project.


Pedra Canga by Tereza Albues. Translated from the Portuguese by Clifford E. 
Landers   paperback $12.95 list

Pedra Canga, a small and isolated community in the Brazilian Pantanal, or 
wetlands, endures amid pverty, myth, and supersition. Dreaming and suffering, 
the simple townspeople exist in the mystical reality of
their private universe. With insight and humor the novel tells of the 
ultimate vindication of these humble
folk against a powerful and demonic family that has long oppressed them. 
Filled with magical events,
diabolic storms, and visions both frightening and angelical, this is a 
wonderfully imaginative work, remind-
ing one of the best of South American magic realism.
   Tereza Albues was born in a small village in Mato Grosso, Brazil. She has 
lived in the United States for
16 years.


Suicide Circus: Selected Poems by Alexei Kruchenykh. Translated from the 
Russian by Jack Hirschmann,
Alexander Kohav and Venyamin Tseytlin, with an Introduction by Jack Hirshman, 
and a Preface and Notes by Guy Bennett  paperback   $12.95 list

With Velimir Khlebnikov and Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexei Kruchenykh was one of 
the central figures of
Russian Futurism, and the leading practitioner of zaum poetry. Zaum, meaning 
literally "beyond sense,"
was an attempt to undermine and/or ignore the conventional meaning of words, 
"allowing their sound,"
as Marjorie Perloff has written, "to generate their own range of 
signification, or, in its most extreme form,
the invention of new words based purely on sound." In a series of inventive 
works, among them Pomade, 
Learn Art and Four Phonetic Novels, Kruchenykh sought to transform the 
landscape of Russian
modernist poetry. In the first substantive collection of Kruchenykh's poetry 
in English, along with reproduc-
tions of pages from the original texts, Hirschman, with the help of Guy 
Bennett, has provided a important
sourcebook for modern poetry.


To order: send a check or money order to Douglas Messerli (c/0 Green Integer, 
6026 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90036)
Please remember to enclose the names of the titles you would like, your name 
and address.


From TerryP17 at aol.com  Mon Jul  9 12:42:16 2001
From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 12:42:16 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: ECR #15--new content now up.
Message-ID: <92.1724b016.287b38e8@aol.com>

FYI, new content excerpted from Edge City Review #15 is now up on our website 
at http://www.edge-city.com. Especially recommended is Jared Carter's new 
narrative poem, "Glass Negatives," available on the poetry page.

Terry P


From JoFuhrman at excite.com  Mon Jul  9 22:07:59 2001
From: JoFuhrman at excite.com (Joanna Fuhrman)
Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 19:07:59 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] s.s.p /seattle
Message-ID: <20892826.994730879442.JavaMail.imail@neon.excite.com>

I'm reading in Seattle this thursday (July 12th)with Adeena Karasick at Open
Books.  2414 North 45th Street

best,

Joanna





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From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Tue Jul 10 10:12:35 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:12:35 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Songs Succeed as Poetry
Message-ID: <82.cca55d6.287c6753@aol.com>

I read Leland's _NY Times_ article with great interest, mainly thinking about my undergraduate days (don't laugh, now) when I played guitar in a coffee house every Friday night and fashioned myself a neo-Jim Morrison/Bob Dylan/Jimi Hendrix.  I later realized that, at least for me, poetry is less about performance and more about work.  The poems I wrote then were first drafts, 15 lines at best, quasi-confessional dribble that my writing workshop peers (and professor) loved.

Now, when I teach Introduction to Poetry, I always include a section on poetry and song, and one of the assignments always is critically analyzing a song's lyrics.  I've had great essays discussing lyrics by Sting, the Doors, and the Church.  Last semester, the best essay in the class was about a song by (now get ready for it) Celine Dion!  However much fun we have in class w/these songs, I always stress to my students how much the music matters in a song.  I love the Doors' "Celebration of the Lizard," a long, pretentious poetry/rock piece, but I don't fool myself into believing that those lyrics could stand alone sans Morrison's frenzied chanting and Robby Krieger's haunting guitar lines.

I'm thinking now of Dana Gioia's _Nosferatu_, his liberetto.  I read the work, enjoyed it, but I wonder how much I lost by not seeing it produced live.  I live in Florida, I teach in Florida, and thus I don't have a lot of money, so traveling to see the piece is out of the question as this point; so I feel like I've missed something.  If song lyrics aren't poetry--and I don't think that they are--then is a liberetto poetry?

Do any of you use song lyrics in your classes?  I once used old blues lyrics, but they didn't work out too well.  I love to hear some commentary.

Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English and Foreign Languages
University of West Florida


From languagethief at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 10:25:42 2001
From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 07:25:42 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Songs Succeed as Poetry
In-Reply-To: <82.cca55d6.287c6753@aol.com>
Message-ID: <20010710142542.56646.qmail@web12208.mail.yahoo.com>

Wondering why the old blues lyrics didn't work out
well? I teach a whole course in Blues as Literature,
and I've had great success with it.




--- JackKerouac25 at aol.com wrote:
> I read Leland's _NY Times_ article with great
> interest, mainly thinking about my undergraduate
> days (don't laugh, now) when I played guitar in a
> coffee house every Friday night and fashioned myself
> a neo-Jim Morrison/Bob Dylan/Jimi Hendrix.  I later
> realized that, at least for me, poetry is less about
> performance and more about work.  The poems I wrote
> then were first drafts, 15 lines at best,
> quasi-confessional dribble that my writing workshop
> peers (and professor) loved.
> 
> Now, when I teach Introduction to Poetry, I always
> include a section on poetry and song, and one of the
> assignments always is critically analyzing a song's
> lyrics.  I've had great essays discussing lyrics by
> Sting, the Doors, and the Church.  Last semester,
> the best essay in the class was about a song by (now
> get ready for it) Celine Dion!  However much fun we
> have in class w/these songs, I always stress to my
> students how much the music matters in a song.  I
> love the Doors' "Celebration of the Lizard," a long,
> pretentious poetry/rock piece, but I don't fool
> myself into believing that those lyrics could stand
> alone sans Morrison's frenzied chanting and Robby
> Krieger's haunting guitar lines.
> 
> I'm thinking now of Dana Gioia's _Nosferatu_, his
> liberetto.  I read the work, enjoyed it, but I
> wonder how much I lost by not seeing it produced
> live.  I live in Florida, I teach in Florida, and
> thus I don't have a lot of money, so traveling to
> see the piece is out of the question as this point;
> so I feel like I've missed something.  If song
> lyrics aren't poetry--and I don't think that they
> are--then is a liberetto poetry?
> 
> Do any of you use song lyrics in your classes?  I
> once used old blues lyrics, but they didn't work out
> too well.  I love to hear some commentary.
> 
> Jeff Newberry
> Adjunct Instructor
> Department of English and Foreign Languages
> University of West Florida
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry


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From halvard at earthlink.net  Tue Jul 10 10:37:45 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:37:45 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Songs Succeed as Poetry
In-Reply-To: <82.cca55d6.287c6753@aol.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEBBDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

Two points: One is that studying song lyrics seems to me something
akin to studying photographs of statues, so asking a song to succeed
as a poem is similar to asking a statue to succeed in two dimensions. 

The other is that song lyrics different quite a bit from text settings. To 
me, with a good band or a good singer it doesn't much matter what 
words come out of their mouths if the music's any good. And many
groups' lyrics sound like they just had to use *some* words. Many an 
opera's been set to an idiotic libretto, and many German lieder were 
deliberately set to inferior poems so as not to allow the text to override 
the music. Some composers (e.g. Schubert, I believe) were overt about 
this. 

Hal     "There are then quite a number of things
            one does or does not know."
                            --Gertrude Stein

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson


> I read Leland's _NY Times_ article with great interest, mainly thinking about my undergraduate days (don't laugh, now) 
> when I played guitar in a coffee house every Friday night and fashioned myself a neo-Jim Morrison/Bob Dylan/Jimi Hendrix. 
>  I later realized that, at least for me, poetry is less about performance and more about work.  The poems I wrote then 
> were first drafts, 15 lines at best, quasi-confessional dribble that my writing workshop peers (and professor) loved.
> 
> Now, when I teach Introduction to Poetry, I always include a section on poetry and song, and one of the assignments 
> always is critically analyzing a song's lyrics.  I've had great essays discussing lyrics by Sting, the Doors, and the 
> Church.  Last semester, the best essay in the class was about a song by (now get ready for it) Celine Dion!  However much 
> fun we have in class w/these songs, I always stress to my students how much the music matters in a song.  I love the 
> Doors' "Celebration of the Lizard," a long, pretentious poetry/rock piece, but I don't fool myself into believing that 
> those lyrics could stand alone sans Morrison's frenzied chanting and Robby Krieger's haunting guitar lines.
> 
> I'm thinking now of Dana Gioia's _Nosferatu_, his liberetto.  I read the work, enjoyed it, but I wonder how much I lost 
> by not seeing it produced live.  I live in Florida, I teach in Florida, and thus I don't have a lot of money, so 
> traveling to see the piece is out of the question as this point; so I feel like I've missed something.  If song lyrics 
> aren't poetry--and I don't think that they are--then is a liberetto poetry?
> 
> Do any of you use song lyrics in your classes?  I once used old blues lyrics, but they didn't work out too well.  I love 
> to hear some commentary.
> 
> Jeff Newberry
> Adjunct Instructor
> Department of English and Foreign Languages
> University of West Florida
> _______________________________________________
> 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  Tue Jul 10 11:43:42 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:43:42 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] WILD HONEY PRESS
Message-ID: <99.176f2ba8.287c7cae@aol.com>

Date:    Mon, 9 Jul 2001 19:19:22 +0100
From:    Randolph Healy <poetry at WILDHONEYPRESS.COM>
Subject: New from Wild Honey Press

New from Wild Honey Press.

Apologies for cross posting.

************************************************

Plunge by Harriet Zinnes, 24 pages, 14x21 cm, inkjet printed on cream paper,
with 250 gsm white Stratacolour card cover. The colour illustration on the
cover is from the painting Unexpected Visitor by Alice Zinnes. ISBN 1 903090
29 6, USD 5, STG 3.50

Poet and critic, Harriet Zinnes lives in New York is the author of seven
collections of poetry.

Visit http://www.wildhoneypress.com/books/plunge for a picture of the cover
and a sample poem. It's lucid, graceful work, full of formal interest. I've
found that if you can break the hypnotic spell cast by these poems, one can
learn all sorts of high-tech things.

************************************************

red noise of bones a 42 minute CD of Trevor Joyce reading his own work.
Having been through it from stem to stern six times normalising volumes and
so on, I found myself then listening to it for pleasure. Wonderful stuff.
ISBN 1 903090 30 X. USD 15, STG 10.

Visit http://www.wildhoneypress.com/books/rednoise for a sample.

Book and cd available from me at 16a Ballyman Road, Bray, Co. Wicklow,
Ireland (I take mastercard or visa)
or from Peter Riley.

**************************************************************


Finally, for the brokenwalleted, (no irony here as I sit in my Oxfam
tee-shirt) two freebies:

Ten poems read by Miles Champion, read with a clarity and speed that is
almost too thrilling. Text is provided for those who don't have 1 GHz ears.
Many of the poems read can be found in Three Bell Zero, Miles Champion, Roof
Books, New York, ISBN 0 937804 82 7, USD 10.95 (Highly recommended). This
reading, specially recorded for Wild Honey, is one of the highlights of my
summer. A tour de force.

Second freebie: A Defense of Poetry read by Gabe Gudding, a spendthrift
spirited whale of an anti-praise poem.

All the above can be got to from the main page:
http://www.wildhoneypress.com and click on the link to "new".

Best wishes

Randolph Healy



From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Jul 10 11:58:39 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:58:39 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Wild Honey Press Url Errors
Message-ID: <f5.c56b19e.287c802f@aol.com>

Subject:      Wild Honey Press Url Errors
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Apologies for cross posting

My enthusiastic grammar checker mangled the two urls I sent last night:

Harriet Zinnes new book Plunge can be glimpsed at:
http://www.wildhoneypress.com/BOOKS/Plunge.html

and Trevor Joyce's CD is at
http://www.wildhoneypress.com/BOOKS/red_noise.html

sorry about that,

Randolph


From klvarnes at home.com  Tue Jul 10 12:49:01 2001
From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 11:49:01 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Songs Succeed as Poetry
In-Reply-To: <82.cca55d6.287c6753@aol.com>
Message-ID: <B7709C2C.3A8E%klvarnes@home.com>

> Do any of you use song lyrics in your classes?  I once used old blues lyrics,
> but they didn't work out too well.  I love to hear some commentary.


I teach a section on the blues at the end of my course on repetition, but
it's not mainly a poetry class, although I use poetry to introduce the
blues. We read a bunch of villanelles and sestinas, pantoums and triolets,
and discuss the refrain in poetry for a bit.  (I don't suggest these are
precursors to the blues, of course; I'm working on student methodology and
how to read this stuff.)  Then we dip into part of Baraka's Blues People, a
couple essays on the intersections between blues and poetry, and before that
some Freud and Faludi for psychological/social functions of repetition.
They read the material on the blues, and then I play a good sampling --
Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, John Hurt, Frank Stokes, Fats Waller -- of
early blues, together with Billie Holiday, Freddie King, Leadbelly, Taj
Mahal, Ruth Brown, Witherspoon, Saffire, others.  So I'm trying to give them
a small sense of the history of the blues, how songs and sounds as well as
lyrics get repeated. (Many of them are shocked to learn that Steve Miller
Band didn't coin the peaches/shake my tree expression.) Next I play about
7-8 versions of the same song, after having given them the lyrics for one
version. This works well for me, and I get lots of discussion about lyric
changes, musical styles, meaning shifts -- which sets up for some great
presentations and papers.  But I'm not teaching blues AS poetry.  I'm using
our language for poetics and close reading as a way into the blues.

There's the suggestion in some poetry textbooks that if we discuss lyrics
without music, we're offering a "primitive" poem to the students that
they'll understand or connect with their own music, which paves the way for
poetry. But it only appears that way because we've stripped away the music
and interpretive nuances in the performance.  In my experience (hallway
advising other teachers who tried it), most students are rightly suspicious
of the whole procedure, and those who embrace it tend to have difficulties
making the leap to poetry.


Kathrine Varnes



From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 13:11:13 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:11:13 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Songs Succeed as Poetry
In-Reply-To: <82.cca55d6.287c6753@aol.com>
Message-ID: <20010710171113.13083.qmail@web12105.mail.yahoo.com>

--- JackKerouac25 at aol.com wrote:
> I read Leland's _NY Times_ article with great interest, mainly
> thinking about my undergraduate days (don't laugh, now) when I played
> guitar in a coffee house every Friday night and fashioned myself a
> neo-Jim Morrison/Bob Dylan/Jimi Hendrix.  I later realized that, at
> least for me, poetry is less about performance and more about work. 
> The poems I wrote then were first drafts, 15 lines at best,
> quasi-confessional dribble that my writing workshop peers (and
> professor) loved.

Jeff: Ha.  In my pre-English/Writing degrees days, though in my
post-music degree days, I played cello in D.C. coffee houses, blues and
jazz, though I didn't fashion myself after anyone, except maybe
reaching for a string-Coltrane.

> I always stress to
> my students how much the music matters in a song. 

Which is exactly why I don't even attempt what you succeed at, and also
because I checked out of pop music sometime in the early 70s and
wouldn't have a clue about what music to use as a bridge.  Most of the
jazz I like is wordless; blues, of course, is another matter, but even
there it's the music that carries the load.

- Jim

p.s. - I don't dance, either.

=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/


From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 10 13:33:58 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 12:33:58 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Invitation to Michael Lind
Message-ID: <F242oqFXfyY0QUUBPcZ00005fcc@hotmail.com>

Hello, New-Poetry list, just now joining. I sent the below letter to Michael 
Lind yesterday (hello again, Michael, if you are reading this). Long shot, 
but can anyone (anyone, perhaps, recently up, like him, from conservativism) 
tell me if I have the right email address in the cc. box?

Kent Johnson

-----------

Dear Michael Lind,

I am a subscriber to Poetryetc, a very active 300-or so member listserv that 
is managed by the prominent poet John Kinsella. Recently, a copy of your 
article in Prospect magazine on American poetry was posted to the list, and 
it has caused quite a bit of discussion. By and large, the reaction has been 
decidedly negative-- in short, and to be frank (in the spirit of frankness 
you yourself display in the Prospect piece), the general consensus at 
Poetryetc has been that your essay is not only riddled with errors of fact, 
but that its historical and axiological simplicities lead to conclusions 
about poetic form and value that are wildly obtuse in nature. (I assure you 
that this evaluation has nothing to do with your former political 
allegiances.)

While the above broad characterization of your essay also reflects my own 
view of it, I have pointed out on the list that, to be fair, you *do* make 
certain points that are hard to argue with, ones that might be the starting 
common ground for an interesting exchange of views. And I've suggested, too, 
that the stark terms in which you pose the issues in your article seem, 
almost, to be requesting challenge in return. It's in the spirit of 
hoped-for lively polemic, then, that I am writing to invite you to join 
Poetryetc so that you might have the chance to answer some questions and 
comments from people who --like you, we presume-- care passionately about 
poetry and its controversies.

So enough of catapulting flaming balls of tar from behind balkanized 
cultural journals, raw and cooked alike! Enough of all that, don't you 
agree? Let's get down and do some Greco-Roman wrestling, in the same writing 
room (its ceiling chiseled with Horatian choriambics and Ginsbergian 
alcaics), naked and in person! It's possible, we feel, that such an event 
may even stimulate prominent others from anciently warring poetic camps to 
join in, and to the enlightened benefit of all. In fact, if you are 
interested in this proposal, we would encourage you to ask other "New 
Formalist" poets to join in...

Sorry to have gotten carried away in the above paragraph. This *is* a 
serious letter...

You can write me back with a yes or no, or you can simply subscribe by 
following the alphabetical links at the Jiscmail web site.

Hope you'll join us in the ring. We are are a motley and diverse lot, with a 
few academic beatniks among us, even, but we might be able to learn you a 
thing or two about poesy. And who knows, you may win, after all, and end up 
"writing us out of the cultural picture," or whatever it is you said 
somewhere that you like to do to your "opponents". Anyway...

and for many of the members at Poetryetc (though certainly not all),

Kent Johnson
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com



From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu  Tue Jul 10 14:40:12 2001
From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:40:12 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Songs Succeed as Poetry
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEBBDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
References: <82.cca55d6.287c6753@aol.com>
Message-ID: <l03130300b770fbff1065@[209.23.13.106]>

Slowly catching up with a lot of NewPoetical posts while on the road-I
can't resist a bleep or two on the topic of poetry and song, building on
Hal Johnson's comments.  (And hey, Tad Richards, let's hear more about
blues lyrics as poetry. . . .)

On July 1 I was in Franconia, NH for the annual Robert Frost Day at the
ever-wonderful Frost Place.  (Also attended the conference on poetry &
teaching the previous week, a highlight of which was hearing Gray Jacobik
read, but that'll have to be another post. . . .)

On Frost Day, in addition to a fine reading by B. H. Fairchild, there was a
performance by Elizabeth Von Trapp (granddaughter of Maria), who had set
poems by Frost to music.  Though her settings were all accomplished and her
performance of them entertaining, it quickly became clear that some poems
lent themselves more to being set to music.  The least successful, to my
ears, was "An Old Man's Winter's Night," whose complications of syntax just
weren't too amenable to song.  Not coincidentally, the best was "The
Impulse" (from "The Hill Wife")-whose syntax and stanza structure are both
simpler than in many of Frost's lyrics.  In fact, Von Trapp cribbed an old
ballad tune (can't remember which one) for this particular poem, and it fit
quite well.


David Graham
==================================


>Two points: One is that studying song lyrics seems to me something
>akin to studying photographs of statues, so asking a song to succeed
>as a poem is similar to asking a statue to succeed in two dimensions.
>
>The other is that song lyrics different quite a bit from text settings. To
>me, with a good band or a good singer it doesn't much matter what
>words come out of their mouths if the music's any good. And many
>groups' lyrics sound like they just had to use *some* words. Many an
>opera's been set to an idiotic libretto, and many German lieder were
>deliberately set to inferior poems so as not to allow the text to override
>the music. Some composers (e.g. Schubert, I believe) were overt about
>this.
>
>Hal     "There are then quite a number of things
>            one does or does not know."
>                            --Gertrude Stein
>
>Halvard Johnson

__________________
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
__________________




From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu  Tue Jul 10 15:11:03 2001
From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:11:03 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Narrative Poems
In-Reply-To: <92.1724b016.287b38e8@aol.com>
Message-ID: <l03130302b771027594f7@[208.20.85.201]>

Let me add my recommendation to Terry's--Jared Carter's longish narrative,
"Glass Negatives," is well worth reading.

I recently mentioned hearing B. H. Fairchild read at the Frost Place.
Among the pieces he read was "Body and Soul," which to my mind is one of
the finest narrative poems I've seen in years--not to mention the best
baseball poem of all time.  It's available online, too, in case anyone
wants to check my rash claims:

http://www.geocities.com/billiedee2000/anth-fairchild.html

Scroll down past the first poem on the above page to get to "Body and Soul."

David Graham
______________________


>FYI, new content excerpted from Edge City Review #15 is now up on our website
>at http://www.edge-city.com. Especially recommended is Jared Carter's new
>narrative poem, "Glass Negatives," available on the poetry page.
>
>Terry P

__________________
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
__________________




From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Tue Jul 10 15:14:15 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:14:15 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Songs Succeed as Poetry
Message-ID: <99.176f83e4.287cae07@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/10/2001 9:44:22 AM Central Daylight Time, 
halvard at earthlink.net writes:


> Two points: One is that studying song lyrics seems to me something
> akin to studying photographs of statues, so asking a song to succeed
> as a poem is similar to asking a statue to succeed in two dimensions. 
> 
> The other is that song lyrics different quite a bit from text settings. To 
> me, with a good band or a good singer it doesn't much matter what 
> words come out of their mouths if the music's any good. 

This is an analogy I often use.  They (song lyrics and poems) are related art 
forms but not the same.

The truth of the second statement  should be evident. Listen to Billie 
Holliday or Sinatra's phrasing and try to match that up with what you get on 
the page.
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Tue Jul 10 15:24:59 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:24:59 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Narrative Poems
Message-ID: <c5.133844e8.287cb08b@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/10/2001 2:11:48 PM Central Daylight Time, 
grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes:


> I recently mentioned hearing B. H. Fairchild read at the Frost Place.
> Among the pieces he read was "Body and Soul," which to my mind is one of
> the finest narrative poems I've seen in years--not to mention the best
> baseball poem of all time.  It's available online, too, in case anyone
> wants to check my rash claims:
> 

"Body and Soul" will appear in the next edition of my anthology, Poetry: A 
Pocket Anthology, which is due out next month.
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From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Tue Jul 10 15:33:28 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:33:28 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Songs Succeed as Poetry
Message-ID: <25.17dfe00f.287cb288@aol.com>

In a message dated Tue, 10 Jul 2001  3:15:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes:

<< In a message dated 7/10/2001 9:44:22 AM Central Daylight Time,   
halvard at earthlink.net writes:  
  
  
Two points: One is that studying song lyrics seems to me something  
akin to studying photographs of statues, so asking a song to succeed  
as a poem is similar to asking a statue to succeed in two dimensions.   
  
The other is that song lyrics different quite a bit from text settings. To   
me, with a good band or a good singer it doesn't much matter what   
words come out of their mouths if the music's any good.   
  
This is an analogy I often use. They (song lyrics and poems) are related art   
forms but not the same.  
  
The truth of the second statement should be evident. Listen to Billie   
Holliday or Sinatra's phrasing and try to match that up with what you get on   
the page.   >>


Well said.  The problem I've run into when I do bring songs into the classroom is that students can't tell the difference between a song, a poem, or a piece of prose.  Most of my students believe that, and I quote, "poetry is anything I say it is."  I've also heard, and I love this one, that "poetry is the expression of one's true soul."  I always ask, "Where does that leave the false soul?"

Last Spring, a student of mine, a real jock-strap of a fellow if I remember correctly, wrote his song paper on some band called "Licoln Park" or "Linkin Perk."  The paper was somewhere below first-grade status, but on the last page, he'd dropped me a note.  I don't remember it word for for word, but he said something about "That stupid poem you made us read, where the guy's walking around talking about Michaelangelo, is complete gibberish.  This stuff, though, is poetry, real poetry"--refering to T.S. Eliot's "Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" and the song by Likin Perk, respectively.

Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English and Foreign Languages
University of West Florida



From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Tue Jul 10 15:37:26 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 15:37:26 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Songs Succeed as Poetry
Message-ID: <9b.17a2f433.287cb378@aol.com>

In a message dated Tue, 10 Jul 2001 10:27:05 AM Eastern Daylight Time, The Old Mole <languagethief at yahoo.com> writes:

<< Wondering why the old blues lyrics didn't work out
well? I teach a whole course in Blues as Literature,
and I've had great success with it.>>


To tell the honest truth, I don't think that I understood the lyrics as well as I thought that I did.  I used a couple of Robert Johnson songs, "Hellhound on my Trail" was one, and some Blind Lemon Jefferson, I believe.  I also handed out an article I found (I don't remember where) about blues and poetry.  I'll look it up and let you know what article it was.  Anyway, I just didn't do a good job that semester, and my students knew that I wasn't doing a good job.  So, the next semester, I scrapped the idea.  It was Introduction to Poetry.

I am interested in your course, thought.  Would you mind sending me a copy of your syllabus?  Or maybe posting it?  I'd love to see what you do.

Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English and Foreign Languages
University of West Florida




From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 10 20:01:34 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 17:01:34 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Narrative Poems
In-Reply-To: <l03130302b771027594f7@[208.20.85.201]>
Message-ID: <20010711000134.97426.qmail@web12108.mail.yahoo.com>

--- David Graham <grahamd at mail.ripon.edu> wrote:
> Let me add my recommendation to Terry's--Jared Carter's longish
> narrative,
> "Glass Negatives," is well worth reading.
> 

Sorry, David, I go to sleep sometime during the 3rd stanza but continue
reading out of a sense of duty . . . and the poem drones on and on. 
This fits:

Elaine Scarry, in _Dreaming by the Book_, re: Hardy:

"Nothing about the work of this detail is accounted for by explanations
that say vivid writing piles on more and more details:  on the
contrary, an accumulation of detail can lead to what Edward Tufte, in
his analysis of visual information in maps, timetables, and
architectural drawings, calls 'visual noise' or 'color junk'."

Yes, lots of noise, lots of "color junk,"  albeit well-crafted color
junk.  I think the last, long narrative poem I read that I go back to
is Robert Penn Warren's "Fall Comes to Back-country Vermont."  I used
to like Norman Dubie's narratives (he was a teacher and a pal) but now
they hold no surprises - kind of like a Kubrick film you've seen many
times: interesting, but you know all the moves.

- Jim


=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/


From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 10 21:13:51 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 20:13:51 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Weinberger on song lyrics into poetry
Message-ID: <F24oFOAmEaJswFCHOzy0000924d@hotmail.com>

On this lyrics discussion, the following from Eliot Weinberger, from the 
essay "What Was Formalism?", seems germane. For the full essay see Jacket 
#6.  http://www.jacket.zip.com.au :


>>I began to suspect that the vaunted strictures of the New
                   Formalism were rather like the rules in a household with 
small
                   children: tiny attempts at maintaining order, frequently 
reiterated,
                   and rarely observed. Very few Rebel Angels attempted 
anything more
                   difficult than a sonnet, and only a few even tried their 
hands at these.
                   Many of the poems merely kept to regular stanza forms, 
without
                   rhyme -- as countless "free verse" poems do. The rhymes 
themselves
                   were astonishingly banal (brook/book, well/tell, 
park/dark, eye/sky,
                   storm/warm, etc); not a one even approached the wit of 
popular song:
                   Bob Dylan ("the pump don't work/ 'cause the vandals/ took 
the
                   handles") or Smokey Robinson or Moss Hart or Curtis 
Mayfield or
                   John Lennon or nearly any song by Cole Porter ("Let's 
throw away
                   anxiety, let's quite forget propriety,/ Respectable 
society, the rector
                   and his piety,/ And contemplate l'amour in all its 
infinite variety,/ My
                   dear, let's talk about love.").
                         And nearly every poem was written in three, four, 
or five feet of
                   iambs. What is difficult, as Pound said at the beginning 
of the century,
                   is not to write in iambs: "to break the HEAVE." After 
all, most of what
                   we say in English is an unstressed monosyllabic personal 
pronoun or
                   possessive or preposition or article followed by a 
stressed monosyllabic
                   noun or verb (one iamb) or a disyllabic noun or verb 
stressed on its
                   first syllable (one and a half iambs). Most polysyllabic 
words have
                   alternating stresses. When one adds the permissible 
trochee at the
                   beginning of the line, the permissible anapests anywhere, 
and all the
                   other little infractions -- exceptions that are supposed 
to make the
                   rule -- it may well be that the iamb is no more a formal 
quality than
                   standard spelling.
_________________________________________________________________
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From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu  Tue Jul 10 22:03:34 2001
From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 22:03:34 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re:  Narrative Poems
In-Reply-To: <20010711000134.97426.qmail@web12108.mail.yahoo.com>
References: <l03130302b771027594f7@[208.20.85.201]>
Message-ID: <l03130300b77162c859d3@[208.20.85.201]>

Well, Jim, I still think Jared Carter's poem is well worth reading, though
I'm not making large claims for it.

Say anything negative about B. H. Fairchild's "Body and Soul," however, and
I'll have to kill you.  Anyone can check it out, by the way, at:
http://www.geocities.com/billiedee2000/anth-fairchild.html

The noise/color junk distinction's an intriguing one, in any case:  was
Scarry talking about Hardy's novels or his poems, I wonder?  If it's poems,
certainly the generalization doesn't work for his best. . . .

Anyone else up for naming favorite recent narrative poems?  My top vote
probably would go to Sydney Lea's "The Feud."  Brendan Galvin's another
storytelling poet I return to.

David Graham
_________________


>--- David Graham <grahamd at mail.ripon.edu> wrote:
>> Let me add my recommendation to Terry's--Jared Carter's longish
>> narrative,
>> "Glass Negatives," is well worth reading.
>>
>
>Sorry, David, I go to sleep sometime during the 3rd stanza but continue
>reading out of a sense of duty . . . and the poem drones on and on.
>This fits:
>
>Elaine Scarry, in _Dreaming by the Book_, re: Hardy:
>
>"Nothing about the work of this detail is accounted for by explanations
>that say vivid writing piles on more and more details:  on the
>contrary, an accumulation of detail can lead to what Edward Tufte, in
>his analysis of visual information in maps, timetables, and
>architectural drawings, calls 'visual noise' or 'color junk'."
>
>Yes, lots of noise, lots of "color junk,"  albeit well-crafted color
>junk.  I think the last, long narrative poem I read that I go back to
>is Robert Penn Warren's "Fall Comes to Back-country Vermont."  I used
>to like Norman Dubie's narratives (he was a teacher and a pal) but now
>they hold no surprises - kind of like a Kubrick film you've seen many
>times: interesting, but you know all the moves.
>
>- Jim
>

__________________
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
__________________




From TerryP17 at aol.com  Wed Jul 11 11:07:06 2001
From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 11:07:06 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Narrative Poems
Message-ID: <84.188395e1.287dc59b@aol.com>

David--

Thanks for seconding my motion on "Glass Negatives," an extraordinary example of the long narrative poem, I think, something poets don't attempt much anymore. I do see our opinion is not unanimous, but I'm not surprised. The lyric poem, free or formal verse, is still very much the preferred method of poetic approach these days, and many people don't seem to have much patience for the longer stuff.

Jared Carter, by the way, is a much-published poet although he's surprisingly unknown to the general public. His latest collection "Les Barricades Mysterieuses" (can't do the accent in this email) was published by Cleveland State University Press in 1999, and was another nervy outing by Jared--an entire book of highly effective villanelles.

The long, narrative poem is an acquired taste, being somewhat of a hybrid, having the earmarks of a short story (and hence, the accretion of detail), needing a beginning, middle, and end, and, at least in poetry that I favor, developing one or more characters, and having some kind of metrical structure that differentiates it from a prose story. We particularly appreciated Jared's "back and fill" method of storytelling, which is much favored in film today, but is usually not attempted in today's short lyrics. (Browning's oft-anthologized "My Last Duchess" offers an excellent example of this in the shorter form.)

It's not much worth it to a poet to attempt long narratives today, either. Their publication options are limited, since journals don't much like to publish them, preferring a lyric per page. We run them when we can (we've also run long narratives by Joe Awad and Paul Lake), and Art Mortensen's journal "Pivot" favors them a bit more. In England, Bill and Patricia Oxley's "Acumen" will run long narratives, and Bill also publishes an irregular "Long Poem Newsletter" that keeps these poets in touch with one another, at least in the UK.

--Terry P


From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu  Wed Jul 11 11:30:51 2001
From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 11:30:51 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Do Songs Succeed as Poetry
Message-ID: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE147@ness.agnesscott.edu>

I think the article overlooked the most obvious and practical reason for
printing lyrics. Many songs have a point where the singer sounds like he's
singing through a pillow. Sometimes, you just want to know exactly what it
was that he said.

-Amber

 



From JforJames at aol.com  Wed Jul 11 11:38:33 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 11:38:33 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Narrative Poems
Message-ID: <99.177651d2.287dccf9@aol.com>

In a message dated 7/10/01 8:03:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
wasanthony at yahoo.com writes:

> Elaine Scarry, in _Dreaming by the Book_, re: Hardy:
>  
>  "Nothing about the work of this detail is accounted for by explanations
>  that say vivid writing piles on more and more details:  on the
>  contrary, an accumulation of detail can lead to what Edward Tufte, in
>  his analysis of visual information in maps, timetables, and
>  architectural drawings, calls 'visual noise' or 'color junk'."
>  
Jim,
Was Scarry referring to a particular Hardy work or the body
of his work, prose & poetry? 
By & large poets, particularly before the advent the American 
plain style, were inclined to slather on the visual elements 
w/ lavish & highly descriptive language. (It wouldn't be too much
of a stretch to say this was once an important distinguishing 
factor between poetry and prose.) Is Jared Carter becoming 
a maximalist? Gray Jacobik (David Graham mentioned her in 
a recent post) is inclined to the lushly descriptive line.  
Obviously it can be overdone at times. Then again some of my 
favorite Stevens' poems are almost solely built of "visual noise" 
and "color junk" (w/ some attention to sound as well). 
Finnegan


From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu  Wed Jul 11 12:03:27 2001
From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:03:27 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Links
Message-ID: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE148@ness.agnesscott.edu>

Here's some links you guys might find helpful:

www.abebooks.com - If you don't already know this place, it's pretty good at
helping locate used and out-of-print books from independent bookstores. The
downside is that you usually have to call or email the bookseller directly
with your payment information. Still, some have enabled online payment.

www.drowningman.net/poetrylinks.htm

This is a pretty up-to-date listing of print journals' web sites. The site
has a really busy layout, but it has a lot of (working) links. There's also
an email link you can use to suggest sites.

Oh, and if anyone knows of some good bookstores in Chicago (near the El -
I'm not old enough to rent a car) or Indianapolis (anywhere), tell me! I'm
going on a trip. (Heck, if you know of any good bookstores in Atlanta, tell
me that, too!)

-Amber 


From halvard at earthlink.net  Wed Jul 11 12:41:12 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 12:41:12 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sonetto: Buona Fortuna
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEGEBLDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

Sonetto: Buona Fortuna

Let me not stay you from making your self-
Appointed rounds, O epistle-carriers.
Do not go postal into that good night,
Tho old age ain'tcher av'rage purdy pitchur.
Stunned apparatchiks wander lonely in
Our lonely crowds until the cows come home
And all our pleasures prove intractable
As bankers' hours in that fragile light
Wherein all musics flow together into
One, two--no--three grand allegations of mal-
Feasance by those CEOs we've come to love
And trust with sacred fortunes and men's eyes.
O, Fortuna! What luck that we have found
Ourselves too pleased for words to stop us now!


Hal

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson



From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Wed Jul 11 13:29:57 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 13:29:57 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Weinberger's Whine
Message-ID: <f.17024f24.287de716@aol.com>

I followed the link to Weinberger's essay at <http://www.jacket.zip.com.au/jacket06/weinberger-formalism.html> to find out what else he might have to say about rhyme and song.

I didn't find anything intellectually stimulating.  I found tripe, a whiney attack on New Formalism that is so laden with inaccuracies and false assumptions that I laughed out loud as I read.

Consider:

<<I HAVE RECENTLY come across an anthology with a fire-alarm red cover, an inflammatory title (Rebel Angels), and a gaseous introduction whose first word is "Revolution." It is not, as one might expect, a lost artifact of the Beat Generation, but rather a Molotov cocktail tossed by the radical right of poetry, the self-styled "New Formalists.">>

Self-styled?  Come one, Eliot, think that one through.  These poets were labeled "New Formalists."  They then took the word and applied it to themselves.  This section, the very first one, wasn't thought through very well.

Consider this:

<<According to these Rebel Angels -- who, like most conservatives, have short historical memories for what they are conserving -- it was during the "cultural upheavals of the 60's and 70's" that formalism, defined as "meter and rhyme," was "largely . . .  abandoned by American poets.">>

And?  How on earth does Weinberger equate political conservativeness with New Formalism?  Did he read the poetry inside?  Apparently not.  And wasn't form and meter practically abandoned by most American poets?  Flip through an anthology used in almost any college classroom . . .

I was completely apalled by his essay.  He sets up straw man and nocks it down, assuming he's doing his duty as a (and I quote him here) "devotee of poetic revolutions."  What is the point of this essay?  He knocks _Rebel Angels_ for the majority of the essay, and in the end, winds up discussing (now get ready for it) rhyme schemes used on Viking tombstones.  Huh?

I've read better from a Comp 1 student.

Bah.

Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English and Foreign Languages
University of West Florida


From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Jul 11 13:41:47 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 13:41:47 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Weinberger's Whine
References: <f.17024f24.287de716@aol.com>
Message-ID: <3B4C8FDB.4B58@nut-n-but.net>

A note from the opposite end of the poetry spectrum from formalism:
in the view of most poets engaged in visual, mathematical and
similar forms of unconventional poetry, Weinberger is only a tick
more "revolutionary" than Gioia.  Nothing wrong with that--except
that he takes himself as singularly open to the new.

                                              --Bob G.



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 11 15:32:04 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 14:32:04 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Weinberger's whine
Message-ID: <F109DHJauvomAEKjGEt0000927f@hotmail.com>

Jeff,

Weinberger's essay seems to have twanged a dactyl somewhere in you!

His demonstration of the prosodic complexities of Old Norse versification is 
no non-sequitur, as you imply; it shows, rather, how shallow and silly is 
all the chest-thumping by Anglo-American New Formalists: their purported 
"poetic rigour" is for the greater part mere patty-cakes-- to the fractal 
densities of poetic form, one could say, what tic-tac-toe is to chess.

And Bob G.: If you read the section on Old Norse that Jeff bemusedly refers 
to, you will see that Weinberger has quite a sophisitcated appreciation of 
the "mathematical" dimensions of poetry. But you'll see that what you seem 
to regard as the "revolutionary" contemporary moment in poetry was 
anticipated centuries ago. Imagine: Revolutionary poetry written by bearded 
hulks with daggers on their hips and horns on their helmets!

Kent
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Wed Jul 11 17:11:23 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:11:23 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re:  Narrative Poems
Message-ID: <a7.108472f0.287e1afb@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/10/2001 9:04:56 PM Central Daylight Time, 
grahamd at mail.ripon.edu writes:


> Anyone else up for naming favorite recent narrative poems?  My top vote
> probably would go to Sydney Lea's "The Feud."  Brendan Galvin's another
> storytelling poet I return to.
> 

"The Feud" is a great one!  One of my favorites too.  Check out Leon 
Stokesbury's "Evening's End" from his selected poems, Autumn Rhythm.
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Wed Jul 11 17:12:53 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 17:12:53 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re:  Narrative Poems
Message-ID: <17.1835d1e8.287e1b55@cs.com>

Stokesbury's "Evening's End":

http://gloria-brame.com/glory/ezine3.htm
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From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 11 18:20:12 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:20:12 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Narrative Poems
In-Reply-To: <99.177651d2.287dccf9@aol.com>
Message-ID: <20010711222012.51337.qmail@web12106.mail.yahoo.com>

--- JforJames at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 7/10/01 8:03:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
> wasanthony at yahoo.com writes:
> 
> > Elaine Scarry, in _Dreaming by the Book_, re: Hardy:
> >  
> >  "Nothing about the work of this detail is accounted for by
> explanations
> >  that say vivid writing piles on more and more details:  on the
> >  contrary, an accumulation of detail can lead to what Edward Tufte,
> in
> >  his analysis of visual information in maps, timetables, and
> >  architectural drawings, calls 'visual noise' or 'color junk'."
> >  
> Jim,
> Was Scarry referring to a particular Hardy work or the body
> of his work, prose & poetry? 

Yes, in context, the introduction of Tufte's complaint is colored
differently.  The two sentences prior to the above were: "There is a
moment in Far from the Madding Crowd when, as Hardy is instructing us
in the construction of a certain scene, he notes that the temperature
behind every piece of furniture in the room is slightly different. 
Local for Hardy means not the neighborhood. but each pocket of air
hovering around each chair or table.  Nothing about the work of this
detail . . . "

As for me: right now the temperature of the skin on my left shoulder
seems cooler than that of my left armpit.

> By & large poets, particularly before the advent the American 
> plain style, were inclined to slather on the visual elements 
> w/ lavish & highly descriptive language. (It wouldn't be too much
> of a stretch to say this was once an important distinguishing 
> factor between poetry and prose.) Is Jared Carter becoming 
> a maximalist? Gray Jacobik (David Graham mentioned her in 
> a recent post) is inclined to the lushly descriptive line.  

Ah yes, but tighter construction (to my ear) than Carter's poem, not to
mention greater interest - subject matter does matter.

> Obviously it can be overdone at times. Then again some of my 
> favorite Stevens' poems are almost solely built of "visual noise" 
> and "color junk" (w/ some attention to sound as well). 
> Finnegan

I'm with you on that, but Stevens was not trying for narrative.

- Jim


=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail
http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/


From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Jul 11 19:04:52 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 19:04:52 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Weinberger's whine
References: <F109DHJauvomAEKjGEt0000927f@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <3B4CDB94.2DD1@nut-n-but.net>

Kent, could you give me the URL to Weinberger's essay?  I never 
bothered to go to it as I was sure from what I've read of him
previously, and from his anthology of poetry by "innovators and
outsiders" that it wouldn't have anything interesting to say.  
I can't imagine that the Norse composed mathematical poetry, but 
if they did, I'd certainly like to see it.  Mathematical poetry, 
by the way, has nothing to do with counting syllables, or beats, or
anything else; it has to do with composing poetic works that DO
math.  

                                               --Bob G.




From gmcvay at patriot.net  Wed Jul 11 20:15:16 2001
From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:15:16 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Weinberger's whine
In-Reply-To: <F109DHJauvomAEKjGEt0000927f@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107112014460.13363-100000@adams.patriot.net>

>>>Imagine: Revolutionary poetry written by bearded
hulks with daggers on their hips and horns on their helmets!<<<

Hell's Angels?


Gwyn



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 11 20:38:39 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 19:38:39 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Weinberger's whine
Message-ID: <F211SxzW234xOjIL2jp00004c09@hotmail.com>

I'd said:

>>>Imagine: Revolutionary poetry written by bearded
hulks with daggers on their hips and horns on their helmets!<<<

And then Gwyn asked:

>Hell's Angels?

And so I say:

Yes, the leathered riders who rode boats with dragon heads. (Or at least 
that's my memory of the ships from National Geographic...)

Bloodthirsty, ass-kicking poets with four-dimensional prosody under their 
helmets. Not the effete, sing-songy crowd by any means...

Kent



_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 11 21:11:37 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 20:11:37 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Weinberger's whine
Message-ID: <F177X1vZq9StmITZo2v0000975b@hotmail.com>

Bob,

The url is http://jacket.zip.com.au  Go to issue #6.

Hey I see that Jordan Davis is on this list. Hi Jordan!!! I thought you'd 
gone down glub-glub with the sub-sub... How are things at prep school, 
enfante terrible?

Kent
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com



From MerwinDame at aol.com  Wed Jul 11 23:23:57 2001
From: MerwinDame at aol.com (MerwinDame at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 23:23:57 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] french writers
Message-ID: <ad.d369659.287e724d@aol.com>

okay, kids -- here's your chance to don your berets, draw on your fake 
triangle moustaches with a black sharpie pen, load your bike basket with 
several fresh-baked baguettes,  and sashay grandly about the room as you 
warble like edith piaf and show off all that you know about fine french 
literature   ;)

actually, my real reason for the above drivel is that i am OH, SO READY to 
begin an in-depth odyssey into the world of french lit (both poetry and 
prose...from any and all time periods) and am looking for suggestions from 
the list as to where i should start, and who i should read. 

i would be SO appreciative of anyone who might be able to offer me some 
titles and/or authors to get me going. 

merci!   :)

*muffy* 
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From wjbat at conncoll.edu  Wed Jul 11 20:45:11 2001
From: wjbat at conncoll.edu (Wendy Battin)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 00:45:11 +0000
Subject: [New-Poetry] french writers
In-Reply-To: <ad.d369659.287e724d@aol.com>
Message-ID: <20010712004511.007564@oak.cc.conncoll.edu>

>i would be SO appreciative of anyone who might be able to offer me some 
>titles and/or authors to get me going.

Rene Daumal--_Rasa_, _Mont Analogue_, _A Night of Serious Drinking_
(haven't tracked this down in the original; let me know if you find the
French.)  Some of his poems are collected by Gallimard, but I'm still
hunting and translating as I go.

Wendy



From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Jul 12 05:56:51 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 05:56:51 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Weinberger's whine
References: <F177X1vZq9StmITZo2v0000975b@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <3B4D7463.3148@nut-n-but.net>

Thanks for the link to Weinberger's silly essay, Kent.
As I suspected, it has nothing whatever to do with
mathematical poetry, something I remain fairly confident that
Weinberger knows nothing about.

                                        --Bob G.



From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com  Thu Jul 12 08:55:34 2001
From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 05:55:34 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Weinberger's whine
Message-ID: <20010712125534.24B5B36F9@sitemail.everyone.net>

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From jdavis at panix.com  Thu Jul 12 09:58:12 2001
From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 09:58:12 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Front channel to Kent
In-Reply-To: <F177X1vZq9StmITZo2v0000975b@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0107120951210.2886-100000@panix3.panix.com>

Hi Kent -

Actually I haven't taught for a while now (and I never got to teach at a
private school.. although some of those PSs in Queens can have about the
comfort level of elementary schools in the suburbs) - how's the K12 scene
treating you?

Having any luck with Michael Lind?

Jordan



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 12 11:21:51 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 10:21:51 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Front channel back to Jordan
Message-ID: <F159Ex3AkwtsQztQoPA000007d9@hotmail.com>

Hi Jordan,

The K-12 scene is not treating me very well. It's very depressing!!(!) My 
colleagues read The National Enquirer and People magazine in the lounge at 
lunch, and when I try to strike up a conversation about mathematical poetry 
with them, they look at me like I'm some sort of goon, or something. 
Philistines, the lot of 'em. Any openings in the Bronx that you know of?

And Lind, no, his agent tells me he's in Vietnam, promoting his new book, 
_The Necessary War_. Then he's off to Laos, Cambodia, and Monaco.


Kent

_________________________________________________________________
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From rkubie at mail.pratt.lib.md.us  Thu Jul 12 13:55:21 2001
From: rkubie at mail.pratt.lib.md.us (Rachel Kubie)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:55:21 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: PUB: looking for experimental poetry (fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.05.10107121354420.17672-100000@mail.pratt.lib.md.us>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:40:58 -0400
From: Reginald Harris <rmharris2001 at hotmail.com>
To: cave_canem at egroups.com, artstour2000 at yahoogroups.com, rkubie at epfl.net
Subject: Fwd: PUB: looking for experimental poetry




>From: Kalamu ya Salaam <kalamu at aol.com>
>Reply-To: kalamu at aol.com
>To: e-drum at topica.com
>Subject: PUB: looking for experimental poetry
>Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 02:37:15 EDT
>
>============================================================
>Half.com is the Smartest Place to Buy & Sell your CDs, DVDs
>Books, & Games! Get killer deals on over 10 million items
>priced up to 50-90% off.  Plus get $5 off your 1st purchase.
>http://click.topica.com/caaacv1bUrD3obVAjt2a/half
>============================================================
>
> >>PUB: looking for experimental poetry
>==============================
>
>4th INTERNATIONAL MEETING OF VISUAL, SOUND AND EXPERIMENTAL POETRY
>
>INTERNATIONAL CALL
>
>VORTICE ARGENTINA ASKS ROUND TO PARTICIPATE IN THE 4th INTERNATIONAL
>MEETING
>
>OF VISUAL, SOUND AND EXPERIMENTAL POETRY. CALLING FOR WORKS AND
>PROJECTS IN ALL
>
>FORMATS: PAPER, OBJECTS, VIDEOS, ACTIONS, PERFORMANCES, AUDIOVISUALS,
>AUDIO TAPES, CDs,VIDEO, ETC.
>
>FREE THEME AND TECHNIQUES. NO TRADITIONALS POEMS.
>
>ARTWORKS WON'T BE GIVEN BACK TO THE ARTISTS; THESE WILL BE PART OF
>VORTICE
>
>ARGENTINA
>
>ARCHIVE. DOCUMENTATION TO ALL PARTICIPANTS AFTER THE PROJECT FINISHES.
>
>WORKS & PROJECTS' RECEPTION DEADLINE: JULY 30, 2001. EXHIBITION:
>PLACE &
>
>DATE TO BE CONFIRMED.
>
>SEND WORKS AND PROJECTS TO:
>
>VORTICE ARGENTINA - 4th Visual Poetry Meeting
>
>BACACAY 3103, BUENOS AIRES C1406GEE, ARGENTINA
>
>EMAIL: mailart at vorticeargentina.com.ar
>
>WEBSITE: www.vorticeargentina.com.ar
>
>
>
>ANYONE INTERESTED IN CARRYING OUT AN ACTION, PERFORMANCE OR OTHER
>ASSORTED
>
>PROJECTS, PLEASE SEND E-MAIL IN ORDER TO COORDINATE THE EVENT.
>
>#############################################
>this is e-drum, a listserv providing information of interests to black 
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From rkubie at mail.pratt.lib.md.us  Thu Jul 12 13:56:01 2001
From: rkubie at mail.pratt.lib.md.us (Rachel Kubie)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:56:01 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] espada(fwd)
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.05.10107121355340.17672-100000@mail.pratt.lib.md.us>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 13:37:45 -0400
From: Reginald Harris <rmharris2001 at hotmail.com>
To: cave_canem at egroups.com
Cc: rkubie at epfl.net, hbrogers_98 at yahoo.com
Subject: Fwd: No Subject




>From: LJOYBIRD at aol.com
>To: WestSasha at hotmail.com
>Subject: No Subject
>Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2001 14:50:25 EDT
>
>Some of you may have read the work of Mart?nEspada - I had the privilege of
>sharing a venue with him in 1993 so I'm hoping that you'll join with these
>others to help.
>
>
>this is where support of poets counts.  Please do your best to help
>
>publicize Martin Espada's plight.  He is an excellent poet, teacher and
>
>translator who has contributed greatly in making Pablo Neruda's poetry
>
>known, understood and loved.
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>
>From: Joe Gouveia [mailto:capepoet at hotmail.com]
>
>Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2001 7:56 PM
>
>To: capepoetstheatre at hotmail.com
>
>Subject: poet Mart?n Espada
>
>
>
>
>I received the following email.  I'm doing what I can to help...please
>
>everyone do the same.  And please help in passing this email along.
>
>
>Thanks,
>
>
>
>Joe Gouveia
>
>
>
>
>
>Dear Friends:
>
>
>It's time to rally around poet Mart?n Espada.
>
>Mart?n, his wife Katherine, and their son Klemente are going through a
>
>very difficult time. Several months ago, at age 44, Katherine suffered a
>
>stroke, with damage to the right side of the brain. A teacher, Katherine
>
>found that she could not read or write; an artist, she discovered that she
>
>could not paint, or even draw the face of a clock; an athlete, she realized
>
>that she could not swim, and for a time required a wheelchair. Though
>
>she is recovering -- now reading, writing, painting -- Katherine still
>
>experiences numbness on her left side, loss of vision in her left eye,
>
>memory loss, dizzy spells, spatial disorientation, exhaustion and migraine
>
>headaches (which triggered the stroke).
>
>In the weeks prior to Katherine's stroke, Mart?n himself was diagnosed
>
>with serious conditions in his neck: degenerative disc and joint diseases,
>
>bone spurs, stenosis, herniated discs and pinched nerves. For a while,
>
>as a result of nerve problems, he lost the use of his right arm. A
>
>neurosurgeon informed him that he would need multiple operations or
>
>risk paralysis. Though Mart?n has responded very well to alternative
>
>therapies, he, like Katherine, will require ongoing treatment and
>
>monitoring.
>
>Their health insurance is inadequate, leaving essential treatments and
>
>medications partially covered or not covered at all. They have incurred
>
>still
>
>more expenses for everything from laundry to housecleaning, tasks they
>
>can no longer manage themselves; it has been a logistical nightmare to
>
>find friends who can drive them to their medical appointments. To deal
>
>with his wife's stroke and his own medical problems, Mart?n has cut back
>
>drastically on his travel for readings. His income has plummeted as his
>
>costs have risen.
>
>A poet whose work has healed many now needs our healing help. We,
>
>his colleagues, students, and readers, must take action. We've set up a
>
>bank account on his behalf and urge you to make out a check to Poetry
>
>Like Bread. Send it to: Poetry Like Bread, c/o Peter Desmond, 93 Montgomery
>
>Street, Cambridge, MA 02140. You can wire money directly to the account. 
>The
>
>
>routing number of Cambridge Trust is 011300595, and the account number is
>
>90690520. (Mailing your gift will save you bank charges.)
>
>The last poem in the anthology Poetry Like Bread, edited by Mart?n, is
>
>"Precisely," by Daisy Zamora:
>
>Precisely because I do not have
>
>the beautiful words I need
>
>I call upon my acts
>
>to speak to you.
>
>For more information, e-mail Peter Desmond at TaxHombre at cs.com.

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 12 16:27:23 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 15:27:23 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: espada
Message-ID: <F1130v5IvUBoNcu3HDm0000ac02@hotmail.com>

Thanks for the information on Martin Espada, Rachel. Pretty wrenching. Let's 
help out.

Kent
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From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Fri Jul 13 10:13:37 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:13:37 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Weinberger's whine
Message-ID: <c0.170f551a.28805c11@aol.com>

Kent wrote:

<<Jeff,

Weinberger's essay seems to have twanged a dactyl somewhere in you!

His demonstration of the prosodic complexities of Old Norse versification is 
no non-sequitur, as you imply; it shows, rather, how shallow and silly is 
all the chest-thumping by Anglo-American New Formalists: their purported 
"poetic rigour" is for the greater part mere patty-cakes-- to the fractal 
densities of poetic form, one could say, what tic-tac-toe is to chess.>>

I respond:

Whatever Weinberger was trying to accomplish, he wrote poorly and argued using straw man tactics.  I know of no self-proclaimed New Formalist who "chest-thumps" as you say.  

Weinberger's essay, I reiterate, is tripe, rather whiney and hyperbolic propoganda that fails.  He seems to want his readers to believe that all poets who use formal structures are ultra-conservative, Rush Limbaugh-quoting, NRA members.  He argues poorly, and on several points is just simply wrong.

I don't think for one minute that all poetry should be formal.  I do think that both form and narrative should be an *option* for poets; and I do think that much of what is published these days is poorly written and quite uninspired.  It seems to me that critics are so scared of hurting someone's feelings that these critics don't offer well-thought-out critiques as much as they offer simply back-scratching.  

Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English and Foreign Languages
University of West Florida



From anastasios at hell.com  Fri Jul 13 10:21:32 2001
From: anastasios at hell.com (ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:21:32 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] American form
In-Reply-To: <c0.170f551a.28805c11@aol.com>
Message-ID: <5.0.0.25.2.20010713102050.00a5ee30@mail.verizon.net>

I sent this to another list this a.m.


Here is also some very interest commentary from a book I liked reading,
Stephen Cushman's FICTIONS OF FORM IN AMERICAN POETRY.

    "The fictions of form in American poetry arise, then, from both the
heightened significance American poets attach to form as it organizes a
given poem or poems and the figurative significance they attach to form as
it relates to the world outside the poem. H. Bloom and D. Bromwich treat
these fictions harshly: 'Am. poetry since the end of WWII is an epitome of
this reverse Emersonianism: no other poets in West. history have so
self-deceivingly organized themselves along the supposed lines of formal
divisions." ... Quoting Emerson's injunction "Ask the fact for the form"
("Poetry and Imagination) to claim that recent Am poetry have reversed it
'to beg the form for the fact,' they conclude with the question 'For what,
finally, can poetic form mean to an Am?"
    ...Bloom and Bromwich prescribe that Am ought not to attach to it the
primary importatnce that many do. Acc. to them, the Am poet overvalues
form as a defense against the recognition of this essential truth: "Every
Am poet who aspires to strength knows that he starts in the eveningland,
realizes he is a latecomer, fears to be only a secondary man." The
implication, then, is that only a secondary poet considers form primary.
Support for this belief could come from Emerison's statement that "it is
not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem," a statement
that many have read as justification of organicism, but that could also
mean that poetric form of any kind should not matter compared with "a
thought so passionate and alive." [p.6]

--Ak


At 10:13 AM 7/13/01, you wrote:
>Kent wrote:
>
><<Jeff,
>
>Weinberger's essay seems to have twanged a dactyl somewhere in you!
>
>His demonstration of the prosodic complexities of Old Norse versification is
>no non-sequitur, as you imply; it shows, rather, how shallow and silly is
>all the chest-thumping by Anglo-American New Formalists: their purported
>"poetic rigour" is for the greater part mere patty-cakes-- to the fractal
>densities of poetic form, one could say, what tic-tac-toe is to chess.>>
>
>I respond:
>
>Whatever Weinberger was trying to accomplish, he wrote poorly and argued 
>using straw man tactics.  I know of no self-proclaimed New Formalist who 
>"chest-thumps" as you say.
>
>Weinberger's essay, I reiterate, is tripe, rather whiney and hyperbolic 
>propoganda that fails.  He seems to want his readers to believe that all 
>poets who use formal structures are ultra-conservative, Rush 
>Limbaugh-quoting, NRA members.  He argues poorly, and on several points is 
>just simply wrong.
>
>I don't think for one minute that all poetry should be formal.  I do think 
>that both form and narrative should be an *option* for poets; and I do 
>think that much of what is published these days is poorly written and 
>quite uninspired.  It seems to me that critics are so scared of hurting 
>someone's feelings that these critics don't offer well-thought-out 
>critiques as much as they offer simply back-scratching.
>
>Jeff Newberry
>Adjunct Instructor
>Department of English and Foreign Languages
>University of West Florida
>
>_______________________________________________
>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  Fri Jul 13 12:22:14 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 12:22:14 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Weinberger's whine
Message-ID: <4f.e3455c9.28807a36@aol.com>

Last nite I revisited the Eliot Weinberger piece. I'm not 
particularly vested in formal verse, so there's no need for me
to defend the New Formalists, but I found "What Was 
Formalism?," except for a lack of glaring factual mistakes, 
not much better argued than Michael Lind's piece.

He opens with "I have recently come across an anthology with
a fire-alarm red cover, an inflammatory title (Rebel Angels),
and a gaseous introduction..." I don't believe for a minute the 
review was provoked so casually. Weinberger is a well-known
reviewer and, perhaps a notch below the fear inspired by 
William Logan, many poets (even avantgardist ones) would 
cringe at having EW "come across" their books. Weinberger 
certainly has the right to make fun of the "hype" that Jarman 
and Mason and their press Storyline, are playing to the hilt, 
for the publicity buzz. However, casting the anthology as they
have is just good book marketing.

I'm suspicious of reviewers (when space is not an issue) who quote
scantily from the book they attack (or promote, for that matter).
Only three disconnected quatrains, and few odd lines are quoted
in the review. Not one whole sonnet? It's always nice to see the
critical barbs next to some of the poetry as it lays. EW is acting
a bit like bluffer in a poker game, turning over a single ace, 
and making noise like there's lots more where that comes from. 
You start to wonder...out of 25 poets & 240 pages of poetry
he couldn't find a passage to even damn with some faint praise.

EW: "The only uncivil note was a leering sexuality (some titles listed) that
was creepy in its adolescent frisson of formalism and pseudo-lewdness,
and entirely lacking in genuine perversity..." Even if we all could
agree what "genuine perversity" was, this seems a strange criticism.
And an odd avenue of inquiry: Is there a right & wrong bodily prosody
for sex as illustrated in a poem...a Kama-Sutric way of doing it, 
so to speak?

"Very few Rebel Angels attempted anything more difficult than a sonnet,
and only a few even tried their hands at these." This is really disingenuous.
The 25 poets represented have each 3-7 poems on display. There are
a good number of sonnets on display...but surely most of the poets 
represented have written &/or published sonnets...they're just not among 
this particular selection. And the anthology isn't meant to show off the 
many forms (common & exotic) each poet has mastered...like most 
anthologies is meant to give one a small representative sample of each 
poet's work.

EW brings up Bob Dylan, Curtis Mayfield, Moss Hart, Cole Porter...
as better rimesters than those anthologized. A week or so ago W.S.
Gilbert was mentioned as rimer non pareil...but he wasn't the best
poet of his age. At first poetry was song...but now poetry, even
"musical" poetry is measured with a different set of critical standards 
from song lyrics. Its artistic mission is different. 

Then EW obtusely observes: "The only American formalists of the
century may well turn out to be Louis Zukofsky, John Cage, and
Jackson Mac Low, who invented their own idiosyncratic and inflexible
rules..." This kind of structuring of language is formal, true....but it's
traditional formalism...using the received prosody of English language
canon. He purposefully clouds the issue of whether contemporary poets 
can make lasting artistic works while working within the received 
traditonal conventions of English prosody...or by pushing them,
and shaping them to some degree...but not so much as to make
them unrecognizable as emanating from the tradition.

The stuff about the difficulty of Viking prosody was really
off topic. It's news that some languages, like Old Norse,
have more complex prosodic elements at play in the verse?
I could say Welsh has a more complex prosody, from what
I know it..but how is this relevant? Eliot Weinberger should
know that different languages/cultures develop poetries with
different prosodic elements. He did a wonderful little book
called 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei. In it he says "In
classical Chinese, each character (ideogram) represents 
a word of a single syllable." Wouldn't a poetry based on
this language, by its very nature (single word=one syllable), 
develop a different set of prosodic elements? He knows better 
but is just playing games: NahNah..I know a language's poetry 
that is more prosodically intricate than your language's poetry?
Okay, and there are certainly poetries in languages that have 
simpler prosodic elements & received forms than those that 
have developed in English poetry. So what.

Personally, I don't think the genie of free verse is ever going
back into the bottle...but those in sympathy to Michael Lind,
who think that free verse, difficulty & other offenses against 
the art have irreparably harmed poetry are free to try to save
"the distressed damsel" (stealing Sven Birkert's characterization 
of Harold Bloom's bombast in BAP '88-97) of our art. It will take 
more than sonnet cycles & and epics cast in Heroic couplets 
however. 
Finnegan


From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 13 12:51:28 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 11:51:28 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Weinberger's whine
Message-ID: <F2524vJFRFWMozgYLow000059bd@hotmail.com>

Jeff,

Well, tripe or no tripe, I've got to ask: Where do you see Weinberger saying 
that "narrative and form" should not be an "option"? Actually, if you look 
at his anthology, Innovators and Outsiders, you'll see that it is largely 
made up of poets with a decidedly "formal" bent, albeit of a more complexly 
varied bent than the "bend over and spank me Robert Frost" bent exhibited in 
the "Rebel Angels" anthology.

And I've got to ask, too, why you think that Weinberger thinks that all New 
Formalists are Limbaugh-loving, Rider truck-driving, NRA members? How do you 
come up with that? I know for a  fact that some of Weinberger's best friends 
have written sonnets and pantoums!

Calm down, young man. You're going to have a stroke.

Kent
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From cstroffo at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 13 13:56:22 2001
From: cstroffo at earthlink.net (Chris Estroffonio)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 10:56:22 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Weinberger's whine
References: <F2524vJFRFWMozgYLow000059bd@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <3B4F3646.CDCACBA1@earthlink.net>

"poets with a decidedly "formal" bent, albeit of a more complexly
varied bent...."
that would of course be the "bend over and spank me Ezra Pound"
a bent is a bent is a bent (tho Olson wd call it "breath")

Kent, be careful of your heart too....




kent johnson wrote:

> Jeff,
>
> Well, tripe or no tripe, I've got to ask: Where do you see Weinberger saying
> that "narrative and form" should not be an "option"? Actually, if you look
> at his anthology, Innovators and Outsiders, you'll see that it is largely
> made up of poets with a decidedly "formal" bent, albeit of a more complexly
> varied bent than the "bend over and spank me Robert Frost" bent exhibited in
> the "Rebel Angels" anthology.
>
> And I've got to ask, too, why you think that Weinberger thinks that all New
> Formalists are Limbaugh-loving, Rider truck-driving, NRA members? How do you
> come up with that? I know for a  fact that some of Weinberger's best friends
> have written sonnets and pantoums!
>
> Calm down, young man. You're going to have a stroke.
>
> Kent
> _________________________________________________________________
> 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 JforJames at aol.com  Fri Jul 13 15:31:36 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:31:36 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] french writers
Message-ID: <114.194e66e.2880a698@aol.com>

THE CONTEMPORARY POETRY IN FRENCH ISSUE

The combined October-November issue of POETRY Magazine is a special 
triple-size number devoted to contemporary poetry in French by 39 poets, some 
of whom are appearing in English for the first time. Co-edited with noted 
critic and essayist John Taylor and National Book Award winning poet Marilyn 
Hacker, the issue begins with Julien Gracq and other writers who began 
publishing early in the 20th century, and covers the latter half of the 
century, concluding with younger poets such as Jean-Michel Maulpoix and 
Pascalle Monnier. The contents are uniquely broad in that the editors 
considered important recent work by all Francophone poets, regardless of 
whether the author lives in France or is a French citizen.

The number features newly-commissioned translations by such noted poets as 
John Ashbery, John Montague, and Alfred Corn, as well as contributions from 
highly regarded scholar-translators, including Mary Ann Caws, Hoyt Rogers, 
and Andrew Shields. At least one work by each poet is presented in the 
original French. John Taylor's essay, "From Intimism to the Poetics of 
'Presence': Reading Contemporary French Poetry" surveys the major movements 
in recent French poetry and provides background information for the writers 
included.

Featured Poets: Pierre Martory, Robert Marteau, Jacques R?da, Jean-Michel 
Maulpoix, Marie-Claire Bancquart, Jacques Roubaud, Charles Juliet, Claire 
Malroux


Special double issues $10 postpaid 

POETRY Magazine 
60 West Walton Street 
Chicago, Illinois 60610 
U.S.A. 
  
Telephone: (312) 255-3703 
Fax: (312) 255-3702 




From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 13 15:32:57 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 14:32:57 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Weinberger's whine
Message-ID: <F139pMmOlbcrYP0QzBx0000bedc@hotmail.com>

Chris Stroffolino wrote:

"poets with a decidedly "formal" bent, albeit of a more complexly
varied bent...."
that would of course be the "bend over and spank me Ezra Pound"

You betcha. And with a riding crop. I mean Pound in a cage and all that, the 
racist scumbag, don't get me wrong. But when it comes to prosody, the guy is 
THE DOMINATRIX of American poetry. Frost's spank on the bottom of the Rebel 
Cherubs goes whackety-whack; Pound's whip is (when he's transported, which 
is often) sheathed in real museica angelica.

Kent



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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 13 16:36:59 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 15:36:59 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Five Poems for The New Criterion
Message-ID: <F163yhJzqNwiGnSqJIc000063c0@hotmail.com>

The below were composed by me today, in a kind of hypnotic, almost 
epileptic, fit, while I stood at my dresser (where I almost always write my 
poems). Some of the references pertain to another listserv I am on, and thus 
their clever twistings will necessarily be lost on the readers of 
New-Poetry. Still, it is my hope that others in Lisbon may find them of some 
value.

KJ

-----

*Five Poems for the New Criterion*

1.

There once was a man who lived in Lisboa,
He wandered among persons and his name was Pessoa;
A trunkful of names he kept under lock...
MFA's take heed: A black thing is the "voice box"!


2.

There once was a man who wrote choriambics.
His name was Reis, and he was a monarchist. [slant rhyme, KJ]
When Pessoa asked if such form wasn't choral,
he sighed and replied, "Ay, Fernando: OUR culture/
                                               is no longer ORAL!"

3.

There once was a poet whose name was de Campos:
Engineer, pederast, dark, like a girl from Patmos.
When Bernstein hopped at the podium, screaming, "You don't exist!"
de Campos sneered back, "Oh yeah, white boy? Watch me do the/
                                                      hyper-twist!"

4.

There once was an heteronym who played the tuba;
He tooted and tooted with the passion of Hecuba.
It wasn't so bad until he started a-dancen', now a-yodelen',
"Be gone, Tuba-Freak-Boy," cried the neighbors, "or we'll/
                                               call the Warden!"

5.

There once was a land where humour suffered penury,
Save for yukky jokes, about bagels and Germany.
Not even the harp of ancient and quatrained prosody
Was enough to break the threnodied meter of hypocrisy!

*








_________________________________________________________________





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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 13 17:16:10 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 16:16:10 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Five Poems for The New Criterion
Message-ID: <F202VdGJ5OGQOuE3chA0000bdba@hotmail.com>

The below were composed by me today, in a kind of hypnotic, almost 
epileptic, fit, while I stood at my dresser (where I almost always write my 
poems). Some of the references pertain to another listserv I am on, and thus 
their clever twistings will necessarily be lost on the readers of 
New-Poetry. Still, it is my hope that others in Lisbon may find them of some 
value.

KJ

-----

*Five Poems for the New Criterion*

1.

There once was a man who lived in Lisboa,
He wandered among persons and his name was Pessoa;
A trunkful of names he kept under lock...
MFA's take heed: A black thing is the "voice box"!


2.

There once was a man who wrote choriambics.
His name was Reis, and he was a monarchist. [slant rhyme, KJ]
When Pessoa asked if such form wasn't choral,
he sighed and replied, "Ay, Fernando: OUR culture/
                                               is no longer ORAL!"

3.

There once was a poet whose name was de Campos:
Engineer, pederast, dark, like a girl from Patmos.
When Bernstein hopped at the podium, screaming, "You don't exist!"
de Campos sneered back, "Oh yeah, white boy? Watch me do the/
                                                      hyper-twist!"

4.

There once was an heteronym who played the tuba;
He tooted and tooted with the passion of Hecuba.
It wasn't so bad until he started a-dancen', now a-yodelen',
"Be gone, Tuba-Freak-Boy," cried the neighbors, "or we'll/
                                               call the Warden!"

5.

There once was a land where humour suffered penury,
Save for yukky jokes, about bagels and Germany.
Not even the harp of ancient and quatrained prosody
Was enough to break the threnodied meter of hypocrisy!

*








_________________________________________________________________





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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 13 18:45:44 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2001 17:45:44 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poem for the New Criterion [#6] (De vulgari eloquentia)
Message-ID: <F77XUIEAOeIiGXix4A20000d1c7@hotmail.com>

There once was an heteronym named Gould,
Who fancied himself champ at *trobar clus*;
But Johnson was there with his johnsoned *fabliau*,
And slayed him with the knife of *trobar leu*!
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From halvard at earthlink.net  Sat Jul 14 13:06:41 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 13:06:41 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Lamantia, "The Uncertain Sciences"
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEOEELDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

The Uncertain Sciences

1		The monoliths fly from the central desert
1.1		Smelling of monkshood
1.11		And disgorging smoke of iron and
			wheezing flax
1.12		Raining hair of oyster and typewriter of
			split pea

1.13		The visages: one part, President/Secretary
			of State
1.2		The other, a composite of Mona Lisas
			laced with spider grease
1.21		That exude fur and tickertape
2		Wag tinsel wings
2.01		And flex muscles of liquefying prairie
			grass.

2.012		Yes, it's the pontifical moment the robot
			armies
2.0122		Loaded on wave mattresses
2.0123		(Charged by the multi-leveled systemic
			universities)
2.01231	Unleash metallic rats who prance, scream
			and
2.0124		Limn over the coprophagic tendons
2.013		Of the sacred heart rinds
2.0131		Whose petomaniacal distension
2.0122		Of red white and blue vapor
2.0123		Wafts into a bucket of pate, Jesus
			Hamadryad
2.01231	Rejoining its gang of Dravidian cuttlefish
2.0124		To shine (drooped) from a silver nitrate
			window
2.013		Of the Pure Conceptual Behavior Maze
2.0131		Which conditions the smoldering fleas of
			law and order
2.014		For their "exuberancies" of entropic
			resuscitation.

--Philip Lamantia


Hal

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sat Jul 14 19:27:57 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2001 18:27:57 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] sentimental piscatorial [revised second time]
Message-ID: <F84uNY1SWoBDyseVwrb0000a558@hotmail.com>

My son's leaving home, as boys his age do. We went fishing this morning. I'm 
the sort of guy who cries at movies like "The Bridges of Madison County." 
Forgive me, please. And Jordan Davis, don't you say anything third 
generation NY school'ish.

Kent

-------

Why I Am Not a Poet, etc.

         --with thanks to David Bircumshaw and Henry Gould


The fishing was good this morning, though
we never made it to the Mississippi. The Apple
is a lovely tributary; once I almost drowned

in its green, but that was a long time ago,
and I didn't, because I guess life still
needed something there. Well,

for instance, as I said to my son Brooks,
who is starting to be a painter, many times
(as I've said many times to him, that is), if

you are going to put your life into
painting, make sure you stay low, walk slow,
and lay the fly right along the velocity

changes. The sun was just starting to burn-
off the fog, and a doe walked across the riffle
right upstream and didn't startle. A heron stood

in the next pool, shimmering, "like
some kind of religious lawn ornament,
or something," my son

said. And so I watched my son fish,
covered in an actual gold, like his
painting of the man with the city

in his heart. I watched him
fish, trying so to impress me,
his back to the sun.

_________________________________________________________________
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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 15 23:44:17 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 22:44:17 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sentimental Piscatorial [revised THIRD time]
Message-ID: <F149YC98Bi89QtpfTYS000099e9@hotmail.com>



Why I Am Not a Poet, etc.

         --with an acknowledgment to Frank O'Hara


The fishing was good this morning, though
we never made it to the Mississippi. The Apple
is a lovely tributary; once I almost drowned

in its green, but that was a long time ago,
and I didn't, because I guess life still
needed something there. Well,

for instance, as I said to my son Brooks,
who is starting to be a painter, many times
(as I've said many times to him, that is), if

you are going to put your life into
painting, make sure you stay low, walk slow,
and lay the fly right along the velocity

changes. The sun was just starting to burn-
off the fog, and a doe walked across the riffle
right upstream and didn't startle. A heron stood

in the next pool, shimmering, "like
some kind of religious lawn ornament,
when you think about it," my son

said. And so I watched my son fish,
covered in an actual gold, like his
drug-inspired painting of the man

with the burning city in his heart. I
watched him fish, trying so to impress me,
his back to the sun.

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 16 00:29:37 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 15 Jul 2001 23:29:37 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets' acts & the Real of theatre
Message-ID: <F95tgceXEev8uEbJjCl00007f50@hotmail.com>

This message was posted to Poetryetc. I thougt I'd post it, too, to 
New-Poetries, becasue jeezes, New-poetries, are new poets dead? Is everyone 
too busy following the intern's disappearance? Oprah's pregnancy?

I know, yes, like you, in the face of the Hubble and architecture's marvels 
in general, I feel worhtless, too. But hey, here we are! This is your life, 
Mr. Shoe.

Kent

------

Joe,

You wrote a whole post to me without once taunting my johnson. Thank you. I 
feel like we're friends again!

Yes, I agree with what you say. But it's not very hard to agree with it. In 
this idea of poets "playing themselves", I'm talking about something beyond 
Grandma's tablecloth poets-- I'm talkiing about, pretty much, the whole 
Self-Recycling Theatre Festival of Poetry.

This is how I see it: The "avant-gardists," who theorize about the "self" 
and deploy Brechtian-type "V-effect" devices (as they are most lately 
beginning to say, see Andrews, etc.) in their compositions, are no less 
"playing themselves" than, say, Robert Bly or (to be more up to date) Jorie 
Graham play themselves as "Actor-Poet": The performances are differently 
choreographed, of course, but, at their conclusions, the actors meet with 
the congratulating (or contemptuous) audience in the foyer.

And, lo, what is that on the foyer walls? Why, look, it's the actor's 
photograph, the photo among the others of the company, the photograph (this 
is part of the conceit, to remind you where you are) of the one who had just 
been acting in the one-person play, only here sans the stage make-up. The 
actor and the milling audience delight or bristle in each other's presence, 
united by the shared and psychically comforting knowledge that what just 
transpired in the punctiliously-lit room was merely a fabricatio, a hoax, of 
sorts, the discrete and light-focused actor on stage "playing herself," with 
well-practiced forms and modulations of "expression"-- expressions so wildly 
ranging, in some cases, why, the audience begins to wonder if the actor has 
a "Self"! Imagine...

But thank God, the official company photograph is there to return us to the 
"real": Ron Silliman, Henry Gould, Candice Ward, Joseph Duemer, Alison 
Croggon, Douglas Barbour, Kent Johnson when he writes fishing poems, and 
etc, etc. ad infinitum., quite competent actors playing themselves, all, 
caught within an ideological drama very much outside their "poet-selves", an 
uncountably manifold-act extavaganza, inflected differently in each show at 
each Broadway, each Off-Broadway, or each community theater venue, a drama 
whose script is fractal and written beyond them, them who act out and 
pretend they are not acting, or pretend they are only pretending that they 
are not acting, it doesn't matter, even if a double-negative gets confused, 
they are actors, always-already playing themselves, and their framed photos 
are smiling or else earnest in the (as I said) foyer of the theater, built, 
I forgot to say, with mostly anonymous patron money, directly or indirectly 
disbursed by the State.

By the way, remember that I brought up Pessoa (no one responded, but par for 
the course with that guy with the johnson): Here was a poet, Joe, who 
understood theater in the deepest possible sense: What he understood, in a 
kind of Hegelian intuitional rush, I'd say, is that Real Poetry is the real 
life synthesis (yes, the Situationists were provisionally onto something, 
even if the French CP betrayed in '68 and everyone forgot) that the 
antithesis of staged and institutional Author Function drama/theatre makes 
possible. Poetry (that poetry which moves into its real and unmediated 
nature outside the circumscribed legality of hoaxed identities) is the one 
art that can take the Spirit of Theater from the fabricated, from the 
compromised and faked productional premise that poetry presently entertains, 
to the absolute Real, turning poetry inside out, into a Real object, like a 
Klein bottle, as I said of Gould's tentative rhymes, that "real" laws cannot 
touch.

Save this post, Joe.

Kent




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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 16 10:39:43 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 09:39:43 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetic theater/ flight tests (reply to Alison)
Message-ID: <F100OAmEaJswFCHOzyf0000e595@hotmail.com>

As a follow up to my Poetry as theatre post, I thought I'd share this. Sorry 
for the cross-posting, but since these are mine, and the topic seems 
potentially rich for discussion, I thought I'd send here, too.
Though where is everybody?

Kent

----------

Alison,

Thanks for the response. Let me point out, please, how you misread me.

It's not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with the conventional 
name stamp, no more than there is anything really wrong with the photos of 
the company's actors in the foyer. It's just that such stampings mark a 
*productive horizon* beyond which certain imaginative moves cannot be made 
and certain (mostly undisovered, no doubt) imaginative dimensions cannot be 
entered. Hyper-authorsip, as I argue in an interview forthcoming this fall, 
does not supplant, it *adds*. It's an aperture, a tunneling, hinted at by 
Pessoa, barely touched since.

Now, I understand that conventional attributional forms can also be 
productive, even psychically propulsive, for some (Henry Gould is an 
unusually interesting case, Narcissus purposely drowning himself into his 
reflection to see what's on the other side), but for the vast majority of 
poets (this is indisputable, it seems to me) self-inscription inside an 
institutionalized mode of production/distribution/reception is made without 
a thought, as if it were the law of nature, or something. And this is 
ideology powerfully working, of course.

I am not saying that poets should stop using their names, and I've made this 
clear in a number of published statements; I'm saying that poetry is perhaps 
in the days of Kitty Hawk, and other forms of flight haven't begun to be 
glimpsed. There will be lots of pilots who will be immolated in tests of new 
vehicles powered by weird fuels. It's an exciting time.

By the way, my "toast"/Author conceit in last post was not meant to suggest 
champagne-- I meant the toast that pops out of the toaster!

Kent
_________________________________________________________________
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From JforJames at aol.com  Mon Jul 16 16:12:21 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 16:12:21 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] The Bard De/Composed
Message-ID: <97.1841ebc6.2884a4a5@aol.com>

Subj:    Everse 07.16.01
Date:   7/16/01 2:02:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From:   webmaster at worldashome.org (World As Home Webmaster)
Sender: everse-owner at list.milkweed.org
To: everse at list.milkweed.org

Everse 07.16.01

How can we tell good poetry from bad? To illustrate why good poems, including 
well-loved classics, are so remarkable, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet W.D. 
Snodgrass rewrites them -- wrong. Here's a sonnet in the original and in two 
rewritten versions. 


Sonnet #129

-- William Shakespeare

Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and, till action, lust
Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame, 
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, 
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight, 
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had, 
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad: 
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so; 
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; 
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe; 
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. 
        All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
        To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. 



Sonnet #129 

-- de/composed from Shakespeare, A

Vigor and spunk drain out to barren guilt
In casual sex. To bring it off, we lie, 
Accuse, cheat, kill; first tears are spilt, 
Then blood; we slash, stab, gouge out groin or eye.
Once she's been laid, she's like some loathsome bug;
She's been too long pursued -- once she's been had,
She's too much hated, like some secret drug
Slipped into someone's drink to make him mad.
It's mad pursuing her, mad once she's captured;
Laid, laying, schemes to lay her -- all insane.
Your long-sought Eden sours when you've trapped her.
Before, dreams of bliss; after, dead dream's pain.
         All this the world knows since we've warned them well
         To seek some other pleasure than this hell.



Sonnet #129 

-- de/composed from Shakespeare, B

In casual sex, we jeopardize our souls
And all their powers. Seeking intercourse,
We take wrong means to reach illicit goals,
Behaving lawlessly with undue force.
When they're achieved, such pleasures are despised.
They're sought past reason and if brought about 
Are too much hated -- like a plot devised
So all sound judgement would be driven out -- 
Frenzied in the seeking and the act;
Before, throughout and after, too extreme;
A joy to try out, but a grief in fact;
A bliss imagined, then a shattered dream.
       All men have heard this yet none seems to know
       That seeking such joys only leads to woe.

---------------------------------
copyright (c) 2001 W. D. Snodgrass, from "De/Compositions: 
101 Good Poems Gone Wrong" just published by Graywolf Press 
(http://www.graywolfpress.org). Visit Graywolf's website to read the author's 
introduction. 
--------------------------


From halvard at earthlink.net  Mon Jul 16 16:17:16 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 16:17:16 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] The Bard De/Composed
In-Reply-To: <97.1841ebc6.2884a4a5@aol.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEEEFODNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

Not wrong enough, methinks.

Hal     "When you come to a fork in the road--
            take it!"
                         --Yogi Berra

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson



> How can we tell good poetry from bad? To illustrate why good poems, including 
> well-loved classics, are so remarkable, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet W.D. 
> Snodgrass rewrites them -- wrong. Here's a sonnet in the original and in two 
> rewritten versions. 
> 
> 
> Sonnet #129
> 
> -- William Shakespeare
> 
> Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
> Is lust in action; and, till action, lust
> Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame, 
> Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust, 
> Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight, 
> Past reason hunted; and no sooner had, 
> Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
> On purpose laid to make the taker mad: 
> Mad in pursuit, and in possession so; 
> Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; 
> A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe; 
> Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. 
>         All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
>         To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. 
> 
> 
> 
> Sonnet #129 
> 
> -- de/composed from Shakespeare, A
> 
> Vigor and spunk drain out to barren guilt
> In casual sex. To bring it off, we lie, 
> Accuse, cheat, kill; first tears are spilt, 
> Then blood; we slash, stab, gouge out groin or eye.
> Once she's been laid, she's like some loathsome bug;
> She's been too long pursued -- once she's been had,
> She's too much hated, like some secret drug
> Slipped into someone's drink to make him mad.
> It's mad pursuing her, mad once she's captured;
> Laid, laying, schemes to lay her -- all insane.
> Your long-sought Eden sours when you've trapped her.
> Before, dreams of bliss; after, dead dream's pain.
>          All this the world knows since we've warned them well
>          To seek some other pleasure than this hell.
> 
> 
> 
> Sonnet #129 
> 
> -- de/composed from Shakespeare, B
> 
> In casual sex, we jeopardize our souls
> And all their powers. Seeking intercourse,
> We take wrong means to reach illicit goals,
> Behaving lawlessly with undue force.
> When they're achieved, such pleasures are despised.
> They're sought past reason and if brought about 
> Are too much hated -- like a plot devised
> So all sound judgement would be driven out -- 
> Frenzied in the seeking and the act;
> Before, throughout and after, too extreme;
> A joy to try out, but a grief in fact;
> A bliss imagined, then a shattered dream.
>        All men have heard this yet none seems to know
>        That seeking such joys only leads to woe.
> 
> ---------------------------------
> copyright (c) 2001 W. D. Snodgrass, from "De/Compositions: 
> 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong" just published by Graywolf Press 
> (http://www.graywolfpress.org). Visit Graywolf's website to read the author's 
> introduction. 
> --------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> 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  Mon Jul 16 16:45:21 2001
From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson)
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 13:45:21 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sentimental Piscatorial [revised THIRD time]
References: <F149YC98Bi89QtpfTYS000099e9@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <00ea01c10e38$3dddfb80$65aeefd8@0021936706>

Kent, you old sap, I kinda like this.
I'd like it better if it didn't remind me of Ray Carver,
but you can't win 'em all.

Best,
Tony


> The fishing was good this morning, though
> we never made it to the Mississippi. The Apple
> is a lovely tributary; once I almost drowned
> 
> in its green, but that was a long time ago,
> and I didn't, because I guess life still
> needed something there. Well,
> 
> for instance, as I said to my son Brooks,
> who is starting to be a painter, many times
> (as I've said many times to him, that is), if
> 
> you are going to put your life into
> painting, make sure you stay low, walk slow,
> and lay the fly right along the velocity
> 
> changes. The sun was just starting to burn-
> off the fog, and a doe walked across the riffle
> right upstream and didn't startle. A heron stood
> 
> in the next pool, shimmering, "like
> some kind of religious lawn ornament,
> when you think about it," my son
> 
> said. And so I watched my son fish,
> covered in an actual gold, like his
> drug-inspired painting of the man
> 
> with the burning city in his heart. I
> watched him fish, trying so to impress me,
> his back to the sun.
> 
> _________________________________________________________________
> 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 JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Tue Jul 17 09:43:04 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 09:43:04 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Weinberger's whine
Message-ID: <84.18cc2bcc.28859ae8@aol.com>

In a message dated Fri, 13 Jul 2001  3:34:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "kent johnson" <kljohnson45 at hotmail.com> writes:

> Chris Stroffolino wrote:
> 
> "poets with a decidedly "formal" bent, albeit of a more complexly
> varied bent...."
> that would of course be the "bend over and spank me Ezra Pound"
> 
> You betcha. And with a riding crop. I mean Pound in a cage and all that, the 
> racist scumbag, don't get me wrong. But when it comes to prosody, the guy is 
> THE DOMINATRIX of American poetry. Frost's spank on the bottom of the Rebel 
> Cherubs goes whackety-whack; Pound's whip is (when he's transported, which 
> is often) sheathed in real museica angelica.
> 
> Kent
> 


Hmmmm. . . 

That's funny.  I thought that I set my filters to avoid pornographic email.  Ah well . . .

Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English and Foreign Languages
University of West Florida




From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Jul 17 10:36:12 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 10:36:12 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] ANGELAKI General Issue 2002
Message-ID: <ad.d73dc46.2885a75c@aol.com>

Date:    Sat, 14 Jul 2001 21:39:54 +0100
From:    Gerard Greenway <greenway at ANGELAKI.DEMON.CO.UK>
Subject: CfP: ANGELAKI General Issue 2002

ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities

CALL FOR PAPERS -- GENERAL ISSUE 2002

"Fearless and inventive, this journal has reset the agenda for the
theoretical humanities."
-- Peggy Kamuf, University of Southern California, USA


_Angelaki: journal of the theoretical humanities_ publishes two special
issues and one general/open issue per volume. The journal invites
submissions for its volume 7, number 3 general/open issue, for
publication December 2002. Please see below for the current contents
list of the 2001 general issue (6.3, for publication December).

Deadline for submission of 7.3 material for review: February 28, 2002.

Submissions are subject to peer review.

For full details on _Angelaki_, submission information and contents
listings of volumes 2 to 5, please visit the journal's website at:

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/routledge/0969725X.html

ELECTRONIC SAMPLE COPY. The journal has been available online as
well as in print since volume 5 (2000). The 2000 general issue (5.3),
with work from Deleuze, Derrida and Zizek, is available as a free
electronic sample at the website -- click on the sample copy link in the
listing at the top of the home page.

Thank you -- Gerard Greenway, managing editor, Angelaki
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/routledge/0969725X.html


volume 6 number 3 december 2001
GENERAL ISSUE 2001
issue editor: Pelagia Goulimari

CONTENTS

Editorial Introduction
-- Pelagia Goulimari

Never Before, Always Already: Notes on Agamben
and the Category of Relation
-- Alexander Garcia Duttmann

Humanism After Auschwitz: Reflections on Jean Amery's _Freitod_
-- Andrew McCann

Judgement is not an Exit: Toward an Affective Criticism
of Violence with _American Psycho_
-- Marco Abel

A New Lyricism: Some Early Thoughts on Linguistic Disobedience
-- John Kinsella

To Follow a Snail: Experimental Empiricism and
the Ethic of Minor Literature
-- Peter Trnka

Cave Paintings and Wall Writings: Blanchot's Signature
-- Lars Iyer

To Place the Void: Badiou Reads Spinoza
-- Sam Gillespie

Photography and the Exposure of Community: Sharing Nan Goldin
and Jean-Luc Nancy
-- Louis Kaplan

The Comedy of Philosophy: Bataille, Hegel and Derrida
-- Lisa Trahair

The Aesthetics of Affect: Thinking Art Beyond Representation
-- Simon O'Sullivan

Human Rights, Humanism and Desire
-- Costas Douzinas

DEBATE: Just Hoaxing: A Reply to Margaret Soltan's
"Hoax Poetry in America"
-- Bill Freind*

     * Bill Freind writes in response to Margaret Soltan's piece in
     _Angelaki_ 5.1: _Poets on the Verge_. We encourage the submission
     of responses to work published in the journal. These will be
     considered for publication in the annual general issue.

Gerard Greenway

managing editor
A N G E L A K I
journal of the theoretical humanities

greenway at angelaki.demon.co.uk
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/routledge/0969725X.html

36A Norham Road
Oxford  OX2 6SQ
United  Kingdom



From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Jul 17 10:42:03 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 10:42:03 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Rattapallax's New Reading Series at the NYPL
Message-ID: <121.1c7c510.2885a8bb@aol.com>

Date:    Sat, 14 Jul 2001 11:08:27 -0700
From:    Ram Devineni <rattapallax at YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Rattapallax's New Reading Series at the NYPL

Rattapallax Press launches a new reading series with
the New York Public Library at several branches.  In
particular at St. AgnesBranch located at 444 Amsterdam
Ave.

Some of the featured poets include Louis Simpson,
Marilyn Hacker,Glyn Maxwell, Charlie Smith, Robert
Minhinnick and Colette Inez. Our fall 2001 schedule is
below and additional information can be foundat
http://www.rattapallax.com

Thanks,
Ram

September 8 at 2pm--Indran Amirthanayagam, Peter M.
Rojcewicz, and Richard Levine

September 15 at 2pm--Marilyn Hacker, Beatrix Gates &
Stephanos Papadopoulos

September 29 at 2 pm--Rattapallax No. 6 Launch Reading
hosted by Martin Mitchell
Mid-Manhattan Library, 455 Fifth Ave., NYC

October 6 at 2pm--Colette Inez and Ron Price

October 20 at 2pm--Poets from Rattapallax (USA) and
Poetry Wales (UK) hosted by Robert Minhinnick and
Martin Mitchell

October 27 at 2pm--Charlie Smith and Mark Nickels

November 3 at 2pm--George Bradley, Rick Pernod and
Michael T. Young

November 12 at 6:45 pm--Glyn Maxwell & Stephanos
Papadopoulos

November 17 at 2 pm--Bob Holman, Regie Cabico & Bill
Kushner

December 8 at 2 pm--Louis Simpson & Elaine Schwager

December 15 at 2 pm--PO-EP! Launch Reading: hosted by
Anselm Berrigan & Edwin Torres

June 19, 2002 at 7:30 pm-- X.J. Kennedy & Michael T.
Young Newburyport Art Association Gallery (Powow River
Poets Monthly Reading Series)




From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 17 18:49:17 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:49:17 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sentimental Piscatorial [Fourth, with footnotes]
Message-ID: <F767dxhsayi4AFpltIG00011811@hotmail.com>

Thank you, everyone, for all the comments-- the nice ones and the sneering 
ones, front and back-channel. I have added five footnotes to the poem, and 
it seems to me that the piece is beginning to find its (as they say) voice!

Kent

---------

Sentimental Piscatorial


The fishing was good this morning, though
we never made it to the Mississippi. The Apple
is a lovely tributary; once I almost drowned [1]

in its green, but that was a long time ago,
and I didn't, because I guess life still
needed something there. Well,

for instance, as I said to my son Brooks,
who is starting to be a painter, many times
(as I've said many times to him, that is), if [2]

you are going to put your life into
painting, make sure you stay low, walk slow,
and lay the fly right along the velocity

changes. The sun was just starting to burn-
off the fog, and a doe walked across the riffle
right upstream and didn't startle. A heron stood

in the next pool, shimmering, "like
some kind of religious lawn ornament,
when you think about it," my son [3]

said. And so I watched my son fish,
covered in an actual gold, like his
drug-inspired painting of the man

with the burning city in his heart. I [4]
watched him fish, trying so to impress me,
his back to the sun. [5]

***


1. The first stanza is, perhaps over-obviously, an allusion to John 
Ashbery's "Into the Dusk-Charged Air."

2. The second and third stanzas are prosodic glosses on Frank O'Hara's "Why 
I Am Not a Painter." Interestingly, the following email response was 
received from Hilton Kramer, editor of The New Criterion, to whom this poem 
(sans footnotes) was originally submitted: "Dear Mr. Johnson, I like the 
poem quite a lot; it has an easy and laconic sound breaking elegantly across 
an unusual and complex meter (the ionic as base foot is idiosyncratic, to 
say the least, and quite impressive). Still, I am afraid I have to pass this 
time around-- Guy Davenport, who has the last word with all poems submitted 
to NC, felt that the poaching, as he put it, from O'Hara in the second and 
third stanzas was too cute and obvious. But I will tell you that Mr. 
Davenport found the poem's ending "strangely moving," and I can tell you, 
too, that he doesn't often offer up such words as "moving" in his reports to 
me. Please do send us more of your poems. --HK "

3. When Brooks was a child, I would read him poems at bedtime. Wallace 
Stevens (the Stevens of Harmonium) and Kenneth Koch were his favorites. I 
now realize that Brooks would never have said what he did about the heron 
appearing as a lawn ornament had it not been for Koch's line in that love 
poem about the parts of speech, where the garbage can lid is smashed into a 
likeness of George Washington's face.

4. This is an allusion to St. Augustine's City of God, which is the theme, 
if you will, of my son's painting. In the upper corner of the canvass, in 
tiny, calligraphic lettering, my son has written the following passage from 
Augustine's Soliloquia, which he copies from Doubled Flowering: From the 
Notebooks of Araki Yaususada, the heteronymous masterpiece of "Tosa 
Motokiyu," of whose manuscripts, it is by now widely known, I am one of the 
caretakers:

"For how could the actor I mentioned be a true tragic actor if he were not 
willing to be a false Hector, a false Andromache, a false Hercules? Or how 
could a picture of a horse be a true picture unless it were a false horse? 
Or an image of a man in a mirror be a true image unless it were a false man? 
So if the fact that they are false in one respect helps certain things to be 
true in another respect, why do we fear falseness so much and seek truth as 
such a great good? Will we not admit that these things make up truth itself, 
that truth is so to speak put together from them?"

5. This is an allusion to an image in a poem by Whitman, where the sun 
behind a man standing in the water forms a golden aura around him. But I 
cannot now recall the exact poem.




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From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 17 19:09:05 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 15:09:05 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sentimental Piscatorial [Fourth, with footnotes]
Message-ID: <F48llNY30kkZIhTrBoe0001c259@hotmail.com>

Are the footnotes going to be part of the poem?  Or are you going to try to 
send out just the poem?

The weighting of footnotes to poem reminds me of the huge amount of back 
matter in "Inventions of the March Hare" (although frankly I got the book 
_because_ of all of that back matter).  Does anyone know of any poems where 
the footnotes outnumber what they are footnoting?  Funny ones, I mean.

There is a great scene in Robert Grudin's novel "Book" where the footnotes 
attack and take over the text.

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA
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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 17 20:00:26 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 19:00:26 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Footnoted poem for Moira
Message-ID: <F46eS7stEYqG7LDybUP00006799@hotmail.com>

Moira wrote,

"Are the footnotes going to be part of the poem? Or are you going to try to 
send out just the poem?"

No, they are part of the poem now, part of its body! If you have a minotaur 
and you want to sell it to the media, you don't slice off it's "back matter" 
with a chain saw-- that would kill it! *[1]

Moira then asked:

"Does anyone know of any poems where the footnotes outnumber what they are 
footnoting? Funny ones, I mean."

This happens all the time in Derrida's prose poems. Adn the footnotes are 
hilarious! *[2]

Kent

1. Though, of course, if Arthur Vogelsang wrote and said that he would print 
the poem if only I cut off the footnotes, why, then, you'd better believe 
it, I'd slice that Wildebeast right in half with my Black and Decker!

2. Needless to say, this depends on your sense of humour.




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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Tue Jul 17 21:33:10 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 21:33:10 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sentimental Piscatorial [Fourth, with footnotes]
Message-ID: <e5.92a31cb.28864156@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/17/01 6:10:19 PM Central Daylight Time, 
moira_russell at hotmail.com writes:


> Does anyone know of any poems where 
> the footnotes outnumber what they are footnoting?  Funny ones, I mean.
> 
> 

If you haven't read Nabokov's Pale Fire you must--immediately.
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Tue Jul 17 21:35:04 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 21:35:04 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sentimental Piscatorial [Fourth, with footnotes]
Message-ID: <123.1ca9979.288641c8@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/17/01 6:10:19 PM Central Daylight Time, 
moira_russell at hotmail.com writes:


> Does anyone know of any poems where 
> the footnotes outnumber what they are footnoting?  Funny ones, I mean.
> 
> 

Jim Simmerman has one in one of his early books--a "texte" and a "glose."
 Pretty funny.  Maybe someone else has it and can post it.
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From antrobin at clipper.net  Tue Jul 17 21:44:04 2001
From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:44:04 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] Footnoted poem for Moira
References: <F46eS7stEYqG7LDybUP00006799@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <006b01c10f2b$26029b80$7caeefd8@0021936706>

Kent--

Although it may have seemed sneering, my comment was sincere.  This is
really nice.
And the footnotes are good too.  Any footnotes that mention both Koch AND
O'Hara
are tops in my book.

Tony



From antrobin at clipper.net  Tue Jul 17 21:47:27 2001
From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 18:47:27 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sentimental Piscatorial [Fourth, with footnotes]
References: <e5.92a31cb.28864156@cs.com>
Message-ID: <008d01c10f2b$9d3e4a00$7caeefd8@0021936706>

Oh my God, yes.  You must.  Really.

tony




  If you haven't read Nabokov's Pale Fire you must--immediately. 
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From msnider at mindspring.com  Tue Jul 17 21:57:15 2001
From: msnider at mindspring.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 21:57:15 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sentimental Piscatorial [Fourth, with footnotes]
In-Reply-To: <F48llNY30kkZIhTrBoe0001c259@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <200107180159.VAA08446@tisch.mail.mindspring.net>

On Tuesday, July 17, 2001, at 07:09 PM, Moira Russell wrote:

> Does anyone know of any poems where the footnotes outnumber what they 
> are footnoting?  Funny ones, I mean.


There's Nemerov's parody of "The Waste Land," "On the Threshold of His 
Greatness, the Poet Comes Down with a Sore Throat."  It has a Note on 
Notes:

"These notes have not the intention of offering a complete elucidation 
of the poem. Naturally, interpretations will differ from one reader to 
another, and even, perhaps, from one minute to the next. But because 
Modern Poetry is generally agreed to be a matter of the Intellect, and 
not the Feelings; because it is meant to be studied, and not merely 
read; and because it is valued, in the classroom, to the precise degree 
of its difficulty, poet and critic have agreed that these Notes will not 
merely adorn the Poem, but possibly supersede it altogether."


From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com  Wed Jul 18 07:24:29 2001
From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 04:24:29 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Footnoted poem for Moira
Message-ID: <20010718112429.7332C273F@sitemail.everyone.net>

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From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 18 11:22:46 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 07:22:46 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sentimental Piscatorial [Fourth, with footnotes]
Message-ID: <F34QYZkxOjmfCHJr1Wt00000b2e@hotmail.com>

>If you haven't read Nabokov's Pale Fire you must--immediately.

I have heard of it, but never read it.  I'll try picking it up.

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 18 12:17:45 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 11:17:45 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] prosody of footnotes
Message-ID: <F105ggkzpB8JPGbFqTn00000955@hotmail.com>

Pale Fire, absolutely!

The Waste Land, of course, even if the notes don't "spatially" overtake the 
text... But they have, it seems indisputable, functioned down through time 
as little rocket boosters, firing in little bursts to change the poem's 
trajectory and orbit in aesthetic space-time. No?

Another example, if I may, would be certain of the young Yasusada to 
"Richard" letters, whose difficult editing is now nearly complete. The 
letters are all accompanied by footnotes from Motokiyu; it has been 
necessary for Javier Alvarez and myself to add numerous footnotes of our own 
to explain the conceptual twists and turns that Motokiyu's notes represent-- 
not to mention the slips, errors, insconsistencies therein. A large 
selection of these will soon be appearing at Garrett Kalleberg's amazing web 
production, The Transcendental Friend. In a couple of these letters, the 
footnotes extend for twice or three times the length of the "original" 
letter.

Incidentally, on Yasusada, fyi, the essay by Bill Freind in the forthcoming 
Anglelaki, which annoucnement was recently posted here, substantially 
concerns the reception of the Yasusada affair. I think Freind makes some 
very strong arguments contra Margaret Soltan's amazingly bizarre essay in 
previous issue.

Kent
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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 18 14:06:49 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 13:06:49 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] scan THIS one
Message-ID: <F142Nl4iZWw8gRzpPWy00000c30@hotmail.com>

Yet
   what if there's a perfectly natural
form, and god wants us to kiss it and talk dirty

(quoted in Brian Kim Stefan's toru de force review of Kevin Davies' _Comp._ 
(Edge Books-- in current Boston Review, on web)
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From JforJames at aol.com  Wed Jul 18 15:22:58 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 15:22:58 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Two New Tate Poems
Message-ID: <91.d80e9ff.28873c12@aol.com>

Some of you may have heard James Tate interviewed
yesterday morn on NPR...here are couple from
his new book. I've not seen the book but it looks
like these are meant to be set as prose poems:


From JforJames at aol.com  Wed Jul 18 17:35:34 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:35:34 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] James Tate Again
Message-ID: <122.1dacc10.28875b26@aol.com>

I hope the formatting comes thru correctlty this try...


From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 18 19:16:32 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 18:16:32 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] james tate and Igor
Message-ID: <F1427vXee4fDGCl9Fop00001286@hotmail.com>

You know, not to be a smarty-pants or anything, but it this the guy who won 
the Pulitzer Prize twice?

Or did you make these two "prose poems" up, Finnegan, as a kind of Sokal 
joke?

kent
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From JforJames at aol.com  Wed Jul 18 22:14:42 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 22:14:42 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] james tate and Igor
Message-ID: <40.e57ce53.28879c92@aol.com>

In a message dated 7/18/01 7:18:09 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
kljohnson45 at hotmail.com writes:

<< Or did you make these two "prose poems" up, Finnegan, as a kind of Sokal 
 joke? >>
I'm osomuchbetter than that. Seriously, I kinda liked the second p-poem...
Adam & Eve lost in suburbs, lapse into sex, so to speak. A mini-play, in 
what?,
14 lines...postlapsarian sonnet.
Finnegan
 


From languagethief at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 19 11:14:55 2001
From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 08:14:55 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] james tate and Igor
In-Reply-To: <40.e57ce53.28879c92@aol.com>
Message-ID: <20010719151455.77097.qmail@web12208.mail.yahoo.com>

Agree with Finnegan here -- I kinda liked the second
one, too. But wouldn't it have been better with some
degree of artistry?

Tad


--- JforJames at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 7/18/01 7:18:09 PM Eastern
> Daylight Time, 
> kljohnson45 at hotmail.com writes:
> 
> << Or did you make these two "prose poems" up,
> Finnegan, as a kind of Sokal 
>  joke? >>
> I'm osomuchbetter than that. Seriously, I kinda
> liked the second p-poem...
> Adam & Eve lost in suburbs, lapse into sex, so to
> speak. A mini-play, in 
> what?,
> 14 lines...postlapsarian sonnet.
> Finnegan
>  
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry


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From JforJames at aol.com  Thu Jul 19 18:39:00 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 18:39:00 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well Put: Standing up for the much maligned "I"
Message-ID: <114.1e6c1b1.2888bb84@aol.com>

"...it is nonetheless true that when we speak we say "I," 
and we say it in the urgency of our days and in the midst 
of a condition and of a place which remain, whatever may 
be their false pretenses or their groundlessness, both a reality 
and an absolute. We say '"I," and thanks first of all to this 
word, we give direction to our existence, and sometimes to 
that of others; we decide upon values; it even happens,
strangely that beings die for the latter through what seems
to be a free choice, while others, and we know what a 
misfortune it is, others who are many in our time, suffer at
having lost a clear and coherent relationship with something 
in them they might call their own being and prefer from
then on, in so many instances, to simply let themselves
die. This capacity to acknowledge and to accept oneself,
through the agency of a few values which may be shared
with others, would have been a simple fiction--we can 
accept this last word--but this is also what would have
given to those lives a reason for lasting and to the world
around them a meaning, with a little warmth. And I notice
moreover that this era, which has disqualified all inner 
experience, is also the period which, for the first time in
history, turns with nostalgia toward the arts and the poetry
of those times when the relationship of individuals and
an asserted meaning of life or the universe was a unique
concern of collective thought." 

Yves Bonnefoy, "Image & Presence"
The Art & The Place of Poetry, selected essay
U of Chicago Press, '89


From JforJames at aol.com  Thu Jul 19 18:44:43 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 18:44:43 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] More new Green Integer titles
Message-ID: <104.653488d.2888bcdb@aol.com>

Subj:    More new Green Integer titles
Date:   7/19/01 11:44:41 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From:   djmess at greeninteger.com (kiwi)

NEW PUBLICATIONS FROM GREEN INTEGER
________________________________________

Dear Friends,

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on this e-mail list.

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Poet, painter, and essayist Hsi Muren is perhaps the most widely read woman 
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From schro047 at tc.umn.edu  Thu Jul 19 15:07:02 2001
From: schro047 at tc.umn.edu (Steve Schroer)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 14:07:02 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: James Tate Again
References: <200107191600.f6JG03a18604@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <3B572FD6.21FDFE18@tc.umn.edu>

Apparently neither Tate nor his editor knows:

    a) that Harry S Truman did not use a period after his middle initial; or

    b) how to spell Stravinsky's "Petrouchka" (the "ouch" part is debatable, but
there's no excuse for "Pa").

Getting this sort of thing right won't make one a good poet, but getting it
wrong is an almost infallible sign that one is a bad poet.

Steve Schroer



From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 19 19:34:46 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 16:34:46 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: James Tate Again
In-Reply-To: <3B572FD6.21FDFE18@tc.umn.edu>
Message-ID: <20010719233446.67446.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com>

--- Steve Schroer <schro047 at tc.umn.edu> wrote:
> Apparently neither Tate nor his editor knows:
> 
>     a) that Harry S Truman did not use a period after his middle
> initial; or
> 
>     b) how to spell Stravinsky's "Petrouchka" (the "ouch" part is
> debatable, but
> there's no excuse for "Pa").
> 
> Getting this sort of thing right won't make one a good poet, but
> getting it
> wrong is an almost infallible sign that one is a bad poet.
> 

Skip the "bad."  It just wasn't interesting.  Or is that what you mean?

- Jim

=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Jul 19 20:28:13 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:28:13 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: James Tate Again
References: <200107191600.f6JG03a18604@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <3B572FD6.21FDFE18@tc.umn.edu>
Message-ID: <3B577B1D.1C07@nut-n-but.net>

> Getting this sort of thing right won't make one a good poet, but 
> getting it wrong is an almost infallible sign that one is a bad poet.
> 
> Steve Schroer

I'd say that almost the exact opposite is true; pedants get
trivialities right; creative people are mistake-prone.

                                               --Bob G.



From halvard at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 19 20:49:48 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 20:49:48 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: James Tate Again
In-Reply-To: <3B577B1D.1C07@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEIEIBDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

> > Getting this sort of thing right won't make one a good poet, but 
> > getting it wrong is an almost infallible sign that one is a bad poet.
> > 
> > Steve Schroer
> 
> I'd say that almost the exact opposite is true; pedants get
> trivialities right; creative people are mistake-prone.
> 
>                                                --Bob G.

Damn it, you're right, Bob, but too late--I've already thrown
out my Coleridge on the basis of Steve's post.

Hal     "There are then quite a number of things
            one does or does not know."
                            --Gertrude Stein

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson



From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com  Thu Jul 19 22:57:03 2001
From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb)
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 19:57:03 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: James Tate Again
Message-ID: <20010720025703.967D236F9@sitemail.everyone.net>

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From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Jul 20 05:10:31 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 05:10:31 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: James Tate Again
References: <20010720025703.967D236F9@sitemail.everyone.net>
Message-ID: <3B57F587.31B@nut-n-but.net>

> I agree with your assessment but wonder where mathematicians may lie between good and bad, right or wrong, poetically speaking.
> 
> Bob C.

My guess is that the best creative mathematicians make many more
trivial errors than mediocre mathematicians.  I understand
Einstein made a mistake on the first official formulation of
his theory of special relativity.

But math is a lot different field from poetry: getting equations
exactly right, eventually, is essential; getting poems exactly
right not (see Keats's "On First Reading Chapman's Homer").  Also,
I think poetry requires a kind of sloppy, far-ranging mind rather
than the kind of focus math does.  Not sure I've answered your
question--and I really don't know mathematics well enough to 
say that much about it.

                                             --Bob G.



From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com  Fri Jul 20 05:47:57 2001
From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 02:47:57 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: James Tate Again
Message-ID: <20010720094758.091F036F9@sitemail.everyone.net>

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From JforJames at aol.com  Fri Jul 20 12:22:25 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:22:25 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: James Tate Again
Message-ID: <8f.d843b32.2889b4c1@aol.com>

In a message dated 7/19/01 7:05:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
schro047 at tc.umn.edu writes:

> a) that Harry S Truman did not use a period after his middle initial; or
>  
>      b) how to spell Stravinsky's "Petrouchka" (the "ouch" part is 
debatable, 
> but
>  there's no excuse for "Pa").
>  
>  Getting this sort of thing right won't make one a good poet, but getting it
>  wrong is an almost infallible sign that one is a bad poet.
>  
Steve,
First my pet quote of the month....
"He was a poet and hated the approximate." 
(R M Rilke: The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge)
Which I believe wholeheartedly.

Two things tho: The poem may have been corrected
in book form...this was presumably how the poem
appeared in Ontario Review...however we're not even
sure that the print form of the journal didn't fix things...
the error may exist only on the website. Secondly,
given the Petrushka/Petrouchka variation
(translated from the Cyrillic?) the variant "Pa-" 
is not to be allowed period? 

Lastly, tho I don't want to defend this particular prose poem,
these comments are like those in a bad workshop...
where the poem gets read and immediately the group
starts copy editing the work instead of talking about
it as a whole piece. It's easier to nitpick than to articulate 
the larger concerns and flaws of a piece as rendered...
and if the poem is fatally flawed as seen from a more 
wide-angle perspective, what's the point of even
pointing out the lesser devils in the details.

The two pieces posted seem to me that point to a 
contrast in what often works and what often doesn't in 
absurdist fancy (fantasy, in general, pershap). 
The fantastic, when it works, typically leaves one foot 
firmly planted on the ground (in the space of reality
as we know it, so to speak). Or both feet are lifted 
only after the poem has prepared and established a 
firm grounding in reality...and the reader is adequately
prepared to be removed/eased from the real to an 
unreal plane. 
The second prose poem begins with a somewhat audacious 
assertion of an apple growing from a pear tree (tho less 
odd in our times of genetically altered seeds; and 
then there is the possibility of a graft); but other than that 
oddity the poem is fixed in a fairly generic setting...
backyard, kitchen, domestic partners who
perhaps are prone to squabbling, etc...and from that
commonplace grounding it veers into the absurb
at the end. The economy of this entire gesture I applaud
in the second poem. Tad Richard mentioned a lack of artistry...
I'm not so sure. It is a prose poem, after all....and as
such it may be allowed a flatness of telling we'd reject
more readily in a lineated piece: the parable updated.
Finnegan

In the Ring or on the Field, Igor Hummed

    Although Stravinsky?s fame rests entirely
on his musical compositions, he was also a form-
idable boxer with a lifetime record of one hundred-
and-three wins and only one loss, and that to the
brutal Harry S. Truman. But he also loved base-
ball and pitched in the minor leagues for some
years. His fastball was clocked at 105 mph and
he could throw a sinker that left the best batters
wondering if the ball had been sucked into the
earth by a demon. He composed Patrouchka while
on the road with the Kansas City Blues, his team-
mates often helped out with difficult passages.
While drinking a couple of beers on the bus,
he?d hum out loud, and one of the players would
say, ?No, Igor, like this, fortissimo.?

Just to Feel Human

   A single apple grew on our tree, which
was some kind of miracle because it was a
pear tree. We walked around it scratching
our heads. ?You want to eat it?? I asked
my wife. ?I?d die first,? she replied. We
went back into the house. I stood by the
kitchen window and stared at it. I thought
of Adam and Eve, but I didn?t believe in Adam
and Eve. My wife said, ?If you don?t stop
staring at that stupid apple I?m going to go
out there and eat it.? ?So go,? I said, ?but
take your clothes off first, go naked.? She
looked at me as if I were insane, and then
she started to undress, and so did I.

 


From schro047 at tc.umn.edu  Fri Jul 20 12:54:56 2001
From: schro047 at tc.umn.edu (Steve Schroer)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 11:54:56 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] James Tate Again
References: <200107201600.f6KG02a25176@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <3B586260.8D4556E2@tc.umn.edu>

> But math is a lot different field from poetry: getting equations
> exactly right, eventually, is essential; getting poems exactly
> right not (see Keats's "On First Reading Chapman's Homer").
> Also, I think poetry requires a kind of sloppy, far-ranging
> mind rather than the kind of focus math does.

Given the sloppy, far-ranging minds of many list members, I guess I shouldn't have expected my comment to be universally understood.

That Balboa rather than Cortez was the first European to see the Pacific from the Andes is what you might call a fact of history.
Literature has always been riddled with this sort of error; damage does not necessarily result.

That Truman used no period after his middle initial (or his one-letter middle name) is what you might call a fact of typography. It's
a wrinkle well known to copy editors and thus rarely gets into print incorrectly. How many times do you suppose James Tate has seen
Truman's name without noticing such an oddity? Doesn't this say something about his alertness to language?

That a Roman A cannot substitute for the first Cyrillic vowel in "Petrouchka" is what you might call a fact of orthography. Maybe I'm
old-fashioned, but for me spelling mistakes shatter the experience of a poem and call into question the credibility of the author.

These lapses would be forgivable in early drafts, early stages of the creative process; but there's a deep cluelessness at work when
they make it all the way into publication. It's amazing to me that Tate never thought to look up the name of the Stravinsky ballet. He
must have been very confident in his error. And a person who is confident in that sort of error, it seems to me, is unlikely to be
able to write good poetry, because he doesn't care enough about language.

Errors of history or philosophy etc. don't necessarily matter in poetry. Errors of language do.

Steve Schroer




From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 20 14:00:40 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:00:40 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Truman's(.) rage
Message-ID: <F269kgCeR9eJjt8gsVW00002168@hotmail.com>

Does anyone know whether Truman wrote that letter threatening violence upon 
the music critic who dissed his daughter's piano concert BEFORE or AFTER 
Hiroshima/Nagasaki?

Not that the answer matters all that much, really, but since we are on a 
list where an avowed advocate of "mathematical poetry" writes in to reveal 
that poetry and mathematics really don't have anything to do one with the 
other, I thought I'd ask, for the record.

Kent

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From johnbrehm at mindspring.com  Fri Jul 20 14:02:51 2001
From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 14:02:51 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] James Tate Again
References: <200107201600.f6KG02a25176@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <3B586260.8D4556E2@tc.umn.edu>
Message-ID: <002f01c11146$31f1d600$d718f7a5@oemcomputer>

"It's amazing to me that Tate never thought to look up the name of the
Stravinsky ballet. He
must have been very confident in his error. And a person who is confident in
that sort of error, it seems to me, is unlikely to be
able to write good poetry, because he doesn't care enough about language."

Does it follow that because Tate failed to double check a reference that he
"must have" been confident in his error, that he does not care about
language and therefore cannot write poetry? Are we to condemn his entire
body of work based on this one error? That seems to me a rash and pedantic,
not to mention illogicial, way of approaching literature. It calls to mind a
recent New Yorker profile on Stanley Fish. When Fish sees a letter of
recommendation praising a job canditate as "meticulous," he automatically
thinks: "a plodder."

John Brehm



Errors of history or philosophy etc. don't necessarily matter in poetry.
Errors of language do.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Schroer" <schro047 at tc.umn.edu>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 12:54 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] James Tate Again


> > But math is a lot different field from poetry: getting equations
> > exactly right, eventually, is essential; getting poems exactly
> > right not (see Keats's "On First Reading Chapman's Homer").
> > Also, I think poetry requires a kind of sloppy, far-ranging
> > mind rather than the kind of focus math does.
>
> Given the sloppy, far-ranging minds of many list members, I guess I
shouldn't have expected my comment to be universally understood.
>
> That Balboa rather than Cortez was the first European to see the Pacific
from the Andes is what you might call a fact of history.
> Literature has always been riddled with this sort of error; damage does
not necessarily result.
>
> That Truman used no period after his middle initial (or his one-letter
middle name) is what you might call a fact of typography. It's
> a wrinkle well known to copy editors and thus rarely gets into print
incorrectly. How many times do you suppose James Tate has seen
> Truman's name without noticing such an oddity? Doesn't this say something
about his alertness to language?
>
> That a Roman A cannot substitute for the first Cyrillic vowel in
"Petrouchka" is what you might call a fact of orthography. Maybe I'm
> old-fashioned, but for me spelling mistakes shatter the experience of a
poem and call into question the credibility of the author.
>
> These lapses would be forgivable in early drafts, early stages of the
creative process; but there's a deep cluelessness at work when
> they make it all the way into publication. It's amazing to me that Tate
never thought to look up the name of the Stravinsky ballet. He
> must have been very confident in his error. And a person who is confident
in that sort of error, it seems to me, is unlikely to be
> able to write good poetry, because he doesn't care enough about language.
>
> Errors of history or philosophy etc. don't necessarily matter in poetry.
Errors of language do.
>
> Steve Schroer
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu  Fri Jul 20 16:43:57 2001
From: rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu (rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 13:43:57 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] Truman's(.) rage
Message-ID: <3.0.32.20010720134356.00e28684@medicine.nodak.edu>

At 01:00 PM 7/20/01 -0500, Kent Johnson wrote:
>Does anyone know whether Truman wrote that letter threatening violence upon 
>the music critic who dissed his daughter's piano concert BEFORE or AFTER 
>Hiroshima/Nagasaki?
>
>Not that the answer matters all that much, really, but since we are on a 
>list where an avowed advocate of "mathematical poetry" writes in to reveal 
>that poetry and mathematics really don't have anything to do one with the 
>other, I thought I'd ask, for the record.
>
>Kent

For the record, Kent, Harry let loose on the music critic (Paul Hume of the
Washington Post) in December 1950, over 5 years after Hiroshima/Nagasaki. 
Not much of mathematical note in the timing, or the review, or Harry's
letter, 
IMO. However, that opinion is coming from someone who may fit Harry's
description 
of the critic (Hume) in the letter: "a frustrated old man who wishes he could 
have been successful." %-)>

Richard W. Wilsnack
Department of Neuroscience
University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences
Grand Forks, ND  58202-9037




From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Jul 20 15:59:11 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 15:59:11 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] James Tate Again
References: <200107201600.f6KG02a25176@wiz.cath.vt.edu> <3B586260.8D4556E2@tc.umn.edu>
Message-ID: <3B588D8F.5F67@nut-n-but.net>

Well, Steve, although I'm a poet/critic long very interested in the
expressive potential of punctuation, I must admit I was never
aware that old Harry didn't use a period with his initial.  If I
wrote about him (unlikely), I'd have put a period after his middle
initial.  I wouldn't have worried much about the spelling of some
Russian ballet, either.  I take a lot of pains over what I think
is the heart of whatever I write, not on trivialities.  As for
the trivialities, I DO want them correct (and I don't consider
Cortez for Balboa trivial), but (1) I lack sufficient time to get
everything correct and (2) I'm fallible, so would make mistakes
regardless of how much time I had.  I believe the better poets
(and--yes--a lot of poor poets) are more like Tate and I in that 
respect than they are like those poets who could be counted on 
properly to render Truman's name.

                                              --Bob G.

Steve Schroer wrote:
> 
> > But math is a lot different field from poetry: getting equations
> > exactly right, eventually, is essential; getting poems exactly
> > right not (see Keats's "On First Reading Chapman's Homer").
> > Also, I think poetry requires a kind of sloppy, far-ranging
> > mind rather than the kind of focus math does.
> 
> Given the sloppy, far-ranging minds of many list members, I guess I shouldn't have expected my comment to be universally understood.

Good greiff.

> That Balboa rather than Cortez was the first European to see the Pacific from the Andes is what you might call a fact of history.
> Literature has always been riddled with this sort of error; damage does not necessarily result.
> 
> That Truman used no period after his middle initial (or his one-letter middle name) is what you might call a fact of typography. It's
> a wrinkle well known to copy editors and thus rarely gets into print incorrectly. How many times do you suppose James Tate has seen
> Truman's name without noticing such an oddity? Doesn't this say something about his alertness to language?
> 
> That a Roman A cannot substitute for the first Cyrillic vowel in "Petrouchka" is what you might call a fact of orthography. Maybe I'm
> old-fashioned, but for me spelling mistakes shatter the experience of a poem and call into question the credibility of the author.
> 
> These lapses would be forgivable in early drafts, early stages of the creative process; but there's a deep cluelessness at work when
> they make it all the way into publication. It's amazing to me that Tate never thought to look up the name of the Stravinsky ballet. He
> must have been very confident in his error. And a person who is confident in that sort of error, it seems to me, is unlikely to be
> able to write good poetry, because he doesn't care enough about language.
> 
> Errors of history or philosophy etc. don't necessarily matter in > poetry. Errors of language do.




From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Jul 20 16:02:18 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:02:18 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Truman's(.) rage
References: <F269kgCeR9eJjt8gsVW00002168@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <3B588E4A.568F@nut-n-but.net>

I don't know what you're talking about, Kent.  I can't see what
I wrote anything in my offhand post that could be construed to 
indicate that "poetry and mathematics really don't have anything
to do with each other."  I was comparing what a mathematician does,
which is seek exact answers, with what a poet does, which is seek
aesthetically-rich approximations (to contradict Rilke) of dots of 
human experience.  This does not mean that a poet can't use 
mathematics fruitfully in his work.

I might add that I am not an "avowed advocate of mathematical poetry,"
but an "advocate of mathematical poetry."

                                                    --Bob G.

kent johnson wrote:
> 
> Does anyone know whether Truman wrote that letter threatening violence upon
> the music critic who dissed his daughter's piano concert BEFORE or AFTER
> Hiroshima/Nagasaki?
> 
> Not that the answer matters all that much, really, but since we are on a
> list where an avowed advocate of "mathematical poetry" writes in to reveal
> that poetry and mathematics really don't have anything to do one with the
> other, I thought I'd ask, for the record.
 
> Kent



From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Jul 20 16:32:37 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:32:37 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Truman's(.) rage
References: <F269kgCeR9eJjt8gsVW00002168@hotmail.com> <3B588E4A.568F@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <3B589564.1889@nut-n-but.net>

Oops, I realize now that I've made a . . . mistake of 
language.  I think I AM an "avowed advocate of mathematical
poetry."  Until my last post, though, I was merely an
advocate of mathematical poetry.

                                          --Bob G.



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 20 18:20:32 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 17:20:32 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Truman' (s.) letter
Message-ID: <F247iSnRMWuLn5U9T3T00001c49@hotmail.com>

Dear Richard,,

Thanks for that note. I agree-- his daughter's piano playing  had nothing to 
do with the bombing of Hiroshima.

You know, you might not believe this, but Dr. Thompson Brandt, the Dean of 
my Division here at tiny-tweeny Highland Community College, has just 
published an edition of Harry Truman's letters on music. And there are close 
to 200 pages of them!

Go figure. The musical ruminations of a mass murderer...

Viva Genoa. Major mobilizations, blazing barricades, two shot dead by 
police, smoke everywhere. Turn on the TV adn what do you see (as I type) on 
Fox, MSNBC, CNN? Gary Condit's face and Al Gore's slipping percentages in 
the polls (he's slipping)!

Kent

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From rloden at concentric.net  Sat Jul 21 10:25:58 2001
From: rloden at concentric.net (Rachel Loden)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 07:25:58 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] mathematics & poetry
References: <20010720025703.967D236F9@sitemail.everyone.net> <3B57F587.31B@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <3B5990F6.D714D622@concentric.net>

Well, I'm married to a logician of some renown, and a few months into
our life together it became clear that he could not balance a checkbook
to save his life.

And while it's true that getting it right is essential in mathematics,
there are a lot of ways to get to the same result--some crufty (is this
a word in common parlance?), some elegant. Errors do turn up in proofs.
These can be trivial or fatal or useful, which is all part of the terror
and fun of the game.

I don't know whether any of you saw the beautiful BBC program on Andrew
Wiles, who solved Fermat's Last Theorem, a famous open problem. (Seem to
recall the show ran on NOVA but I might be wrong.) He thought he had
solved it but then somebody found an error. And then this happened:  

"ANDREW WILES: In September, I decided to go back and look one more time
at the original structure of Flach and Kolyvagin to try and pinpoint
exactly why it wasn't working, try and formulate it precisely. One can
never really do that in mathematics but I just wanted to set my mind at
rest that it really couldn't be made to work. And I was sitting here at
this desk. It was a Monday morning, September 19th and I was trying
convincing myself that it didn't work, just seeing exactly what the
problem was when suddenly, totally unexpectedly, I had this incredible
revelation. I realised what was holding me up was exactly what would
resolve the problem I'd had in my Iwasawa theory attempt three years
earlier. It was the most important moment of my working life. It was so
indescribably beautiful, it was so simple and so elegant and I just
stared in disbelief for twenty minutes. Then during the day I walked
round the department, I'd keep coming back to my desk and looking to see
it was still there, it was still there. Almost what seemed to be
stopping the method of Flach and Kolyvagin was exactly what would make
horizontally Iwasawa theory. My original approach to the problem from
three years before would make exactly that work, so out of the ashes
seemed to rise the true answer to the problem. So the first night I went
back and slept on it, I checked through it again the next morning and by
11 o'clock I was satisfied and I went down, told my wife I've got it, I
think I've got it, I've found it. It was so unexpected, I think she
thought I was talking about a children's toy or something and said got
what? and I said I've fixed my proof, I've got it." 

Moments of mathematical "inspiration" seem not entirely different from
sudden poetical storms. My husband's been known to wake up with the
solution to a problem he hasn't thought of in years, and even then he
might not write it down.

Rachel

-- 
Rachel Loden
http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/hotel.html
email: rloden at concentric.net


From halvard at earthlink.net  Sat Jul 21 11:29:33 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 11:29:33 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] mathematics & poetry
In-Reply-To: <3B5990F6.D714D622@concentric.net>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEOEKDDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

an' 'ere's to fuzzy logic, an' 'ere's to fuzzy art--

Hal     "I don't know what music is."
                      --Ludvig van Beethoven

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson


> Well, I'm married to a logician of some renown, and a few months into
> our life together it became clear that he could not balance a checkbook
> to save his life.
> 
> And while it's true that getting it right is essential in mathematics,
> there are a lot of ways to get to the same result--some crufty (is this
> a word in common parlance?), some elegant. Errors do turn up in proofs.
> These can be trivial or fatal or useful, which is all part of the terror
> and fun of the game.
> 
> I don't know whether any of you saw the beautiful BBC program on Andrew
> Wiles, who solved Fermat's Last Theorem, a famous open problem. (Seem to
> recall the show ran on NOVA but I might be wrong.) He thought he had
> solved it but then somebody found an error. And then this happened:  
> 
> "ANDREW WILES: In September, I decided to go back and look one more time
> at the original structure of Flach and Kolyvagin to try and pinpoint
> exactly why it wasn't working, try and formulate it precisely. One can
> never really do that in mathematics but I just wanted to set my mind at
> rest that it really couldn't be made to work. And I was sitting here at
> this desk. It was a Monday morning, September 19th and I was trying
> convincing myself that it didn't work, just seeing exactly what the
> problem was when suddenly, totally unexpectedly, I had this incredible
> revelation. I realised what was holding me up was exactly what would
> resolve the problem I'd had in my Iwasawa theory attempt three years
> earlier. It was the most important moment of my working life. It was so
> indescribably beautiful, it was so simple and so elegant and I just
> stared in disbelief for twenty minutes. Then during the day I walked
> round the department, I'd keep coming back to my desk and looking to see
> it was still there, it was still there. Almost what seemed to be
> stopping the method of Flach and Kolyvagin was exactly what would make
> horizontally Iwasawa theory. My original approach to the problem from
> three years before would make exactly that work, so out of the ashes
> seemed to rise the true answer to the problem. So the first night I went
> back and slept on it, I checked through it again the next morning and by
> 11 o'clock I was satisfied and I went down, told my wife I've got it, I
> think I've got it, I've found it. It was so unexpected, I think she
> thought I was talking about a children's toy or something and said got
> what? and I said I've fixed my proof, I've got it." 
> 
> Moments of mathematical "inspiration" seem not entirely different from
> sudden poetical storms. My husband's been known to wake up with the
> solution to a problem he hasn't thought of in years, and even then he
> might not write it down.
> 
> Rachel
> 
> -- 
> Rachel Loden
> http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/hotel.html
> email: rloden at concentric.net
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 


From rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu  Sat Jul 21 14:38:52 2001
From: rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu (rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 11:38:52 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] mathematics & poetry
Message-ID: <3.0.32.20010721113850.00eb7d68@medicine.nodak.edu>

Rachel Loden suggests that poetical and mathematical inspiration
are probably not cordoned off from each other in the brain (as in
Andrew Wiles' experience in rescuing the proof of Fermat's Last
Theorem). A more (in)famous example of this is the self-told
experience of the 19th-century chemist Kekule, who supposedly had
a daydream about the worm Ourobo(u)ros that mythically encircles 
the world, devouring its own tail. He than had a Wiles-like flash 
of insight, that the image could explain the structure of benzene 
(C6H12), in which the mathematics of the bonds between atoms made 
sense if benzene formed a ring, while trying to depict the compound 
as a linear molecule could not work. I would prefer to believe (as 
an epidemiologist studying the uses and effects of alcohol) that
Kekule's dream (like the inspirations of *many* poets) was aided 
to some extent by the effects of alcohol (and possibly other 
substances), but I've been unable to find any strong historical 
evidence for that in Kekule's case. 

Richard W. Wilsnack
Department of Neuroscience
University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences
Grand Forks, ND  58202-9037
rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu


From schro047 at tc.umn.edu  Sat Jul 21 15:17:36 2001
From: schro047 at tc.umn.edu (Steve Schroer)
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2001 14:17:36 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] James Tate Again
References: <200107211534.f6LFY2a30533@wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Message-ID: <3B59D550.C62EBD41@tc.umn.edu>

> Does it follow that because Tate failed to double check a reference that he
> "must have" been confident in his error, that he does not care about
> language and therefore cannot write poetry? Are we to condemn his entire
> body of work based on this one error?

Sure, why not?

There are so many poets out there -- I admit that I look for reasons NOT to read some of them.

Steve Schroer



From rloden at concentric.net  Sun Jul 22 09:03:01 2001
From: rloden at concentric.net (Rachel Loden)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 06:03:01 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] mathematics & poetry
References: <3.0.32.20010721113850.00eb7d68@medicine.nodak.edu>
Message-ID: <3B5ACF05.A3AED77D@concentric.net>

Richard, great story. Am assuming Kekule turned out to be right about
the structure of benzene.

For anyone interested, there's more about Andrew Wiles and Fermat's Last
Theorem at the URL below. The BBC narrator calls it "the world's
greatest mathematical problem" but I think it's more like the world's
most famous unsolved mathematical problem. One of the lovelier aspects
of the story is that Wiles first encountered it as a ten year old and
had been trying to solve it ever since. 

My husband says that for years it was considered "the province of nut
cases."

PROF. ANDREW WILES: Perhaps I could best describe my experience of doing
mathematics in terms of entering a dark mansion. One goes into the first
room and it's dark, completely dark, one stumbles around bumping into
the furniture and then gradually you learn where each piece of furniture
is, and finally after six months or so you find the light switch, you
turn it on, suddenly it's all illuminated, you can see exactly where you
were. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/fermattran.shtml

Rachel

rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu wrote:
> 
> Rachel Loden suggests that poetical and mathematical inspiration
> are probably not cordoned off from each other in the brain (as in
> Andrew Wiles' experience in rescuing the proof of Fermat's Last
> Theorem). A more (in)famous example of this is the self-told
> experience of the 19th-century chemist Kekule, who supposedly had
> a daydream about the worm Ourobo(u)ros that mythically encircles
> the world, devouring its own tail. He than had a Wiles-like flash
> of insight, that the image could explain the structure of benzene
> (C6H12), in which the mathematics of the bonds between atoms made
> sense if benzene formed a ring, while trying to depict the compound
> as a linear molecule could not work. I would prefer to believe (as
> an epidemiologist studying the uses and effects of alcohol) that
> Kekule's dream (like the inspirations of *many* poets) was aided
> to some extent by the effects of alcohol (and possibly other
> substances), but I've been unable to find any strong historical
> evidence for that in Kekule's case.
> 
> Richard W. Wilsnack
> Department of Neuroscience
> University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences
> Grand Forks, ND  58202-9037
> rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry

-- 
Rachel Loden
http://www.thepomegranate.com/loden/hotel.html
email: rloden at concentric.net


From halvard at earthlink.net  Sun Jul 22 11:21:44 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 11:21:44 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Miroslav Holub, "What Else"
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEMEKODNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

What Else

What else to do
but with a stick
drive a small dog
out of yourself?

Scruff bristling with fright
he huddles against the wall,
crawls in the domestic zodiac,
limps,
bleeding from the muzzle.

He would eat out of your hand
but that's no use.

What else
is poetry
but killing that small dog
in yourself?

And all around the barking, barking,
the hysterical barking
of cats.

--Miroslav Holub (trans. David Young and Dana Habova)
   fr. *Vanishing Lung Syndrome*, 1990


Hal

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson



From Jandhodge at aol.com  Sun Jul 22 14:19:05 2001
From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 14:19:05 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Creativity and mistakes
Message-ID: <8f.d988a3b.288c7319@aol.com>

In a message dated 01-07-19 20:29:25 EDT, you write:

<< > Getting this sort of thing right won't make one a good poet, but 
 > getting it wrong is an almost infallible sign that one is a bad poet.
 > 
 > Steve Schroer
 
 I'd say that almost the exact opposite is true; pedants get
 trivialities right; creative people are mistake-prone.
 
                                                --Bob G. >>

Not always.  E.g.: Frost wrote: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep..."  
His pedantic editor E. C. Lathem presumed to "correct" his grammar by 
inserting a comma after "dark," thus in a single keystroke utterly
destroying the meaning, the music, and the rhythm of the line.

Then again, maybe it's fashionable (and easier) to excuse carelessness
or incompetence as "creativity"?  

Jan


From halvard at earthlink.net  Sun Jul 22 15:00:52 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 15:00:52 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Creativity and mistakes
In-Reply-To: <8f.d988a3b.288c7319@aol.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEEELHDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

> Then again, maybe it's fashionable (and easier) to excuse carelessness
> or incompetence as "creativity"?  
> 
> Jan

Or maybe it's easier to correct our mistakes 
than to listen to them.

Hal     "He displaced the air around him
           in an unusual way."
                         --Nicholas Shakespeare, 
                            on John Malkovich
Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson



From halvard at earthlink.net  Sun Jul 22 15:29:36 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 15:29:36 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Have another Holub
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEIELIDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

Here's the title poem from *Vanishing Lung Syndrome*
(trans. David Young & Dana Habova)


Vanishing Lung Syndrome

Once in a while somebody fights for breath.
He stops, getting everybody's way.
The crowd flows around, muttering
about the flow of crowds,
but he just fights for breath.

Inside there may be growing
a sea monster within a sea monster,
a black, talking bird,
a raven Nevermore that
can't find a bust of Athena
to perch on and so just grows
like a bulbous emphysema with cyst development,
fibrous masses and lung hypertension.

Inside there may be growing
a huge muteness of fairy tales,
the wood-block baby that gobbles up everything,
father, mother, flock of sheep,
dead-end road among fields,
screeching wagon and horse,
I've eaten them all and now I'll eat you,
while scintigraphy shows
a disappearance of perfusion, and angiography
shows remnants of arterial branches
without the capillary phase.

Inside there may be growing
an abandoned room,
bare walls, pale squares where pictures hung,
a disconnected phone,
feathers settling on the floor
the encyclopaedists have moved out and
Dostoevsky never found the place,

lost in the landscape
where only surgeons
write poems.

--Miroslav Holub


Hal

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson



From halvard at earthlink.net  Sun Jul 22 15:43:59 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 15:43:59 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Have another Holub 2
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEEELKDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

Oh, all right! Just one more for today, though.

Animal Rights

Pity for dogs
	that cry
(boundless pity).
Pity for mice
	that squirm.

Pity for earthworms
	that wither helplessly
(limited pity).
(Pity for protozoons
	that sway their cilia
	so desperately.
Pity for cells
	that crawl away
	for life).

Pity for the central nervous system,
	microglia excepted.

Patients
with progressive amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
can just fuck off. They shouldn't have been born.
Hieronymus Bosch be with them
for ever and ever amen.

--Miroslav Holub (trans. David Young and Dana Habova)


Hal

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson



From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu  Sun Jul 22 15:59:43 2001
From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 15:59:43 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
Message-ID: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE151@ness.agnesscott.edu>

Eons ago (in internet time), JackKerouac25 wrote:

Most of my students believe that, and I quote, "poetry is anything I say it
is."  I've also heard, and I love this one, that "poetry is the expression
of one's true soul."  I always ask, "Where does that leave the false soul?"
___________________

Come to think about it, I have never had anyone try to explain in plain
language what a poem is supposed to be. Since it doesn't seem to have a
specific definition, frothy ideas about the definition of poetry probably
ought to be expected. While some things can be easily excluded from the
realm of poetry (bills, editorial columns, and essays squeezed out of tired
students), others (prose poems, for example) straddle lines. Poetry isn't
the potential any- and everything any random person decides it is, but it
apparently can be a helluva lot, or, at least, a helluva lot is pretending
to be poetry. For me, it seems like 'poem' is a catch-all word that includes
as its definition 'things that fall somewhat short of prose, but we file
them under this word because we don't have another name for them.' 'Poem'
seems stuck in a cloud of vague meaning. This really doesn't bother me;
rather, it seems an invitation for poets to make their own limits (wide or
narrow) and see if anyone else will come along for the ride. If this doesn't
make any sense, by all means, skewer it.

-Amber

-Amber


From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com  Sun Jul 22 16:10:27 2001
From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 13:10:27 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Creativity and mistakes
Message-ID: <20010722201027.A60923ECC@sitemail.everyone.net>

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From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Jul 22 16:58:14 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 16:58:14 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Creativity and mistakes
References: <8f.d988a3b.288c7319@aol.com>
Message-ID: <3B5B3E65.3191@nut-n-but.net>

Gee, for a moment, I thought you were going to agree with me, 
for a change, Jan.

>  I'd say that almost the exact opposite is true; pedants get
>  trivialities right; creative people are mistake-prone.
> 
>                                                 --Bob G. >>
> 
> Not always.  E.g.: Frost wrote: "The woods are lovely, dark and 
> deep..."  His pedantic editor E. C. Lathem presumed to "correct" 
> his grammar by inserting a comma after "dark," thus in a single 
> keystroke utterly destroying the meaning, the music, and the 
> rhythm of the line.

I don't know about "utterly destroying," though I'd prefer "lovely,
dark and deep," myself.  At the time of the correction, though,
I'm pretty sure "correct grammar" would require the comma, so 
Lathem was correct, Frost careless.  Steve Schroer would keep
reading him only because Lathem had stepped in.

> Then again, maybe it's fashionable (and easier) to excuse 
> carelessness or incompetence as "creativity"?

All I've ever been saying is that creative people are more
likely to make mistakes than pedants are, not that pedants
don't ever make mistakes, or that creative people can't do
anything but make mistakes, or that mistakes are good, or that
you can't make too many of them.  I do excuse trivial mistakes
on the grounds that everyone makes them, and who cares.  Actually,
I excuse major mistakes, too, if--as is quite possible--the person
making them has other virtues--can make a non-trivial mistake in his
math but still come up with a theory of special relativity, for
instance.

While in this thread, let me thank Rachel for the Andrew Wiles
stuff.  What a wonderful, heart-warming story.  Unless it turns
out that he got his punctuation wrong.

                                                  --Bob G.

 
> Jan
> _______________________________________________
> 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 Jul 22 17:03:04 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 17:03:04 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Have another Holub 2
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEEELKDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <3B5B3F88.4270@nut-n-but.net>

Hey, this Holub guy is really fun!  Thanks for the (for me)
introduction to his . . . interesting slant on things, Halvard.

                                          --Bob G.



From JforJames at aol.com  Mon Jul 23 10:44:52 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:44:52 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
Message-ID: <128.1d31de8.288d9264@aol.com>

In a message dated 7/22/01 3:57:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes:

> st of my students believe that, and I quote, "poetry is anything I say it
>  is."  I've also heard, and I love this one, that "poetry is the expression
>  of one's true soul."  I always ask, "Where does that leave the false soul?"
>  ___________________
>  
>  Come to think about it, I have never had anyone try to explain in plain
>  language what a poem is supposed to be. Since it doesn't seem to have a
>  specific definition, frothy ideas about the definition of poetry probably
>  ought to be expected. While some things can be easily excluded from the
>  realm of poetry (bills, editorial columns, and essays squeezed out of tired
>  students), others (prose poems, for example) straddle lines. Poetry isn't
>  the potential any- and everything any random person decides it is, but it
>  apparently can be a helluva lot, or, at least, a helluva lot is pretending
>  to be poetry. For me, it seems like 'poem' is a catch-all word that 
includes
>  as its definition 'things that fall somewhat short of prose, but we file
>  them under this word because we don't have another name for them.' 'Poem'
>  seems stuck in a cloud of vague meaning. This really doesn't bother me;
>  rather, it seems an invitation for poets to make their own limits (wide or
>  narrow) and see if anyone else will come along for the ride. If this 
doesn't
>  make any sense, by all means, skewer it.
>  
Borges said something like to define poetry is to oversimplify it. And
there's a lot of truth in that...tho a critical mind will always enjoy
the conundrum of the attempt to define (confine) the ineffable.
I'd silently responded to Jeff's quote attributed to certain 
students, "poetry is anything I say it is," with the response:
Yes, anything one says is poetry, is poetry...it's just takes
an innate gift or an immense artistic effort to be able to say so
and make it true. Blessed are those poets born to the former 
or who have lived the latter.
Finnegan 
PS: That Borges paraphrase regarding the definition of poetry 
can be turned into a gentle retort to the second statement: 
"To know one's soul is to oversimplify it."

FYI: There is a 4 CD set of Borges' Charles Eliot
Norton Lectures entitled The Craft of Verse (Harvard
U. Press).


From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 23 11:21:16 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:21:16 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] mathematics & poetry
Message-ID: <F32AQV6uPDVniSnRMWu000048cd@hotmail.com>

Rachel, thank you for a wonderful story.  It reminded me of the anecdote 
about the chemist who was worrying a problem to death, and who then went to 
sleep and dreamed about two interlocking snakes with tails in their mouths, 
and on waking realized he now knew the essential nature of (I think) 
benzedrine.

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

Wise Wretch! with Pleasures too refin'd to please;
With too much Spirit to be e'er at ease;
With too much Quickness ever to be taught;
With too much Thinking to have common Thought:
You purchase Pain with all that Joy can give,
And die of nothing but a Rage to live.
-- Alexander Pope


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 23 11:22:06 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 07:22:06 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] mathematics & poetry
Message-ID: <F40t0OUIHNkjgJKVApw00002f18@hotmail.com>

How did I get benzedrine instead of benzene?

Ah, well.

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

Wise Wretch! with Pleasures too refin'd to please;
With too much Spirit to be e'er at ease;
With too much Quickness ever to be taught;
With too much Thinking to have common Thought:
You purchase Pain with all that Joy can give,
And die of nothing but a Rage to live.
-- Alexander Pope


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From kellogg at duke.edu  Mon Jul 23 12:59:12 2001
From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 12:59:12 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] organic chemistry & poetry
References: <3.0.32.20010721113850.00eb7d68@medicine.nodak.edu>
Message-ID: <3B5C57E0.BA6507F@duke.edu>

rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu wrote:

> Rachel Loden suggests that poetical and mathematical inspiration
> are probably not cordoned off from each other in the brain (as in
> Andrew Wiles' experience in rescuing the proof of Fermat's Last
> Theorem). A more (in)famous example of this is the self-told
> experience of the 19th-century chemist Kekule, who supposedly had
> a daydream about the worm Ourobo(u)ros that mythically encircles
> the world, devouring its own tail. He than had a Wiles-like flash
> of insight, that the image could explain the structure of benzene
> (C6H12), in which the mathematics of the bonds between atoms made
> sense if benzene formed a ring, while trying to depict the compound
> as a linear molecule could not work. I would prefer to believe (as
> an epidemiologist studying the uses and effects of alcohol) that
> Kekule's dream (like the inspirations of *many* poets) was aided
> to some extent by the effects of alcohol (and possibly other
> substances), but I've been unable to find any strong historical
> evidence for that in Kekule's case.

It's actually two dreams, and not daydreams but sleeping ones.
Kekule's reminiscence is reprinted in _Eyewitness to Science_, ed. John
Carey, Harvard University Press, pp. 137-8.  This is from the second
memory:

"I turned my chair to the fire and dozed.  Again the atoms were
gamboling before my eyes.  This time the smaller groups kept modestly
in the background.  My mental eye, rendered more acute by repeated
visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of
manifold conformation: long rows, sometimes more closely fitted
together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion.  But look!
What was that?  One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and
the form whirled mockingly before my eyes.  As if by a flash of
lightning I awoke; and this time also I spent the rest of the night in
working out the consequences of the hypothesis."

In Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon devotes a great deal of energy to
Kekule's dream and its consequences (the German dye industry, made
possible by the advent of orgo, leading eventually to the V2 and the
"screaming comes across the sky").

David Kellogg
Assistant Director, University Writing Program
Duke University
(919) 660-4357; FAX (919) 660-4372
http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg




From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 23 12:37:08 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 09:37:08 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] mathematics & poetry
In-Reply-To: <F32AQV6uPDVniSnRMWu000048cd@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <20010723163708.74260.qmail@web12108.mail.yahoo.com>

--- Moira Russell <moira_russell at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Rachel, thank you for a wonderful story.  It reminded me of the
> anecdote 
> about the chemist who was worrying a problem to death, and who then
> went to 
> sleep and dreamed about two interlocking snakes with tails in their
> mouths, 
> and on waking realized he now knew the essential nature of (I think) 
> benzedrine.
>

Makes me wonder if anyone has, intentionally or unintentionally,
written a poem in which all the images (such as "two interlocking
snakes with tails in their mouths") were representations of the
chemical make-ups of various drugs.  Certainly is a challenge.

- Jim

=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Mon Jul 23 13:02:08 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:02:08 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] James Tate Again
Message-ID: <11c.2023a9a.288db290@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/20/2001 11:57:18 AM Central Daylight Time, 
schro047 at tc.umn.edu writes:


> That Balboa rather than Cortez was the first European to see the Pacific 
> from the Andes is what you might call a fact of history.
> Literature has always been riddled with this sort of error; damage does not 
> necessarily result.
> 

I've always wondered what difference this made.  I was impressed the first 
time I saw the Pacific, even though I knew from hearsay that it was there.  
It's not even stated that the "watcher of the skies" has discovered the new 
planet.  The whole point of the poem is that Homer was there, others knew of 
his greatness, and Keats had just discovered the fact for himself.
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Mon Jul 23 13:28:53 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 13:28:53 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poet Lariat
Message-ID: <99.180eca33.288db8d5@cs.com>

I will be serving as "poet lariat" at www.ablemuse.com for the next couple of 
weeks.  Drop in, register, and join the forums.
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From JforJames at aol.com  Mon Jul 23 15:08:26 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:08:26 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] The Public Life of American Poetry
Message-ID: <9d.18a070bd.288dd02a@aol.com>

Call for papers

 Submissions are sought for a collection of essays on the public uses and
 effects of modern American poetry. The aim of the book, The Public Life of
 American Poetry, is to provide a history of public poetry in America from
the
 mid-nineteenth century through the contemporary period and to explore the
 cultural contexts and politics of that poetry and its performances. Essays
on
 poets and poems that mobilize a mass audience and/or seek to intervene in
 public political discourses are welcome. We intend the book to be accessible
 to a wide audience, and encourage submissions of essays that, even if
 theoretical in nature, are written in a way that is open to general readers.

 Possible subjects include: defining "public" poetries; newspaper and
magazine
 poetry; bookstore poetry readings; poetry slams; web-based poetry; subway
 poetry; labor/protest poetry; inaugural poetry; Poet Laureates; Robert
 Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project; MTV/PBS/NPR poetry broadcasts; war/protest
 poetry; cowboy poetry; rap poetry; etc. Possible poets include, but are not
 limited to Walt Whitman, James Whitcomb Riley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Vachel
 Lindsay, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Robert Frost, Harlem Renaissance poets,
the
 Beats, Black Arts Movement poets, and contemporary spoken word poets.

 Contributions should be 15-20 pages in length and follow MLA style. The
 deadline is December 3, 2001; early submission is encouraged. Send
 manuscripts either by mail or by e-mail as an attached file to:


 Tyler Hoffman
 Rutgers University
 Armitage Hall
 Camden, NJ 08102
 TBHLHH at crab.rutgers.edu


 or Susan Gilmore
 19 Auburn Rd.
 West Hartford, CT 06119
 gilmores at mail.ccsu.edu


From JforJames at aol.com  Mon Jul 23 15:35:06 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:35:06 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Sugar Mule
Message-ID: <59.d74b1ca.288dd66a@aol.com>

Date:    Sun, 22 Jul 2001 21:23:51 +0100
From:    M L Weber <mlweber at HOTMAIL.COM>
Subject: Sugar Mule, a literary magazine -- Call for manuscripts

Sugar Mule

www.sugarmule.com


    is looking for new work -- esp. prose (any genre) --
    for its 10th issue--

you will need to meet the theme of the phrase: "on the road"


    Deadline for submissions is Feb. 15, 2002.

We also welcome any comments you might have.

thank you,

Marc L. Weber
ed.


From gmcvay at patriot.net  Mon Jul 23 21:17:49 2001
From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 21:17:49 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] mathematics & poetry
References: <F40t0OUIHNkjgJKVApw00002f18@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <3B5CCCBB.332342B9@patriot.net>

Moira,

>>>How did I get benzedrine instead of benzene?<<<

Easy: you must have been reading William S. Burroughs. 

Best, Gwyn


From JforJames at aol.com  Tue Jul 24 09:38:58 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 09:38:58 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] speaking of Stravinsky
Message-ID: <116.2173f56.288ed472@aol.com>

At a reading recently Mark Doty read from his memoir 
_Firebird_. I recall that one section he read
was about a grade school teacher who encouraged
creativity in her classroom. He traced his own artistic
awakening to a wild, interpretive dance he performed 
(improvised) in front of the class to 
Stravinsky's The Firebird. He told it marvelously....
much better than this.
Finnegan


From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Tue Jul 24 10:02:29 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 10:02:29 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
Message-ID: <4f.ea510f6.288ed9f5@aol.com>

In a message dated Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:46:18 AM Eastern Daylight Time, JforJames at aol.com writes:

> In a message dated 7/22/01 3:57:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
> aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes:
> 
> > st of my students believe that, and I quote, "poetry is anything I say it
> >  is."  I've also heard, and I love this one, that "poetry is the expression
> >  of one's true soul."  I always ask, "Where does that leave the false soul?"
> >  ___________________
> >  
> >  Come to think about it, I have never had anyone try to explain in plain
> >  language what a poem is supposed to be. Since it doesn't seem to have a
> >  specific definition, frothy ideas about the definition of poetry probably
> >  ought to be expected. While some things can be easily excluded from the
> >  realm of poetry (bills, editorial columns, and essays squeezed out of tired
> >  students), others (prose poems, for example) straddle lines. Poetry isn't
> >  the potential any- and everything any random person decides it is, but it
> >  apparently can be a helluva lot, or, at least, a helluva lot is pretending
> >  to be poetry. For me, it seems like 'poem' is a catch-all word that 
> includes
> >  as its definition 'things that fall somewhat short of prose, but we file
> >  them under this word because we don't have another name for them.' 'Poem'
> >  seems stuck in a cloud of vague meaning. This really doesn't bother me;
> >  rather, it seems an invitation for poets to make their own limits (wide or
> >  narrow) and see if anyone else will come along for the ride. If this 
> doesn't
> >  make any sense, by all means, skewer it.

Amber (& Interested Parties),

I don't know how to define poetry--that much I'll admit.  One of the writing assigments I used to give was a definition of poetry.  After going over Shelley's "Defense" and talking about Wordsworth's "spontaneous overflow" and Coleridge's "best words," I assigned my students to write their own definitions.  Two things stopped me from ever giving the assignment again:

1)  The sheer breadth of the assignment--some students, rightfully so I think, complained that the assignment was just too broad.  How could they define poetry, students complained, when they didn't even understand it?  I shook my head, considered what they said, and plodded on.

2)  The number of "Poetry is what I say it is" and "Poetry is the expression of one's true soul" assignments that I received--well over 90% of my students wrote that poetry was anything and everything, from what they read in a student handbook to Shakespeare.  Others were convinced that poetry is this elusive "expression of one's true soul," a sentence I read a thousand times but never understood.  When I explained that many poets make things up, that not all poets write in the confessional mode, students jeered me.  It seems the cult of feelings had hijacked my students, and they believed that all poetry was autobiographical.

So, what is poetry?  I don't know.  I guess it might be like jazz--who was it who said "I know it when I see it."  Hmmm...that's rather like our congressional government's definition of pornography, too, I think.  Well--this post doesn't make much sense, so I'll move on.

Jim wrote:

> Borges said something like to define poetry is to oversimplify it. And
> there's a lot of truth in that...tho a critical mind will always enjoy
> the conundrum of the attempt to define (confine) the ineffable.
> I'd silently responded to Jeff's quote attributed to certain 
> students, "poetry is anything I say it is," with the response:
> Yes, anything one says is poetry, is poetry...it's just takes
> an innate gift or an immense artistic effort to be able to say so
> and make it true. Blessed are those poets born to the former 
> or who have lived the latter.
> Finnegan 
> PS: That Borges paraphrase regarding the definition of poetry 
> can be turned into a gentle retort to the second statement: 
> "To know one's soul is to oversimplify it."

I'd quite agree.  I'll use that one in class, Jim.  Thanks.


Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English and Foreign Languages
University of West Florida

"Still trying to find my false soul"


From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Tue Jul 24 10:18:47 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 10:18:47 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] A Reader's Manifesto
Message-ID: <6e.d5c462d.288eddc7@aol.com>

I'm wondering if anyone read the "Reader's Manifesto" in the lastest _Atlantic Monthly_.  

It was an interesting argument against fashionable literary prose, and the author (his name escapes me) takes to task several well known writers whose work is almost universally praised by critics, and (as the author suggests--I've no idea if this is true) widely hated by the general reading public.  He takes to task Proulx, especially, and summarily dismantles Delilo, whose _Underworld_ I found pretentious and unreadable. I do think the author was a little hard on Cormac McCarthey, but his critique of David Guterson made me sure that I _didn't_ want to read _Snow Falling on Cedars_.  (I did have the misfortnue of watching the banal movie version.)

Comments on the article?  Critiques?  Flames?

Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English and Foreign Languages
University of West Florida

"It's all in the timing this sort of rhyming."
                                 --R.S. Gwynn


From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 24 10:24:45 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 09:24:45 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] urgent request [re: Poetryetc]
Message-ID: <F2706Ci6nx8dyDd3OJX00005d39@hotmail.com>

The below message was sent this morning to Candice Ward, "moderator" of 
Poetryetc listserv. I am sharing it with this list because I feel the 
situation is very disturbing, and one that has broader implications for the 
poetry community.

For a review of the discussion at Poetryetc and the censorious and libelous 
actions taken by the moderators there, go to the Jiscmail homepage and 
follow the aphabetical links to the Poetryetc July archives.

In the near future, an article will be written on the matter.

Kent

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

Candice,

I had asked you to post to the list the "backchannel emails" you claimed, in 
front channel post (titled "Re: KJ unsubscribed", 7/23), that I'd written to 
a "fellow member" of Poetryetc. In that post you made reference to 
"information" about me that you had received from a "victimized" person. As 
I understood your message to the list, you suddenly decided to change my 
status from "Under Review" to "Expelled" after getting this "confidential" 
information. Am I right that this is your justification for my expulsion 
from the list? If this is the reason, and if this "information" does exist, 
why did you not check with me on its veracity, context, whatever, before 
taking your action?

Since it appears you will not honor my request to publicly provide evidence 
for the ugly public slander you have made, I am writing to ask that you 
backchannel that information to me at once, with copies of the "emails" in 
question. It is not necessary, of course, to reveal who the person is that 
received them, if such a person exists. I would need the text of the message 
with the complete date/time headings, please.

If I don't hear from you within the next 48 hours, I will pursue legal 
action against you and related parties. Your crass censorship as "moderator" 
of Poetryetc is sad enough, but to seek to justify it through calumny and 
defamation is injurious to me and, in fact, to the community of poetry at 
large.

Sincerely,

Kent Johnson

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 24 10:30:03 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 07:30:03 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] A Reader's Manifesto
In-Reply-To: <6e.d5c462d.288eddc7@aol.com>
Message-ID: <20010724143003.33963.qmail@web12102.mail.yahoo.com>

--- JackKerouac25 at aol.com wrote:
> I'm wondering if anyone read the "Reader's Manifesto" in the lastest
> _Atlantic Monthly_.  
> 
> It was an interesting argument against fashionable literary prose,
> and the author (his name escapes me) takes to task several well known
> writers whose work is almost universally praised by critics, and (as
> the author suggests--I've no idea if this is true) widely hated by
> the general reading public.  He takes to task Proulx, especially, and
> summarily dismantles Delilo, whose _Underworld_ I found pretentious
> and unreadable. I do think the author was a little hard on Cormac
> McCarthey, but his critique of David Guterson made me sure that I
> _didn't_ want to read _Snow Falling on Cedars_.  (I did have the
> misfortnue of watching the banal movie version.)
> 
> Comments on the article?  Critiques?  Flames?

It's all part of a national conspiracy to turn our brains to oatmeal
before the climate does.  Kind of like the tranquilizer administered
before a lethal injection.

- Morosely yours, Jim


=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/


From anastasios at hell.com  Tue Jul 24 10:32:18 2001
From: anastasios at hell.com (ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 10:32:18 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] A Reader's Manifesto
In-Reply-To: <6e.d5c462d.288eddc7@aol.com>
Message-ID: <5.0.0.25.2.20010724102313.00a8f940@mail.verizon.net>

His name is B.R. Myers, and he's received plenty of press lately. NPR had 
him on last week.

I agree with him re/ Proulx, but I think he was wrong about Rick Moody. His 
screed was reactionary, and he as a reader and consumer has a choice to 
read whatever it is he wants to read. He did not have to go on such an 
offensive. Granted there is much to be said and much  about banal, clever 
for the sake of being clever, market driven, big biz pub produced American 
"literature. But, IMO Myers has had enough press already.

--Ak


At 10:18 AM 7/24/01, you wrote:
>I'm wondering if anyone read the "Reader's Manifesto" in the lastest 
>_Atlantic Monthly_.
>
>It was an interesting argument against fashionable literary prose, and the 
>author (his name escapes me) takes to task several well known writers 
>whose work is almost universally praised by critics, and (as the author 
>suggests--I've no idea if this is true) widely hated by the general 
>reading public.  He takes to task Proulx, especially, and summarily 
>dismantles Delilo, whose _Underworld_ I found pretentious and unreadable. 
>I do think the author was a little hard on Cormac McCarthey, but his 
>critique of David Guterson made me sure that I _didn't_ want to read _Snow 
>Falling on Cedars_.  (I did have the misfortnue of watching the banal 
>movie version.)
>
>Comments on the article?  Critiques?  Flames?
>
>Jeff Newberry
>Adjunct Instructor
>Department of English and Foreign Languages
>University of West Florida
>
>"It's all in the timing this sort of rhyming."
>                                  --R.S. Gwynn
>_______________________________________________
>New-Poetry mailing list
>New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From anastasios at hell.com  Tue Jul 24 10:33:43 2001
From: anastasios at hell.com (ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 10:33:43 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] urgent request [re: Poetryetc]
In-Reply-To: <F2706Ci6nx8dyDd3OJX00005d39@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <5.0.0.25.2.20010724103320.00a5d010@mail.verizon.net>

Kent--

Why does another list have to deal with all of this?

--Ak

At 10:24 AM 7/24/01, you wrote:
>The below message was sent this morning to Candice Ward, "moderator" of 
>Poetryetc listserv. I am sharing it with this list because I feel the 
>situation is very disturbing, and one that has broader implications for 
>the poetry community.
>
>For a review of the discussion at Poetryetc and the censorious and 
>libelous actions taken by the moderators there, go to the Jiscmail 
>homepage and follow the aphabetical links to the Poetryetc July archives.
>
>In the near future, an article will be written on the matter.
>
>Kent
>
>------------
>
>Candice,
>
>I had asked you to post to the list the "backchannel emails" you claimed, 
>in front channel post (titled "Re: KJ unsubscribed", 7/23), that I'd 
>written to a "fellow member" of Poetryetc. In that post you made reference 
>to "information" about me that you had received from a "victimized" 
>person. As I understood your message to the list, you suddenly decided to 
>change my status from "Under Review" to "Expelled" after getting this 
>"confidential" information. Am I right that this is your justification for 
>my expulsion from the list? If this is the reason, and if this 
>"information" does exist, why did you not check with me on its veracity, 
>context, whatever, before taking your action?
>
>Since it appears you will not honor my request to publicly provide 
>evidence for the ugly public slander you have made, I am writing to ask 
>that you backchannel that information to me at once, with copies of the 
>"emails" in question. It is not necessary, of course, to reveal who the 
>person is that received them, if such a person exists. I would need the 
>text of the message with the complete date/time headings, please.
>
>If I don't hear from you within the next 48 hours, I will pursue legal 
>action against you and related parties. Your crass censorship as 
>"moderator" of Poetryetc is sad enough, but to seek to justify it through 
>calumny and defamation is injurious to me and, in fact, to the community 
>of poetry at large.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Kent Johnson
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
>
>_______________________________________________
>New-Poetry mailing list
>New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
>http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From mcward at nc.rr.com  Tue Jul 24 11:43:27 2001
From: mcward at nc.rr.com (Candice Ward)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:43:27 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Virus Alert
Message-ID: <B7830FDF.3DD4%mcward@nc.rr.com>

Watch out for one called VBS.Haptime.A, which seems to be afflicting
subscribers to poetry discussion lists in particular, if Poetryetc is
anything to go by. That list, of which I am a co-owner, has been operating
on announcement-only basis for the past twelve hours.

I am sorry to see Poetryetc's problems with a disgruntled former subscriber
spreading to this very nice new list and hope New-Poetry's owners will act
swiftly to safeguard their venue from manipulation and assimilation to an
unrelated agenda. 

Warm regards to all,

Candice Ward



From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 24 11:48:45 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 08:48:45 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Virus Alert
In-Reply-To: <B7830FDF.3DD4%mcward@nc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <20010724154845.95166.qmail@web12105.mail.yahoo.com>

--- Candice Ward <mcward at nc.rr.com> wrote:
> Watch out for one called VBS.Haptime.A, which seems to be afflicting
> subscribers to poetry discussion lists in particular, if Poetryetc is
> anything to go by. That list, of which I am a co-owner, has been
> operating
> on announcement-only basis for the past twelve hours.
> 
> I am sorry to see Poetryetc's problems with a disgruntled former
> subscriber
> spreading to this very nice new list and hope New-Poetry's owners
> will act
> swiftly to safeguard their venue from manipulation and assimilation
> to an
> unrelated agenda. 
> 
> Warm regards to all,
> 

A virus and the Borg at the same time!  Dang!

- Jim, off to get innoculated

=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/


From halvard at earthlink.net  Tue Jul 24 11:53:04 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:53:04 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] A Reader's Manifesto
In-Reply-To: <20010724143003.33963.qmail@web12102.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEMENMDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

I second Jim's notion. The guy's a jerk.

Hal                "He's the kind of guy who can brighten
                      a room by leaving it."
                                   --Milton Berle
Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson


> > I'm wondering if anyone read the "Reader's Manifesto" in the lastest
> > _Atlantic Monthly_.  
> > 
> > It was an interesting argument against fashionable literary prose,
> > and the author (his name escapes me) takes to task several well known
> > writers whose work is almost universally praised by critics, and (as
> > the author suggests--I've no idea if this is true) widely hated by
> > the general reading public.  He takes to task Proulx, especially, and
> > summarily dismantles Delilo, whose _Underworld_ I found pretentious
> > and unreadable. I do think the author was a little hard on Cormac
> > McCarthey, but his critique of David Guterson made me sure that I
> > _didn't_ want to read _Snow Falling on Cedars_.  (I did have the
> > misfortnue of watching the banal movie version.)
> > 
> > Comments on the article?  Critiques?  Flames?
> 
> It's all part of a national conspiracy to turn our brains to oatmeal
> before the climate does.  Kind of like the tranquilizer administered
> before a lethal injection.
> 
> - Morosely yours, Jim
> 
> 
> =====
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
> Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
> "Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
> Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
> http://phonecard.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 


From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 24 12:06:58 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:06:58 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Virus Alert
Message-ID: <F208aGltFBNlJbSorxT00005f90@hotmail.com>

Candice Ward said,

"I...hope New-Poetry's owners will act swiftly to safeguard their venue from 
manipulation..."

Priceless.

Kent

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From TerryP17 at aol.com  Tue Jul 24 12:31:33 2001
From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:31:33 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Virus Alert
Message-ID: <29.180d91ec.288efce5@aol.com>

Resistance is futile!

TLP


From ibid1 at earthlink.net  Tue Jul 24 15:35:25 2001
From: ibid1 at earthlink.net (David Hickman)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:35:25 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] Virus Alert
In-Reply-To: <B7830FDF.3DD4%mcward@nc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <B7831C0D.466D%ibid1@earthlink.net>

I would appreciate it if list managers from another venue would not
contribute to re-establishing and/or rehashing with Kent Johnson the trouble
they had with him on another list. You, more than most,
already know what this will lead to, and  you will be as responsible for it
as he is. 

David Hickman


on 7/24/01 8:43 AM, Candice Ward at mcward at nc.rr.com wrote:

> Watch out for one called VBS.Haptime.A, which seems to be afflicting
> subscribers to poetry discussion lists in particular, if Poetryetc is
> anything to go by. That list, of which I am a co-owner, has been operating
> on announcement-only basis for the past twelve hours.
> 
> I am sorry to see Poetryetc's problems with a disgruntled former subscriber
> spreading to this very nice new list and hope New-Poetry's owners will act
> swiftly to safeguard their venue from manipulation and assimilation to an
> unrelated agenda.
> 
> Warm regards to all,
> 
> Candice Ward
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 24 13:15:29 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 12:15:29 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Virus Alert/slander
Message-ID: <F84Wwr2UAaTzvb5YI9I00006048@hotmail.com>

Some of you may wish to check out Candice Ward's latest message to 
Poetryetc. She is now strongly hinting that I am sending email viruses to 
members of poetry listservs. This is the same person who has justified 
removing me from the list because she had "received information" that I was 
"victimizing" another Poetryetc member. To date, despite my front and 
backchannel requests that she publicly or privately provide evidence of 
this, she has not done so.

Anastasios, you asked why the Poetryetc issue is a matter of concern to the 
New-poetry list and others in the poetry world? Watch, as this campaign of 
defamation and plotted paranoia coming from Poetryetc unfolds before your 
eyes. And then tell me it's not something that should be condemned.

Kent

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From groggydays at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 24 13:28:53 2001
From: groggydays at hotmail.com (David Bircumshaw)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:28:53 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Virus Alert/slander
References: <F84Wwr2UAaTzvb5YI9I00006048@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <OE693sl3xbYiMCIqtQv000029c4@hotmail.com>

Heavens, Kent, talk about the s--t h-tting the fan.

My observation was, and this is truly unbiased, that Candice was sending out
an alert about the virus for the sake of doing so. I had an attempted visit
from it myself this morning, it replicates on Address Book recipients, and
the sender was understandably and innocently abashed.

Whatever the pros and cons of what's happened in another list of late, I
don't think a virus alert is culpable.

All the Best

Dave


----- Original Message -----
From: "kent johnson" <kljohnson45 at hotmail.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Cc: <mcward at nc.rr.com>; <masthead at onthe.net.au>
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 6:15 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Virus Alert/slander


> Some of you may wish to check out Candice Ward's latest message to
> Poetryetc. She is now strongly hinting that I am sending email viruses to
> members of poetry listservs. This is the same person who has justified
> removing me from the list because she had "received information" that I
was
> "victimizing" another Poetryetc member. To date, despite my front and
> backchannel requests that she publicly or privately provide evidence of
> this, she has not done so.
>
> Anastasios, you asked why the Poetryetc issue is a matter of concern to
the
> New-poetry list and others in the poetry world? Watch, as this campaign of
> defamation and plotted paranoia coming from Poetryetc unfolds before your
> eyes. And then tell me it's not something that should be condemned.
>
> Kent
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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  Tue Jul 24 14:16:57 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:16:57 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] 10 Books that Made Poetry New
Message-ID: <5b.1920cc19.288f159d@aol.com>

http://www.poetrysociety.org/journal/index.html
PSA's Crossroads online journal, Autumn 2000,
had a couple of pieces on politics & poetry, and 
also the editors solicited these (below) lists of 
10 books that changed 20th C. poetry...   

MAKE IT NEW

Preface

This fall, Crossroads invited seven literary editors and critics to reconsider the 20th century in terms of the books of poetry that constituted a structural, ideological, metaphysical, linguistic, or even a typographical innovation in the genre&#8212;books that not only contributed a momentary "blast," as Wyndham Lewis would call it, but which have had an enduring effect on the way in which poetry continues to be written and received.1 Though the survey's primary focus was English- language poetry, participants were encouraged to include innovative foreign-language translations. They were also asked to consider ground-breaking 20th century editions of texts from previous centuries, as well as ground-breaking anthologies. The result is a series of inventories as fascinating for their idiosyncrasies as for their overlaps. Of equal interest are the explanations that the participants have appended to their lists. The statements attest to the herculean nature of the labor at hand and to the challenge that faces 
anyone who must consider what is connoted by "the New." 


Marjorie Perloff 2
PROFESSOR, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

  
 
  1. Rainer Maria Rilke, New Poems (1908)
  2. Blaise Cendrars, The Prose of the Trans-siberian (1913)
  3. Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons (1914)
  4. Vladimir Mayakovsky, The Cloud in Trousers (1915)
  5. T. S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
  6. W. B. Yeats, The Tower (1928)
  7. Ezra Pound, A Draft of XXX Cantos (1930)
  8. Aim? C?saire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (1947)
  9. Anna Akhmatova, Requiem (1947, published 1963)
10. Paul Celan, Poppy and Memory (1952) or Breathturn (1967)  
 
  


 
First, a word about choices of volumes by the poets above: I almost chose Rilke's Duino Elegies, but Neue Gedichte contains such classics as "Torso of Apollo" and "The Panther" &#8212;classics that just couldn't NOT be on a top ten list. I chose Prufrock rather than The Waste Land because I believe Eliot had already hit on his great poetic mode by the time Prufrock was published. I chose A Draft of XXX Cantos by Pound because only in his Cantos did Pound do something that changed the course of poetry forever. I chose The Tower as Yeats' most fully realized collection of poems. And I chose Akhmatova's Requiem because it was a political milestone as well as a great work&#8212;her poem contra Stalinism&#8212;and hence deserves a place. I might have made other choices within the C?saire or Celan corpus but those are my favorites. As for Tender Buttons, I am aware that many of my fellow critics dismiss this book as "not poetry" but I think it qualifies on every poetic ground: intensity, verbal complexity, formal 
brilliance, thematic richness. 

But I am not sure my second string is not equally good. 

1. William Carlos Williams, Spring and All (1923)
Indeed, I agonized about not having Williams on the list but if I judge by impact and influence as well as "greatness," I opted for Yeats instead. True, Yeats looks back to the nineteenth century&#8212;it's hard to believe that the "Byzantium" poems and "The Second Coming" are written much later than Eliot's or Pound's early works&#8212;but the fact remains that these poems are among the great poems of the century. 

2. Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923)
Certainly one of the great books of the century, but not as influential as the others. 

3. Velimir Khlebnikov
I take Khlebnikov to be the great Russian poet of the period, but there isn't one volume that's seminal and so he is not on my top ten list. 

4. Guillaume Apollinaire, Calligrammes (1918)
A central volume of twentieth-century inventions, especially in the verbal-visual realm, but Cendrars is even more important, I feel, and the two are similar. So I chose Cendrars. 

5. W. H. Auden, The Sea and the Mirror (1944) 

And a list without Georg Trakl, Bertold Brecht, without Montale and Vallejo and Pessoa? And without the avant-gardists Kurt Schwitters, Tristan Tzara or Max Jacob? It's unfortunate, but ten items is very little. 

On principle, I have chosen to omit poets who have come of age in the second half of century&#8212;so there is no Ginsberg, no Ashbery, etcetera&#8212;because it is difficult to judge the present and because, when I thought about it, it struck me that no contemporary poet has quite the ambition, range and influence of the poets of the early century. 


Grace Schulman 3
POETRY EDITOR, THE NATION

  
 
  1. Marianne Moore, Selected Poems (1935)
  2. Ezra Pound, The Cantos (1948)
  3. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems (1922)
  4. Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson (1955)
  5. W. B. Yeats, In the Seven Woods (1903)
  6. Pablo Neruda, Residence on Earth, translated by Donald Walsh (1973)
  7. C. P. Cavafy, Selected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (1972)
  8. Paul Celan, Poems of Paul Celan, translated by Michael Hamburger (1988)
  9. The New Poetry, edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson (1918)
10. The Poem of the Cid, translated by W.S. Merwin (1959)
 
 
  


 
1. Marianne Moore, Selected Poems
Of the many reasons why Moore's Selected Poems is ground-breaking, I'll offer two. (1) She was the first of her major contemporaries to write (in 1922) of urban people behaving mechanically for want of insight. This theme was to become dominant in the literature and painting of the period. In "People's Surroundings," which appeared first in The Dial (June 1922), she writes of the city as "the vast indestructible necropolis/ of composite Yawman-Erbe separable units . . ." preceding Eliot's "unreal city" of The Waste Land (1922) and Williams' "automatons" of Paterson (1946). (2) The sequence, "Part of a Poem, Part of a Novel, Part of a Play" (later revised and split into three poems), is ground-breaking in that its length is sustained by musical effects, by rhyme and image patterns, rather than by a closed form. Here the rhythm and the sensibility are new. Even Eliot, notably adherent to tradition in poetry, wrote in his introduction to this volume, "Miss Moore has no immediate poetic derivations. I cannot, th
erefore, fill up my pages with the usual account of influences and development." Your question does not ask about the books' greatness, and I will say only that it contains "Poetry," "A Grave," "The Fish," "No Swan So Fine," "Critics and Connoisseurs" and "Roses Only." 

2. Ezra Pound, The Cantos
"The epic of the farings of a literary mind," Moore called The Cantos, and added, "The ghost of Homer sings." Begun in 1904 and representing the work of a lifetime, The Cantos is the most ambitious poetic sequence of the 20th century. The multiple hero, or "periplum," the poet merging with heroes of the past, speaks to us of our civilization as it is seen from the vantage point of many luminous eras. His brilliant use of metamorphosis, akin to Joyce's experiments in Ulysses, shows us reality as a process of perceptual change. And lest we forget: The title of this assignment, "Make it New," is one Ezra Pound translated from Confucius, and gave us as our most precious gift. 

3. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
A conventional choice, I'm afraid. But then, how can one live without it? Four Quartets is a better book, I feel, but The Waste Land may be the century's primary ground- breaker. Reasons: You've heard them all before&#8212;his absence of transitions, his handling of the simultaneity of occurrences over time, his theme of the present ironically placed in the shadow of past beauty, his vision of a doomed civilization and language. OK, OK. I hear the reader yawning. But it's true. 

4. The New Poetry, edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson
Both editors of Poetry in 1917, they included here poetry published outside the magazine as well, but nothing before 1900. Among the poets are H.D., Eliot, Frost, Hardy, Pound, Stevens, Williams and also the likes of Charles Erskine Scott Wood. My reason for choosing this is symbolic in that women broke new ground as editors in the 20th century: Moore, Monroe, Margaret Anderson, Dorothy Norman and Margaret Marshall, among other women editors, brought together some of the century's best writers and advocated contemporary speech over poetic diction. 

5. W. B. Yeats, In the Seven Woods
This may be the century's first book in English to emphasize direct, natural speech in poetry, in contrast to the flaccidity of the Aesthetes and the Georgians. In "Adam's Curse," Yeats writes: "A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been naught." Brand-new for its time. 

6. Pablo Neruda, Residence on Earth
Neruda is the innovator, but here, as with Cavafy and Celan, I like the translation, as well. Neruda dwells on all his mind can entertain and he lifts it into poetry. He transmutes wet onions, calling cards, rosebushes, political betrayals, "and so many things that I want to forget." "Alberto Rojas Jiminez Comes Flying" is my love. I add that because I cannot write about Neruda without love. 

7. C. P. Cavafy, Selected Poems
I choose this for Cavafy, but find the translation innovative as well. Cavafy's poetry broke ground in revealing faithfulness to his own experience, distaste for decoration for its own sake, and the use of demotic Greek combined with high style. He was one of the first modern poets to acknowledge his homosexuality, and he writes of sex without any moral tone. In his most famous poem, "The God Abandons Antony," he deftly combines the hero, the city, the god, the man. The Keeley and Sherrard translations are the first to capture Cavafy's urgent, colloquial tone. 

8. Paul Celan, Poems of Paul Celan
The ground-breaker here, of course, is Celan, whose poems occupy a unique place in 20th century literature. A survivor of German death camps, he wrote of horror in a way that celebrates energy and beauty while telling of destruction. "Death Fugue" is an example of how he makes art of what can barely be spoken; other poems are of light and air and hope: "The bright/ stones pass through the air, the brightly/ white, the light-/ bringers." Hamburger's translation is the most efficient I know. 

9. Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson
A ground-breaking edition. Johnson showed us the Dickinson we know. She had published only seven poems in her lifetime, and her posthumous editions were slim, their punctuation and wording, in some cases, altered. Johnson found 1775 poems, discovered their dates, and restored her own punctuation as well as her great lines. 

10. The Poem of the Cid, translated by W.S. Merwin
I must include this book because it changed my life. Before reading it, in the early 1960s, I did not appreciate how beautifully a translator could render a 12th century classic into contemporary English. I wish I could cite Merwin's new translation of Dante's Purgatorio here, but that will be first on my list for ground-breakers of the 21st century.


Daniel Halpern
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, THE ECCO PRESS

  
 
  1. T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
  2. Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923)
  3. William Butler Yeats, The Tower (1928)
  4. Delmore Schwartz, Summer Knowledge (1958)
  5. Robert Lowell, Life Studies (1959)
  6. John Berryman, 77 Dream Songs (1964)
  7. Elizabeth Bishop, Questions of Travel (1965)
  8. W.S. Merwin, The Lice (1967)
  9. C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (1975)
  10. Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Traveling in the Family, translated by Mark Strand, Thomas Colchie, Elizabeth Bishop and Gregory Rabassa (1998)
 
 
  


 
Picking ten "ground-breaking"&#8212;or, in my case, "personally significant"&#8212;books of poetry written over the past 100 years is like being asked to relocate with only ten lifelong possessions. What's left behind? Who's not on that list of them? However, as I've been given a little room, here's a list of what will be coming along anyway&#8212;under separate cover, as it were. 

Here comes Rafael Alberti's The Owl's Insomnia and John Ashbery's Rivers and Mountains. The Bridge or White Buildings by Hart Crane and North of Boston by Robert Frost, Zbigniew Herbert's Selected Poems and Czeslaw Milosz's Bells in Winter. Residence on Earth by Pablo Neruda, The Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke (I know he'll safely be on other lists), and either of James Wright's first two books. And I would add a favorite underdog, The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir by Richard Hugo, a now forgotten and very underrated volume of poems that moved me mightily when I first read the voicey opening lines of "Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg": 

 You might come here Sunday on whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
You had was years ago. You walk these streets
Laid out by the insane, past hotels
That didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try
Of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
Only churches are kept up. The jail
Turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
Is always in, not knowing what he's done.

The principal supporting business now
Is rage. Hatred of the various grays
The mountain sends, hatred of the mill,
The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls
Who leave each year for Butte. . . .4 


The last time I saw Hugo, he was eating out of a gallon container of vanilla ice cream in the tiny West Village studio apartment of an old girlfriend of mine, talking to James Wright about a bad review one or the other had recently received. 

Of course, the most idiosyncratic book on my list is Summer Knowledge by Delmore Schwartz, but I find him irresistible. For example, from "I Am to My Own Heart Merely a Serf": 

 I am to my own heart merely a serf
And follow humbly as it glides with autos
And come attentive when it is too sick,
In the bad cold of sorrow much too weak,
To drink some coffee, light a cigarette 
And think of summer beaches, blue and gay.
I climb the sides of buildings just to get
Merely a gob of gum, all that is left
Of its infatuation of last year.
Being the servant of incredible assumption,
Being to my own heart merely a serf. . . .5 


The ten books I've listed above are those that made a tremendous difference to me as a poet and as a reader of poetry. Each contributed something that had never occurred to me&#8212;each spoke in a voice so novel that the poems rising up and through the voice reinvented language for me.


Barbara Epler
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, NEW DIRECTIONS

  
 
  1. Sappho
  2. William Blake
  3. Heinrich Heine
  4. Emily Dickinson
  5. Gerard Manley Hopkins
  6. Wang Wei
  7. Osip Mandelstam
  8. Paul Celan
  9. Gertrude Stein
  10. Inger Christensen
 
 
  


 
Pretty soon after agreeing to go on this interesting PSA fishing trip, I realized that I was the one on the hook. As a New Directions editor, compiling a list of the ten most ground-breaking texts was impossible&#8212;impossible (and a bit suicidal) to select among all the poets (dozens of them living) chosen by James Laughlin for their ability to "make it new." 

In light of this impossibility, I would like to offer a few more qualifiers. First of all, I would have demurred had I known how small and select would be the pool of experts. I had pictured about a hundred opinion-mongers. I am no poetry critic or theorist: I read fiction most of the time. Secondly, I created my list with the understanding that the PSA was not fishing for a Greats List, so Homer, Dante and Shakespeare are not on it, and with the understanding that the PSA did not want a Personal Favorites List&#8212;among the non-New Directions authors, poets like Ovid, Elizabeth Bishop, Basho, Lorine Niedecker, Christopher Smart, Mina Loy, Lucille Clifton, John Ashbery and Anne Carson (we have brought out only one of her books, Glass, Irony and God). The PSA, as had to be explained at length to me, wanted a list of the Top Ten Ground-Breakers of the Twentieth Century. 

In making my list, I chose not to confine myself to the last century, because (to my admittedly partisan mind) it is just not the same century without the entire span of poetry New Directions publishes: from, to name just a few, Kamau Brathwaite, Robert Creeley, H.D., Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Susan Howe, Denise Levertov, Bernadette Mayer, Charles Olson, George Oppen, Michael Palmer, Ezra Pound, Stevie Smith, Dylan Thomas, Rosmarie Waldrop and William Carlos Williams to contemporary translations of Guillaume Apollinaire, Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarm?, Henri Michaux, Paul Val?ry, Bei Dao, Vicente Huidobro, Federico Garcia Lorca, Eugenio Montale, Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra, Octavio Paz, Rainer Maria Rilke and Arthur Rimbaud.


Max Rodriguez 6
EDITOR, QBR THE BLACK BOOK REVIEW

  
 
  1. Sonia Sanchez, Does Your House Have Lions? (1998)
  2. Saul Williams, Seventh Octave (1999)
  3. Sandra Maria Esteves, Bluestown Mockingbird Mambo (1990)
  4. Amiri Baraka, Transbluency: The Selected Poetry (1995)
  5. Audre Lorde, Coal (1976)
  6. Gwendolyn Brooks, A Street in Bronzeville (1945)
  7. Victor Hernandez Cruz, Red Beans (1991)
  8. Agostinho Neto, Sacred Hope (1986)
  9. Dennis Brutus, A Simple Lust: Selected Poems (1973)
10. Paul Laurence Dunbar, Collected Poetry (1993)
 
 
  


 
If you want to know the condition of a people, listen to its poets. For my taste, the best poetry is structurally sound, visually vibrant, and most importantly, opens new vistas of thought. The above selections meet these criteria for me. They are ground-breaking (some for reason of style and presentation; some for content) in that they introduce the consciousness of emerging social movements within the poetic form. these are the works of those poet-intellectuals who led those movements.


Andrew Krivak
POETRY EDITOR, DOUBLETAKE

  
 
  1. Robert Frost, North of Boston (1914)
  2. William Carlos Williams, Spring and All (1923)
  3. Robert Lowell, Life Studies (1959)
  4. Sylvia Plath, Ariel (1965)
  5. Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language (1978)
  6. Seamus Heaney, Field Work (1979)
 
 
  


 
All 20th century poetry, it seems to me, is measured against the poetry of the Modernists, and, of all the works of that period, The Waste Land acts as the ultimate standard. Yet, while The Waste Land certainly shaped the mind of Modernist criticism in this century, it didn't shape the voices of poets or re-tune the ears of readers. I consider a ground- breaking text in this century to be a book of poems that allowed an audience of writers and readers to re-hear as well as to re-think what a poem might be. 

I begin with Robert Frost's North of Boston because of the formal complexities and regional echoes that elide in this early book. Poems such as "Mending Wall," "Home Burial," "The Death of the Hired Man" and "After Apple-Picking" demonstrate a truly unique prosody, which may prove in the end to be more lasting than Eliot's project. 

Copies of William Carlos Williams' book Spring and All were actually confiscated at U.S. Customs when they were shipped from France in 1923. Written one year after The Waste Land, Spring and All never had a chance to emerge as a "book" in the United States until after Williams' death. Yet, this is the text in which Williams famously proclaims "THE WORLD IS NEW." From this book come the poems "By the road to the contagious hospital," "The pure products of America" and "so much depends"&#8212;poems that "freed-up" more than one generation of poets writing after the Moderns. 

Which leads me to Robert Lowell's Life Studies and Sylvia Plath's Ariel. I put these on the list because there is no dismissing the impact the turn to a so-called "confessional" voice has had on poetry in the twentieth century, and these two books are, in my opinion, the first and only ground-breakers on that front. 

Finally, I have chosen Adrienne Rich's The Dream of a Common Language and Seamus Heaney's Field Work for the influence they have had on a "post-confessional" generation of poetry readers and writers. These two books were published nearly simultaneously in the United States, and they are remarkable for their turn towards a desire for "witness" in poetry. While Heaney and Rich have had different projects in mind (for Heaney, the Troubles in Northern Ireland; for Rich, the oppression of patriarchal language), their respective breakthroughs in these mid-career volumes show what it means to write poetry that forces readers to re-consider their notion of a world that has changed significantly since the publication of The Waste Land.


John Tranter 7
EDITOR, JACKET

  
 
  1. Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems, translated and edited by Oliver Bernard (1962)
  2. W.H. Auden, On This Island (1937)
  3. T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
  4. John Ashbery, Some Trees (1956)
  5. Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems (1956)
  6. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, The Sinking of the Titanic, translated by the author (1981)
  7. George Seferis, Collected Poems 1924-1955, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (1969)
  8. Blaise Cendrars, Selected Writings of Blaise Cendrars, edited by Walter Albert (1966)
  9. Fernando Pessoa, Selected Poems, edited by Jonathan Griffin (1982)
10. Ern Malley, The Darkening Ecliptic (1944)
 
 
  


 
1. Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems
Rimbaud's political and aesthetic revolution was carried out almost single-handedly by a teenage boy, and laid the foundations for Modernism in France. Bernard's translations made all the works available for an English reader in clear, striking prose versions, with the French on the same page. 

2. W.H. Auden, On This Island
Though Poems (1930) set up Auden as the smart young poet to watch, On This Island saw his verse reach out to find a wider audience and start the process that made his poetry famous. In Auden a blend of imagery from Anglo-Saxon verse, the Icelandic sagas, Freud, Marx and contemporary cinema fuses into a quintessentially "modern" tone. 

3. T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations

From mcward at nc.rr.com  Tue Jul 24 14:53:15 2001
From: mcward at nc.rr.com (Candice Ward)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:53:15 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Virus Alert
Message-ID: <B7833C5B.3E0C%mcward@nc.rr.com>

Yes, David (Hickman), a rehashing of Poetryetc's troubles is precisely what
I was requesting--as a New-Poetry subscriber--be avoided here. Thank
you--Candice



From groggydays at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 24 15:23:53 2001
From: groggydays at hotmail.com (David Bircumshaw)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 20:23:53 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] 10 Books that Made Poetry New
References: <5b.1920cc19.288f159d@aol.com>
Message-ID: <OE31TNkO3C9vBGtWva700002a0d@hotmail.com>

It's a fascinating rough guide to the idiosyncracies of taste, I must
confess that the distinctions between English language and translated poetry
seem rather blurred, if a list was drawn up of poetic volumes of importance
in any language I suspect all but a few English speakdom poets would
struggle to make the 'grade' unless that is one includes Blake as of the
twentieth century! Eliot, yes, (but of the Waste Land really, rather than
Prufock, or even the Poems of 1917, in parts, Yeats as a whole rather than
individual volumes, and too the not mentioned Thos Hardy) but I was pleased
to see the prevalence of Celan, good to see a tout for Calligrammes too, if
not happy at the low profile of Vallejo, what?, Trilce not in the top ten?
tho' I have to reluctantly cavil at the presence of Gertrude Stein. A
celebrated literary name, yes, but a poet?

Naw!

Best

David B


----- Original Message -----
From: <JforJames at aol.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 7:16 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] 10 Books that Made Poetry New


> http://www.poetrysociety.org/journal/index.html
> PSA's Crossroads online journal, Autumn 2000,
> had a couple of pieces on politics & poetry, and
> also the editors solicited these (below) lists of
> 10 books that changed 20th C. poetry...
>
> MAKE IT NEW
>
> Preface
>
> This fall, Crossroads invited seven literary editors and critics to
reconsider the 20th century in terms of the books of poetry that constituted
a structural, ideological, metaphysical, linguistic, or even a typographical
innovation in the genre&#8212;books that not only contributed a momentary
"blast," as Wyndham Lewis would call it, but which have had an enduring
effect on the way in which poetry continues to be written and received.1
Though the survey's primary focus was English- language poetry, participants
were encouraged to include innovative foreign-language translations. They
were also asked to consider ground-breaking 20th century editions of texts
from previous centuries, as well as ground-breaking anthologies. The result
is a series of inventories as fascinating for their idiosyncrasies as for
their overlaps. Of equal interest are the explanations that the participants
have appended to their lists. The statements attest to the herculean nature
of the labor at han!
> d and to the challenge that faces
> anyone who must consider what is connoted by "the New."
>
>
> Marjorie Perloff 2
> PROFESSOR, STANFORD UNIVERSITY
>
>
>
>   1. Rainer Maria Rilke, New Poems (1908)
>   2. Blaise Cendrars, The Prose of the Trans-siberian (1913)
>   3. Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons (1914)
>   4. Vladimir Mayakovsky, The Cloud in Trousers (1915)
>   5. T. S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
>   6. W. B. Yeats, The Tower (1928)
>   7. Ezra Pound, A Draft of XXX Cantos (1930)
>   8. Aim? C?saire, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (1947)
>   9. Anna Akhmatova, Requiem (1947, published 1963)
> 10. Paul Celan, Poppy and Memory (1952) or Breathturn (1967)
>
>
>
>
>
> First, a word about choices of volumes by the poets above: I almost chose
Rilke's Duino Elegies, but Neue Gedichte contains such classics as "Torso of
Apollo" and "The Panther" &#8212;classics that just couldn't NOT be on a top
ten list. I chose Prufrock rather than The Waste Land because I believe
Eliot had already hit on his great poetic mode by the time Prufrock was
published. I chose A Draft of XXX Cantos by Pound because only in his Cantos
did Pound do something that changed the course of poetry forever. I chose
The Tower as Yeats' most fully realized collection of poems. And I chose
Akhmatova's Requiem because it was a political milestone as well as a great
work&#8212;her poem contra Stalinism&#8212;and hence deserves a place. I
might have made other choices within the C?saire or Celan corpus but those
are my favorites. As for Tender Buttons, I am aware that many of my fellow
critics dismiss this book as "not poetry" but I think it qualifies on every
poetic ground: int!
> ensity, verbal complexity, formal
> brilliance, thematic richness.
>
> But I am not sure my second string is not equally good.
>
> 1. William Carlos Williams, Spring and All (1923)
> Indeed, I agonized about not having Williams on the list but if I judge by
impact and influence as well as "greatness," I opted for Yeats instead.
True, Yeats looks back to the nineteenth century&#8212;it's hard to believe
that the "Byzantium" poems and "The Second Coming" are written much later
than Eliot's or Pound's early works&#8212;but the fact remains that these
poems are among the great poems of the century.
>
> 2. Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923)
> Certainly one of the great books of the century, but not as influential as
the others.
>
> 3. Velimir Khlebnikov
> I take Khlebnikov to be the great Russian poet of the period, but there
isn't one volume that's seminal and so he is not on my top ten list.
>
> 4. Guillaume Apollinaire, Calligrammes (1918)
> A central volume of twentieth-century inventions, especially in the
verbal-visual realm, but Cendrars is even more important, I feel, and the
two are similar. So I chose Cendrars.
>
> 5. W. H. Auden, The Sea and the Mirror (1944)
>
> And a list without Georg Trakl, Bertold Brecht, without Montale and
Vallejo and Pessoa? And without the avant-gardists Kurt Schwitters, Tristan
Tzara or Max Jacob? It's unfortunate, but ten items is very little.
>
> On principle, I have chosen to omit poets who have come of age in the
second half of century&#8212;so there is no Ginsberg, no Ashbery,
etcetera&#8212;because it is difficult to judge the present and because,
when I thought about it, it struck me that no contemporary poet has quite
the ambition, range and influence of the poets of the early century.
>
>
> Grace Schulman 3
> POETRY EDITOR, THE NATION
>
>
>
>   1. Marianne Moore, Selected Poems (1935)
>   2. Ezra Pound, The Cantos (1948)
>   3. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems (1922)
>   4. Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H.
Johnson (1955)
>   5. W. B. Yeats, In the Seven Woods (1903)
>   6. Pablo Neruda, Residence on Earth, translated by Donald Walsh (1973)
>   7. C. P. Cavafy, Selected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip
Sherrard (1972)
>   8. Paul Celan, Poems of Paul Celan, translated by Michael Hamburger
(1988)
>   9. The New Poetry, edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson
(1918)
> 10. The Poem of the Cid, translated by W.S. Merwin (1959)
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 1. Marianne Moore, Selected Poems
> Of the many reasons why Moore's Selected Poems is ground-breaking, I'll
offer two. (1) She was the first of her major contemporaries to write (in
1922) of urban people behaving mechanically for want of insight. This theme
was to become dominant in the literature and painting of the period. In
"People's Surroundings," which appeared first in The Dial (June 1922), she
writes of the city as "the vast indestructible necropolis/ of composite
Yawman-Erbe separable units . . ." preceding Eliot's "unreal city" of The
Waste Land (1922) and Williams' "automatons" of Paterson (1946). (2) The
sequence, "Part of a Poem, Part of a Novel, Part of a Play" (later revised
and split into three poems), is ground-breaking in that its length is
sustained by musical effects, by rhyme and image patterns, rather than by a
closed form. Here the rhythm and the sensibility are new. Even Eliot,
notably adherent to tradition in poetry, wrote in his introduction to this
volume, "Miss Moore has no immediat!
> e poetic derivations. I cannot, th
> erefore, fill up my pages with the usual account of influences and
development." Your question does not ask about the books' greatness, and I
will say only that it contains "Poetry," "A Grave," "The Fish," "No Swan So
Fine," "Critics and Connoisseurs" and "Roses Only."
>
> 2. Ezra Pound, The Cantos
> "The epic of the farings of a literary mind," Moore called The Cantos, and
added, "The ghost of Homer sings." Begun in 1904 and representing the work
of a lifetime, The Cantos is the most ambitious poetic sequence of the 20th
century. The multiple hero, or "periplum," the poet merging with heroes of
the past, speaks to us of our civilization as it is seen from the vantage
point of many luminous eras. His brilliant use of metamorphosis, akin to
Joyce's experiments in Ulysses, shows us reality as a process of perceptual
change. And lest we forget: The title of this assignment, "Make it New," is
one Ezra Pound translated from Confucius, and gave us as our most precious
gift.
>
> 3. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land
> A conventional choice, I'm afraid. But then, how can one live without it?
Four Quartets is a better book, I feel, but The Waste Land may be the
century's primary ground- breaker. Reasons: You've heard them all
before&#8212;his absence of transitions, his handling of the simultaneity of
occurrences over time, his theme of the present ironically placed in the
shadow of past beauty, his vision of a doomed civilization and language. OK,
OK. I hear the reader yawning. But it's true.
>
> 4. The New Poetry, edited by Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson
> Both editors of Poetry in 1917, they included here poetry published
outside the magazine as well, but nothing before 1900. Among the poets are
H.D., Eliot, Frost, Hardy, Pound, Stevens, Williams and also the likes of
Charles Erskine Scott Wood. My reason for choosing this is symbolic in that
women broke new ground as editors in the 20th century: Moore, Monroe,
Margaret Anderson, Dorothy Norman and Margaret Marshall, among other women
editors, brought together some of the century's best writers and advocated
contemporary speech over poetic diction.
>
> 5. W. B. Yeats, In the Seven Woods
> This may be the century's first book in English to emphasize direct,
natural speech in poetry, in contrast to the flaccidity of the Aesthetes and
the Georgians. In "Adam's Curse," Yeats writes: "A line will take us hours
maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, Our stitching and
unstitching has been naught." Brand-new for its time.
>
> 6. Pablo Neruda, Residence on Earth
> Neruda is the innovator, but here, as with Cavafy and Celan, I like the
translation, as well. Neruda dwells on all his mind can entertain and he
lifts it into poetry. He transmutes wet onions, calling cards, rosebushes,
political betrayals, "and so many things that I want to forget." "Alberto
Rojas Jiminez Comes Flying" is my love. I add that because I cannot write
about Neruda without love.
>
> 7. C. P. Cavafy, Selected Poems
> I choose this for Cavafy, but find the translation innovative as well.
Cavafy's poetry broke ground in revealing faithfulness to his own
experience, distaste for decoration for its own sake, and the use of demotic
Greek combined with high style. He was one of the first modern poets to
acknowledge his homosexuality, and he writes of sex without any moral tone.
In his most famous poem, "The God Abandons Antony," he deftly combines the
hero, the city, the god, the man. The Keeley and Sherrard translations are
the first to capture Cavafy's urgent, colloquial tone.
>
> 8. Paul Celan, Poems of Paul Celan
> The ground-breaker here, of course, is Celan, whose poems occupy a unique
place in 20th century literature. A survivor of German death camps, he wrote
of horror in a way that celebrates energy and beauty while telling of
destruction. "Death Fugue" is an example of how he makes art of what can
barely be spoken; other poems are of light and air and hope: "The bright/
stones pass through the air, the brightly/ white, the light-/ bringers."
Hamburger's translation is the most efficient I know.
>
> 9. Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson
> A ground-breaking edition. Johnson showed us the Dickinson we know. She
had published only seven poems in her lifetime, and her posthumous editions
were slim, their punctuation and wording, in some cases, altered. Johnson
found 1775 poems, discovered their dates, and restored her own punctuation
as well as her great lines.
>
> 10. The Poem of the Cid, translated by W.S. Merwin
> I must include this book because it changed my life. Before reading it, in
the early 1960s, I did not appreciate how beautifully a translator could
render a 12th century classic into contemporary English. I wish I could cite
Merwin's new translation of Dante's Purgatorio here, but that will be first
on my list for ground-breakers of the 21st century.
>
>
> Daniel Halpern
> EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, THE ECCO PRESS
>
>
>
>   1. T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)
>   2. Wallace Stevens, Harmonium (1923)
>   3. William Butler Yeats, The Tower (1928)
>   4. Delmore Schwartz, Summer Knowledge (1958)
>   5. Robert Lowell, Life Studies (1959)
>   6. John Berryman, 77 Dream Songs (1964)
>   7. Elizabeth Bishop, Questions of Travel (1965)
>   8. W.S. Merwin, The Lice (1967)
>   9. C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip
Sherrard (1975)
>   10. Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Traveling in the Family, translated by
Mark Strand, Thomas Colchie, Elizabeth Bishop and Gregory Rabassa (1998)
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Picking ten "ground-breaking"&#8212;or, in my case, "personally
significant"&#8212;books of poetry written over the past 100 years is like
being asked to relocate with only ten lifelong possessions. What's left
behind? Who's not on that list of them? However, as I've been given a little
room, here's a list of what will be coming along anyway&#8212;under separate
cover, as it were.
>
> Here comes Rafael Alberti's The Owl's Insomnia and John Ashbery's Rivers
and Mountains. The Bridge or White Buildings by Hart Crane and North of
Boston by Robert Frost, Zbigniew Herbert's Selected Poems and Czeslaw
Milosz's Bells in Winter. Residence on Earth by Pablo Neruda, The Duino
Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke (I know he'll safely be on other lists), and
either of James Wright's first two books. And I would add a favorite
underdog, The Lady in Kicking Horse Reservoir by Richard Hugo, a now
forgotten and very underrated volume of poems that moved me mightily when I
first read the voicey opening lines of "Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg":
>
>  You might come here Sunday on whim.
> Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
> You had was years ago. You walk these streets
> Laid out by the insane, past hotels
> That didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try
> Of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
> Only churches are kept up. The jail
> Turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
> Is always in, not knowing what he's done.
>
> The principal supporting business now
> Is rage. Hatred of the various grays
> The mountain sends, hatred of the mill,
> The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls
> Who leave each year for Butte. . . .4
>
>
> The last time I saw Hugo, he was eating out of a gallon container of
vanilla ice cream in the tiny West Village studio apartment of an old
girlfriend of mine, talking to James Wright about a bad review one or the
other had recently received.
>
> Of course, the most idiosyncratic book on my list is Summer Knowledge by
Delmore Schwartz, but I find him irresistible. For example, from "I Am to My
Own Heart Merely a Serf":
>
>  I am to my own heart merely a serf
> And follow humbly as it glides with autos
> And come attentive when it is too sick,
> In the bad cold of sorrow much too weak,
> To drink some coffee, light a cigarette
> And think of summer beaches, blue and gay.
> I climb the sides of buildings just to get
> Merely a gob of gum, all that is left
> Of its infatuation of last year.
> Being the servant of incredible assumption,
> Being to my own heart merely a serf. . . .5
>
>
> The ten books I've listed above are those that made a tremendous
difference to me as a poet and as a reader of poetry. Each contributed
something that had never occurred to me&#8212;each spoke in a voice so novel
that the poems rising up and through the voice reinvented language for me.
>
>
> Barbara Epler
> EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, NEW DIRECTIONS
>
>
>
>   1. Sappho
>   2. William Blake
>   3. Heinrich Heine
>   4. Emily Dickinson
>   5. Gerard Manley Hopkins
>   6. Wang Wei
>   7. Osip Mandelstam
>   8. Paul Celan
>   9. Gertrude Stein
>   10. Inger Christensen
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Pretty soon after agreeing to go on this interesting PSA fishing trip, I
realized that I was the one on the hook. As a New Directions editor,
compiling a list of the ten most ground-breaking texts was
impossible&#8212;impossible (and a bit suicidal) to select among all the
poets (dozens of them living) chosen by James Laughlin for their ability to
"make it new."
>
> In light of this impossibility, I would like to offer a few more
qualifiers. First of all, I would have demurred had I known how small and
select would be the pool of experts. I had pictured about a hundred
opinion-mongers. I am no poetry critic or theorist: I read fiction most of
the time. Secondly, I created my list with the understanding that the PSA
was not fishing for a Greats List, so Homer, Dante and Shakespeare are not
on it, and with the understanding that the PSA did not want a Personal
Favorites List&#8212;among the non-New Directions authors, poets like Ovid,
Elizabeth Bishop, Basho, Lorine Niedecker, Christopher Smart, Mina Loy,
Lucille Clifton, John Ashbery and Anne Carson (we have brought out only one
of her books, Glass, Irony and God). The PSA, as had to be explained at
length to me, wanted a list of the Top Ten Ground-Breakers of the Twentieth
Century.
>
> In making my list, I chose not to confine myself to the last century,
because (to my admittedly partisan mind) it is just not the same century
without the entire span of poetry New Directions publishes: from, to name
just a few, Kamau Brathwaite, Robert Creeley, H.D., Robert Duncan, Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, Susan Howe, Denise Levertov, Bernadette Mayer, Charles Olson,
George Oppen, Michael Palmer, Ezra Pound, Stevie Smith, Dylan Thomas,
Rosmarie Waldrop and William Carlos Williams to contemporary translations of
Guillaume Apollinaire, Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarm?, Henri Michaux,
Paul Val?ry, Bei Dao, Vicente Huidobro, Federico Garcia Lorca, Eugenio
Montale, Pablo Neruda, Nicanor Parra, Octavio Paz, Rainer Maria Rilke and
Arthur Rimbaud.
>
>
> Max Rodriguez 6
> EDITOR, QBR THE BLACK BOOK REVIEW
>
>
>
>   1. Sonia Sanchez, Does Your House Have Lions? (1998)
>   2. Saul Williams, Seventh Octave (1999)
>   3. Sandra Maria Esteves, Bluestown Mockingbird Mambo (1990)
>   4. Amiri Baraka, Transbluency: The Selected Poetry (1995)
>   5. Audre Lorde, Coal (1976)
>   6. Gwendolyn Brooks, A Street in Bronzeville (1945)
>   7. Victor Hernandez Cruz, Red Beans (1991)
>   8. Agostinho Neto, Sacred Hope (1986)
>   9. Dennis Brutus, A Simple Lust: Selected Poems (1973)
> 10. Paul Laurence Dunbar, Collected Poetry (1993)
>
>
>
>
>
>
> If you want to know the condition of a people, listen to its poets. For my
taste, the best poetry is structurally sound, visually vibrant, and most
importantly, opens new vistas of thought. The above selections meet these
criteria for me. They are ground-breaking (some for reason of style and
presentation; some for content) in that they introduce the consciousness of
emerging social movements within the poetic form. these are the works of
those poet-intellectuals who led those movements.
>
>
> Andrew Krivak
> POETRY EDITOR, DOUBLETAKE
>
>
>
>   1. Robert Frost, North of Boston (1914)
>   2. William Carlos Williams, Spring and All (1923)
>   3. Robert Lowell, Life Studies (1959)
>   4. Sylvia Plath, Ariel (1965)
>   5. Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language (1978)
>   6. Seamus Heaney, Field Work (1979)
>
>
>
>
>
>
> All 20th century poetry, it seems to me, is measured against the poetry of
the Modernists, and, of all the works of that period, The Waste Land acts as
the ultimate standard. Yet, while The Waste Land certainly shaped the mind
of Modernist criticism in this century, it didn't shape the voices of poets
or re-tune the ears of readers. I consider a ground- breaking text in this
century to be a book of poems that allowed an audience of writers and
readers to re-hear as well as to re-think what a poem might be.
>
> I begin with Robert Frost's North of Boston because of the formal
complexities and regional echoes that elide in this early book. Poems such
as "Mending Wall," "Home Burial," "The Death of the Hired Man" and "After
Apple-Picking" demonstrate a truly unique prosody, which may prove in the
end to be more lasting than Eliot's project.
>
> Copies of William Carlos Williams' book Spring and All were actually
confiscated at U.S. Customs when they were shipped from France in 1923.
Written one year after The Waste Land, Spring and All never had a chance to
emerge as a "book" in the United States until after Williams' death. Yet,
this is the text in which Williams famously proclaims "THE WORLD IS NEW."

From ibid1 at earthlink.net  Tue Jul 24 18:37:25 2001
From: ibid1 at earthlink.net (David Hickman)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:37:25 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Virus Alert
In-Reply-To: <B7833C5B.3E0C%mcward@nc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <B78346B5.467A%ibid1@earthlink.net>

Candice--

It appears to me your" request" was a way of beginning the poetry etc
difficulties all over again here.
Please do not drag your feud with Kent Johnson onto this list.

David

 


on 7/24/01 11:53 AM, Candice Ward at mcward at nc.rr.com wrote:

> Yes, David (Hickman), a rehashing of Poetryetc's troubles is precisely what
> I was requesting--as a New-Poetry subscriber--be avoided here. Thank
> you--Candice



From languagethief at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 24 16:23:26 2001
From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 13:23:26 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
In-Reply-To: <4f.ea510f6.288ed9f5@aol.com>
Message-ID: <20010724202326.10102.qmail@web12202.mail.yahoo.com>

The "poetry is whatever I say it is" theory is not the
worst in the world. In fact, it's more than adequate.
Its only flaw as a definition -- not its fault -- is
that people expect it to answer another question that
hasn't been asked: "What is good poetry?" 

The whole point of art is precisely that it is
"whatever I say it is." Art says the the
reader/viewer/listener, "look at me in a different way
than you would look at non-art. I'm part of life, but
separate from it, and my separateness is a mirror, a
commentary, a perspective."

The best statement of this I ever read is Italo
Calvino's:

"Both in art and literature, the function of the frame
is fundamental. It is the frame that marks the
boundary between the picture and what is outside. It
allows the picture to exist, isolating it from the
rest; but at the same time it recalls -- and somehow
stands for -- everything that remains out of the
picture."

As good as this is, it gets better, because Calvino
manages to extend his definition of art to a
definition of good art:

"I might venture a definition:  we consider poetic a
production in which each individual experience
acquires prominence through its detachment from the
general continuum, while it retains a kind of glint of
that unlimited vastness."

--- JackKerouac25 at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:46:18 AM
> Eastern Daylight Time, JforJames at aol.com writes:
> 
> > In a message dated 7/22/01 3:57:50 PM Eastern
> Daylight Time, 
> > aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes:
> > 
> > > st of my students believe that, and I quote,
> "poetry is anything I say it
> > >  is."  I've also heard, and I love this one,
> that "poetry is the expression
> > >  of one's true soul."  I always ask, "Where does
> that leave the false soul?"
> > >  ___________________
> > >  
> > >  Come to think about it, I have never had anyone
> try to explain in plain
> > >  language what a poem is supposed to be. Since
> it doesn't seem to have a
> > >  specific definition, frothy ideas about the
> definition of poetry probably
> > >  ought to be expected. While some things can be
> easily excluded from the
> > >  realm of poetry (bills, editorial columns, and
> essays squeezed out of tired
> > >  students), others (prose poems, for example)
> straddle lines. Poetry isn't
> > >  the potential any- and everything any random
> person decides it is, but it
> > >  apparently can be a helluva lot, or, at least,
> a helluva lot is pretending
> > >  to be poetry. For me, it seems like 'poem' is a
> catch-all word that 
> > includes
> > >  as its definition 'things that fall somewhat
> short of prose, but we file
> > >  them under this word because we don't have
> another name for them.' 'Poem'
> > >  seems stuck in a cloud of vague meaning. This
> really doesn't bother me;
> > >  rather, it seems an invitation for poets to
> make their own limits (wide or
> > >  narrow) and see if anyone else will come along
> for the ride. If this 
> > doesn't
> > >  make any sense, by all means, skewer it.
> 
> Amber (& Interested Parties),
> 
> I don't know how to define poetry--that much I'll
> admit.  One of the writing assigments I used to give
> was a definition of poetry.  After going over
> Shelley's "Defense" and talking about Wordsworth's
> "spontaneous overflow" and Coleridge's "best words,"
> I assigned my students to write their own
> definitions.  Two things stopped me from ever giving
> the assignment again:
> 
> 1)  The sheer breadth of the assignment--some
> students, rightfully so I think, complained that the
> assignment was just too broad.  How could they
> define poetry, students complained, when they didn't
> even understand it?  I shook my head, considered
> what they said, and plodded on.
> 
> 2)  The number of "Poetry is what I say it is" and
> "Poetry is the expression of one's true soul"
> assignments that I received--well over 90% of my
> students wrote that poetry was anything and
> everything, from what they read in a student
> handbook to Shakespeare.  Others were convinced that
> poetry is this elusive "expression of one's true
> soul," a sentence I read a thousand times but never
> understood.  When I explained that many poets make
> things up, that not all poets write in the
> confessional mode, students jeered me.  It seems the
> cult of feelings had hijacked my students, and they
> believed that all poetry was autobiographical.
> 
> So, what is poetry?  I don't know.  I guess it might
> be like jazz--who was it who said "I know it when I
> see it."  Hmmm...that's rather like our
> congressional government's definition of
> pornography, too, I think.  Well--this post doesn't
> make much sense, so I'll move on.
> 
> Jim wrote:
> 
> > Borges said something like to define poetry is to
> oversimplify it. And
> > there's a lot of truth in that...tho a critical
> mind will always enjoy
> > the conundrum of the attempt to define (confine)
> the ineffable.
> > I'd silently responded to Jeff's quote attributed
> to certain 
> > students, "poetry is anything I say it is," with
> the response:
> > Yes, anything one says is poetry, is poetry...it's
> just takes
> > an innate gift or an immense artistic effort to be
> able to say so
> > and make it true. Blessed are those poets born to
> the former 
> > or who have lived the latter.
> > Finnegan 
> > PS: That Borges paraphrase regarding the
> definition of poetry 
> > can be turned into a gentle retort to the second
> statement: 
> > "To know one's soul is to oversimplify it."
> 
> I'd quite agree.  I'll use that one in class, Jim. 
> Thanks.
> 
> 
> Jeff Newberry
> Adjunct Instructor
> Department of English and Foreign Languages
> University of West Florida
> 
> "Still trying to find my false soul"
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry


__________________________________________________
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Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
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From JBCM2 at aol.com  Tue Jul 24 16:40:32 2001
From: JBCM2 at aol.com (JBCM2 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 16:40:32 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Virus Alert
Message-ID: <8b.9bfa993.288f3740@aol.com>

I agree with David Hickman.  Whatever personality conflict that Candice & 
Kent were having on another list does not need to be reprised here.  
Candice's request has the smell of a pre-emptive strike.  Whatever Kent's 
sins were on Poetryetc, real or imagined, they should have no currency in 
this venue.


joe brennan

In a message dated 07/24/2001 3:37:03 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
ibid1 at earthlink.net writes:

<< 
 Candice--
 
 It appears to me your" request" was a way of beginning the poetry etc
 difficulties all over again here.
 Please do not drag your feud with Kent Johnson onto this list.
 
 David
 
  
 
 
 on 7/24/01 11:53 AM, Candice Ward at mcward at nc.rr.com wrote:
 
 > Yes, David (Hickman), a rehashing of Poetryetc's troubles is precisely what
 > I was requesting--as a New-Poetry subscriber--be avoided here. Thank
 > you--Candice
 
  >>


From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Tue Jul 24 17:01:12 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:01:12 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] A Reader's Manifesto
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEMENMDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <3B5DE218.50B1@nut-n-but.net>

I'm surprised (and disappointed) that anyone cares what
the Atlantic Monthly has to say about anything.

                                             --Bob G.



From msnider at mindspring.com  Tue Jul 24 17:28:29 2001
From: msnider at mindspring.com (Michael Snider)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:28:29 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Virus Alert
In-Reply-To: <8b.9bfa993.288f3740@aol.com>
Message-ID: <200107242131.RAA32628@smtp6.mindspring.com>

For what it's worth, Kent brought it up here first, in a message with 
the subject  "[New-Poetry] urgent request [re: Poetryetc]."

On Tuesday, July 24, 2001, at 04:40 PM, JBCM2 at aol.com wrote:

> I agree with David Hickman.  Whatever personality conflict that 
> Candice &
> Kent were having on another list does not need to be reprised here.
> Candice's request has the smell of a pre-emptive strike.  Whatever 
> Kent's
> sins were on Poetryetc, real or imagined, they should have no currency 
> in
> this venue.
>
>
> joe brennan
>
> In a message dated 07/24/2001 3:37:03 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> ibid1 at earthlink.net writes:
>
> <<
>  Candice--
>
>  It appears to me your" request" was a way of beginning the poetry etc
>  difficulties all over again here.
>  Please do not drag your feud with Kent Johnson onto this list.
>
>  David
>
>
>
>
>  on 7/24/01 11:53 AM, Candice Ward at mcward at nc.rr.com wrote:
>
>> Yes, David (Hickman), a rehashing of Poetryetc's troubles is precisely 
>> what
>> I was requesting--as a New-Poetry subscriber--be avoided here. Thank
>> you--Candice
>
>>>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>
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From halvard at earthlink.net  Tue Jul 24 17:38:09 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 17:38:09 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
In-Reply-To: <20010724202326.10102.qmail@web12202.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEOEDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

Oh, why oh why don't people put names to messages
rather than depend on us to remember their very
various monikers.

Hal     "There are then quite a number of things
            one does or does not know."
                            --Gertrude Stein

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson


> The "poetry is whatever I say it is" theory is not the
> worst in the world. In fact, it's more than adequate.
> Its only flaw as a definition -- not its fault -- is
> that people expect it to answer another question that
> hasn't been asked: "What is good poetry?" 
> 
> The whole point of art is precisely that it is
> "whatever I say it is." Art says the the
> reader/viewer/listener, "look at me in a different way
> than you would look at non-art. I'm part of life, but
> separate from it, and my separateness is a mirror, a
> commentary, a perspective."
> 
> The best statement of this I ever read is Italo
> Calvino's:
> 
> "Both in art and literature, the function of the frame
> is fundamental. It is the frame that marks the
> boundary between the picture and what is outside. It
> allows the picture to exist, isolating it from the
> rest; but at the same time it recalls -- and somehow
> stands for -- everything that remains out of the
> picture."
> 
> As good as this is, it gets better, because Calvino
> manages to extend his definition of art to a
> definition of good art:
> 
> "I might venture a definition:  we consider poetic a
> production in which each individual experience
> acquires prominence through its detachment from the
> general continuum, while it retains a kind of glint of
> that unlimited vastness."
> 
> --- JackKerouac25 at aol.com wrote:
> > In a message dated Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:46:18 AM
> > Eastern Daylight Time, JforJames at aol.com writes:
> > 
> > > In a message dated 7/22/01 3:57:50 PM Eastern
> > Daylight Time, 
> > > aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes:
> > > 
> > > > st of my students believe that, and I quote,
> > "poetry is anything I say it
> > > >  is."  I've also heard, and I love this one,
> > that "poetry is the expression
> > > >  of one's true soul."  I always ask, "Where does
> > that leave the false soul?"
> > > >  ___________________
> > > >  
> > > >  Come to think about it, I have never had anyone
> > try to explain in plain
> > > >  language what a poem is supposed to be. Since
> > it doesn't seem to have a
> > > >  specific definition, frothy ideas about the
> > definition of poetry probably
> > > >  ought to be expected. While some things can be
> > easily excluded from the
> > > >  realm of poetry (bills, editorial columns, and
> > essays squeezed out of tired
> > > >  students), others (prose poems, for example)
> > straddle lines. Poetry isn't
> > > >  the potential any- and everything any random
> > person decides it is, but it
> > > >  apparently can be a helluva lot, or, at least,
> > a helluva lot is pretending
> > > >  to be poetry. For me, it seems like 'poem' is a
> > catch-all word that 
> > > includes
> > > >  as its definition 'things that fall somewhat
> > short of prose, but we file
> > > >  them under this word because we don't have
> > another name for them.' 'Poem'
> > > >  seems stuck in a cloud of vague meaning. This
> > really doesn't bother me;
> > > >  rather, it seems an invitation for poets to
> > make their own limits (wide or
> > > >  narrow) and see if anyone else will come along
> > for the ride. If this 
> > > doesn't
> > > >  make any sense, by all means, skewer it.
> > 
> > Amber (& Interested Parties),
> > 
> > I don't know how to define poetry--that much I'll
> > admit.  One of the writing assigments I used to give
> > was a definition of poetry.  After going over
> > Shelley's "Defense" and talking about Wordsworth's
> > "spontaneous overflow" and Coleridge's "best words,"
> > I assigned my students to write their own
> > definitions.  Two things stopped me from ever giving
> > the assignment again:
> > 
> > 1)  The sheer breadth of the assignment--some
> > students, rightfully so I think, complained that the
> > assignment was just too broad.  How could they
> > define poetry, students complained, when they didn't
> > even understand it?  I shook my head, considered
> > what they said, and plodded on.
> > 
> > 2)  The number of "Poetry is what I say it is" and
> > "Poetry is the expression of one's true soul"
> > assignments that I received--well over 90% of my
> > students wrote that poetry was anything and
> > everything, from what they read in a student
> > handbook to Shakespeare.  Others were convinced that
> > poetry is this elusive "expression of one's true
> > soul," a sentence I read a thousand times but never
> > understood.  When I explained that many poets make
> > things up, that not all poets write in the
> > confessional mode, students jeered me.  It seems the
> > cult of feelings had hijacked my students, and they
> > believed that all poetry was autobiographical.
> > 
> > So, what is poetry?  I don't know.  I guess it might
> > be like jazz--who was it who said "I know it when I
> > see it."  Hmmm...that's rather like our
> > congressional government's definition of
> > pornography, too, I think.  Well--this post doesn't
> > make much sense, so I'll move on.
> > 
> > Jim wrote:
> > 
> > > Borges said something like to define poetry is to
> > oversimplify it. And
> > > there's a lot of truth in that...tho a critical
> > mind will always enjoy
> > > the conundrum of the attempt to define (confine)
> > the ineffable.
> > > I'd silently responded to Jeff's quote attributed
> > to certain 
> > > students, "poetry is anything I say it is," with
> > the response:
> > > Yes, anything one says is poetry, is poetry...it's
> > just takes
> > > an innate gift or an immense artistic effort to be
> > able to say so
> > > and make it true. Blessed are those poets born to
> > the former 
> > > or who have lived the latter.
> > > Finnegan 
> > > PS: That Borges paraphrase regarding the
> > definition of poetry 
> > > can be turned into a gentle retort to the second
> > statement: 
> > > "To know one's soul is to oversimplify it."
> > 
> > I'd quite agree.  I'll use that one in class, Jim. 
> > Thanks.
> > 
> > 
> > Jeff Newberry
> > Adjunct Instructor
> > Department of English and Foreign Languages
> > University of West Florida
> > 
> > "Still trying to find my false soul"
> > _______________________________________________
> > New-Poetry mailing list
> > New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> > http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 
> 
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
> http://phonecard.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
> 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 Jul 24 18:08:32 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:08:32 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
Message-ID: <F19LuSbh29cM3oryKFR000074c0@hotmail.com>

Maybe we can say that, as with pornography, we know poetry when we see it?

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

Wise Wretch! with Pleasures too refin'd to please;
With too much Spirit to be e'er at ease;
With too much Quickness ever to be taught;
With too much Thinking to have common Thought:
You purchase Pain with all that Joy can give,
And die of nothing but a Rage to live.
-- Alexander Pope


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 24 18:10:07 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 14:10:07 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Surprised and Disappointed
Message-ID: <F42LiHdlQgdYXSVvR0W00001eb4@hotmail.com>

Well, at least, unlike the New Yorker, they are still keeping up with some 
poetry and other literature.  Can anyone imagine the New Yorker now 
publishing an essay about reading current literary work?

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

Wise Wretch! with Pleasures too refin'd to please;
With too much Spirit to be e'er at ease;
With too much Quickness ever to be taught;
With too much Thinking to have common Thought:
You purchase Pain with all that Joy can give,
And die of nothing but a Rage to live.
-- Alexander Pope



_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From languagethief at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 24 18:13:07 2001
From: languagethief at yahoo.com (The Old Mole)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 15:13:07 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEOEDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <20010724221307.25555.qmail@web12208.mail.yahoo.com>

Sorry -- it's Tad Richards. My name automatically goes
on when I write from my Prodigy account -- I have to
remember to put it on when i'm writing from Yahoo, and
I forgot.

Tad


--- Halvard Johnson <halvard at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Oh, why oh why don't people put names to messages
> rather than depend on us to remember their very
> various monikers.
> 
> Hal     "There are then quite a number of things
>             one does or does not know."
>                             --Gertrude Stein
> 
> Halvard Johnson
> ===============
> email: halvard at earthlink.net
> website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson
> 
> 
> > The "poetry is whatever I say it is" theory is not
> the
> > worst in the world. In fact, it's more than
> adequate.
> > Its only flaw as a definition -- not its fault --
> is
> > that people expect it to answer another question
> that
> > hasn't been asked: "What is good poetry?" 
> > 
> > The whole point of art is precisely that it is
> > "whatever I say it is." Art says the the
> > reader/viewer/listener, "look at me in a different
> way
> > than you would look at non-art. I'm part of life,
> but
> > separate from it, and my separateness is a mirror,
> a
> > commentary, a perspective."
> > 
> > The best statement of this I ever read is Italo
> > Calvino's:
> > 
> > "Both in art and literature, the function of the
> frame
> > is fundamental. It is the frame that marks the
> > boundary between the picture and what is outside.
> It
> > allows the picture to exist, isolating it from the
> > rest; but at the same time it recalls -- and
> somehow
> > stands for -- everything that remains out of the
> > picture."
> > 
> > As good as this is, it gets better, because
> Calvino
> > manages to extend his definition of art to a
> > definition of good art:
> > 
> > "I might venture a definition:  we consider poetic
> a
> > production in which each individual experience
> > acquires prominence through its detachment from
> the
> > general continuum, while it retains a kind of
> glint of
> > that unlimited vastness."
> > 
> > --- JackKerouac25 at aol.com wrote:
> > > In a message dated Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:46:18 AM
> > > Eastern Daylight Time, JforJames at aol.com writes:
> > > 
> > > > In a message dated 7/22/01 3:57:50 PM Eastern
> > > Daylight Time, 
> > > > aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes:
> > > > 
> > > > > st of my students believe that, and I quote,
> > > "poetry is anything I say it
> > > > >  is."  I've also heard, and I love this one,
> > > that "poetry is the expression
> > > > >  of one's true soul."  I always ask, "Where
> does
> > > that leave the false soul?"
> > > > >  ___________________
> > > > >  
> > > > >  Come to think about it, I have never had
> anyone
> > > try to explain in plain
> > > > >  language what a poem is supposed to be.
> Since
> > > it doesn't seem to have a
> > > > >  specific definition, frothy ideas about the
> > > definition of poetry probably
> > > > >  ought to be expected. While some things can
> be
> > > easily excluded from the
> > > > >  realm of poetry (bills, editorial columns,
> and
> > > essays squeezed out of tired
> > > > >  students), others (prose poems, for
> example)
> > > straddle lines. Poetry isn't
> > > > >  the potential any- and everything any
> random
> > > person decides it is, but it
> > > > >  apparently can be a helluva lot, or, at
> least,
> > > a helluva lot is pretending
> > > > >  to be poetry. For me, it seems like 'poem'
> is a
> > > catch-all word that 
> > > > includes
> > > > >  as its definition 'things that fall
> somewhat
> > > short of prose, but we file
> > > > >  them under this word because we don't have
> > > another name for them.' 'Poem'
> > > > >  seems stuck in a cloud of vague meaning.
> This
> > > really doesn't bother me;
> > > > >  rather, it seems an invitation for poets to
> > > make their own limits (wide or
> > > > >  narrow) and see if anyone else will come
> along
> > > for the ride. If this 
> > > > doesn't
> > > > >  make any sense, by all means, skewer it.
> > > 
> > > Amber (& Interested Parties),
> > > 
> > > I don't know how to define poetry--that much
> I'll
> > > admit.  One of the writing assigments I used to
> give
> > > was a definition of poetry.  After going over
> > > Shelley's "Defense" and talking about
> Wordsworth's
> > > "spontaneous overflow" and Coleridge's "best
> words,"
> > > I assigned my students to write their own
> > > definitions.  Two things stopped me from ever
> giving
> > > the assignment again:
> > > 
> > > 1)  The sheer breadth of the assignment--some
> > > students, rightfully so I think, complained that
> the
> > > assignment was just too broad.  How could they
> > > define poetry, students complained, when they
> didn't
> > > even understand it?  I shook my head, considered
> > > what they said, and plodded on.
> > > 
> > > 2)  The number of "Poetry is what I say it is"
> and
> > > "Poetry is the expression of one's true soul"
> > > assignments that I received--well over 90% of my
> > > students wrote that poetry was anything and
> > > everything, from what they read in a student
> > > handbook to Shakespeare.  Others were convinced
> that
> > > poetry is this elusive "expression of one's true
> > > soul," a sentence I read a thousand times but
> never
> > > understood.  When I explained that many poets
> make
> > > things up, that not all poets write in the
> > > confessional mode, students jeered me.  It seems
> the
> > > cult of feelings had hijacked my students, and
> they
> > > believed that all poetry was autobiographical.
> > > 
> > > So, what is poetry?  I don't know.  I guess it
> might
> > > be like jazz--who was it who said "I know it
> when I
> > > see it."  Hmmm...that's rather like our
> > > congressional government's definition of
> > > pornography, too, I think.  Well--this post
> doesn't
> > > make much sense, so I'll move on.
> > > 
> > > Jim wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Borges said something like to define poetry is
> to
> > > oversimplify it. And
> > > > there's a lot of truth in that...tho a
> critical
> > > mind will always enjoy
> > > > the conundrum of the attempt to define
> (confine)
> > > the ineffable.
> > > > I'd silently responded to Jeff's quote
> attributed
> > > to certain 
> > > > students, "poetry is anything I say it is,"
> with
> > > the response:
> > > > Yes, anything one says is poetry, is
> poetry...it's
> > > just takes
> > > > an innate gift or an immense artistic effort
> to be
> > > able to say so
> > > > and make it true. Blessed are those poets born
> to
> 
=== message truncated ===


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/


From JBCM2 at aol.com  Tue Jul 24 18:32:20 2001
From: JBCM2 at aol.com (JBCM2 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:32:20 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Virus Alert
Message-ID: <a3.1928f759.288f5174@aol.com>

In a message dated 07/24/2001 5:33:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
msnider at mindspring.com writes:

<< 
 For what it's worth, Kent brought it up here first, in a message with 
 the subject  "[New-Poetry] urgent request [re: Poetryetc]."
  >>

yes, he did, but it's not necessary to either respond or make a big deal of 
it...

jb...


From mcward at nc.rr.com  Tue Jul 24 19:22:24 2001
From: mcward at nc.rr.com (Candice Ward)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 19:22:24 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Virus Alert
Message-ID: <B7837B70.3E30%mcward@nc.rr.com>

Thanks, Michael, for correcting the record.

I'm sorry that David and Joe view it as unreasonable to have responded to
Kent's posting here of an e-missive to me concerning Poetryetc business with
an appeal to keep it from spreading to this list. As a response, it was
hardly a "preemptive strike," by definition.

But I have nothing further to say about this matter here in any case and
just wanted to acknowledge Michael's gesture of fairness.

Candice



From halvard at earthlink.net  Tue Jul 24 20:26:38 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 20:26:38 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
In-Reply-To: <20010724221307.25555.qmail@web12208.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEOJDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

I'm sorry I forgot too, Tad. I've probably seen your name
in conjunction w/ Kerouac and/or Old Mole about 15
million times by now, but the synapses here are sometimes
firing blanks.

Anyway, I've always like this--

	      "Anything is art if an artist says it is." 
                               --Marcel Duchamp

Which clarifies a lot, especially if one gets Duchamp's
little joke there.

Hal

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson


> Sorry -- it's Tad Richards. My name automatically goes
> on when I write from my Prodigy account -- I have to
> remember to put it on when i'm writing from Yahoo, and
> I forgot.
> 
> Tad
> 
> 
> --- Halvard Johnson <halvard at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > Oh, why oh why don't people put names to messages
> > rather than depend on us to remember their very
> > various monikers.
> > 
> > Hal     "There are then quite a number of things
> >             one does or does not know."
> >                             --Gertrude Stein
> > 
> > Halvard Johnson
> > ===============
> > email: halvard at earthlink.net
> > website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson
> > 
> > 
> > > The "poetry is whatever I say it is" theory is not
> > the
> > > worst in the world. In fact, it's more than
> > adequate.
> > > Its only flaw as a definition -- not its fault --
> > is
> > > that people expect it to answer another question
> > that
> > > hasn't been asked: "What is good poetry?" 
> > > 
> > > The whole point of art is precisely that it is
> > > "whatever I say it is." Art says the the
> > > reader/viewer/listener, "look at me in a different
> > way
> > > than you would look at non-art. I'm part of life,
> > but
> > > separate from it, and my separateness is a mirror,
> > a
> > > commentary, a perspective."
> > > 
> > > The best statement of this I ever read is Italo
> > > Calvino's:
> > > 
> > > "Both in art and literature, the function of the
> > frame
> > > is fundamental. It is the frame that marks the
> > > boundary between the picture and what is outside.
> > It
> > > allows the picture to exist, isolating it from the
> > > rest; but at the same time it recalls -- and
> > somehow
> > > stands for -- everything that remains out of the
> > > picture."
> > > 
> > > As good as this is, it gets better, because
> > Calvino
> > > manages to extend his definition of art to a
> > > definition of good art:
> > > 
> > > "I might venture a definition:  we consider poetic
> > a
> > > production in which each individual experience
> > > acquires prominence through its detachment from
> > the
> > > general continuum, while it retains a kind of
> > glint of
> > > that unlimited vastness."
> > > 
> > > --- JackKerouac25 at aol.com wrote:
> > > > In a message dated Mon, 23 Jul 2001 10:46:18 AM
> > > > Eastern Daylight Time, JforJames at aol.com writes:
> > > > 
> > > > > In a message dated 7/22/01 3:57:50 PM Eastern
> > > > Daylight Time, 
> > > > > aprentiss at agnesscott.edu writes:
> > > > > 
> > > > > > st of my students believe that, and I quote,
> > > > "poetry is anything I say it
> > > > > >  is."  I've also heard, and I love this one,
> > > > that "poetry is the expression
> > > > > >  of one's true soul."  I always ask, "Where
> > does
> > > > that leave the false soul?"
> > > > > >  ___________________
> > > > > >  
> > > > > >  Come to think about it, I have never had
> > anyone
> > > > try to explain in plain
> > > > > >  language what a poem is supposed to be.
> > Since
> > > > it doesn't seem to have a
> > > > > >  specific definition, frothy ideas about the
> > > > definition of poetry probably
> > > > > >  ought to be expected. While some things can
> > be
> > > > easily excluded from the
> > > > > >  realm of poetry (bills, editorial columns,
> > and
> > > > essays squeezed out of tired
> > > > > >  students), others (prose poems, for
> > example)
> > > > straddle lines. Poetry isn't
> > > > > >  the potential any- and everything any
> > random
> > > > person decides it is, but it
> > > > > >  apparently can be a helluva lot, or, at
> > least,
> > > > a helluva lot is pretending
> > > > > >  to be poetry. For me, it seems like 'poem'
> > is a
> > > > catch-all word that 
> > > > > includes
> > > > > >  as its definition 'things that fall
> > somewhat
> > > > short of prose, but we file
> > > > > >  them under this word because we don't have
> > > > another name for them.' 'Poem'
> > > > > >  seems stuck in a cloud of vague meaning.
> > This
> > > > really doesn't bother me;
> > > > > >  rather, it seems an invitation for poets to
> > > > make their own limits (wide or
> > > > > >  narrow) and see if anyone else will come
> > along
> > > > for the ride. If this 
> > > > > doesn't
> > > > > >  make any sense, by all means, skewer it.
> > > > 
> > > > Amber (& Interested Parties),
> > > > 
> > > > I don't know how to define poetry--that much
> > I'll
> > > > admit.  One of the writing assigments I used to
> > give
> > > > was a definition of poetry.  After going over
> > > > Shelley's "Defense" and talking about
> > Wordsworth's
> > > > "spontaneous overflow" and Coleridge's "best
> > words,"
> > > > I assigned my students to write their own
> > > > definitions.  Two things stopped me from ever
> > giving
> > > > the assignment again:
> > > > 
> > > > 1)  The sheer breadth of the assignment--some
> > > > students, rightfully so I think, complained that
> > the
> > > > assignment was just too broad.  How could they
> > > > define poetry, students complained, when they
> > didn't
> > > > even understand it?  I shook my head, considered
> > > > what they said, and plodded on.
> > > > 
> > > > 2)  The number of "Poetry is what I say it is"
> > and
> > > > "Poetry is the expression of one's true soul"
> > > > assignments that I received--well over 90% of my
> > > > students wrote that poetry was anything and
> > > > everything, from what they read in a student
> > > > handbook to Shakespeare.  Others were convinced
> > that
> > > > poetry is this elusive "expression of one's true
> > > > soul," a sentence I read a thousand times but
> > never
> > > > understood.  When I explained that many poets
> > make
> > > > things up, that not all poets write in the
> > > > confessional mode, students jeered me.  It seems
> > the
> > > > cult of feelings had hijacked my students, and
> > they
> > > > believed that all poetry was autobiographical.
> > > > 
> > > > So, what is poetry?  I don't know.  I guess it
> > might
> > > > be like jazz--who was it who said "I know it
> > when I
> > > > see it."  Hmmm...that's rather like our
> > > > congressional government's definition of
> > > > pornography, too, I think.  Well--this post
> > doesn't
> > > > make much sense, so I'll move on.
> > > > 
> > > > Jim wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > Borges said something like to define poetry is
> > to
> > > > oversimplify it. And
> > > > > there's a lot of truth in that...tho a
> > critical
> > > > mind will always enjoy
> > > > > the conundrum of the attempt to define
> > (confine)
> > > > the ineffable.
> > > > > I'd silently responded to Jeff's quote
> > attributed
> > > > to certain 
> > > > > students, "poetry is anything I say it is,"
> > with
> > > > the response:
> > > > > Yes, anything one says is poetry, is
> > poetry...it's
> > > > just takes
> > > > > an innate gift or an immense artistic effort
> > to be
> > > > able to say so
> > > > > and make it true. Blessed are those poets born
> > to
> > 
> === message truncated ===
> 
> 
> __________________________________________________
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> 


From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Tue Jul 24 20:55:39 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 20:55:39 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Virus Alert
References: <B78346B5.467A%ibid1@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <3B5E190A.44A2@nut-n-but.net>

I dunno, David--I, for one, am glad of Candice's warning, and
I sure hope the people running New-Poetry take it to heart and do
their utmost to protect me from Kent.

                                                   --Bob G.

David Hickman wrote:
> 
> Candice--
> 
> It appears to me your" request" was a way of beginning the poetry etc
> difficulties all over again here.
> Please do not drag your feud with Kent Johnson onto this list.
> 
> David
> 
> 
> > Yes, David (Hickman), a rehashing of Poetryetc's troubles is precisely what
> > I was requesting--as a New-Poetry subscriber--be avoided here. Thank
> > you--Candice



From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Tue Jul 24 20:59:39 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 20:59:39 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
References: <20010724202326.10102.qmail@web12202.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <3B5E19FB.3004@nut-n-but.net>

The Old Mole wrote:
> 
> The "poetry is whatever I say it is" theory is not the
> worst in the world.

It should surprise anyone whose read my posts before that I
disagree.  Words should have agree-upon meanings.

                                             --Bob G.



From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Tue Jul 24 21:06:49 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:06:49 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Surprised and Disappointed
References: <F42LiHdlQgdYXSVvR0W00001eb4@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <3B5E1BA9.708F@nut-n-but.net>

The Atlantic is better than People Magazine, too.

                                --Bob G.

Moira Russell wrote:
> 
> Well, at least, unlike the New Yorker, they are still keeping 
> up with some poetry and other literature.  Can anyone imagine 
> the New Yorker now publishing an essay about reading current 
> literary work?
> 
> Moira Russell



From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 24 21:13:03 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 18:13:03 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Virus Alert
In-Reply-To: <3B5E190A.44A2@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <20010725011303.86527.qmail@web12102.mail.yahoo.com>

--- Bob Grumman <BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net> wrote:
> I dunno, David--I, for one, am glad of Candice's warning, and
> I sure hope the people running New-Poetry take it to heart and do
> their utmost to protect me from Kent.
> 
>                         

Bob, an agent is on the way.  Just keep your curtains closed and
exercise great care in word choice in your sestinas.

- Jim


=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
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From tadrichards at prodigy.net  Tue Jul 24 21:15:56 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 21:15:56 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
References: <20010724202326.10102.qmail@web12202.mail.yahoo.com> <3B5E19FB.3004@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <00b601c114a7$5cd5e460$6801a8c0@hvc.rr.com>

I think this is a meaning upon which everyone should agree. Art is anything
that's announced by its creator as art, that calls upon its audience to
regard it as art. The same definition can be used for any of the individual
arts, such as poetry. I believe it can also be agreed upon by everyone that
this is not a definition of good art.


  Tad Richards                       "Well said, old mole."
    The Old Mole                         Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet
    of the MoleNet                          Act I, Scene 5
          http://pages.prodigy.net/tadrichards
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Grumman" <BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 8:59 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?


> The Old Mole wrote:
> >
> > The "poetry is whatever I say it is" theory is not the
> > worst in the world.
>
> It should surprise anyone whose read my posts before that I
> disagree.  Words should have agree-upon meanings.
>
>                                              --Bob G.
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From JBCM2 at aol.com  Tue Jul 24 22:32:48 2001
From: JBCM2 at aol.com (JBCM2 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 22:32:48 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] close reading?
Message-ID: <f3.d32273d.288f89d0@aol.com>

Clues to Suicide Contained in Poets' Words

By Will Dunham
Reuters

WASHINGTON (July 24) - The writings of poets of various nationalities who 
committed suicide contain words and language patterns that give clues about 
their eventual fate, researchers said on Tuesday.

Using a computer program that examines word usage in written texts, the 
researchers analyzed 156 poems written by nine poets who committed suicide 
and 135 poems written by nine poets who did not. They found that the suicidal 
poets gravitated toward words indicating their detachment from other people 
and preoccupation with themselves.

''The key finding is that we were able to distinguish features of people's 
mental health by the language they use,'' said James Pennebaker, a University 
of Texas psychology professor who conducted the research along with 
University of Pennsylvania graduate student Shannon Wiltsey Stirman.

''The words we use, especially what often appear to be the unimportant words, 
say a lot about who we are, what we're thinking and how we're approaching the 
world,'' he added.

The study appears in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

The researchers looked at the works of John Berryman (1914-1972), Hart Crane 
(1899-1932), Sergei Esenin (1895-1925), Adam L. Gordon (1833-1870), Randall 
Jarrell (1914-1965), Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), Sylvia Plath 
(1932-1963), Sarah Teasdale (1884-1933) and Anne Sexton (1928-1974), all of 
whom took their own lives.

It compared their works to poets matched as closely as possible by 
nationality, era, education and gender. All the poets were American, British 
or Russian.

The comparison group included Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), Lawrence 
Ferlinghetti (1919-present), Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918), Denise Levertov 
(1923-1997), Robert Lowell (1917-1977), Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938), Boris 
Pasternak (1890-1960), Adrienne Rich (1929-present) and Edna St. Vincent 
Millay (1892-1950).

The poets who committed suicide used many more first-person singular 
self-references such as ''I,'' ''me'' and ''my'' and fewer first-person 
plural words than did the non-suicidal poets.

A SHORT WORD WITH A BIG MESSAGE

''Issues of identity, isolation and connection to others is revealed in 
pronoun usage,'' Pennebaker said in an interview. ''One of the most telling 
words of all is the word 'I.' People who are suicidal or depressed use 'I' at 
much, much higher rates, and there's also a corresponding drop in references 
to other people.''

The suicidal poets also generally reduced their use of communication words 
such as ''talk,'' ''share'' and ''listen'' over time heading toward their 
self-inflicted deaths, while the non-suicidal poets tended to increase their 
use of such words.

The suicidal ones also used more words associated with death, but 
surprisingly the amount of words with negative emotion (for example, 
''hate'') or positive emotion (''love'') did not vary significantly between 
the groups.

Pennebaker said previous research has found that suicide rates are much 
higher among poets than among other literary writers and the general public, 
and that poets are more prone to depression and bipolar disorder, also called 
manic-depressive illness.

''As a group, no one would call poets a particularly bubbly, chipper group,'' 
Pennebaker added.

He said the patterns of language used by the poets who eventually took their 
lives could serve as ''linguistic predictors of suicide'' in current poets. 
''This is not some kind of causal relationship. We're not saying that if you 
use 'I' a lot, then you'll commit suicide. It's just simply a marker of 
greater risk,'' Pennebaker said.


From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Tue Jul 24 23:17:00 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:17:00 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
References: <20010724202326.10102.qmail@web12202.mail.yahoo.com> <3B5E19FB.3004@nut-n-but.net> <00b601c114a7$5cd5e460$6801a8c0@hvc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3B5E3A2C.2807@nut-n-but.net>

theoldmole wrote:
> 
> I think this is a meaning upon which everyone should agree. 
> Art is anything that's announced by its creator as art, that 
> calls upon its audience to regard it as art. The same definition 
> can be used for any of the individual arts, such as poetry.

How about the art of car-making?  Will you accept this post as
a car if I, its creator, announce that it is a car?  Or what if
I made a car (fat chance) and sent it to you, announcing it as a
poem.  Would you accept it as a poem?  If so, how would you 
determine whether or not it was a good poem?  Maybe by
how well the license plate scanned?

                                             --Bob G.



From ibid1 at earthlink.net  Wed Jul 25 03:13:26 2001
From: ibid1 at earthlink.net (David Hickman)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 00:13:26 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] close reading?
In-Reply-To: <f3.d32273d.288f89d0@aol.com>
Message-ID: <B783BFA5.4696%ibid1@earthlink.net>

Joe,

This is really funny.
I guess language poets will live forever.

David



on 7/24/01 7:32 PM, JBCM2 at aol.com at JBCM2 at aol.com wrote:



> ''Issues of identity, isolation and connection to others is revealed in
> pronoun usage,'' Pennebaker said in an interview. ''One of the most telling
> words of all is the word 'I.' People who are suicidal or depressed use 'I' at
> much, much higher rates, and there's also a corresponding drop in references
> to other people.''
> 


> _______________________________________________
> 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  Tue Jul 24 23:34:02 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 23:34:02 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
References: <20010724202326.10102.qmail@web12202.mail.yahoo.com> <3B5E19FB.3004@nut-n-but.net> <00b601c114a7$5cd5e460$6801a8c0@hvc.rr.com> <3B5E3A2C.2807@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <00e201c114ba$a6776680$6801a8c0@hvc.rr.com>

Well, Duchamp pretty much did that, didn't he? Yeah, if you take one car and
separate it out, and say, this is my art, I'm presenting it as art, it's not
just a car, it has meaning beyond, which makes it worth your attention in a
different way -- then that car is art because you said it was. People have
actually done that -- taken Cadillacs, upended them, and buried them part
way into the ground...recontextualized them.

People like Aram Saroyan have made things -- objects -- out of words, so why
is it impossible to go the next step and make a poem out of an object? You
may find this hard to believe, but I've heard a rumor there are even poets
who make poems out of numbers and mathematical equations.

Let's get back to this idea of you sending me a car......


  Tad Richards                       "Well said, old mole."
    The Old Mole                         Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet
    of the MoleNet                          Act I, Scene 5
          http://pages.prodigy.net/tadrichards
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Grumman" <BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 11:17 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?


> theoldmole wrote:
> >
> > I think this is a meaning upon which everyone should agree.
> > Art is anything that's announced by its creator as art, that
> > calls upon its audience to regard it as art. The same definition
> > can be used for any of the individual arts, such as poetry.
>
> How about the art of car-making?  Will you accept this post as
> a car if I, its creator, announce that it is a car?  Or what if
> I made a car (fat chance) and sent it to you, announcing it as a
> poem.  Would you accept it as a poem?  If so, how would you
> determine whether or not it was a good poem?  Maybe by
> how well the license plate scanned?
>
>                                              --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  Wed Jul 25 07:26:45 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 07:26:45 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
References: <20010724202326.10102.qmail@web12202.mail.yahoo.com> <3B5E19FB.3004@nut-n-but.net> <00b601c114a7$5cd5e460$6801a8c0@hvc.rr.com> <3B5E3A2C.2807@nut-n-but.net> <00e201c114ba$a6776680$6801a8c0@hvc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <3B5EACF5.6A5C@nut-n-but.net>

Recontextualizing a car and calling it a work of visual art
is different from making a car as a car and simply calling it
a poem.  Even simply calling it a work of visual art without
putting it on a pedestal or in a gallery or the like makes
little sense--except in the trivial one, that, yes, one can
call attention to its beauty by doing that, but that is really
only a way of pointing out similarities between the car and
a work of visual art, not treating it as an artwork.  Duchamp
did not just call his ready-mades "art"; he made them into art 
by taking them out of their practical function and in some way
beyond naming them, giving them a frame--putting them into something
everyone could agree was an aesthetic form.

I could see making a car into a poem, too, if someone were to
write even a single evocative word or near-word on it, and call
it a poem.  Perhaps where you and I would meet on this question
is that I think it probably pretty easy to transform anything
into a work of visual art by framing it in some way, and anything
into a poem by attaching something verbal to it (though it would
have to interact with it more than a label does).  I can't see
that making something music would be easy since music has to be heard
to be music--or heard as not present in the case of Cage's ventures
into silence (if we consider those not really about the non-silences
of expectant audiences, etc.).

As for the car I spoke of possibly sending you, Tad, I assure you
that you're better off without any car I could possibly make.

                                              --Bob G.



From FanwoodJEL at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 08:23:45 2001
From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:23:45 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
Message-ID: <14.177a2bbe.28901451@aol.com>

Cage's forays into silence (pianist sitting--just sitting--at a piano for 4 
minutes or so, for example) resulted in what he called aleatoric music--the 
random music (because he called it music, or noise if you prefer) of the 
audience, yes, but also of the street and sky beyond the doors of the concert 
hall, true, but also back to what ever random bits of music happend then to 
be coursing through the consciousness of the audience. 

But yes, the presence of the pianist at the piano, in fact the presence of 
the audience in the hall, was a kind of framing. Framing enough to transform 
random sounds or stray bits of memory into art? Cage would say yes, of 
course, but then, so would Humpty Dumpty (*it's a word because I say it is*). 

Remember Lily's Tomlin's brilliant one-woman show, *Signs of Intelligent 
Life,* where she, in bag-lady role, picks up two stray can of Campbell's 
tomato soup and riffs on Andy Warhol. Then, holding one in each hand, says 
bemusedly: *Art . . . Soup . . . Art . . .Soup.* And yet, her 
commentary--wasn't that poetry?

Jeffrey Levine


In a message dated 7/25/01 7:34:52 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:


> I can't see
> that making something music would be easy since music has to be heard
> to be music--or heard as not present in the case of Cage's ventures
> into silence (if we consider those not really about the non-silences
> of expectant audiences, etc.).
> 
> 


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From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 25 08:41:25 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 05:41:25 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
In-Reply-To: <14.177a2bbe.28901451@aol.com>
Message-ID: <20010725124125.8423.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com>

--- FanwoodJEL at aol.com wrote:
> Cage's forays into silence (pianist sitting--just sitting--at a piano
> for 4 
> minutes or so, for example) resulted in what he called aleatoric
> music--the 
> random music (because he called it music, or noise if you prefer) of
> the 
> audience, yes, but also of the street and sky beyond the doors of the
> concert 
> hall, true, but also back to what ever random bits of music happend
> then to 
> be coursing through the consciousness of the audience. 
> 
> But yes, the presence of the pianist at the piano, in fact the
> presence of 
> the audience in the hall, was a kind of framing. Framing enough to
> transform 
> random sounds or stray bits of memory into art? Cage would say yes,
> of 
> course, but then, so would Humpty Dumpty (*it's a word because I say
> it is*). 
> 
> Remember Lily's Tomlin's brilliant one-woman show, *Signs of
> Intelligent 
> Life,* where she, in bag-lady role, picks up two stray can of
> Campbell's 
> tomato soup and riffs on Andy Warhol. Then, holding one in each hand,
> says 
> bemusedly: *Art . . . Soup . . . Art . . .Soup.* And yet, her 
> commentary--wasn't that poetry?
> 

Let's go from music and the graphic arts to poetry:

The poet's forays into silence (poet standing--just standing--at a
podium for 4 minutes or so, for example) resulted in what he called
aleatoric poetry--the random poetry (because he called it poetry, or
noise if you prefer) of the audience, yes, but also of the street and
sky beyond the doors of the bookstore/coffee shop, true, but also back
to what ever random bits of poetry happend then to be coursing through
the consciousness of the audience. 
 
But yes, the presence of the poet at the podium, in fact the presence
of  the audience in the bookstore/coffee shop, was a kind of framing.
Framing enough to transform random words or stray bits of memory into
poetry? The poet would say yes,
of course, but then, so would Humpty Dumpty (*it's a word because I say
it is*). 
 
Remember Sylvia Plath's brilliant one-woman show, *Signs of  Arbitrary
Life* where she, in a nurse's role, picks up two stray vials of
morphine and riffs on Ted Hughes. Then, holding one in each hand, says
bemusedly: *Poetry . . . Label . . . Poetry . . . Label.* And yet, her
commentary--wasn't that poetry?

Kinf of gets us nowhere, huh?

- Jim



=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/


From FanwoodJEL at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 09:28:15 2001
From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:28:15 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
Message-ID: <45.99788c5.2890236f@aol.com>

Well, yes. That was the point.

Jeffrey

In a message dated 7/25/01 8:42:07 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
wasanthony at yahoo.com writes:


> Kinf of gets us nowhere, huh?
> 
> - Jim
> 
> 
> 
> 


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From JforJames at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 09:29:25 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:29:25 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] 10 Books that Made Poetry New
Message-ID: <123.22e788f.289023b5@aol.com>

>  In light of this impossibility, I would like to offer a few more
>  qualifiers. First of all, I would have demurred had I known how small and
>  select would be the pool of experts. I had pictured about a hundred
>  opinion-mongers.
Would the experts &/or opinion-mongers on this list care
to tilt this list torward the contemporary somewhat by giving their
picks of:
5 books since 1970 that changed poetry?
or 3 since 1980?
or 1-2 since 1990?
Finnegan 


From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu  Wed Jul 25 09:32:37 2001
From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:32:37 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
Message-ID: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE154@ness.agnesscott.edu>

Nowhere gets email in my inbox, which, in turn, gives me something to do.
Yammer on.

-Amber

-----Original Message-----
From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Sent: 7/25/2001 9:28 AM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?

Well, yes. That was the point. 

Jeffrey 

In a message dated 7/25/01 8:42:07 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
wasanthony at yahoo.com writes: 




Kinf of gets us nowhere, huh? 

- Jim 










From jdavis at panix.com  Wed Jul 25 09:31:31 2001
From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:31:31 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Bull session
In-Reply-To: <F19LuSbh29cM3oryKFR000074c0@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0107250916110.13102-100000@panix3.panix.com>

> Maybe we can say that, as with pornography, we know poetry when we see it?
>
> Moira Russell

I'm sending D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce over to speak to you about that.
Seriously, though, I think there is a "physical-effect" test that pertains
to pornography that, pace Emily Dickinson's top-of-the-head telltale, does
not necessarily apply to poetry.

Theories of art -- and by extension, of poetry -- that lead to new kinds
of art, as opposed to theories of art that establish borders beyond which
one may not cross... not to equivocate, but these seem equally silly, and
therefore equally necessary, especially when told to soldiers just before
a siege.

Vive l'avant garde -
Jordan Davis
Woods Hole, MA



From TerryP17 at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 09:32:14 2001
From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:32:14 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: A Reader's Manifesto
Message-ID: <e8.18098472.2890245e@aol.com>

<<I'm surprised (and disappointed) that anyone cares what
the Atlantic Monthly has to say about anything.

                                             --Bob G.>>

A pretty broad dismissal. Care to elaborate?

Terry Ponick



From halvard at earthlink.net  Wed Jul 25 10:12:08 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:12:08 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
In-Reply-To: <20010725124125.8423.qmail@web12107.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEPEDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

> Kinf of gets us nowhere, huh?
> 
> - Jim

And where was it we wanted to go?

Hal      "The only thing that is not art
             is inattention." 
                    --Marcel Duchamp

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson
 


From JforJames at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 10:18:14 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:18:14 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
Message-ID: <6c.d6d6d59.28902f26@aol.com>

Don't know if anyone else caught this piece of comment
linked on that page Arts & Letters Daily, http://www.aldaily.com/
It speaks to the issue of "This is art if I say it is." Tad,
has spun the question of What is poetry? into "What is 
good art/poetry?" Equally unresolvable throughtout the history
of taste-making... 

Making it
Tom Stoppard
14/06/2001, The TImes Literary Supplement
Full story displayed 
 A couple of days before the annual dinner of the Royal Academy of Arts, 
where I was to propose the toast for the guests, I telephoned for guidance. 
So, whats the form with these speeches? 
Start off with a joke or two, then get into your theme, and end up by saying 
something nice about the RA. 
My theme? 
Ideally, something controversial. 
But Ive got nothing controversial to say. 

I neednt have worried. The next Friday morning I was on the front page of the 
Daily Telegraph as the man who attacked Tracey Emin, just like Munnings had 
attacked Picasso at the equivalent dinner half a century earlier. By Sunday, 
my remarks had been promoted to a denunciation of modern art, illustrated by 
a drawing of me daubing Rubbish! on a work by Damien Hirst, whom I hadnt 
mentioned. In the Independent on Sunday , Janet Street-Porter called it an 
outburst provoked by pique at theatres not being incredibly popular like 
modern art. Meanwhile, the Mail on Sunday had been chasing me, presumably 
having marked me down as the sane voice of Middle England. 

All this was dispiriting, because my theme had had nothing to do with modern 
art in general or even with abstract art as such. I had used my speech to 
suggest that a fault line in the history of art had been crossed when it had 
become unnecessary for an artist to make anything, when the thought, the 
inspiration itself, had come to constitute the achievement, and I would have 
been pleased to see this phenomenon get an airing in the column inches which 
were devoted instead to parading the death of shorthand. 

I had decided to keep value judgements out of it, and I think I succeeded (I 
was speaking off the cuff) but the instructive thing about the press coverage 
and the letters I have received is that merely to describe the phenomenon (An 
object can be a work of art just because the artist says it is) is to be 
taken to be attacking it. 

There are historical reasons why this should be so. In classical Greek, the 
idea of the artist is covered by several words, all of which carry the sense 
of skill, manufacture, technique, expertise, etc. Demiourgos , one who works 
for the people, might be used for cooks as well as for sculptors. The first 
meaning of poietes was maker. T. S. Eliot would have been a poietes who made 
poems. I drag him in because The Waste Land was dedicated to the better maker 
(il miglior fabbro)  Ezra Pound  and thats a notion of art I understand. I 
grew up with it. As with poets, so with artists. From Praxiteles to Pollock 
(not to stop there), the artist was somebody who made something. 

The long shift towards subjectivity, first intellectualized by the German 
Romantic philosophers as Nature expressing itself through the inspiration of 
the artist, historically gave escalating offence to the older ideal of art as 
the pursuit of objective truth, and yet the personal action of a unique and 
necessary maker of  something remained part of the meaning of the word 
artist, whether his name was Klimt or de Kooning. 

This is what has been jettisoned, not furtively, not in cabals or garrets but 
in triumph, in national galleries, in the Venice Biennale  where this week 
one of the exhibits temporarily escaped notice, being an empty room with 
green walls. At its present extreme, a work of art may be no more than a 
mental act, complete at the moment of inspiration  Eureka! An empty room 
painted green! There is nothing to make. Where there may be something to make 
 Eureka! A scaled-up reproduction of a toy! A photograph torn from a 
newspaper! Framed tinfoil!  technicians can do the making, or the shopping. 

How new is this? When did it stop being true that an artist is somebody who 
can do something more or less well which the rest of us can only do badly or 
not at all? 

If I were a conceptual artist, or a minimalist, I might answer that it was 
never true, or rather, never the point; the real point was that the artist 
made us see things we wouldnt otherwise see, and look at things in a new way, 
and that what I called a fault line was the realization that this could be 
achieved differently, not by being good at making something, but perhaps by 
relocating a familiar object in an unfamiliar context, or perhaps by removing 
the idea of skill from those shrines to skill known as art galleries. Thirty 
years ago at the Tate, I interviewed for a television film an artist who 
shaded sheets of cartridge paper edge to edge with a lead pencil. He 
disclaimed any special ability at shading. 
But does that mean I could just as well do one of these for myself if I 
wanted? 
Yes, of course. 

Well, its coherent. From the repudiation of the traditional idea of value, 
sprung on us by Duchamps urinal 84 years ago, we have come to put a value on 
repudiation. 

And yet, there is a problem. In Peacocks novel Headlong Hall , two sparring 
landscape gardeners, Milestone and Gall, are trying to impress the client: 
Milestone: Sir, you will have the goodness to make a distinction between the 
picturesque and the beautiful. 
Mr. Gall: I distinguish the picturesque and the beautiful, and I add to them, 
in the laying out of grounds, a third and distinct character, which I call 
unexpectedness. 
Milestone: Pray, sir, by what name do you distinguish this character when a 
person walks round the grounds for the second time? 

 But now, recalling the Academy dinner, I remember blurting Ive been walking 
round these damn grounds since 1917, so its not true that I succeeded in 
keeping my opinion out of it entirely. I regret this, because my opinion is 
too untidy to be laid out in an after-dinner speech, let alone a 
Hirst-and-Emin-bashing headline. Hirsts shark seems to me a different kettle 
of fish from Hirsts polka dots, the one a disturbing piece for which the 
artist was a necessary intermediary, the other devoid of personality, sans 
teeth, eyes, taste, everything. As for Emin, a recent interview by Lynn 
Barber forced one to take her more seriously than her art alone, in my case, 
had any hope of doing: the interview as apparatus. 

What that reiterates is that conceptual art is exactly what it says it is. It 
is thought exhibited, thought bodied forth (Eureka! The plinth repeated 
upside down and transparent!) But so is a Turner, he of the Prize. So is art 
itself. The thought varies in profundity. The rest, the making, is, or was, 
the hard part.     
 
 


From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 25 11:19:39 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:19:39 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEPEDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <20010725151939.18016.qmail@web12103.mail.yahoo.com>

--- Halvard Johnson <halvard at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > Kinf of gets us nowhere, huh?
> > 
> > - Jim
> 
> And where was it we wanted to go?
> 

We wanted to go *there,* which is wherever and whatever I want it to
be.  Now, did I really have to say that?  The silence should have told
you.  But then again, it doesn't speak to everyone.

- Jim


=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
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From halvard at earthlink.net  Wed Jul 25 11:16:54 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:16:54 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
In-Reply-To: <3B5E19FB.3004@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEEEPHDNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

>.  Words should have agree-upon meanings.
> 
>                                              --Bob G.

And who said idealism was a dead letter?

Hal      "If the brain were so simple we could understand it,
            we would be so simple we couldn't.''
                           --Lyall Watson
Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson




From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 25 11:56:07 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 07:56:07 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Bull session
Message-ID: <F1359IcVux1Zcn8TtEv00006439@hotmail.com>

> > Maybe we can say that, as with pornography, we know poetry when we see 
>it?

>Seriously, though, I think there is a "physical-effect" test that pertains 
>to pornography that, pace Emily Dickinson's top-of-the-head telltale, does 
>not necessarily apply to poetry.

Talk about reader-response theory....

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

_________________________________________________________________
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From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 25 12:01:38 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 09:01:38 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Bull session
In-Reply-To: <F1359IcVux1Zcn8TtEv00006439@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <20010725160138.83829.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com>

--- Moira Russell <moira_russell at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > > Maybe we can say that, as with pornography, we know poetry when
> we see 
> >it?
> 
> >Seriously, though, I think there is a "physical-effect" test that
> pertains 
> >to pornography that, pace Emily Dickinson's top-of-the-head
> telltale, does 
> >not necessarily apply to poetry.
> 
> Talk about reader-response theory....
> 

I think that's mostly viewer-response, Moira.

- Jim

=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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From jdavis at panix.com  Wed Jul 25 12:01:59 2001
From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 12:01:59 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Bull session
In-Reply-To: <F1359IcVux1Zcn8TtEv00006439@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0107251200330.14918-100000@panix6.panix.com>


On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Moira Russell wrote:
>
> Talk about reader-response theory....


I'll bite -- what *is* reader-response theory? I'm innocent of Stanley
Fish, is there more to it than the catchphrase would imply? (And isn't
that cluster of consonants at the heart of "catchphrase" delicious?)

Jordan Davis
Woods Hole, MA



From FanwoodJEL at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 12:17:06 2001
From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 12:17:06 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
Message-ID: <dd.17dceefb.28904b02@aol.com>

Oh yeah? Well, I know and I'm not telling. Saving it for my 
ex-post-later-doc-dissertation (i.e., dessert). 

Jeffrey Levine


In a message dated 7/25/01 10:19:50 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
JforJames at aol.com writes:


> Tad, has spun the question of What is poetry? into "What is 
> good art/poetry?" Equally unresolvable throughtout the history
> of taste-making... 
> 
> 


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From Jandhodge at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 12:21:48 2001
From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 12:21:48 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
Message-ID: <d8.98f3e8f.28904c1c@aol.com>

This thread, and particularly the Stoppard article, reminds me of a 
conversation I had years ago with a colleague and self-proclaimed artist.  At 
the time one of the more prestigious galleries [the Whitney?] had an exhibit 
featuring as its centerpiece a pile of dirt emptied from a dump truck in the 
middle of the hall.  "That's art?" I asked naively.  "Of course," she 
answered.  "It's in the -----."  

Still a bit skeptical, I asked: "Do you mean that if I drove a truck into the 
gallery and dumped its load, I'd be an artist?"

And she answered: . . . 

"They wouldn't let you do it."

So does it logically follow that art is defined by that mysterious "they" who 
controls the keys to the gallery?  Come to think of it, that seems a 
surprisingly apt metaphor: the "they" being various "taste-makers," editors, 
publishers, etc. (the "etc." including recognized artists protecting their 
own turf), and the various "galleries" being the concert halls, academies, 
magazines, websites, publishing houses . . .

These days of course virtually anyone can "publish" virtually anything one 
way or another [though Carnegie Hall or Ploughshares or FSG may be out of 
reach], and can even demand an audience, though of course that doesn't 
guarantee one; perhaps the indispensible element is a good PR agent?  

Jan


From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Jul 25 11:44:19 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:44:19 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: A Reader's Manifesto
References: <e8.18098472.2890245e@aol.com>
Message-ID: <3B5EE953.768C@nut-n-but.net>

> <<I'm surprised (and disappointed) that anyone cares what
> the Atlantic Monthly has to say about anything.
> 
>                                              --Bob G.>>
> 
> A pretty broad dismissal. Care to elaborate?
> 
> Terry Ponick

No.  Except to say that I occasionally look over a copy over when on
break from substitute teaching and in the library of the school
I teach at, and never find anything of consequence in it, and 
that I am still annoyed that Gioia's insipid and ignorant article 
about the state of poetry has gotten so much discussion simply
because . . . The Atlantic--tah dah--published it, while commentators
with something at least mildly fresh to say about at least half the
true range of current poetry are ignored.  Harper's is as bad.
Interestingly, both magazines have covered another of my interests,
the Shakespeare Authorship controversy, the Atlantic badly, Harper's
insanely (coming out against Shakespeare).

                                                     --Bob G.




From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Jul 25 12:21:20 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 12:21:20 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] 10 Books that Made Poetry New
References: <123.22e788f.289023b5@aol.com>
Message-ID: <3B5EF200.3162@nut-n-but.net>

> Would the experts &/or opinion-mongers on this list care
> to tilt this list torward the contemporary somewhat by giving their
> picks of: 
> 5 books since 1970 that changed poetry?
> or 3 since 1980?
> or 1-2 since 1990?
> Finnegan

How about a few since 1900 that changed poetry more than all
but three or four on the combined lists of the experts whose
lists were posted?  E. E. Cummings's No Thanks would have to be
one.

I'd be very interested to see lists of books since 1990 that
made poetry new, for I, frankly, have lost touch.  The books since
then that I see seem only to extend newnesses of the preceding
ten or twenty years.  Except maybe for one recent one by Mike
Basinski, Beseechers, that seems to me really to dramatize 
previously untapped possibilities of color in poetry (as well as
exploit the many other new techniques Basinski's stuff always does).  
(Some of its poems are reproduced at the light & dust website.)
And anything by John M. Bennett, who is continually doing new 
things in poetry, witness the new Potes and Poets edition of
his work, rOlling COMBers.  Or how about a simple exhibition catalog, 
the one for a show of David Cole's work 22 May - 21 July 2000 at
Monclair State University Art Galleries?

Another important unknown book: Jonathan Brannen's Sirloin Clouds.

I could go on and list thirty books from 1980 to the present
that I admire, but the ones I've mentioned I firmly believe will
be considered important a hundred years from now.  And this just
in my areas of visual and infraverbal poetry.  I'm sure there
are as many key obscure books by language-poets that merit
similar recognition.  And, I hope, books from poetry schools
I don't know about yet.

                                            --Bob G.



From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 25 12:51:35 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:51:35 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Bull session
Message-ID: <F80SWLeSLxmhnpw7GAH00008988@hotmail.com>

Jim wrote:

> > Talk about reader-response theory....
>I think that's mostly viewer-response, Moira.

Well....for *guys* (don't you remember that section in "Vox" where the man 
says he would choose the video and the woman says she would choose the 
Victorian pornographic book?).

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

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From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 25 12:54:25 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 08:54:25 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Bull session
Message-ID: <F40SmT6QcWY9pgXVWz1000068a0@hotmail.com>

Jordan wrote:

>On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Moira Russell wrote:
> > Talk about reader-response theory....
>I'll bite -- what *is* reader-response theory?

Um.

I have to admit, I was going for the punchline.  I did study reader-response 
theory (some) in graduate school, but you should most certainly ask someone 
else (preferably someone who takes modern criticism more seriously than I 
do).

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Wed Jul 25 13:05:19 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:05:19 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: A Reader's Manifesto
Message-ID: <ca.186730d3.2890564f@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/25/2001 11:25:18 AM Central Daylight Time, 
BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:


> Except to say that I occasionally look over a copy over when on
> break from substitute teaching and in the library of the school
> I teach at, and never find anything of consequence in it, and 
> that I am still annoyed that Gioia's insipid and ignorant article 
> about the state of poetry has gotten so much discussion simply
> because . . . The Atlantic--tah dah--published it, while commentators
> with something at least mildly fresh to say about at least half the
> true range of current poetry are ignored. 

This remark, and so many like it, make me wonder how many people have 
actually reread Gioia's "Can Poetry Matter?" in the ten years since it first 
appeared.  Reactions to it now seem to be based on a decade's worth of other 
reactions, not to the original piece.  "Ignorant" and "insipid" do not strike 
me as particularly useful modifiers.  One can disagree, of course, but one 
should disagree with the Gioia the Critic instead of with Gioia the Great 
Satan.
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From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 13:13:36 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:13:36 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: A Reader's Manifesto
Message-ID: <105.6b25028.28905840@aol.com>

In a message dated 7/25/01 11:25:18 AM Central Daylight Time, 
BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net writes:


> Gioia's insipid and ignorant article 
> 

Okay, I'll bite:

What exactly was ignorant or insipid about Gioia's article?  Other than the 
fact that he angered quite a few academics, I find nothing wrong with the 
article--if you are speaking of "Can Poetry Matter?" of course.  Come to 
think of it, making academics angry is rather funny.  They turn all red and 
start hopping around, shouting out ten-syllable words.

Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English/Foreign Languages
University of West Florida
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From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 25 13:54:16 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:54:16 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] 10 Books that Made Poetry New
In-Reply-To: <3B5EF200.3162@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <20010725175416.53909.qmail@web12101.mail.yahoo.com>

> Would the experts &/or opinion-mongers on this list care
> to tilt this list torward the contemporary somewhat by giving their
> picks of: 
> 5 books since 1970 that changed poetry?
> or 3 since 1980?
> or 1-2 since 1990?
> Finnegan

I'll go for the latter:  Anne Carson's _Autobiography of Red_

- Jim



=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
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From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Wed Jul 25 13:58:32 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 10:58:32 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Bull session
In-Reply-To: <F80SWLeSLxmhnpw7GAH00008988@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <20010725175832.50929.qmail@web12108.mail.yahoo.com>

--- Moira Russell <moira_russell at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Jim wrote:
> 
> > > Talk about reader-response theory....
> >I think that's mostly viewer-response, Moira.
> 
> Well....for *guys* (don't you remember that section in "Vox" where
> the man 
> says he would choose the video and the woman says she would choose
> the 
> Victorian pornographic book?).

I'll resist the very strong temptation to expound on dactyl-response
theory.

- Jim

=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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From JforJames at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 14:39:12 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:39:12 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: A Reader's Manifesto
Message-ID: <38.19662953.28906c50@aol.com>

In a message dated 7/25/01 1:15:58 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
JackKerouac25 at aol.com writes:

> What exactly was ignorant or insipid about Gioia's article?  Other than the 
>  fact that he angered quite a few academics, I find nothing wrong with the 
>  article--if you are speaking of "Can Poetry Matter?" of course.  Come to 
>  think of it, making academics angry is rather funny.  They turn all red 
and 
>  start hopping around, shouting out ten-syllable words.
Jeff, while I too object to Bob's unfair characterization of Gioia's article, 
I do hope this discussion doesn't turn back to this old war horse of 
an article, because Can Poetry Matter?" has a flawed premise, "poetry 
is broken or poetry has driven off its audience"...I'm not the only one 
to have observed this; secondly, his concluding prescriptions, even 
if one were to buy his premise, are overly simplistic.  
Finnegan


From halvard at earthlink.net  Wed Jul 25 14:39:50 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:39:50 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: A Reader's Manifesto
In-Reply-To: <38.19662953.28906c50@aol.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEKEPODNAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

"overly simplistic."  

Isn't this formulation overly redundant and maybe
just a little bit wordy too?

Hal          "Way down the deserted street, I thought I saw
                a bus which, with luck, might get me out of this
                sentence . . . "
                                 --Rosmarie Waldrop
Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson





From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Jul 25 14:49:27 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 14:49:27 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: A Reader's Manifesto
References: <105.6b25028.28905840@aol.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F14B6.39EF@nut-n-but.net>

Okay, I should just have said I didn't like Gioia's article.  (Yeah, I
know: I really shouldn't have said anything about the Atlantic in
the first place.)  I'm sure I have a xerox I made of it when it came out
lying around, but I can't find it, so I can't say specifically what
was insipid and ignorant about it.  I recall, though, that it said
nothing interesting, nothing I hadn't heard before, so in that respect
was insipid; and I'm sure it was ignorant the way all articles on
contemporary poetry in mainstream magazines (i.e., magazines with
circulations over a hundred thousand or so) have for years been: in its
not mentioning the various kinds of poetry I'm most interested in, like
visual poetry (or only briefly mentioning them).  

I don't, by the way, think characterizing Gioia's essay as insipid and
ignorant is quite demonizing him; it wasn't anywhere near as bad as many
other essays I've read on the state of poetry and was not terrible
or even really damaging, just symptomatic of Atlantic-level thinking;
but, hey, while at my eye-doctor's last week I read Time Magazine's
recent list of "the best" in various of the arts, including talk-show
hosting; we may be able to agree that their choices were not too
intelligent; I would be quite unhappy if we couldn't definitely agree
that Time truly showed its cultural backwardness by not having poetry as
a category--unless I missed it; though I guess we should breathe sighs
of relief about the little war over the person Time selected as its best
poet that we avoided here at New-Poetry.  Anyway, the Atlantic is not at
the bottom, even among the more pseudo-cultured American mainstream
magazines.

                                                --Bob G.

 
                                               --Bob G.



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 25 16:00:03 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:00:03 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] To Poetryect [via the kindness of David B.]
Message-ID: <F180CRBHZXFZ0stgr3S000009eb@hotmail.com>

[Preface to David:

Why, David, your post yeterday, what utterly viscid disingenuousness. And 
that such would be coming from you, no less, star fullback for "Kill the 
Lacanian/VeRT Bastards United," winner of this year's Poetry Listserv League 
Sportsmanship Award!

Listen, my dear fellow, you know exactly what was the intent and message of 
Candice Ward's post on the e-mail virus. And just in case the "Bircumshaw" 
written across the back of your jersey might denote SOME remaining shadow of 
authorial honesty and self-respect, I would like to challenge you with the 
following:  That given the impossibility of directly defending myself 
against the malicious innuendoes and calumnies that Candice Ward has put 
forth as
justification for my removal from Poetryetc, you send the below to
Poetryetc for the list members' free and democratic consideration. What say 
you?

Let me know, please. If you do, I will forgive every word of wild personal 
abuse you spit at me and Jacques Debrot during the Lacan fracas at Brit-Po.  
  --Kent]



-----------
Message:

Dear members of Poetryetc (and other members of the poetry and academic 
communities, who feel that Listserv moderators should never resort to 
fabrication and slander as tactical tools of power and control, and who feel 
so because such behavior constitutes an insidious threat to free discourse, 
and who agree that such behavior should be condemned as a matter of 
principle, for the behavior is likely to spread if not addressed in candid 
terms):


Many of you have no doubt set your filters against me following Candice 
Ward's innuendo-ridden post about the email virus. I have nothing to do with 
such a virus; even if I were so malicious as to consider sending such a 
thing, I know nothing about viral computer codes and haven't the slightest 
notion how one would deliver them. But with this new aspersion, Ms. Ward has 
succeeded in muddying the waters further and heating up the climate of 
paranoia at Poetryetc. And I would like to suggest, for your consideration, 
that this is precisely what she needs to do so as to cover over acts of 
censorship and flagrant abuse that she can not defend with reason and logic.

What she cannot defend, or honestly explain, is exactly WHY I (and later 
Steve Duffy, who had the decency to allow me to defend myself in face of the 
attacks) was removed a few days ago from the list. If you believe that all 
members of a poetry list, regardless of the popularity of their views or 
"styles" are entitled to fair treatment, due process (or *some* measure of 
it) before being expelled, and then entitled to candid explanation after 
suffering such consequences, then I ask that you momentarily put 
preconceptions aside and consider the following facts. I won't take long:

1) After I was placed on "Special Review" status by the moderators for
expressing a desire to share (and with the author's permission) some
interesting posts from another list, I sent in, through the kindness of 
Steve Duffy, a post explaining why I felt the moderators' action was 
unnecessary and unfair.

2) Shortly after this, I was removed from Poetryetc by Candice Ward. My 
first impression was that she had done so out of displeasure with my post, 
which had been sent briefly after she told the list that I was invited to 
post "anything under the sun," just so long as it did not involve an 
infringement of "copyright" which might compromise the integrity of the list 
and of Jiscmail. I sent in a couple or three more posts of protest against 
Ms. Ward's act of censorship (again, through the kindness of Steve Duffy, 
who was soon himself to be vindictively expelled on a ludicrous and 
trumped-up charge of "personal abuse" against another list member).

3) Ms. Ward then revealed, to my surprise, that the post I had sent in
under my "Special Review" status had nothing to do with my expulsion, that, 
in fact, she had removed me from the list before the post actually appeared. 
Her reason for doing so? That she had "received information" about my back 
channel "victimization" of another list member, and that, of course, such 
information was confidential and could not be revealed. [Was I sexually 
harrassing him or her? Was I threatening to harm his or her children? Was I 
sending her or him e-mail viruses? Was I jabbering endlessly on about 
Yasusada? What was I doing?]

Obviously, Ms. Ward's mysterious-sounding claim is, at best, hearsay, and at 
worst, outright fabrication and slander. And for anyone who recognizes in 
such blatant innuendo the potential for arbitrary and deceitful abuse of 
power, it certainly cannot stand as justifiable reason for permanently 
silencing someone's voice. Ms. Ward knows this, and it is why she has been 
so busy the past couple of days trying to close off as many channels for me 
as she can (my banning at Poetryetc, advising that filters be set, 
insinuating at three different listservs about possible virus's from me, 
requesting there be no more "bad mannered" forwarding of posts from me, 
urging no more cross-list discussion at New-Poetry list, etc.)

4) Because I have not the faintest notion what Ms. Ward could be
alluding to in her "justification" for my disappearance from Poetryetc, I 
have, since she made these allegations and then promptly asked listees to 
move on to "the business of the list" (again, advising them, on more than 
one occasion, to set their filters against my e-mail), *emphatically* 
requested to the list moderators that these nefarious and "victimizing" 
e-mails I have supposedly sent to "someone" be publicly revealed. In other 
words, I have demanded that Ms. Ward's defamatory allegations be clarified 
and my *expulsion justified front channel*, via a posting of this material 
which supposedly justifies the moderators' censorious act against me. And I 
have asked, most recently, since it is clear that such request is not to be 
honored, that I at least be shown back-channel the text and headings of the 
e-mails in question.

Such a request is obviously reasonable, and that it has been met with
complete silence leads me to conclude, as bizarre and disturbing as the 
conclusion may be, that the whole allegation is a libelous canard, created 
by Ms. Ward for the explicit purpose of carrying out a vindictive action 
against me-- one that, I can only surmise under the extraordinary 
circumstances, is guided by the desire to avenge the injury she and other 
present and former British Poets listserv members (a group, incidentally, in 
which Alison Croggon, Ward's co-moderator, is included, though to be fair, 
Ms. Croggon has never acted with in-your-face malice) perceive was done to 
them by the Jacques Lacan/Jacques Debrot correspondence published at VeRT
http://www.litvert.com

5) Steve Duffy said, before he was expelled by Ms. Ward, that if Poetryetc 
was going to be turned into a kind of "red-zoned" space, that he would 
appreciate having candor from the moderators that such was the case. The 
current situation shows, I feel, that such is, exactly, the case. I would 
suggest that those interested in the ideals of fairness, where difference 
and discussion can unfold in an atmosphere free from bureaucratic 
intimidation, where members can participate without the fear of being 
demonized with slurs and then silenced altogether, only to be further 
demonized with slurs-- I would suggest (if you will excuse this long 
sentence) that these individuals gather the courage and elemental integrity 
to speak up and say something about the matter. To do so in no way would 
mean you are "aligned" with "me"; it would mean, only, that you are not 
aligned, as a matter of principle, with acts of blatant and vindictive 
censorship.

Kent Johnson


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU  Wed Jul 25 17:08:26 2001
From: AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (Henry)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 17:08:26 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] re: Kent's latest honk
Message-ID: <010725.174720.EDT.AP201070@BROWNVM.brown.edu>

Dear New-Poets,

I apologize for continuing this thread to those who find it disagreeable:
to you I suggest, DELETE NOW.

To Kent I would like to ask a question:  in the world of free speech on the
internet, do individual discussion groups have a right to establish their
own sets of rules?

I think this question is at the heart of the hubbub.  Because when you asked
to import material from another list, you already knew, or you learned very
soon afterward, that this was in violation of one of the written rules of
Poetryetc.

The responsibility for managing and maintaining these discussion communities
often devolves upon unpaid volunteers.  Along with that responsibility,
I am sure, comes a certain amount of discretion.  If the managers themselves
are subjected to threats to violate the rules of the list, along with
personal insults, I, for one, can understand why they might wish to
exercise their discretion with regard to reviewing or expelling certain
list members.

Which leads to my second question addressed to you, Kent:  in your debate
with the list managers, did you ever acknowledge the existence of the
standing rules of list membership?  And my third question:  Did you
ever attempt, back-channel, to resolve the dispute amicably?  I don't
expect you to provide evidence: but I think the facts from which these
questions depend would go a long way toward clarifying your own sense
of responsibility toward the discussion group which you had chosen to
join.

I ask you these questions, Kent, because if you are going to hold
poetry discussion groups to high standards of public speech ethics,
then it goes without saying that you yourself need to be held
accountable for your behavior in the context of these community
dialogues.  That behavior includes, AMONG OTHER MUCH MORE POSITIVE
TRAITS: grandstanding, belligerent baiting, personal attacks, threats
to publish discussions in other venues, egregious feuding in public,
and a disregard for the stated rules of the group you have
joined.

It's a 2-way street, Kent.  At this point I don't even expect you to answer
my questions.  I understand very well the ideals that you are banking on:
that internet poetry discussion could be a FREE space, unlike the edited
venues of official poetry biz.  But the difference between freedom and a
license to abuse others is the gray area that list managers are called
upon to deal with.  & your methods of demanding freedom for yourself
seem designed, not so much to challenge certain list managers in person,
but to call into question the established rules of internet discussion
(I am talking about copyright protections).  In other words, the
actions of Candice Ward are not your true target, but the legal
assumptions & protections set in place by JISCmail, for example.
Which is ironic in that not long ago you threatened on this list
to take CW to court.  Are some laws (defamation) okay with you,
while others (copyright) are not?  That's another question you
haven't addressed.

Henry


From tadrichards at prodigy.net  Wed Jul 25 15:24:24 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:24:24 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
References: <20010725151939.18016.qmail@web12103.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <006d01c1153f$6a1887c0$6801a8c0@hvc.rr.com>

> > > Kinf of gets us nowhere, huh?
> > > 
> > > - Jim
> > 
> > And where was it we wanted to go?
> > 
> 
> We wanted to go *there,* which is wherever and whatever I want it to
> be.  Now, did I really have to say that?  The silence should have told
> you.  But then again, it doesn't speak to everyone.
> 
> - Jim
> 

That's glory for you.


Tad



From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Wed Jul 25 16:10:02 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 16:10:02 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: A Reader's Manifesto
Message-ID: <d8.992a98c.2890819a@cs.com>

I guess that much of Gioia's point was made when a mainstream magazine's 
devoting so much space to an article on contemporary poetry stirred up the 
huge mail response that The Atlantic got. However, one could also argue that 
the large numbers of folks out there who bothered to respond could be an 
argument that there is in fact a large audience for poetry (or at least for 
arguments about it).  I do agree that we shouldn't get into yet another 
rehash of this essay.
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From JforJames at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 15:15:48 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 15:15:48 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: A Reader's Manifesto
Message-ID: <114.230b110.289074e4@aol.com>

In a message dated 7/25/01 2:46:14 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
halvard at earthlink.net writes:

> overly simplistic."  
>  
>  Isn't this formulation overly redundant and maybe
>  just a little bit wordy too?
& how many typos did you find?
F


From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Wed Jul 25 15:45:12 2001
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:45:12 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: A Reader's Manifesto
References: <105.6b25028.28905840@aol.com> <3B5F14B6.39EF@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <011201c11542$55639920$a0b5fea9@w4e4b3>

From: "Bob Grumman" <BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net>

> Okay, I should just have said I didn't like Gioia's article.  (Yeah, I
> know: I really shouldn't have said anything about the Atlantic in
> the first place.)  I'm sure I have a xerox I made of it when it came out
> lying around, but I can't find it, so I can't say specifically what
> was insipid and ignorant about it.

On the Web, at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/gioia/gioia.htm

Having just (partly) read it [as a result of this thread], my immediate
reactions were that (a) it was relatively well-written pap; and (b) it
managed to conflate two separate phenomena -- the general shift in the
nature of poetry (due to the competing impact of prose) and the rise of
Creative Writing Departments in American universities.

The problem with (b):ii is that a relatively similar phenomenon could be
observed in recent British poetry, which singularly lacks the pedagogical
infrastructure of the Nation.  So it can't be blamed on +just+ that.

I haven't yet reached the "answer to the problem", but I'm guessing that
this will be that we all go back to writing in rhyming iambic pentameter.

If I'm wrong ...

> I recall, though, that it said
> nothing interesting, nothing I hadn't heard before, so in that respect
> was insipid;

Concur.  I suppose I'll get round to finishing it, but it sure don't
generate any sense of excitement.  Even less of enchantment.

> I don't, by the way, think characterizing Gioia's essay as insipid and
> ignorant is quite demonizing him; it wasn't anywhere near as bad as many
> other essays I've read on the state of poetry and was not terrible
> or even really damaging, just symptomatic of Atlantic-level thinking;

My previous encounter (recent) with Gioia (on Another List) was via one of
his "formal" poems.  I have to say that, deficient as it was, the article
was a pleasant surprise.

Robin Hamilton



From ibid1 at earthlink.net  Wed Jul 25 23:35:26 2001
From: ibid1 at earthlink.net (David Hickman)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:35:26 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] re: Kent's latest honk
In-Reply-To: <010725.174720.EDT.AP201070@BROWNVM.brown.edu>
Message-ID: <B784DE0E.46E3%ibid1@earthlink.net>

Dear Henry,

DELETE NOW. Is that the BANNED IN BOSTON of the internet?

More to the point though,this post, as well as Kent Johnsosn's, Candice
Ward's and others, are  Poetry Etc. list business. If Poetry Etc members are
not willing to discuss this on their own list, then why are they willing to
do it here, on a list that has indicated little or no interest in it?


DH




on 7/25/01 2:08 PM, Henry at AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU wrote:

> Dear New-Poets,
> 
> I apologize for continuing this thread to those who find it disagreeable:
> to you I suggest, DELETE NOW.
> 
> To Kent I would like to ask a question:  in the world of free speech on the
> internet, do individual discussion groups have a right to establish their
> own sets of rules?
> 
> I think this question is at the heart of the hubbub.  Because when you asked
> to import material from another list, you already knew, or you learned very
> soon afterward, that this was in violation of one of the written rules of
> Poetryetc.
> 
> The responsibility for managing and maintaining these discussion communities
> often devolves upon unpaid volunteers.  Along with that responsibility,
> I am sure, comes a certain amount of discretion.  If the managers themselves
> are subjected to threats to violate the rules of the list, along with
> personal insults, I, for one, can understand why they might wish to
> exercise their discretion with regard to reviewing or expelling certain
> list members.
> 
> Which leads to my second question addressed to you, Kent:  in your debate
> with the list managers, did you ever acknowledge the existence of the
> standing rules of list membership?  And my third question:  Did you
> ever attempt, back-channel, to resolve the dispute amicably?  I don't
> expect you to provide evidence: but I think the facts from which these
> questions depend would go a long way toward clarifying your own sense
> of responsibility toward the discussion group which you had chosen to
> join.
> 
> I ask you these questions, Kent, because if you are going to hold
> poetry discussion groups to high standards of public speech ethics,
> then it goes without saying that you yourself need to be held
> accountable for your behavior in the context of these community
> dialogues.  That behavior includes, AMONG OTHER MUCH MORE POSITIVE
> TRAITS: grandstanding, belligerent baiting, personal attacks, threats
> to publish discussions in other venues, egregious feuding in public,
> and a disregard for the stated rules of the group you have
> joined.
> 
> It's a 2-way street, Kent.  At this point I don't even expect you to answer
> my questions.  I understand very well the ideals that you are banking on:
> that internet poetry discussion could be a FREE space, unlike the edited
> venues of official poetry biz.  But the difference between freedom and a
> license to abuse others is the gray area that list managers are called
> upon to deal with.  & your methods of demanding freedom for yourself
> seem designed, not so much to challenge certain list managers in person,
> but to call into question the established rules of internet discussion
> (I am talking about copyright protections).  In other words, the
> actions of Candice Ward are not your true target, but the legal
> assumptions & protections set in place by JISCmail, for example.
> Which is ironic in that not long ago you threatened on this list
> to take CW to court.  Are some laws (defamation) okay with you,
> while others (copyright) are not?  That's another question you
> haven't addressed.
> 
> Henry
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 25 20:39:37 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 19:39:37 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Reply to David B. and message
Message-ID: <F30MSYltjfBdenNkeOL0000760e@hotmail.com>

[Preface to David:

Why, David, your post yeterday, what utterly viscid disingenuousness. And 
that such would be coming from you, no less, star fullback for "Kill the 
Lacanian/VeRT Bastards United," winner of this year's Poetry Listserv League 
Sportsmanship Award!

Listen, my dear fellow, you know exactly what was the intent and message of 
Candice Ward's post on the e-mail virus. And just in case the "Bircumshaw" 
written across the back of your jersey might denote SOME remaining shadow of 
authorial honesty and self-respect, I would like to challenge you with the 
following:  That given the impossibility of directly defending myself 
against the malicious innuendoes and calumnies that Candice Ward has put 
forth as
justification for my removal from Poetryetc, you send the below to
Poetryetc for the list members' free and democratic consideration. What say 
you?

Let me know, please. If you do, I will forgive every word of wild personal 
abuse you spit at me and Jacques Debrot during the Lacan fracas at Brit-Po.  
  --Kent]



-----------
Message:

Dear members of Poetryetc (and other members of the poetry and academic 
communities, who feel that Listserv moderators should never resort to 
fabrication and slander as tactical tools of power and control, and who feel 
so because such behavior constitutes an insidious threat to free discourse, 
and who agree that such behavior should be condemned as a matter of 
principle, for the behavior is likely to spread if not addressed in candid 
terms):


Many of you have no doubt set your filters against me following Candice 
Ward's innuendo-ridden post about the email virus. I have nothing to do with 
such a virus; even if I were so malicious as to consider sending such a 
thing, I know nothing about viral computer codes and haven't the slightest 
notion how one would deliver them. But with this new aspersion, Ms. Ward has 
succeeded in muddying the waters further and heating up the climate of 
paranoia at Poetryetc. And I would like to suggest, for your consideration, 
that this is precisely what she needs to do so as to cover over acts of 
censorship and flagrant abuse that she can not defend with reason and logic.

What she cannot defend, or honestly explain, is exactly WHY I (and later 
Steve Duffy, who had the decency to allow me to defend myself in face of the 
attacks) was removed a few days ago from the list. If you believe that all 
members of a poetry list, regardless of the popularity of their views or 
"styles" are entitled to fair treatment, due process (or *some* measure of 
it) before being expelled, and then entitled to candid explanation after 
suffering such consequences, then I ask that you momentarily put 
preconceptions aside and consider the following facts. I won't take long:

1) After I was placed on "Special Review" status by the moderators for
expressing a desire to share (and with the author's permission) some
interesting posts from another list, I sent in, through the kindness of 
Steve Duffy, a post explaining why I felt the moderators' action was 
unnecessary and unfair.

2) Shortly after this, I was removed from Poetryetc by Candice Ward. My 
first impression was that she had done so out of displeasure with my post, 
which had been sent briefly after she told the list that I was invited to 
post "anything under the sun," just so long as it did not involve an 
infringement of "copyright" which might compromise the integrity of the list 
and of Jiscmail. I sent in a couple or three more posts of protest against 
Ms. Ward's act of censorship (again, through the kindness of Steve Duffy, 
who was soon himself to be vindictively expelled on a ludicrous and 
trumped-up charge of "personal abuse" against another list member).

3) Ms. Ward then revealed, to my surprise, that the post I had sent in
under my "Special Review" status had nothing to do with my expulsion, that, 
in fact, she had removed me from the list before the post actually appeared. 
Her reason for doing so? That she had "received information" about my back 
channel "victimization" of another list member, and that, of course, such 
information was confidential and could not be revealed. [Was I sexually 
harrassing him or her? Was I threatening to harm his or her children? Was I 
sending her or him e-mail viruses? Was I jabbering endlessly on about 
Yasusada? What was I doing?]

Obviously, Ms. Ward's mysterious-sounding claim is, at best, hearsay, and at 
worst, outright fabrication and slander. And for anyone who recognizes in 
such blatant innuendo the potential for arbitrary and deceitful abuse of 
power, it certainly cannot stand as justifiable reason for permanently 
silencing someone's voice. Ms. Ward knows this, and it is why she has been 
so busy the past couple of days trying to close off as many channels for me 
as she can (my banning at Poetryetc, advising that filters be set, 
insinuating at three different listservs about possible virus's from me, 
requesting there be no more "bad mannered" forwarding of posts from me, 
urging no more cross-list discussion at New-Poetry list, etc.)

4) Because I have not the faintest notion what Ms. Ward could be
alluding to in her "justification" for my disappearance from Poetryetc, I 
have, since she made these allegations and then promptly asked listees to 
move on to "the business of the list" (again, advising them, on more than 
one occasion, to set their filters against my e-mail), *emphatically* 
requested to the list moderators that these nefarious and "victimizing" 
e-mails I have supposedly sent to "someone" be publicly revealed. In other 
words, I have demanded that Ms. Ward's defamatory allegations be clarified 
and my *expulsion justified front channel*, via a posting of this material 
which supposedly justifies the moderators' censorious act against me. And I 
have asked, most recently, since it is clear that such request is not to be 
honored, that I at least be shown back-channel the text and headings of the 
e-mails in question.

Such a request is obviously reasonable, and that it has been met with
complete silence leads me to conclude, as bizarre and disturbing as the 
conclusion may be, that the whole allegation is a libelous canard, created 
by Ms. Ward for the explicit purpose of carrying out a vindictive action 
against me-- one that, I can only surmise under the extraordinary 
circumstances, is guided by the desire to avenge the injury she and other 
present and former British Poets listserv members (a group, incidentally, in 
which Alison Croggon, Ward's co-moderator, is included, though to be fair, 
Ms. Croggon has never acted with in-your-face malice) perceive was done to 
them by the Jacques Lacan/Jacques Debrot correspondence published at VeRT
http://www.litvert.com

5) Steve Duffy said, before he was expelled by Ms. Ward, that if Poetryetc 
was going to be turned into a kind of "red-zoned" space, that he would 
appreciate having candor from the moderators that such was the case. The 
current situation shows, I feel, that such is, exactly, the case. I would 
suggest that those interested in the ideals of fairness, where difference 
and discussion can unfold in an atmosphere free from bureaucratic 
intimidation, where members can participate without the fear of being 
demonized with slurs and then silenced altogether, only to be further 
demonized with slurs-- I would suggest (if you will excuse this long 
sentence) that these individuals gather the courage and elemental integrity 
to speak up and say something about the matter. To do so in no way would 
mean you are "aligned" with "me"; it would mean, only, that you are not 
aligned, as a matter of principle, with acts of blatant and vindictive 
censorship.

Kent Johnson


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From AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU  Wed Jul 25 20:38:00 2001
From: AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (Henry)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 20:38:00 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] re: Kent's latest honk
In-Reply-To: <B784DE0E.46E3%ibid1@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <010725.204304.EDT.AP201070@BROWNVM.brown.edu>

David, I sent that to new-poets because this is a list where both sides
of the squabble are still able to have their say in public; because the
issues raised seem important, even if blown far into melodrama; and
because I care personally about people on both sides of the feud.

Again, my apologies to those who are no longer interested in this
business.  I will try to keep my posts on this subject to a
MINIMUM & will define them clearly in the subject line of each
post.  I hope others do likewise.

Henry


From JforJames at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 21:34:53 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 21:34:53 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Well then, what is it?
Message-ID: <ea.18c0d039.2890cdbd@aol.com>

Tad Richards wrote: 
As good as this is, it gets better, because Calvino
manages to extend his definition of art to a
definition of good art:

"I might venture a definition:  we consider poetic a
production in which each individual experience
acquires prominence through its detachment from the
general continuum, while it retains a kind of glint of
that unlimited vastness."
----
Tad, is this from that new collection of Calvino
essays, Why Read the Classics?

Despite some appealing aspects of the second
quote, I'm not sure I quite the get it...nor 
am I willing say it is particularly helpful to me.
I presume Calvino has been translated from the
Italian, but here are my problems, broken down into phrases...

"in which each individual experience acquires prominence"
Is he speaking here of the author's experience
or the experience of each individual that comprise the
audience for the work...or does not matter? & a new 
question is begged by that phrase "acquires prominence." 
Perhaps the whole argument about good & bad art could 
be reduced how & why a salient element within or 
the whole piece of a work of art acquires prominence.

Would you say that "its detachment from
general continuum" refers to a poetic/artistic work
being in a state of "remove" from time's here & now?
Or Calvino saying the "poetic" is ahistorical?

And then that "retains a kind of glint of that unlimited vastness."
This is damn pretty rhetoric; but what does it mean exactly?
Is he saying only that a great poem/artwork must
retains an eternal/universal/archetypal aspect? Or is it
a more profoundly spiritual sense he's after?
Finnegan



From JforJames at aol.com  Wed Jul 25 22:18:05 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 22:18:05 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] close reading?
Message-ID: <91.de54b01.2890d7dd@aol.com>

In a message dated 7/24/01 10:34:22 PM Eastern Daylight Time, JBCM2 at aol.com 
writes:
<< Pennebaker said previous research has found that suicide rates are much 
 higher among poets than among other literary writers and the general public, 
 and that poets are more prone to depression and bipolar disorder, also 
called 
 manic-depressive illness.
 
 ''As a group, no one would call poets a particularly bubbly, chipper 
group,'' 
 Pennebaker added. >>

Joe, I wonder if this study will be used against the poets prone to
the I-lyric or whether they'll be cut some critical slack, garner some
sympathy.
I notice Robt. Lowell was among the survivor poets...but of course 
he struggled mightily (bi-polar?) from what I've read in the Ian Hamilton 
bio.

The other nite we were discussing the issue of how 99 out of 100
poems are tinged with some darkness, dark, or downright
gloomy...Even the poems that are affirmative generally come out
steely resolve or gritty resignation to get thru...to survive. Why are
there so few poems of unabashed joy, of unfettered celebration?
What poets would people say are most inclined to happy poems
(as distinguished from the comic bent)? Is there even a handful 
of Positive Mental Attitude poets? Why are these poems so hard 
to write even if the poet not by nature possessed of a dreary 
temperament?

Here's Stevie Smith's take on things:

    Why does my muse only speak when she is unhappy?
    She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy
    When I am happy I live and despise writing
    For my Muse this cannot but be dispiriting.

(from "My Muse" in _Me Again_)
Finnegan
 



From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Wed Jul 25 23:18:24 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 23:18:24 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] The Melancholy of Poets
References: <91.de54b01.2890d7dd@aol.com>
Message-ID: <3B5F8BFF.418D@nut-n-but.net>

Just stray thoughts on why poets might be kinda gloomy.

(1) they're naturally dissatisfied with the world which is why
(a) they make alternative images of it and (b) reject its
conventional language--and (c) are sometimes not that loved
by those who are not dissatisfied with the world

(2) creativity (in my psychology) requires a kind of (intermittant)
loss of character that I call accommodance which opens one to one's
environment but makes one "weak" and not in charge of oneself and 
even depressed while one is experiencing it; this makes for a 
rich soul but an often unhappy one (this one I genuinely am sure of) 

(3) high-level creativity is demanding and can cause nervous
breakdowns of various degrees, and grouchiness, etc.

(4) they don't make very much money

(5) everybody is miserable but few but poets are sufficiently
in touch with themselves to admit that they are and/or their power
of self-expression makes them more vividly miserable than non-poets.

                                             --Bob G.



From groggydays at hotmail.com  Wed Jul 25 23:33:09 2001
From: groggydays at hotmail.com (David Bircumshaw)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 04:33:09 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] The Melancholy of Poets
References: <91.de54b01.2890d7dd@aol.com> <3B5F8BFF.418D@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <OE27nx4qqECWhdAwAa7000002f8@hotmail.com>

> (2) creativity (in my psychology) requires a kind of (intermittant)
> loss of character that I call accommodance which opens one to one's
> environment but makes one "weak" and not in charge of oneself and
> even depressed while one is experiencing it; this makes for a
> rich soul but an often unhappy one (this one I genuinely am sure of)
>

That, in particular, is really fascinating, Bob, and rings all sorts of
rueful bells.

Thanks.

Best

David B
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Grumman" <BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 4:18 AM
Subject: [New-Poetry] The Melancholy of Poets


> Just stray thoughts on why poets might be kinda gloomy.
>
> (1) they're naturally dissatisfied with the world which is why
> (a) they make alternative images of it and (b) reject its
> conventional language--and (c) are sometimes not that loved
> by those who are not dissatisfied with the world
>
> (2) creativity (in my psychology) requires a kind of (intermittant)
> loss of character that I call accommodance which opens one to one's
> environment but makes one "weak" and not in charge of oneself and
> even depressed while one is experiencing it; this makes for a
> rich soul but an often unhappy one (this one I genuinely am sure of)
>
> (3) high-level creativity is demanding and can cause nervous
> breakdowns of various degrees, and grouchiness, etc.
>
> (4) they don't make very much money
>
> (5) everybody is miserable but few but poets are sufficiently
> in touch with themselves to admit that they are and/or their power
> of self-expression makes them more vividly miserable than non-poets.
>
>                                              --Bob G.
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>


From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 26 00:40:33 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 23:40:33 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: hoax email
Message-ID: <F163z5b6KZmcK8r6beU00002520@hotmail.com>

It is late and I am leaving on an overnight conoe trip with my kids tomorrow 
morning. I will respond to Alison Croggon's silly and non-syllogistic email 
below when I return on Friday. It is amazing how every time she or Candice 
Ward write, their "story" becomes more and more contradictory and 
groundless. I am sure I will find all number of new accusations in my 
mailbox when I return. I hope so. It is all so delicious.

Will you at least wish me good fishing, Alison and Candice?

Kent


>From: <masthead at onthe.net.au>
>To: "kent johnson" <kljohnson45 at hotmail.com>, <mcward at nc.rr.com>,   
><poetry at wildhoneypress.com>, <jkittay at linguafranca.com>
>CC: <sondheim at panix.com>, <skankypossum at hotmail.com>, <andrew at litvert.com>, 
>   <sduffy at debris.org.uk>, <lattaj at umich.edu>, <unreal at worldnet.att.net>,   
><ap201070 at brownvm.brown.edu>, <gwg6 at cornell.edu>, <jdavis at panix.com>,   "d 
>b" <david.bircumshaw at ntlworld.com>
>Subject: Re: hoax email
>Date: Thu, 26 Jul 01 14:09:32 +1000
>
>To all concerned:
>
>Kent Johnson is a serial disrupter of poetry email list serves (Buffalo
>Poetics, British Poets and Sub Sub Poetics as well as Poetryetc) and a
>well known "hoaxer" for literary reasons best known to himself.  I trust
>that you will understand that his claim of "threats" being delivered his
>way are a wild distortion of my polite refusal to elaborate on a
>well-grounded suspicion which is nevertheless unprovable and was never
>aired in public.   The hoax email (which was sent to me) was not the
>substantial factor in his removal from a list which is a private
>discussion list run by volunteers.  He was removed for abusing the list
>owners backchannel and for his threats to violate the few and simple
>codes of conduct of the list.  The "rules" are there to facilitate
>discussion on poetry and poetics, which is what the list is for.  It does
>not exist to be a public platform for Kent Johnson.
>
>Regards
>
>Alison Croggon
>Listowner
>Poetryetc
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 26 00:43:24 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 23:43:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: hoax email
Message-ID: <F236Ikus0rWNgcj377X000078a9@hotmail.com>

By the way, the best part of Alison's email is this. Watch out for them 
literary reasons, Alison!

>and a
>well known "hoaxer" for literary reasons best known to himself.

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 26 01:01:52 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:01:52 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: hoax email
Message-ID: <F177YCT4aJ6pkNzPZrI00008223@hotmail.com>

And I mean it-- I am going to dismantle this confused and pathetic and 
halucinatory email.

But first I have to go paddling on the Wisconsin. Friday, somewhat late...

Kent


>From: <masthead at onthe.net.au>
>To: "kent johnson" <kljohnson45 at hotmail.com>, <mcward at nc.rr.com>,   
><poetry at wildhoneypress.com>, <jkittay at linguafranca.com>
>CC: <sondheim at panix.com>, <skankypossum at hotmail.com>, <andrew at litvert.com>, 
>   <sduffy at debris.org.uk>, <lattaj at umich.edu>, <unreal at worldnet.att.net>,   
><ap201070 at brownvm.brown.edu>, <gwg6 at cornell.edu>, <jdavis at panix.com>,   "d 
>b" <david.bircumshaw at ntlworld.com>
>Subject: Re: hoax email
>Date: Thu, 26 Jul 01 14:09:32 +1000
>
>To all concerned:
>
>Kent Johnson is a serial disrupter of poetry email list serves (Buffalo
>Poetics, British Poets and Sub Sub Poetics as well as Poetryetc) and a
>well known "hoaxer" for literary reasons best known to himself.  I trust
>that you will understand that his claim of "threats" being delivered his
>way are a wild distortion of my polite refusal to elaborate on a
>well-grounded suspicion which is nevertheless unprovable and was never
>aired in public.   The hoax email (which was sent to me) was not the
>substantial factor in his removal from a list which is a private
>discussion list run by volunteers.  He was removed for abusing the list
>owners backchannel and for his threats to violate the few and simple
>codes of conduct of the list.  The "rules" are there to facilitate
>discussion on poetry and poetics, which is what the list is for.  It does
>not exist to be a public platform for Kent Johnson.
>
>Regards
>
>Alison Croggon
>Listowner
>Poetryetc
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


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From sondheim at panix.com  Thu Jul 26 01:10:00 2001
From: sondheim at panix.com (Alan Sondheim)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 01:10:00 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: hoax email
In-Reply-To: <F177YCT4aJ6pkNzPZrI00008223@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0107260109180.14207-100000@panix3.panix.com>


Please take me off this list. I've seen far too much of this and I do not
need this exchange.

Thank you.

Alan



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 26 01:17:24 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:17:24 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] apologies/no quarter
Message-ID: <F171oYAPNXRPmcarcR4000082e3@hotmail.com>

I will say this front-channel: Forgive me, Finnegan, for thinking (in the 
heat of this extended moment of poetry listserv history) that you might have 
fallen to Candice Ward's (and now Alison Croggon's) shameful and 
self-serving desire to squash, far and yon, any discussion of issues 
pertaining to poetry listserv politics and ethics.

More on Friday. And to the trash heap of history with the opportunistic 
tactics of the replacements of Saint Lunacharsky.

kent

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 26 01:44:59 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 00:44:59 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Little McCarthyites of the poetry world
Message-ID: <F151cOrBLSAQV6uPDVn00008272@hotmail.com>

Because of the extraordinary situation, which at this point transcends  
borders of "back" and "front" channel (given the desperate and deceitful 
nature of the Poetryetc moderators' behavior), I am forwarding this exchange 
of earlier today. Note that my request for clarification on the mysterious 
email is being assiduously avoided-- in fact, the immediate response 
received from Ward was that she was going to sue if I pursued the matter. 
WHY?  If I have done something so transgressive as to justify my expulsion 
from Poetryetc, why the hesitaton to PROVE IT ONCE AND FOR ALL?

HELLO???

I am asking for clarification on a public claim made against my person. I am 
asking that the email(s) be publicly displayed for the world to see. The 
response is that if I don't immediately desist in my requests for 
clarification on the slander, I will be sued.

Go figure.

See you all on Friday.

Kent
cc. Lingua Franca
cc. Chronicle of Higher Education

-------

Alison,

i'm puzzled by the excerpt you provide. Are you suggesting I wrote this? Or 
is it just a little taunt?

If you haven't yet gotten to it, please read my statement posted today 
thorugh the courtesy of David Bircumshaw at Poetryetc, and the same version 
posted by Pat McManus.

I am still waiting for you and Candice to explain exactly WHY you expelled 
me and why utterly slanderous innuendo was used to publicly justify your 
move. That is the issue under discussion, not whether or not you think I am 
a nice person.

I'd been hoping that your silence was out of shame at being associated with 
Candice's over-the-top unethical behavior. NOw I see that you were just on a 
trip. I'm going on one myself tomorrow. Will be back on Friday. I'm not 
going to let this rest until a) I get an explanation as to the "information 
received" of my supposed "victimization" of another listmember, and B) If no 
evidence of such can be produced, until I receive a public apology.

You've made an error. The sooner you act to correct it, the less long-term 
embarrassment will be caused you and Candice.

best to you too, etc,

Kent




>From: <masthead at onthe.net.au>
>To: "kent johnson" <kljohnson45 at hotmail.com>
>CC: <kinsella at kenyon.edu>, <mcward at nc.rr.com>
>Subject: Re:
>Date: Thu, 26 Jul 01 09:34:31 +1000
>
> >I honestly will have no choice but to pursue legal options if
> >this manipulative slander continues.
>
>Kent -
>
>I am just back from a tour and only now catching up on the mighty shit.
>I note with a certain irony that legal action in this country is the most
>usual means of censorship (I have been sued a few times myself).
>
>I think you have every choice but to sue.  I also think that were I into
>such actions, which I am not, we would have a better case for libel than
>you.  I have a little knowledge of libel laws.
>
>Given that your "work" is aimed at creating an atmosphere of paranoia and
>distrust among a list community, I'm not surprised that things have gone
>awol.  I take note of this especially, as quoted from "an obscure East
>German doctoral dissertation completed by one Werner von Hauptlobotomie,
>titled "Der Mythos der Ahriman in der Hiroshima-Textologie der Kent
>Johnson" (Left Overbie Univ., Kent-on-Avuncalling, UK, 1984).  An excerpt
>from the abstract (trans. by Michael Cheeseburger):
>
>"In his
>persona as "Shamba-haha", Johnson found a way to carry forward
>the re-enactment (in the form of a literary "flash"-back) of
>Hiroshima & Nagasaki by, in American slang, "burning" the
>official middle-brow literary readership (who begin by taking
>themselves too seriously and proceed to apply said smugness to
>the world around them) via the Poe-esque literary hoax. By
>"burning" the smug-naive literary internet communities via
>anarchistic acts of destructive and absurd behavior, Johnson
>extended the range of his original procedures, while, inevitably,
>"burning" himself, a la the Buddhist protesters against Vietnam war,
>in the process."
>
>It seems clear that your list behaviour is precisely calculated to cause
>the maximum amount of outrage and discomfort to fellow listees, and
>sadly, this is what it seems to do.  Given the deliberate nature of the
>provocation, and its serial nature, I am puzzled that you should be
>outraged when people are provoked.
>
>Yours etc
>
>Alison
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


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From Jandhodge at aol.com  Thu Jul 26 03:01:41 2001
From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 03:01:41 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] close reading?
Message-ID: <79.1817c109.28911a55@aol.com>

In a message dated 01-07-25 22:19:26 EDT, you write:

<< Why are there so few poems of unabashed joy, of unfettered celebration? >>

Maybe Tolstoy was right?  "Happy families [or poets?] are all alike; each 
unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Happiness, when expressed, usually becomes (or sounds like) a cliche?  And of 
course cliches are anathema to poetry.  Of course cynics, or those who 
despair of the state of contemporary poetry, might observe that unhappiness 
is getting to sound a lot like a cliche now, too.

Jan


From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Jul 26 05:51:18 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 05:51:18 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: hoax email
References: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0107260109180.14207-100000@panix3.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B5FE816.7819@nut-n-but.net>

Alan Sondheim wrote:
> 
> Please take me off this list. I've seen far too much of this and I do not
> need this exchange.
> 
I'm not enjoying this exchange, either, but am so
relieved that free speech is being allowed here.

                                                  --Bob G.



From AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU  Thu Jul 26 08:12:20 2001
From: AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (Henry)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 08:12:20 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] apologia pro Kent Johnson
Message-ID: <010726.084030.EDT.AP201070@BROWNVM.brown.edu>

The name of Kent is reviled now from NY to Sydney.  This is a tough spot
to be in for someone who takes internet chat as seriously as Kent does.
I myself have accused him of list grandstanding, public feuding,
personal abuse, etc. etc. and I don't take any of that back.  However,
the idea that his behavior is just a pattern of cynical hoaxing and
self-promotion, from Buffalo Poetics through british-poets & subsub
to poetryetc, misses the mark.

Kent's edgy behavior puts "list management" in the spotlight as well;
it tests the "rules" of group discussion in laboratory fashion.  In
a post recently here I put some questions to him about his behavior,
which he has declined to answer so far; but his actions raise questions
for list managers too.  Such as: are "offenders" given due process or
adequate warnings or opportunity to reform their behavior before
being "reviewed" or expelled?  Are the "rules" of a list being
applied fairly, or, in the heat of a squabble, has their application
become arbitrary or heavy-handed?  How much "monitoring" can happen
before the free atmosphere of lists becomes stale & predictable?

Kent is not simply playing a one-note melody on various lists to please
himself.  I think he took seriously what happened originally at the
Buffalo list.  Probably the majority of Buffalo listees believe that
completely open discussion there became "untenable" due to the large
number of members & the list-hogging of a few.  This is the official
line, which neither Kent nor I for my part accept.  The difference
between Kent and me is that he continues to test the boundaries of
"free" discussion in a deliberate & systematic way.  The fact that
Kent's "way" involves confrontational scandal-mongering and list-
hogging is one of the issues he apparently hasn't dealt with yet.

In spite of that, I think it's worth recognizing that Kent's
rambunctious and seemingly "anti-social" persona in a perverse way
underlines, reinforces, points up the difference between FREE
discussion spaces for poetry, on the one hand, and heavily-
moderated, edited, or controlled discussion venues on the other.
These FREE spaces, as Bob Grumman just reminded us, are precious.
The irony is that systematic abuse of discussion spaces tends to
debilitate them just as surely as heavy-handed editorial control
does.  This is a dilemma not only for list managers, but for every
member - since we all respond to "freedom" in different ways.  As
Edwin Honig puts it in his poem "In Cuba" -

"Freedom builds within
or breaks your bones."

In a way, Kent's sometimes-obnoxious, often-ridiculous list behavior
can be considered a pioneering service to the rest of us.  I hope
the immediate conflicts between Kent & Poetryetc can be resolved
amicably, soon.

Henry


From artwords at idirect.com  Thu Jul 26 10:36:32 2001
From: artwords at idirect.com (Tanya Adele Koehnke)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:36:32 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] [New Poetry] Re:  The Melancholy of Poets
Message-ID: <3B602AF0.16EA@idirect.com>

> Just stray thoughts on why poets might be kinda gloomy.
> 
> (1) they're naturally dissatisfied with the world which is why
> (a) they make alternative images of it 

Bob, 

The first of your interesting thoughts reminds me of the German word 
"weltschmerz," which _Webster's_ defines as "mental depression or apathy 
caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal 
state." [(1875) G. fr. *welt* world + *schmerz* pain, from OHG *smerzo*; 
1875] 

While many poets are *weltschmerzian* by standard definition, they can 
fortunately re-invent and re-define themselves via their own imaginative 
lingo, as your third thought suggests (i.e., poets "reject [the world's] 
conventional language).  What a boon!

Terminology aside, have you or any of the other list members read the 
related article in the _Psychosomatic Medicine_ journal?  I am curious 
as to whether the researchers assessed the metrical patterns in their 
chosen poets' work.  

Tanya Adele Koehnke


From groggydays at hotmail.com  Thu Jul 26 09:58:20 2001
From: groggydays at hotmail.com (David Bircumshaw)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:58:20 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] apologia pro Kent Johnson
References: <010726.084030.EDT.AP201070@BROWNVM.brown.edu>
Message-ID: <OE12yrXWWKCSxQaWutz0000397c@hotmail.com>

Kent

is one hell of a subject. I don't know much about his poetry, I've only
really seen the parodies, but I'm very aware that he posseses a fine
discriminating critical intelligence and a rare ability as an anthologist.
Also he can be a complete pain.

Me and him have had run-ins and reconciliations to the furthest in the
relatively short time I've had the pleasure, but I do differ from in two key
areas: one is the question of trust, I think Kent's enthusiasm for personae
goes over the top, I understand and accept the critique of the
property-secured presentation of Self, but I'd aver that there has to be
some bedrock of trust for communication to occur, which Kent's love of
hoaxes undermines, so paranoia becomes a normal state of mind, it's no
wonder he gets accused of things left right and centre, whether he's done
them or not. I've told him this repeatedly, but it never seems to sink in,
which applies to my second objection, which is purely personal, in that he
and his collaborators keep on being nasty to those I regard as friends. Very
dear friends, in some cases.
The two points are related, but he never seems to see the link. I can take
all sorts of verbal fisticuffs from him, as long as it's just related to me,
it's no more than two blokes having a brawl, but attack my friend and you
attack me. Where it hurts.
Along with that come all those shoddy tactics of moral blackmail (I've
certainly fallen for it) indiscriminate messaging, gang warfare etc etc. But
the daft thing is I actually like the semi-wit, so too do those he so often
attacks, whom I've tried to remind him are really his natural allies,
remember, for instance, that the very same co-owners of Poetry Etc whom he
is so busy villifying also let him _back on_ the List after a previous
ejection, he was welcome 'back in the fold' as it were. So too his often
said intention to have a pint with myself and Robin Hamilton in our resident
Leicestershire, if and when he ever next comes to England, is welcome, we
might possibly throw him in the River Soar afterwards ( but it's a good
river, from a literary standpoint, King Lear and Cordelia and Richard the
III all lie in there) but he'd certainly be bonhomie-ly entertained. Before.

The list rumbles of recent days have been a strain on many (myself
definitely included) but I do feel a concern for Kent, I fear he's taken it
in too far, and I hope that he'll chill out today on the Wisconsin. I would
tho' emphasise to him, lay off Alison and Candice, they're good souls, who
do an almost thankless task for nothing.

Let's forgive, if you like forget, and get back to poetry Kent!

Best

Dave




----- Original Message -----
From: "Henry" <AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 1:12 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] apologia pro Kent Johnson


> The name of Kent is reviled now from NY to Sydney.  This is a tough spot
> to be in for someone who takes internet chat as seriously as Kent does.
> I myself have accused him of list grandstanding, public feuding,
> personal abuse, etc. etc. and I don't take any of that back.  However,
> the idea that his behavior is just a pattern of cynical hoaxing and
> self-promotion, from Buffalo Poetics through british-poets & subsub
> to poetryetc, misses the mark.
>
> Kent's edgy behavior puts "list management" in the spotlight as well;
> it tests the "rules" of group discussion in laboratory fashion.  In
> a post recently here I put some questions to him about his behavior,
> which he has declined to answer so far; but his actions raise questions
> for list managers too.  Such as: are "offenders" given due process or
> adequate warnings or opportunity to reform their behavior before
> being "reviewed" or expelled?  Are the "rules" of a list being
> applied fairly, or, in the heat of a squabble, has their application
> become arbitrary or heavy-handed?  How much "monitoring" can happen
> before the free atmosphere of lists becomes stale & predictable?
>
> Kent is not simply playing a one-note melody on various lists to please
> himself.  I think he took seriously what happened originally at the
> Buffalo list.  Probably the majority of Buffalo listees believe that
> completely open discussion there became "untenable" due to the large
> number of members & the list-hogging of a few.  This is the official
> line, which neither Kent nor I for my part accept.  The difference
> between Kent and me is that he continues to test the boundaries of
> "free" discussion in a deliberate & systematic way.  The fact that
> Kent's "way" involves confrontational scandal-mongering and list-
> hogging is one of the issues he apparently hasn't dealt with yet.
>
> In spite of that, I think it's worth recognizing that Kent's
> rambunctious and seemingly "anti-social" persona in a perverse way
> underlines, reinforces, points up the difference between FREE
> discussion spaces for poetry, on the one hand, and heavily-
> moderated, edited, or controlled discussion venues on the other.
> These FREE spaces, as Bob Grumman just reminded us, are precious.
> The irony is that systematic abuse of discussion spaces tends to
> debilitate them just as surely as heavy-handed editorial control
> does.  This is a dilemma not only for list managers, but for every
> member - since we all respond to "freedom" in different ways.  As
> Edwin Honig puts it in his poem "In Cuba" -
>
> "Freedom builds within
> or breaks your bones."
>
> In a way, Kent's sometimes-obnoxious, often-ridiculous list behavior
> can be considered a pioneering service to the rest of us.  I hope
> the immediate conflicts between Kent & Poetryetc can be resolved
> amicably, soon.
>
> Henry
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>


From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu  Thu Jul 26 10:05:43 2001
From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:05:43 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] close reading?
Message-ID: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE155@ness.agnesscott.edu>

 
How many times do people feel unfettered joy after childhood? It seems like
a rare moment, and it seems like the kind of moment always punctuated by a
euphoria-bursting thought -- watching grandchildren and thinking 'I won't
live to see them turn 30' or getting married and remembering all the
divorces you've seen of people whose marriages seemed promising. Maybe there
are few poems of unfettered joy because there are few moments of unfettered
joy. Or maybe all this is just me, and you will all start referring me to a
mental health professional.

-Amber
-----Original Message-----
From: Jandhodge at aol.com
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Sent: 7/26/2001 3:01 AM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] close reading?

In a message dated 01-07-25 22:19:26 EDT, you write:

<< Why are there so few poems of unabashed joy, of unfettered
celebration? >>

Maybe Tolstoy was right?  "Happy families [or poets?] are all alike;
each 
unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Happiness, when expressed, usually becomes (or sounds like) a cliche?
And of 
course cliches are anathema to poetry.  Of course cynics, or those who 
despair of the state of contemporary poetry, might observe that
unhappiness 
is getting to sound a lot like a cliche now, too.

Jan
_______________________________________________
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  Thu Jul 26 10:11:27 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:11:27 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] apologies/no quarter
Message-ID: <ab.cceabba.28917f0f@aol.com>

In a message dated 7/26/01 1:18:16 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
kljohnson45 at hotmail.com writes:
 to squash, far and yon, any discussion of issues 
>  pertaining to poetry listserv politics and ethics.
Kent,
Yesterday afternoon the server went down for a few hours; no one's
posts were getting thru.
This is an unmoderated list as it says on the webpage. But abusive 
posting could get one booted...I'm am so thankful that since this
list went online I haven't had to pull the trapdoor switch. I do wonder 
why you (& the other parties interested in list politics, list management, 
censorship, etc.) don't set up a side list (there are several free services 
available) to hash out these grievances. 
I hope members not interested in this topic will continue to initiate
other discussions more directly related to contemporary poetry.

From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Thu Jul 26 10:11:32 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:11:32 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: A Reader's Manifesto
Message-ID: <a3.193e3a5e.28917f15@aol.com>

In a message dated Wed, 25 Jul 2001  8:26:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time, "Robin Hamilton" <robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com> writes:

> 
> I haven't yet reached the "answer to the problem", but I'm guessing that
> this will be that we all go back to writing in rhyming iambic pentameter.
> 

I'm always amazed by the misconceptions surrounding Gioia's article.  He never comes close to suggesting that we "all go back to writing in rhyming iambic pentameter."  

And, his so-called "answers to the problem" aren't answers at all, and he says as much in the article.  Gioia offers some suggestions to further the readership of modern poetry.

Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English/Foreign Languages
University of West Florida




From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Thu Jul 26 10:12:10 2001
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:12:10 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] An Honest Query ...
References: <F151cOrBLSAQV6uPDVn00008272@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <007c01c115dc$f8520dc0$a0b5fea9@w4e4b3>

From: "kent johnson" <kljohnson45 at hotmail.com>

> I am asking for clarification on a public claim made against my person.

One thing which has always puzzled me is why someone who supposedly teaches
at Highland Community College uses hotmail as his personal email address.

I mean, I can see why he wouldn't use his teaching email address -- but
hotmail?

Is this some sort of identification with cybernetic trailer trash?

One (to use the Royal Impersonal) is reminded of Holmes' dog.  Which rather
than not barking has gone barking mad.

Robin Hamilton



From tadrichards at prodigy.net  Thu Jul 26 09:13:33 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 09:13:33 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] close reading?
References: <79.1817c109.28911a55@aol.com>
Message-ID: <006701c115d4$c6a5f6e0$6801a8c0@hvc.rr.com>

How many really good poems of unabashed unhappiness are there? Certainly
there are no shortage of bad poems on the subject, but don't we expect good
poems to have more emotional complexity than that?


  Tad Richards                       "Well said, old mole."
    The Old Mole                         Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet
    of the MoleNet                          Act I, Scene 5
          http://pages.prodigy.net/tadrichards
----- Original Message -----
From: <Jandhodge at aol.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 3:01 AM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] close reading?


> In a message dated 01-07-25 22:19:26 EDT, you write:
>
> << Why are there so few poems of unabashed joy, of unfettered celebration?
>>
>
> Maybe Tolstoy was right?  "Happy families [or poets?] are all alike; each
> unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
>
> Happiness, when expressed, usually becomes (or sounds like) a cliche?  And
of
> course cliches are anathema to poetry.  Of course cynics, or those who
> despair of the state of contemporary poetry, might observe that
unhappiness
> is getting to sound a lot like a cliche now, too.
>
> Jan
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Thu Jul 26 10:24:50 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:24:50 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Can Poetry Matter? Was: Re: A Reader's Manifesto
Message-ID: <a3.193f7050.28918232@aol.com>

In a message dated Wed, 25 Jul 2001  8:06:44 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com writes:

<<I do agree that we shouldn't get into yet another   
rehash of this essay.>>  

Okay, Sam's right.

I'm sorry; I'll shut up.

Cheers.

Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English and Foreign Languages
University of West Florida


From TerryP17 at aol.com  Thu Jul 26 10:46:09 2001
From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:46:09 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Reader's Manifesto and Poetryetc.
Message-ID: <115.230b177.28918732@aol.com>

All--

Interesting responses on Atlantic, Gioia, etc. Sam's and Jeff's worked best for me. It is amazing what vitriol this "old war horse" of an article still generates after 10 years, which indicates to me at least that it still has plenty of intellectual value in that it always arouses a lively--if occasionally dismissive--discussion.

Magazines like the Atlantic constitute a useful midpoint in the firmament for intelligent readers who can't or won't wade through the impenetrable prose thickets of academic magazines on one hand and the psuedo-populist dreck of Time or People on the other. In spite of all odds, that's why the Atlantic still survives. I'm not sure that "intellectual" magazines always need to wade so deeply into academic arcana that they lose their general readership.

Dancing on to other topix--I think, perhaps, that only 2 people on this board have any interest in getting involved in the Poetryetc brouhaha. So give it a rest.

Terry Ponick


From TerryP17 at aol.com  Thu Jul 26 10:52:27 2001
From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:52:27 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Kent's latest honk
Message-ID: <61.10efa271.289188ab@aol.com>

All--

For the second time: Give it a rest. 

--Terry Ponick


From MillB at aol.com  Thu Jul 26 10:57:40 2001
From: MillB at aol.com (MillB at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 10:57:40 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Another Query ...
Message-ID: <c3.13b92902.289189e4@aol.com>

Greetings:

A few years ago, at the NEA web site, I read a wonderful essay/article about 
why the NEA is beneficial.  It listed statistics about how each person pays 
(in taxes) something like a .50 a year for arts and $100 towards defense. . 
.about how art contributes to the well-being of communities. . .when I 
recently checked, the article was not there.  Of course, I do not know the 
title or the author's name (that would be too easy). . .but if someone has a 
lead?  I would greatly appreciate it.

I've contacted the NEA directly and have done keyword searches with not much 
luck.

I'm in a long-term debate with a coworker about the NEA and need additional 
ammunition!

Many thanks,

Mill


From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu  Thu Jul 26 11:07:36 2001
From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 11:07:36 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Surprised by joy
In-Reply-To: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE155@ness.agnesscott.edu>
Message-ID: <l03130300b785df80dec5@[209.23.13.111]>

I think all the reasons offered for the lack of great, purely joyful poems
make sense--especially Amber's comment that there is relatively little
*pure* joy in the world.  A couple additional thoughts:  I would say that
there are dramatic reasons for adulterating your joyful poem with tinges of
the tragic, or at least something like Amber's "euphoria-bursting thought."
Drama requires, if not actual conflict, at least some degree of tension,
friction, opposition, etc.  So, good dramatic construction works toward the
inclusion of bubble-bursting ideas along with the expression of joy.

Also, how do we recognize joy except in opposition to sorrow?  So there are
probably reasons of descriptive accuracy involved as well.  In one of his
texts, Donald Hall noted that a good lyric poem strives not just to tell
the truth, but to tell the whole of a complex truth:  and of course the
whole truth is seldom unadulterated anything.

Having said all this, I would also like to see some examples of
*relatively* joyful poems that listmembers find compelling.

Here are a couple  I'll toss out for possible comment.  Sorry if my email
screws up the indents. . . .

David Graham
_______________________


O TASTE AND SEE

The world is
not with us enough.
*O taste and see*

the subway Bible poster said,
meaning *The Lord*, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination's tongue,

grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking
the fruit.

------------------------------------------
THE BREAD OF THIS WORLD:  PRAISES III


On the Christmaswhite plains of the flowered and flowering kitchen table
The holy loaves of the bread are slowly being born:
Rising like low hills in the steepled pastures of light--
Lifting the prairie farm house afternoon on their arching backs.

It must be Friday, the bread tells us as it climbs
Out of itself like a poor man climbing up on a cross
Toward transfiguration.
					And it is a Mystery, surely,
If we think that this bread rises only out of the enigma
That leavens the Apocalypse of yeast, or ascends on the beards and beads
Of a rosary and priesthood of barley those Friday heavens
Lofting. . .

			But we who will eat the bread when we come in
Out of the cold and dark know it is a deeper mystery
That brings the bread to rise:
						it is the love and faith
Of large and lonely women, moving like floury clouds
In farmhouse kitchens, that rounds the loaves and the lives
Of those around them. . .
					just as we know it is hunger--
Our own and others'--that gives salt and savor to bread.

But that is a workaday story and this is the end of the week.

--Thomas McGrath



>
>How many times do people feel unfettered joy after childhood? It seems like
>a rare moment, and it seems like the kind of moment always punctuated by a
>euphoria-bursting thought -- watching grandchildren and thinking 'I won't
>live to see them turn 30' or getting married and remembering all the
>divorces you've seen of people whose marriages seemed promising. Maybe there
>are few poems of unfettered joy because there are few moments of unfettered
>joy. Or maybe all this is just me, and you will all start referring me to a
>mental health professional.
>
>-Amber

__________________
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
__________________




From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Jul 26 11:17:45 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 11:17:45 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: [New-Poetry]The Melancholy of Poets
References: <3B602AF0.16EA@idirect.com>
Message-ID: <3B603499.1C3@nut-n-but.net>

Bob G.:  
> > Just stray thoughts on why poets might be kinda gloomy.
> >
> > (1) they're naturally dissatisfied with the world which is why
> > (a) they make alternative images of it
> 
> The first of your interesting thoughts reminds me of the German word
> "weltschmerz," which _Webster's_ defines as "mental depression or 
> apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an 
> ideal state." [(1875) G. fr. *welt* world + *schmerz* pain, from OHG > *smerzo*; 1875]
> 
> While many poets are *weltschmerzian* by standard definition, they can
> fortunately re-invent and re-define themselves via their own 
> imaginative  lingo, as your third thought suggests (i.e., poets 
> reject [the world's] conventional language).  What a boon!

Yes, weltschermz, I'm sure, is part of the schmer for many poets.
Just to clarify (as I'm always doing), though, I was thinking 
more of "the world" rather than "the state of the word"--which is
usually its political state; a poet, for example, may be dissatisfied
with some trees--maybe just bored with them--so improves on them
in a poem . . .  I might add that one can be dissatisfied but
not at all depressed, which I think more the case with scientists
and engineers.  
 
> Terminology aside, have you or any of the other list members read the
> related article in the _Psychosomatic Medicine_ journal?  I am curious
> as to whether the researchers assessed the metrical patterns in their
> chosen poets' work.
> 
> Tanya Adele Koehnke

Haven't read the article, no.

                                           --Bob G



From robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com  Thu Jul 26 11:23:30 2001
From: robin.hamilton2 at btinternet.com (Robin Hamilton)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 16:23:30 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] apologia pro Kent Johnson
References: <010726.084030.EDT.AP201070@BROWNVM.brown.edu>
Message-ID: <012201c115e7$6eba0d00$a0b5fea9@w4e4b3>

Henry:

> However,
> the idea that his behavior is just a pattern of cynical hoaxing and
> self-promotion, from Buffalo Poetics through british-poets & subsub
> to poetryetc, misses the mark.

If I may take this on myself ...  It may be a partial truth, but I'm not
sure it +does+ entirely miss the mark.

Objectively (and we're both of a generation to remember that 'interesting'
phrase, "objective anti-communist" which sometimes shared a bed with
"premature anti-fascist") Kent Johnson's behaviour over a period of time
manifests in this way.

Testing the limits of cybertolerance by means of a series of Situationist
stunts -- well, maybe.  I'll take it under advisement.  Certainly a possibly
more productive perspective.

But Guy Debord (to rake up +really+ old history) was one of the few names KJ
and Debrot didn't react to when The Lacan Letters were floating around
brit-po.

Incidentally (and to strike a slightly more positive note) someone is
premiering a book on The Death of Guy Debord at the Edinburgh Festival Book
Fair. Something for anyone who's at that place at the time could take in.
Me, I'll prolly have to wait on it being published.

Robin

(waiting impatiently)



From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu  Thu Jul 26 12:01:26 2001
From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:01:26 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia's Good Idea
In-Reply-To: <a3.193e3a5e.28917f15@aol.com>
Message-ID: <l03130301b785e4910f7d@[209.23.13.135]>

Count me also as weary of much of the discussion that has circled around
Gioia's famous article, especially in the absence of any very close look at
the text itself.  For what it's worth, I share Finnegan's reservations
about the article, myself, but also find much in it to admire.

Hope that this doesn't constitute re-hash:  I'd like to speak up for one of
Gioia's prescriptions, the notion that poets ought to read work by *other*
poets when they do a public reading.   It seems a small enough idea, but
symbolically it turns the whole concept of the reading into more of a
celebration of poetry than of the individual poet.

I like that idea very much.  Michael Harper's a poet I've long admired for
this reason.  Every time I've heard him read, he's devoted a substantial
chunk of his time to plugging other, usually undervalued poets.  My first
appreciation of Robert Hayden (beyond "Those Winter Sundays") came from one
such reading 20 years ago.

How many other poets routinely do this sort of thing?  I recall one
marvelous occasion (maybe 25 years ago) when Galway Kinnell devoted half of
a reading to *Song of Myself*; and the only time I heard Allen Ginsberg
read, he did as much Blake as Ginsberg.

David Graham
___________________________


>>
>
>I'm always amazed by the misconceptions surrounding Gioia's article.  He
>never comes close to suggesting that we "all go back to writing in rhyming
>iambic pentameter."
>
>And, his so-called "answers to the problem" aren't answers at all, and he
>says as much in the article.  Gioia offers some suggestions to further the
>readership of modern poetry.
>
>Jeff Newberry

__________________
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
__________________




From Thom424 at aol.com  Thu Jul 26 12:09:35 2001
From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:09:35 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia's Good Idea
Message-ID: <71.10364eb5.28919abf@aol.com>

Robert Bly has been doing this (reading/promoting work by other writers at 
readings) for years (30+)

Thom Tammaro
Moorhead, MN 


From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Jul 26 12:21:03 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:21:03 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia's Good Idea
References: <71.10364eb5.28919abf@aol.com>
Message-ID: <3B60436F.1805@nut-n-but.net>

Many poets read other poets' work at their readings--Dylan
Thomas, for instance.  Not sure how many of the older
poets read works by contemporaries, though.  Anyway, Gioia
made several reasonable suggestions--mediocrities like him
always are full of reasonable suggestions.

                                                --Bob G.



From johnbrehm at mindspring.com  Thu Jul 26 13:27:10 2001
From: johnbrehm at mindspring.com (john brehm)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:27:10 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia's Good Idea
References: <71.10364eb5.28919abf@aol.com> <3B60436F.1805@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <009501c115f8$3580f100$102df7a5@oemcomputer>

Please unsubscribe me from this list. 

Thank you.

John Brehm



From JforJames at aol.com  Thu Jul 26 13:29:43 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:29:43 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] close reading?
Message-ID: <f2.d4dbaa7.2891ad87@aol.com>

In a message dated 7/26/01 10:15:31 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
tadrichards at prodigy.net writes:

> How many really good poems of unabashed unhappiness are there? Certainly
>  there are no shortage of bad poems on the subject, but don't we expect good
>  poems to have more emotional complexity than that?
Tad, do you think happiness is less emotionally complex than sorrow?
I'm not sure I do. It may be that the history of literature is one long
written complaint about humankind's lot here on earth. When we're 
happy we don't complain...so it's not a case of our suffering in silence...
rather glee does not provoke our pens & keystrokes. 
Or is it that there is no audience for our happiness. Happiness in one
person may only make for jealousy in the other (audience). We have
immense empathy & regard for the hurt, the blue, or the cruelly treated...
but can't stand to hear someone singing about his/her great success
or utter contentment.
Finnegan
PS: One of my favorite songs of late is U2's "Beautiful Day."


From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Thu Jul 26 13:42:59 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:42:59 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia's Good Idea
Message-ID: <23.ef1d70c.2891b0a3@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/26/2001 12:28:27 PM Central Daylight Time, 
johnbrehm at mindspring.com writes:


> Please unsubscribe me from this list. 
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> John Brehm
> 
> 

This was Gioia's good idea?
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From JforJames at aol.com  Thu Jul 26 13:45:35 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:45:35 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Reminder: UnSub Instructions
Message-ID: <a0.17cb721e.2891b13f@aol.com>

UNSUBSCRIBING INSTRUCTIONS: NEW-POETRY LIST
To unsubscribe, go to the webpage (URL appears below
all posts to the list):
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry 
Note: If you don't have a password or don't remember yours,
you'll need to execute step 2b...
1) Enter your email address at the bottom of the first/main page.
2) On the second page you unsubscribe using your password, or...
2b) If you don't have a password, you'll see an "Email Me My Password"
button under the unsubscribe section...use it to get a password. 
3) When you get the password emailed back to you,
go back in to the first/main page with your password 
(steps 1 & 2 above) and use it to unsubscribe.

Let me know if you have trouble, 
and I'll take care of unsubscribing you.
Jim Finnegan
JforJames at aol.com


From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Thu Jul 26 13:47:02 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:47:02 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] close reading?
Message-ID: <e0.1812909d.2891b196@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/26/2001 12:31:22 PM Central Daylight Time, 
JforJames at aol.com writes:


> > How many really good poems of unabashed unhappiness are there? Certainly
> >  there are no shortage of bad poems on the subject, but don't we expect 
> good
> >  poems to have more emotional complexity than that?
> 

I just reread Wordsworth's "Composed upon Westminster Bridge."  And certainly 
there's a lot of unbridled joy in Hopkins, to mention one.  Wilbur strikes me 
as one of the best contemporary celebrants of joy, time and time again.  None 
of these poets is untouched by melancholy, which perhaps gives them greater 
occasion for praise.
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From Cadaly at aol.com  Thu Jul 26 13:58:40 2001
From: Cadaly at aol.com (Cadaly at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 13:58:40 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] 10 Books that Made Poetry New
Message-ID: <4f.ed018a7.2891b450@aol.com>

I'd think since 1990 it's the internet and more international publishing and 
right now, less books by one author --

John Tranter's Modern Australian Poetry anthology.  There are a few other 
anthologies, but this one's _not_ american.

The way the internationalism of concrete poetry has carried over (& not) into 
online animation, etc.

Catherine

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From Jandhodge at aol.com  Thu Jul 26 14:12:22 2001
From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:12:22 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Surprised by joy
Message-ID: <11c.22b647d.2891b786@aol.com>

Thanks, David, for posting the joyful poems, especially "Praises III."  A 
refreshing reminder of the good in a world bent by squabbles and gratuitous 
cheap shots.

Love poems are still written, and I would guess love is a joy.  To break just 
a bit (as a preface to raising a question) from the contemporary, I'll 
suggest three, quoting only briefly from the first two:

    I wonder by my troth what thou and I
    Did, till we loved? . . . 

    And now good morrow to our waking souls,
    Which watch not one another out of fear. . . . 

                    --Donne, The Good Morrow  

What a splendid one-line df. of love that last cited line is!

    My clumsiest dear, whose hands shipwreck vases,
    At whose quick touch all glasses chip and ring,
    Whose palms are bulls in china, burs in linen,
    And have no cunning with any soft thing

    Except all ill-at-ease fidgeting people . . . 

    Be with me, darling, early and late.  Smash glasses--
    I will study wry music for your sake.
    For should your hands drop white and empty
    All the toys of the world would break.

                        --John Frederick Nims, Love Poem

And from Lucille Clifton, who once summed up her work: "I am a Black
woman poet, and I sound like one," and who once, a bit impatient with
Stern and Strand discussing poetic theory and "texts," declared: "You
may write 'texts'; I write poems."  [The audience burst into applause.]

       To a Dark Moses

    you are the one
    i am lit for.
    come with your rod
    that twists
    and is a serpent.
    i am the bush.
    i am burning.
    i am not consumed.

What an elogent celebration of true joy, spiritual and carnal met in one, and 
from a woman who can write with passionate rage about such atrocities as the 
slave trade and its "middle passage," and the continuing injustices of racism

My question:  though obviously good love poems can be and are still written, 
why do they seem so much rarer than they were in the Renaissance, which [like 
now] was a time both of tremendous intellectual and scientific ferment and of 
war, crime, and horrendous disease?  How much might it have to do not so much 
with the change in "the times" but with the way poets view themselves and 
their relationship with the world?

The triumph of the subjective in the "Romantic revolution" was pretty 
pervasive [and I am neither attacking nor defending the fashion of the lyric 
"I"], but it was also a Romantic who wrote: 

    The great secret of morals is Love; or a going out of 
    our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with
    the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person,
    **not our own.**   [emphasis added]

Yes, I know, that same Romantic also wrote my candidate for perhaps the worst 
line among [otherwise good] English poetry: "I fall upon the thorns of life; 
I bleed."  But that seems sometimes to sum up [too] much of contemporary 
poetry, or is this only my mistaken perception?

Jan


From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Thu Jul 26 14:26:22 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:26:22 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Unabashed Joy Poems
References: <e0.1812909d.2891b196@cs.com>
Message-ID: <3B6060CD.6336@nut-n-but.net>

For what it's worth, my impression is that almost all my
mathematical and visual poems are close to being purely
celebratory (which I suspect would surprise more than a
few at New-Poetry given my often-prickly posts) BUT my
only-verbal poems are often turble sad.  I think I believe
(automatically) that I can get away with unadulteratedly
positive math poem because the necessary darks that Jim or
David mentioned are provided by the alienating effect of the
mathematical elements.  Probably something of the same sort is
true of my composition of visual poems--the disorienting effect
of visual material works to counter any sentimentality.  But
in visual poetry one can also use visual means to balance any
verbal expression of joy that by itself would be too much--blacks,
for instance, or heavy shapes, or sharp ones.

Also, of course, most of my visual and mathematical poems are
imagistic--so short, that is, that a positive message hasn't time
to nauseate.

While gabbing, one more thought: I think no poem is any good that
isn't, finally, celebratory (though it's a strain to interpret 
some that way--but the blackest ones, I believe, celebrate the
human ability to come to grips with any Evil through art, and
to endure).

                                               --Bob G.



From jdavis at panix.com  Thu Jul 26 14:33:02 2001
From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:33:02 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Joy in poems
In-Reply-To: <3B6060CD.6336@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0107261430400.3121-100000@panix3.panix.com>

Amber -

It's the stock in trade of the Beat poets and the New York School,
especially Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Frank O'Hara, and Kenneth Koch.
Bernadette Mayer and Joe Ceravolo are pretty good at being joyful too,
though you may have to work a little to understand them (I read Ceravolo's
"Oak oak like like" as an expression born of pure joy).

Jordan




From AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU  Thu Jul 26 14:41:26 2001
From: AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (Henry)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:41:26 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] re: joy
Message-ID: <010726.144312.EDT.AP201070@BROWNVM.brown.edu>

"For joy rides in stupendous coverings
Luring the living into spiritual gates"

- Hart Crane, "Emblems of Conduct"  (lines which he stole &
modified from 2 separate poems by Samuel Greenberg)

- Henry Gould


From Jandhodge at aol.com  Thu Jul 26 15:49:39 2001
From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:49:39 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Surprised by joy
Message-ID: <8e.18f0f2ac.2891ce53@aol.com>

In a message dated 01-07-26 14:13:59 EDT, you write:

<< elogent >>

What??   Must be a portmanteau, a hybrid of "elegant" and "eloquent."   : )

Jan



From Jandhodge at aol.com  Thu Jul 26 16:00:48 2001
From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 16:00:48 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Joy in poems
Message-ID: <65.17c24137.2891d0f0@aol.com>

James Wright on occasion.  Robert Bly in his less pretentious moments:

                 Watering the Horse

      How strange to think of giving up all ambition!
      Suddenly I see with such clear eyes
      The white flake of snow
      That has just fallen in the horse's mane!


Hey, this is fun!  More joy!

Jan

    


From tadrichards at prodigy.net  Thu Jul 26 15:26:53 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:26:53 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] close reading?
References: <f2.d4dbaa7.2891ad87@aol.com>
Message-ID: <003801c11608$fbd56420$6801a8c0@hvc.rr.com>

Jim -- perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I think poems of any single-malt
emotion are likely to be really good, which is one of the big differences
between poetry and scotch.

There are songs that express unalloyed happiness -- for example, "Walking
Along" by the Solitaires.

But when you get a little more complex than that...Louis Armstrong's
"Wonderful World," for example -- the lyrics are a counterfeit of unalloyed
joy, and Pops turns them into almost an elegy.



  Tad Richards                       "Well said, old mole."
    The Old Mole                         Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet
    of the MoleNet                          Act I, Scene 5
          http://pages.prodigy.net/tadrichards
----- Original Message -----
From: <JforJames at aol.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 1:29 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] close reading?


> In a message dated 7/26/01 10:15:31 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> tadrichards at prodigy.net writes:
>
> > How many really good poems of unabashed unhappiness are there? Certainly
> >  there are no shortage of bad poems on the subject, but don't we expect
good
> >  poems to have more emotional complexity than that?
> Tad, do you think happiness is less emotionally complex than sorrow?
> I'm not sure I do. It may be that the history of literature is one long
> written complaint about humankind's lot here on earth. When we're
> happy we don't complain...so it's not a case of our suffering in
silence...
> rather glee does not provoke our pens & keystrokes.
> Or is it that there is no audience for our happiness. Happiness in one
> person may only make for jealousy in the other (audience). We have
> immense empathy & regard for the hurt, the blue, or the cruelly treated...
> but can't stand to hear someone singing about his/her great success
> or utter contentment.
> Finnegan
> PS: One of my favorite songs of late is U2's "Beautiful Day."
> _______________________________________________
> 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 Jul 26 15:30:10 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:30:10 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Gioia's Good Idea
References: <23.ef1d70c.2891b0a3@cs.com>
Message-ID: <004601c11609$65049380$6801a8c0@hvc.rr.com>


  From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2001 1:42 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Gioia's Good Idea


  In a message dated 7/26/2001 12:28:27 PM Central Daylight Time, 
  johnbrehm at mindspring.com writes: 



    Please unsubscribe me from this list. 

    Thank you. 

    John Brehm 




  This was Gioia's good idea? 

He must have had better. This isn't a good idea at all.

   Tad
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From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu  Thu Jul 26 17:01:06 2001
From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:01:06 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Welcome Back
Message-ID: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE156@ness.agnesscott.edu>

It's nice to see the gang back and crotchety. (Even the crickets had shut up
on this list, quite frankly.) They lured you back from the Caymans to teach,
eh?
-Amber


From Ralph.Wessman at forestrytas.com.au  Thu Jul 26 19:38:03 2001
From: Ralph.Wessman at forestrytas.com.au (Ralph Wessman)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:38:03 +1000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Gioia's good idea
Message-ID: <sb6136a2.071@ft-gateway>

Gday David ... a poet from my neck of the woods - Jim Everett, a local Aboriginal poet/essayist - does this whenever he reads. It's a generous thing to do, I think. And adds another dimension to what you learn about about the poet, by the choices he/she makes to read from. (Jim's accent was on humour. Cracked us up).

Ralph



>Hope that this doesn't constitute re-hash:  I'd like to speak up for one of
>Gioia's prescriptions, the notion that poets ought to read work by *other*
>poets when they do a public reading.   It seems a small enough idea, but
>symbolically it turns the whole concept of the reading into more of a
>celebration of poetry than of the individual poet.

>I like that idea very much.  Michael Harper's a poet I've long admired for
>this reason.  Every time I've heard him read, he's devoted a substantial
>chunk of his time to plugging other, usually undervalued poets.  My first
>appreciation of Robert Hayden (beyond "Those Winter Sundays") came from one
>such reading 20 years ago.



From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com  Thu Jul 26 23:11:53 2001
From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 20:11:53 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Surprised by joy
Message-ID: <20010727031153.8FE412744@sitemail.everyone.net>

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From halvard at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 26 23:24:44 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 23:24:44 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poems by others: Miroslav Holub, "Ode to Joy"
In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.2.20010723144831.0203e730@mail.dol.net>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAECADOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

Ode to Joy

You only love
when you love in vain.

Try another radio probe
when ten have failed,
take two hundred rabbits
when a hundred have dies:
only this is science.

You ask the secret.
It has just one name:
again.

In the end
a dog carries in his jaws
his image in the water,
people rivet the new moon,
I love you.

Like caryatids
our lifted arms
hold up time's granite load

and defeated
we shall always win.

--Miroslav Holub
   trans.Ian Milner & George Theiner


Hal

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson



From halvard at earthlink.net  Thu Jul 26 23:28:00 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 23:28:00 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] FW: Poems by others: Miroslav Holub, "Ode to Joy"
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEKECADOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

Sorry, the translation here was by Milner only.

Hal

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson


> Ode to Joy
> 
> You only love
> when you love in vain.
> 
> Try another radio probe
> when ten have failed,
> take two hundred rabbits
> when a hundred have dies:
> only this is science.
> 
> You ask the secret.
> It has just one name:
> again.
> 
> In the end
> a dog carries in his jaws
> his image in the water,
> people rivet the new moon,
> I love you.
> 
> Like caryatids
> our lifted arms
> hold up time's granite load
> 
> and defeated
> we shall always win.
> 
> --Miroslav Holub
>    trans.Ian Milner & George Theiner
> 
> 
> Hal
> 
> Halvard Johnson
> ===============
> email: halvard at earthlink.net
> website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson
> 


From Thom424 at aol.com  Fri Jul 27 09:20:16 2001
From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:20:16 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Joy Poem
Message-ID: <10.1020cd3b.2892c490@aol.com>

Today I was Happy, So I Made This Poem

As the plump squirrel scampers
Across the roof of the corncrib,
The moon suddenly stands up in the darkness,
And I see that it is impossible to die.
Each moment of time is a mountain.
An eagle rejoices in the oak tress of heaven.
Crying,
This is what I wanted.

        --James Wright, from THE BRANCH WILL NOT BREAK


Thom Tammaro
moorhead, MN


From jdavis at panix.com  Fri Jul 27 09:27:04 2001
From: jdavis at panix.com (Jordan Davis)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:27:04 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Wit vs Joy
In-Reply-To: <10.1020cd3b.2892c490@aol.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0107270924020.6897-100000@panix6.panix.com>

Of course, there's a handsome measure of idiocy in any unalloyed emotion
-- as Eliot said somewhere, wit is the ability to be reasonable in the
face of the lyric. Now there's Bob Grumman's contention that the
reasonable is the province of mediocrities, but I'll leave others to
contend with that.

Jordan Davis
47th and Third, NYC



From halvard at earthlink.net  Fri Jul 27 10:14:17 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 10:14:17 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Query
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEKECGDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

"Much as we appreciate the frustration of slow responses from editors, 
we consider it unethical for a poet to submit the same work
simultaneously to more than one publisher."

	--from the submissions guidelines to a fairly well-known journal

Query: What "ethical" principle is violated when one offers the same
piece of work to more than one potential "buyer"?

Hal      Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
		--Noam Chomsky

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson
 


From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Fri Jul 27 10:26:34 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 07:26:34 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Query
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEKECGDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <20010727142634.41633.qmail@web12101.mail.yahoo.com>

--- Halvard Johnson <halvard at earthlink.net> wrote:
> "Much as we appreciate the frustration of slow responses from
> editors, 
> we consider it unethical for a poet to submit the same work
> simultaneously to more than one publisher."
> 
> 	--from the submissions guidelines to a fairly well-known journal
> 
> Query: What "ethical" principle is violated when one offers the same
> piece of work to more than one potential "buyer"?
> 

None.  It's just that they (the omnipotent, ubiquitous "they")
*consider* it so.

- As an editor, "we" = "me" = "they"

=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/


From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 27 11:16:03 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 07:16:03 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] To Poetryect [via the kindness of David B.]
Message-ID: <F63o95EFk2H3b98Ktdh0000b763@hotmail.com>

<blinkblink>

<klunk>

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

Wise Wretch! with Pleasures too refin'd to please;
With too much Spirit to be e'er at ease;
With too much Quickness ever to be taught;
With too much Thinking to have common Thought:
You purchase Pain with all that Joy can give,
And die of nothing but a Rage to live.
-- Alexander Pope





_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 27 11:24:28 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 07:24:28 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] apologia pro Kent Johnson
Message-ID: <F145cbKTrRVXR08ies800002bbd@hotmail.com>

I signed up for the new-poetry list, not the Kent Johnson list.

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

Wise Wretch! with Pleasures too refin'd to please;
With too much Spirit to be e'er at ease;
With too much Quickness ever to be taught;
With too much Thinking to have common Thought:
You purchase Pain with all that Joy can give,
And die of nothing but a Rage to live.
-- Alexander Pope

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Fri Jul 27 11:46:08 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:46:08 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] apologia pro Kent Johnson
Message-ID: <125.24dd027.2892e6c0@cs.com>

In a message dated 7/27/2001 10:25:44 AM Central Daylight Time, 
moira_russell at hotmail.com writes:


> 
> I signed up for the new-poetry list, not the Kent Johnson list.
> 
> 

I've seen a few like this before.  I hope he catches so many fish it keeps 
him quiet for a while.

Drop by www.ablemuse.com while I'm in the driver's seat.
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From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Fri Jul 27 11:50:35 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 11:50:35 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Wit vs Joy
References: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0107270924020.6897-100000@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <3B618DCB.5804@nut-n-but.net>

No, Jordan, I did not contend that the reasonable is
the province of mediocrities.  I'm not sure exactly what 
I said, but what I believe is that being reasonable is ALL, at
best, that mediocrities like Gioia are capable of.  

                                            --Bob G.



From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com  Fri Jul 27 12:31:45 2001
From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 09:31:45 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] apologia pro Kent Johnson
Message-ID: <20010727163145.E8701274F@sitemail.everyone.net>

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From lattaj at umich.edu  Fri Jul 27 12:42:42 2001
From: lattaj at umich.edu (John Latta)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 12:42:42 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Wit vs Joy
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0107270924020.6897-100000@panix6.panix.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.4.33.0107271240170.23887-100000@galaga.gpcc.itd.umich.edu>

What I like is Pessoa on Shakespeare: "The basis of lyric genius is
hysteria." Though I suppose it's possible to be a mediocre hysteric.

John Latta
South Window of Hatcher North, Ann Arbor





From bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 26 10:18:39 2001
From: bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com (Anthony Robinson)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 07:18:39 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] close reading?
In-Reply-To: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE155@ness.agnesscott.edu>
Message-ID: <20010726141839.33341.qmail@web10501.mail.yahoo.com>

Ah, Amber...

Good question.  Um...let's see.  I used to feel
unfettered joy all the time, before I stopped using
hallucinogens.  

I occasionally feel unfettered joy from within the
depths of an alcoholic stupor....

But I assume you mean the sort of joy that isn't the
result of chemical means.

Happens from time to time.  Not often, though. Less
and less, actually, as I get older.  Not that I'm
ancient by any means, but as I near 30 the moments are
fewer and fewer.  

Back in my impetuous youth (ca. early 1996)my 23
year-old self went thru about 6 weeks of unfettered
joy....daily....no chemicals or love-stuff involved. 
And to tell you the truth, I was delighted but
scared--thought I might be in the throes of a peculiar
brand of manic-depression with an extended manic
phase.

Then it stopped.  No explanations.

What does this have to do with poems?  Beats me.
The first poem (and joyful) I remember really loving
was cummings' "In just-"  

Later, most everything by Kenneth Koch--

Tony
p.s. if Jordan Davis is around please backchannel me
re: Koch.



> How many times do people feel unfettered joy after
> childhood? It seems like
> a rare moment, and it seems like the kind of moment
> always punctuated by a
> euphoria-bursting thought -- watching grandchildren
> and thinking 'I won't
> live to see them turn 30' or getting married and
> remembering all the
> divorces you've seen of people whose marriages
> seemed promising. Maybe there
> are few poems of unfettered joy because there are
> few moments of unfettered
> joy. Or maybe all this is just me, and you will all
> start referring me to a
> mental health professional.
> 
> -Amber
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jandhodge at aol.com
> To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> Sent: 7/26/2001 3:01 AM
> Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] close reading?
> 
> In a message dated 01-07-25 22:19:26 EDT, you write:
> 
> << Why are there so few poems of unabashed joy, of
> unfettered
> celebration? >>
> 
> Maybe Tolstoy was right?  "Happy families [or
> poets?] are all alike;
> each 
> unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
> 
> Happiness, when expressed, usually becomes (or
> sounds like) a cliche?
> And of 
> course cliches are anathema to poetry.  Of course
> cynics, or those who 
> despair of the state of contemporary poetry, might
> observe that
> unhappiness 
> is getting to sound a lot like a cliche now, too.
> 
> Jan
> _______________________________________________
> 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
> 
> 
> 


__________________________________________________
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From bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com  Thu Jul 26 10:22:05 2001
From: bobnewhartfan at yahoo.com (Anthony Robinson)
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 07:22:05 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] close reading?
In-Reply-To: <006701c115d4$c6a5f6e0$6801a8c0@hvc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <20010726142205.69994.qmail@web10508.mail.yahoo.com>

>Certainly
> there are no shortage of bad poems on the subject,
> but don't we expect good
> poems to have more emotional complexity than that?

Not necessarily.  But perhaps I don't understand...can
you elucidate, Tad?  Surely there is room in this vast
thing we call poetry to accomodate all levels of
"emotional complexity," is there not?

Tony

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From gmcvay at patriot.net  Fri Jul 27 22:00:35 2001
From: gmcvay at patriot.net (Gwyn McVay)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 22:00:35 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Joy Poem
In-Reply-To: <10.1020cd3b.2892c490@aol.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0107272200000.12214-100000@adams.patriot.net>

This reader absolutely cannot bear the word "scampers."

Signed, A Killjoy

On Fri, 27 Jul 2001 Thom424 at aol.com wrote:

> Today I was Happy, So I Made This Poem
>
> As the plump squirrel scampers
> Across the roof of the corncrib,
> The moon suddenly stands up in the darkness,
> And I see that it is impossible to die.
> Each moment of time is a mountain.
> An eagle rejoices in the oak tress of heaven.
> Crying,
> This is what I wanted.
>
>         --James Wright, from THE BRANCH WILL NOT BREAK
>
>
> Thom Tammaro
> moorhead, MN
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Fri Jul 27 22:31:57 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 21:31:57 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Faking Literature
Message-ID: <F200n39E1jlJzGeC8AU0000a915@hotmail.com>

The below is blurb copy for Faking Literature, a book just out from 
Cambridge University Press. I thought some might be interested, especially 
those who have been tossing the word "hoax" back and forth between England, 
Australia, the U.S., and Lichtenstein like a medicine ball the past few days 
in the "Manhunt for Kent, Carlos of the Poetry World." I caught a gar, about 
30 inches, the beast, on the Wisconsin yesterday, foul-hooked through the 
eye. May the non-sequitur stand as a metaphor for all those deeply 
unconscious things that make us want, out of nowhere, to cry.

John Tranter has asked me to review the book for Jacket, and this should be 
interesting. Apparently Yasusada is discussed therein, along with, as 
Tranter has told me, 10,000 or so other examples beginning with ancient 
Greece.

I am cc'ing this to Alison Croggon, Poetryetc co-moderator, who accusingly 
asserted the other day that I am deeply involved in "hoaxes, for who knows 
what literary reasons," or something to that House Committee on UnPoeticetc 
Activities effect.

I will be sending in a response re: the Poetryetc matter, as per Henry's 
barely-hidden challenge today that I do so (though he doesn't admit it, he 
loves these kinds of "scandalous" discussions-- especially when he's at the 
center and someone is pounding away to defend him), but it will be my last 
statement here on the matter. Further analyses of the matter will appear in 
published form in the coming months, though not necessarily by myself.

Incidentally, I notice that the list moderators seem to have now closed the 
Poetryetc archives to free public access. Good move: If I was in their 
shoes, I certainly wouldn't want the sordid record readily available either!

Kent

Literary forgeries are usually regarded as spurious versions of genuine
literature. Faking Literature argues that the production of a literary
forgery is an act that reveals the spurious nature of literature itself.

Literature has long been under attack because of its alliance with
rhetoric
(the art of persuasion) rather than with logic and ethics. One way of
deflecting such attacks is to demonise literary forgery: literature
acquires the illusion of authenticity by being dissociated from what are
represented as ersatz approximations to the real thing.

Ken Ruthven argues that literary forgery is the creative manifestation of
cultural critique. As a powerful indictment of dubious practices in such
activities as literary criticism, book-reviewing and the awarding of
literary prizes, literary forgery merits serious attention from cultural
analysts, and should be a key component of literary studies. This
intriguing book will be of interest to all teachers, students and readers
of English literature.

K. K. Ruthven has been a professor of English at the universities of
Canterbury, Adelaide and Melbourne, and is a fellow of the Australian
Academy of the Humanities. He has published books on Ezra Pound and on
myth, feminist literary studies, and nuclear criticism. After editing
Southern Review from 1981 to 1985 he became general editor of
Interpretations, a series of monographs on recent theories and critical
practices in the humanities and social sciences.

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS  -- ISBN 0-521-66965-0 paperback
_____________________________



_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu  Sat Jul 28 13:47:12 2001
From: rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu (rwilsnac at medicine.nodak.edu)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 10:47:12 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Joy Poem
Message-ID: <3.0.32.20010728104524.00e445a4@medicine.nodak.edu>

This thread began with Finnegan's question, "Why are there
so few poems of unabashed joy?" Whatever the many answers
may be, we should share such scarce resources with whomever 
we can touch or teach, proactively, because people will find 
melancholy words so easily on their own. In that philosophy, 
here are two more underpublicized contributions to the limited 
supply of odes to joy:

	Wild Fruit

I came to a bounty of black lustre
One July afternoon, & didn't
Call my brothers.  A silence
Coaxed me up into oak branches
Woodpeckers had weakened.
But they held there, braced
By a hundred years of vines
Strong & thick
Enough to hang a man.
The pulpy, sweet musk
Exploded in my mouth
As each indigo skin collapsed.
Muscadines hung in clusters,
& I forgot about jellybeans,
Honeycomb, & chocolate kisses.
I could almost walk on air
The first time I couldn't get enough
Of something, & in that embrace
Of branches I learned the first
Secret I could keep.

	from Neon Vernacular
		by Yusef Komunyakaa

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

	A Chance Meeting of Two Men

Mr. Clemente R?os and Mr. Lamberto Diaz
In a combined music
Raised to as loud as they could make their voices be
Announced to the world
Their love for each other.
Then after hugging they kissed each other on the cheek
And meant it.
There was no mistake
Though it was neither scandalous nor revelatory.
They made their announcement
After a crisp morning, a long afternoon,
And a spinning evening made of beer, blue
Wine, membrillo-flavored tequila, and cognac,
But a day made just as much

From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu  Sat Jul 28 12:16:19 2001
From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:16:19 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Joy/Music/Elemental
Message-ID: <l03130300b788924c6ad0@[208.20.85.220]>

I'm certainly enjoying the little anthology of joyful poems that we're
improvising here.

It strikes me that there are plenty of joyful poems out there--beginning
with the tradition of hymnody, perhaps, and continuing through the gigantic
love poem tradition.  One could also compile several hefty anthologies of
poems in praise of music, art, food, sex:  all at the relatively joyful end
of the spectrum.

In recent years I find myself drawn more and more to poets who describe
pleasure well.  Billy Collins, whatever his faults or limitations, is very
good at conveying pleasure, isn't he?  Especially the pleasure of listening
to music:  I am thinking of poems like his "The Faces of Jazz,"  "Man
Listening to Disc," or "The Blues":

The Blues

Much of what is said here
must be said twice,
a reminder that no one
takes an immediate interest in the pain of others.

Nobody will listen, it would seem,
if you simply admit
your baby left you early this morning
she didn't even stop to say good-bye.

But if you sing it again
with the help of the band
which will now lift you to a higher,
more ardent and beseeching key,

people will not only listen;
they will shift to the sympathetic
edges of their chairs,
moved to such acute anticipation

by that chord and the delay that follows,
they will not be able to sleep
unless you release with one finger
a scream from the throat of your guitar

and turn your head back to the microphone
to let them know
you're a hard-hearted man
but that woman's sure going to make you cry.
	--Billy Collins.  The Art of Drowning.  (U Pittsburg, 1995): 91.



One of the most compelling poets of the joy of appetite is Neruda.  Many of
his "elemental odes" could be described as joyful--though with more or less
degree of undercurrent in them.   Neruda's always good at conveying the
pleasures of the body, isn't he?

Here's one of my favorites:

Ode to the Watermelon

The tree of intense
summer,
hard,
is all blue sky,
yellow sun,
fatigue in drops,
a sword
above the highways,
a scorched shoe
in the cities:
the brightness and the world
weigh us down,
hit us
in the eyes
with clouds of dust,
with sudden golden blows,
they torture
our feet
with tiny thorns,
with hot stones,
and the mouth
suffers
more than all the toes:
the throat
becomes thirsty,
the teeth,
the lips, the tongue:
we want to drink
waterfalls,
the dark blue night,
the South Pole,
and then
the coolest of all
the planets crosses
the sky,
the round, magnificent,
star-filled watermelon.

It's a fruit from the thirst-tree.
It's the green whale of the summer.

The dry universe
all at once
given dark stars
by this firmament of coolness
lets the swelling
fruit
come down:
its hemispheres open
showing a flag
green, white, red,
that dissolves into
wild rivers, sugar,
delight!

Jewel box of water, phlegmatic
queen
of the fruitshops,
warehouse
of profundity, moon
on earth!
You are pure,
rubies fall apart
in your abundance,
and we
want
to bite into you,
to bury our
face
in you, and
our hair, and
the soul!
When we're thirsty
we glimpse you
like
a mine or a mountain
of fantastic food,
but
among our longings and our teeth
you change
simply
into cool light
that slips in turn into
spring water
that touched us once
singing.
And that is why
you don't weigh us down
in the siesta hour
that's like an oven,
you don't weigh us down,
you just
go by
and your heart, some cold ember,
turned itself into a single
drop of water.
======================
Pablo Neruda
translated from the Spanish
by Robert Bly
Neruda & Vallejo: Selected Poems
Beacon Press
__________________________________________

David Graham

__________________
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
__________________




From Thom424 at aol.com  Sat Jul 28 12:40:57 2001
From: Thom424 at aol.com (Thom424 at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:40:57 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Joy Poem
Message-ID: <a2.177f6695.28944519@aol.com>


Winter Privacy Poems at the Shack

                 I
About four, a few flakes.
I empty the teapot out in the snow,
Feeling shoots of joy in the new cold.
By nightfall, wind;
The curtains on the south sway softly.

                     II
My shack has two rooms; I use one.
The lamplight falls on my chair and table,
And I fly into one of my own poems--
I can't tell where you are--
As if I appeared where I am now,
In a wet field, snow falling.

                     III
Morre of the fathers are dying each day.
It is time for the sons.
Bits of darkness are gathering around them.
The darkness appears as flakes of light.

                     IV
Listening to Bach's Cello Concert

Inside this music there is someone
Who is not well described
By the names of Jesus, or Jehovah, or the Lord of Hosts.

                     V
There is a solitude like black mud!
Sitting in this darkness singing,
I can't tell if this joy
Is from the body, or the soul, or a third place!

                    VI
When I wake, new snow has fallen.
I am alone, yet someone is with me,
Drinking coffee, looking out at the new snow.


--Robert Bly, SILENCE IN THE SNOWY FIELDS


Thom Tammaro
Moorhead, MN


From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu  Sat Jul 28 12:47:06 2001
From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:47:06 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] 10 Books that Made Poetry New
In-Reply-To: <123.22e788f.289023b5@aol.com>
Message-ID: <l03130302b78899b628b0@[208.20.85.169]>

I'm usually game for listmaking games of all sorts, but for some reason
have been resisting this one.

Maybe it's because I think that "make it new" has led us, in the past
century or so, down a lot of dead end roads--increasingly so, after the
first flush of modernist excitement.  Yes, I know what a dinosaur that
makes me--and I would hasten to add that I don't dislike formal innovation
so much as I am less and less fascinated by it in and of itself.

When I encounter a poem for the first time I find that the degree to which
it breaks with tradition is not one of the first yardsticks I wish to
apply, and as I age rapidly into old-fogeydom, novelty of form especially
interests me less than other delights.  For when we talk about books that
"changed poetry," we're mostly talking about formal concerns, aren't we?

I could, of course, list 5 or 10 books that have made *me* new, but that is
a more limited question, and of limited interest.

What I'm wondering now is whether anyone might be interested in a list of
poets who have not changed poetry, but nurtured it, kept writing
excellently well if not in iconoclastic ways.  Or have, in fact, made
careers out of deepening rather than changing.  (Whatever that means!)

An emblematic pairing (first made, was it, by Donald Davie?) might be
between the poetic careers of Hardy and Yeats.   I'd like to see a list of
great contemporary Hardyans along with any list of Yeatseans.

David Graham
_______________________________

>>  In light of this impossibility, I would like to offer a few more
>>  qualifiers. First of all, I would have demurred had I known how small and
>>  select would be the pool of experts. I had pictured about a hundred
>>  opinion-mongers.
>Would the experts &/or opinion-mongers on this list care
>to tilt this list torward the contemporary somewhat by giving their
>picks of:
>5 books since 1970 that changed poetry?
>or 3 since 1980?
>or 1-2 since 1990?
>Finnegan

__________________
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
__________________




From tadrichards at prodigy.net  Sat Jul 28 13:20:46 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:20:46 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Joy Poem
References: <a2.177f6695.28944519@aol.com>
Message-ID: <003a01c11789$a4693040$0100007f@ibm25310>

Here are a couple of mine that I think have some joy in them:


CARNIVAL TIME

First came the morning sun, then the dogs-a ritual
he hadn't warned her about. She pulled
the covers up reflexively, but let the spaniel
who had wriggled up between them, lick her face.
He bounded out of bed. Years later, married
and settled, she'd remember his stork legs jigging, 
his dong a flapping second line,
as the dogs woofed and leaped to the swing of his elbows
and "Carnival Time" through the window next door.



TAD AND PAT

stutters out     stops at a stutter
like a child's party favor
with a snap at each end
and a soft bunny in the middle
like a cream filled doughnut
like a woman's pelvis

Pat and Tad
propelled into
a tarantella
castanets
tippy tapping feet
easing into softness
like bananas


Tad Richards




From JforJames at aol.com  Sat Jul 28 13:24:26 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:24:26 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Joy Poem
Message-ID: <73.109a9fdc.28944f4a@aol.com>

In a message dated 7/27/01 9:22:56 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Thom424 at aol.com 
writes:

<< Today I was Happy, So I Made This Poem
 
 As the plump squirrel scampers
 Across the roof of the corncrib,
 The moon suddenly stands up in the darkness,
 And I see that it is impossible to die.
 Each moment of time is a mountain.
 An eagle rejoices in the oak tress of heaven.
 Crying,
 This is what I wanted.
 
         --James Wright, from THE BRANCH WILL NOT BREAK
 
  >>
I too have been enjoying this ephemeral anthology of joy poems.
This one posted by Thom (& apologies to Gwyn for having to
see the offending word again) seem to point toward that 
note of elegy that Tad stated he found in Armstrong's version
of It's a Wonderful World. The line "And I see that it is 
impossible to die." suggest the transitory nature of life. 
The word "Crying" set out alone on one line has a connotation
of sadness. The whole poem really is tinged with a sense of
loneliness or looking for, perhaps even desperately searching
for, signs in the landscape that would hearten & sustain
 the speaker
Kent catch of th 


From JforJames at aol.com  Sat Jul 28 13:26:57 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:26:57 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Joy Poem
Message-ID: <a7.11617b5e.28944fe1@aol.com>

I somehow hit send before finishing that last post...
I wanted to suggest that Kent's catching the gar might
be an opening for seeing & hearing about some 
favorite "Field & Stream" poems.
Finnegan


From halvard at earthlink.net  Sat Jul 28 13:33:59 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:33:59 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Joy Poem
In-Reply-To: <a2.177f6695.28944519@aol.com>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEEEDJDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

The Phantom of Delight
	by Philip Whalen

The candy glass taking shape and color
Of brown soup to remind us
That part is all we know about the whole thing
And IS the whole thing
The "beauty" or aesthetic shock
Points at that or nothing

The glass mug shines
Brown and colorless
Exquisite; complete.

		Tassajara
		10:VIII:79


Hal

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson

		


From halvard at earthlink.net  Sat Jul 28 13:43:13 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:43:13 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] 10 Books that Made Poetry New
In-Reply-To: <l03130302b78899b628b0@[208.20.85.169]>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEKEDJDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

> Maybe it's because I think that "make it new" has led us, in the past
> century or so, down a lot of dead end roads--increasingly so, after the
> first flush of modernist excitement.  Yes, I know what a dinosaur that
> makes me--and I would hasten to add that I don't dislike formal innovation
> so much as I am less and less fascinated by it in and of itself.

Just a brief objection to the road/path metaphor in this context, David.
I wonder if that trope hasn't outlived its usefulness. Maybe the
web we've all come to know and love isn't a better analogy to
where we are today, but then I don't know what is.

Hal     "metaphor--I use them. They keep me regular."
                         --Paul Violi

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson

 


From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Jul 28 14:11:45 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 14:11:45 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] 10 Books that Made Poetry New
References: <l03130302b78899b628b0@[208.20.85.169]>
Message-ID: <3B630061.51DD@nut-n-but.net>

It's pretty clear that this isn't the best of forums for listing
books that made poetry new.  But the problem of going to books--I'd
prefer poets--that kept poetry old in valuable ways is that I doubt
it'd lead to discoveries.  That is, we all pretty much know who
did this up to twenty or thirty years ago while there are innovative
poets from that time that are still unknown, or little known.

Anyway, I'd shock many at New-Poetry, I suspect, by putting Yeats,
the 20th-century Yeats, at the head of the poets who kept poetry 
old in valuable ways.  Frost, of course--and later Eliot.  Larkin.
Wilbur, Hecht.

There are a lot of major poets who followed less-trodden paths but
didn't make any genuinely new ones, so far as I can see, like 
Stevens and Roethke.

Messy subject, really.  My position has always been that how good
a poet is has nothing to do with how pioneering his techniques or
anything else are; but that how important he is (aside from his
importance for excellence) does.

                                                --Bob G.


> 
> I'm usually game for listmaking games of all sorts, but for some reason
> have been resisting this one.
> 
> Maybe it's because I think that "make it new" has led us, in the past
> century or so, down a lot of dead end roads--increasingly so, after the
> first flush of modernist excitement.  Yes, I know what a dinosaur that
> makes me--and I would hasten to add that I don't dislike formal innovation
> so much as I am less and less fascinated by it in and of itself.
> 
> When I encounter a poem for the first time I find that the degree to which
> it breaks with tradition is not one of the first yardsticks I wish to
> apply, and as I age rapidly into old-fogeydom, novelty of form especially
> interests me less than other delights.  For when we talk about books that
> "changed poetry," we're mostly talking about formal concerns, aren't we?
> 
> I could, of course, list 5 or 10 books that have made *me* new, but that is
> a more limited question, and of limited interest.
> 
> What I'm wondering now is whether anyone might be interested in a list of
> poets who have not changed poetry, but nurtured it, kept writing
> excellently well if not in iconoclastic ways.  Or have, in fact, made
> careers out of deepening rather than changing.  (Whatever that means!)
> 
> An emblematic pairing (first made, was it, by Donald Davie?) might be
> between the poetic careers of Hardy and Yeats.   I'd like to see a list of
> great contemporary Hardyans along with any list of Yeatseans.
> 
> David Graham
> _______________________________
> 
> >>  In light of this impossibility, I would like to offer a few more
> >>  qualifiers. First of all, I would have demurred had I known how small and
> >>  select would be the pool of experts. I had pictured about a hundred
> >>  opinion-mongers.
> >Would the experts &/or opinion-mongers on this list care
> >to tilt this list torward the contemporary somewhat by giving their
> >picks of:
> >5 books since 1970 that changed poetry?
> >or 3 since 1980?
> >or 1-2 since 1990?
> >Finnegan



From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Jul 28 14:17:37 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 14:17:37 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] 10 Books that Made Poetry New
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEKEDJDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <3B6301C1.BFB@nut-n-but.net>

"Maybe it's because I think that 'make it new' has led us, in the past
century or so, down a lot of dead end roads--increasingly so, after the
first flush of modernist excitement."

Hmmm, after seeing the above from David Graham again, I've become
very curious to know what dead end road "make it new" has led us?
I will agree that it has sent a good number of bad poets down
roads they couldn't navigate very well, but that's something
different.

                                              --Bob G.



From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Sat Jul 28 15:11:56 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 11:11:56 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] A Sort Of Joyful Noise
Message-ID: <F30xw8Zw5V6QcqnWwAe00006715@hotmail.com>

I have also been really enjoying the "joyful poems" e-anthology we've sort 
of been building up here, although I have been depressed lately, so didn't 
feel a particular tug to contribute to it.  (Though I was a bit surprised no 
one has, as of yet, chosen Hopkins.)  I did think of one poem, though, which 
might qualify as "cheerful for depressed people," and it cheered me up just 
to have the privilege of typing it out.

I'd also like to thank David for quoting Neruda -- ah, Neruda, Neruda.  My 
Neruda is packed away in boxes elsewhere, so I can tell I'm going to have to 
go out today, at least to the local library, and get some.

THE BIGHT
(On my birthday)
Elizabeth Bishop

At low tide like this how sheer the water is.
While, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare
and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches.
Absorbing, rather than being absorbed,
the water in the bight doesn't wet anything,
the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible.
One can smell it turning to gas;  if one were Baudelaire
one could probably hear it turning to marimba music.
The little ocher dredge at work off the end of the dock
already plays the dry perfectly off-beat claves.
The birds are outsize.  Pelicans crash
into this peculiar gas unnecessarily hard,
it seems to me, like pickaxes,
rarely coming up with anything to show for it,
and going off with humorous elbowings.
Black-and-white man-of-war birds soar
on impalpable drafts
and open their tails like scissors on the curves
or tense them like wishbones, till they tremble.
The frowsy sponge boats keep coming in
with the obliging air of retrievers,
bristling with jackstraw gaffs and hooks
and decorated with bobbles of sponges.
There is a fane of chicken wire along the dock
where, glinting like little plowshares,
the blue-gray shark tails are hung up to dry
for the Chinese restaurant trade.
Some of the little white boats are still piled up
against each other, or lie on their sides, stove in,
and not yet salvaged, if they ever will be, from the last bad storm,
like torn-open, unanswered letters.
The bight is littered with old correspondences.
Click.  Click.  Goes the dredge,
and brings up a dripping jawful of marl.
All the untidy activitiy continues,
awful but cheerful.


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From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Jul 28 15:26:42 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 15:26:42 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] A Sort Of Joyful Noise
References: <F30xw8Zw5V6QcqnWwAe00006715@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <3B6311F2.65F@nut-n-but.net>

Yes, many good joyful poems new to me and old.  I guess there
are a lot more than I thought.  Have to be dutiful to my 
main dead client and remind the list of his "in Just-," which is the
wonderfulest celebration of childhood or spring I know--though
some find darknesses in it starring Pan as seuxality that I
do not.

                                         --Bob G.



From antrobin at clipper.net  Sat Jul 28 15:42:56 2001
From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 12:42:56 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] A Sort Of Joyful Noise
References: <F30xw8Zw5V6QcqnWwAe00006715@hotmail.com> <3B6311F2.65F@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <03d501c1179d$8813fc40$fdaeefd8@0021936706>

Hey Bob,

I beat you to that one in my post of Thursday morning...

Whistling far and wee,
Tony




> Yes, many good joyful poems new to me and old.  I guess there
> are a lot more than I thought.  Have to be dutiful to my 
> main dead client and remind the list of his "in Just-," which is the
> wonderfulest celebration of childhood or spring I know--though
> some find darknesses in it starring Pan as seuxality that I
> do not.
> 
>                                          --Bob G.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 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  Sat Jul 28 17:36:35 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 17:36:35 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Joy Poem
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEEEDJDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEDMDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

BEAM 32, *The Musics*

	by Ronald Johnson


Let the craters of Mercury trumpet first and last things
	from C to shining C.

Let The Magellanic Clouds be shot through with glissan-
	di of migrations of great whales.

Let twin amoebae discombobulate The Leonids hairs-
	breadth twists.


Let spectroscopic polyrhythmics of cricket play taps on
	deep fields of stalactite.

Let the hooffall of buffalo be heard again, in the land.

Let the idea of man's split brain be a grace note among the
	silvery Pleiades.



Hal

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson



From Jandhodge at aol.com  Sat Jul 28 17:53:48 2001
From: Jandhodge at aol.com (Jandhodge at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 17:53:48 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Joy
Message-ID: <119.25c8b03.28948e6c@aol.com>

I'm not usually given to posting my own poems on a public list, but maybe 
this thread justifies an exception.  Here's a poem I wrote for my daughter on 
the occasion of her wedding -- more sentimental than I normally write, but 
hey, if watching your daughter marry a truly great guy isn't cause for 
sentimentality, what is?

Because it is a shaped poem, I can't include it in the body of an e-mail 
post, so am attaching it as a .gif file.  Sorry about that, but necessity . . 
. 

Cheers,
Jan
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From ade3 at columbia.edu  Sat Jul 28 18:23:52 2001
From: ade3 at columbia.edu (Andrew Epstein)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 18:23:52 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Joy
Message-ID: <01c001c117b3$fbe10ee0$3a043b80@ade3>

I know Kenneth Koch (whose work has always been devoted to pleasure, joy,
and the like) and Hopkins have already been mentioned in this thread, but I
thought I'd throw a poem by each into the mix:


IN LOVE WITH YOU

I

O what a physical effect it has on me
To dive forever into the light blue sea
Of your acquaintance!  Ah, but dearest friends,
Like forms, are finished, as life has ends!  Still,
It is beautiful, when October
Is over, and February is over,
To sit in the starch of my shirt, and to dream of your sweet
Ways!  As if the world were a taxi, you enter it, then
Reply (to no one), ?Let?s go five or six blocks.?
Isn?t the blue stream that runs past you a translation from the Russian?
Aren?t my eyes bigger than love?
Isn?t this history, and aren?t we a couple of ruins?
Is Carthage Pompeii?  is the pillow the bed?  is the sun
What glues our heads together?  O midnight!  O midnight!
Is love what we are,
Or has happiness come to me in a private car
That?s so very small I?m amazed to see it there?


2

We walk though the park in the sun, and you say, ?There?s a spider
Of shadow touching the bench, when morning?s begun.?  I love you.
I love you fame I love you raining sun I love you cigarettes I love you love
I love you daggers I love you smiles daggers and symbolism.


3

Inside the symposium of your sweetest look?s
Sunflower awning by the nurse-faced chrysanthemums childhood
Again represents a summer spent sticking knives into porcelain
 raspberries, when China?s
Still a country!  Oh, King Edward abdicated years later, that?s
Exactly when.  If you were seventy thousand years old, and I were a pill,
I know I could cure your headache, like playing baseball in drinking water,
as baskets
Of towels sweetly touch the bathroom floor!  O benches of nothing
Appear and reappear ? electricity!  I?d love to be how
You are, as if
The world were new, and the selves were blue
Which we don
When it?s dawn
Until evening puts on
The gray hooded selves and the light brown selves of 

Water!  your tear-colored nail polish
Kisses me!  and the lumberyard seems new
As a calm
On the sea, where, like pigeons,
I feel so mutated, sad, so breezed, so revivified, and still so
unabdicated ?
Not like an edge of land coming over the sea!

         -- Kenneth Koch


SPRING

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring --
    When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
    Thrush's eggs look little low heavenes, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
    The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
    The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness;  the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
    A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. -- Have, get, before it cloy,
    Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
    Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy thy winning.

        -- Gerard Manley Hopkins

______________

-- Andrew Epstein





From mcward at nc.rr.com  Sat Jul 28 19:28:31 2001
From: mcward at nc.rr.com (Candice Ward)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 19:28:31 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] apologies/no quarter
Message-ID: <B788C2DF.41C5%mcward@nc.rr.com>

In a message dated 7/26/01 10:11:27 EDT, new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu writes:

>This is an unmoderated list as it says on the webpage. But abusive posting
>could get one booted...


When?

Candice



From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sat Jul 28 19:29:42 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 19:29:42 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] A Sort Of Joyful Noise
References: <F30xw8Zw5V6QcqnWwAe00006715@hotmail.com> <3B6311F2.65F@nut-n-but.net> <03d501c1179d$8813fc40$fdaeefd8@0021936706>
Message-ID: <3B634AE6.2E07@nut-n-but.net>

Nertz, I musta missed it.  Glad it got a mention, Tony.

                                       --Bob G.



From JforJames at aol.com  Sat Jul 28 20:29:57 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 20:29:57 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons' other art
Message-ID: <82.db71d7a.2894b305@aol.com>

Where's Fred Muratori, our resident Ammons specialist?...you've
been scooped by Candice Ward (clipped from another list)...

From:    Candice Ward <mcward at NC.RR.COM>
Subject: A. R. Ammons' watercolors

Does everybody but me know he was a painter?

There's a large collection of his watercolors up for sale at Ahabooks.com.
The prices put them well out of my range--but you can look for free, and
they're quite well reproduced (http://www.ahabooks.com/).

Don't be put off by the first few as you scroll down if, like me, you find
them too pretty--there are more interesting ones further on/down, and some
are downright stunning to my untutored eye.


From masthead at onthe.net.au  Sat Jul 28 04:40:31 2001
From: masthead at onthe.net.au (masthead at onthe.net.au)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 01 18:40:31 +1000
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Faking Literature
Message-ID: <200107280837.f6S8bj817422@midas.onthe.net.au>

>I am cc'ing this to Alison Croggon, Poetryetc co-moderator, who accusingly 
>asserted the other day that I am deeply involved in "hoaxes, for who knows 
>what literary reasons," or something to that House Committee on UnPoeticetc 
>Activities effect.

My comment about hoaxes was a sharp reaction to being misrepresented in 
your previous letter - in particular where you told several people I had 
"threatened" you, which was not true.   I am resigned to being 
misrepresented by you yet again; it's happened to me many times before, 
and no doubt will happen many times again.  Line me up with the forces of 
darkness if you like, as part of your literary aesthetic of deceit - 
those who know me know better, and they're the only ones whose opinion I 
care about.

Alison









From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sat Jul 28 22:44:55 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 21:44:55 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] When?
Message-ID: <F271z63Bma4RCIlWrdF00004f20@hotmail.com>

Candice Ward, who has recently closed the Poetryetc archives, so they are 
not availble for public inspection, impatiently asked, in clear hopes of the 
future banning at New-Poetry of any discussion of issues related to 
censorship at the listserv she co-"moderates":

"When?"

I've received today a call from a prominent, national publication regarding 
the Poetryetc affair. They expressed an interest in the issue of listserv 
censorship in the poetry world. Let's see where it leads. I assume Ward and 
Croggon may also be receiving calls.

More anon.

Kent

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From AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU  Sat Jul 28 23:00:24 2001
From: AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (Henry)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 23:00:24 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] re: Faking Literature
Message-ID: <010728.230825.EDT.AP201070@BROWNVM.brown.edu>

BIG BAD BANDIDO, starring ***Kent Johnson*** as

Bid Bad Bandido, the bandit with a heart of gold

and

Various List Managers, as

Schoolmarms Up In Arms

Guest Starring Hank Gould, as

The Double-Crossing Sidekick

and

Several Important Magazine Editors, as

Hell's Angels (US Cavalry???) to Bandido's Rescue

- bored with poetry?  Haven't written much lately (you COMPUTER DRONE)?
Remember what ***Kent Johnson*** says:  "THIS is poetry!"

BID BAD BANDIDO

Coming soon to a screen (very) near you!


From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Sat Jul 28 23:43:09 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 19:43:09 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] re: Faking Literature
Message-ID: <F90qKwRPQIWDO3hRDT600000542@hotmail.com>

I'm reminded of the scene in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" where the 
girl has just gone into a crevasse reaching for the Holy Grail and Indy sees 
her go and then sees if he stretched just a _bit_ farther, he could have it, 
too, and he reaches, and reaches --

and Sean Connery, in an infinitely patient voice, says "Indiana, let it go."

We need Sean Connery right now.

Please....please could we let it go....or could some of it be taken 
offlist....the longer this kind of stuff goes on, the worse it usually gets.

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

Wise Wretch! with Pleasures too refin'd to please;
With too much Spirit to be e'er at ease;
With too much Quickness ever to be taught;
With too much Thinking to have common Thought:
You purchase Pain with all that Joy can give,
And die of nothing but a Rage to live.
-- Alexander Pope


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From mcward at nc.rr.com  Sat Jul 28 23:49:47 2001
From: mcward at nc.rr.com (Candice Ward)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 23:49:47 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: When?
Message-ID: <B789001B.4202%mcward@nc.rr.com>

(919) 493-2861

If.

Candice



Poetryetc Welcomes New Subscriber David Graham!



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sat Jul 28 23:56:55 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 22:56:55 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] co-star
Message-ID: <F48Is9fpxKxRtuQZXee00004375@hotmail.com>

Make that Hank Gould as Tony Blair.

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From tadrichards at prodigy.net  Sun Jul 29 00:11:34 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 00:11:34 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Vendler vs Fenton
References: <F48Is9fpxKxRtuQZXee00004375@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <003101c117e4$8e8be640$6801a8c0@hvc.rr.com>

Excerpted from Wen Stephenson's article in The American Prospect:



The British poet, journalist, and reader James Fenton--whose most recent
collection of poems, Out of Danger (1994), won the prestigious Whitbread
Prize--isn't so charitable. In The Strength of Poetry, his newly published
volume of lectures delivered as Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1994 to
1999, Fenton labels "The Gift Outright" a "modern imperialist poem." "It is
typical of the imperial point of view that it is ignorant of, or blind to,
the other," he writes, and then lets fly this volley:



Yes, there had to be deeds of war--"The deed of gift was many deeds of
war"--but why or against whom we need not, on this occasion, consider. The
point is rather to wallow in the metaphysics of the conceit that Americans,
in order to become truly American and truly strong, had to yield to the
land, surrender to it, instead of what you would expect from an account of a
pioneering society--that they had to seize the land and bend it to their
will.
Fenton's treatment of "The Gift Outright"--which, Fenton not being one to
mince words, he goes on to disparage as "egregious rubbish"--is the most
strident moment in a book covering such twentieth-century poets as Wilfred
Owen, Philip Larkin, T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth
Bishop, Sylvia Plath, and W.H. Auden. Yet as damning and unnuanced as this
reading may be (there is none of Walcott's insight into Frost's poetic
innovation, no acknowledgment of Frost's undeniable contribution to the
development of modern poetry), such a politically charged response to "The
Gift Outright" is justified on some level, especially when one recalls the
image of Robert Frost reading at John F. Kennedy's inauguration--a moment
embedded, for better or worse, in public memory.



Nevertheless, in a scathing prepublication review of Fenton's book for The
New Republic in late March, Helen Vendler, the Harvard English professor and
ubiquitous poetry critic--considered by many the most influential critic of
contemporary poetry in the United States today--seized upon Fenton's
treatment of "The Gift Outright." Here is a prime example of wrongheaded
political criticism, she instructs, and then goes on to offer her own
corrective reading of the poem. (Though not before pausing to rebuke Fenton
for what she takes as a telling error. "Fenton's animus cannot even stop to
check its facts," she writes, before proceeding to quote Fenton's claim that
"The Gift Outright" was written, in Fenton's words, "for purposes of
state--in this case the inauguration of John F. Kennedy." The only problem
is that Vendler's animus toward Fenton apparently cannot pause long enough
to check its own facts: The finished version of Fenton's book contains no
mention of the Kennedy inauguration at all; the passage she quotes is from
the uncorrected proofs.)



Fact checking and personal animus aside, what Vendler goes on to say about
Fenton's book as whole, is interesting for what it reveals about Vendler as
a critic and about the kind of influence she wields with such a heavy
hand--an influence that would attempt to prescribe the proper role of the
critic and the proper boundaries of criticism itself.


"Fenton wants Frost to have written the materialist poem of manifest
destiny," Vendler tells us. "But Frost is after other game: when, he asks,
and how, and why, does any ?migr? begin to feel patriotic about the land he
now inhabits instead of about the land he has left? How does such a change
in consciousness take place?" In other words, Vendler doesn't want Frost to
have written an overtly public-themed poem dealing with an objective,
historical reality but a poem about a private, inner phenomenon. "Why is it
that Fenton has so mistaken a poem about the inner process of a transfer of
loyalty?" she asks. "Because his politics has wrenched him into misreading
it."


Vendler's account of the poem, with her close attention to the language, is
characteristically assured, but not particularly convincing. To call "The
Gift Outright" a poem about "the inner process of a transfer of loyalty" is
one thing; but to say, as she does, that "analogically taken, it is as much
a poem about marriage as about colonials becoming Americans" is, well, a bit
of a stretch--and seems willfully blind to the poem's explicit subject
matter, simply for the sake of polemic. I'm all for reading "analogically,"
but what need is there to read a poem like "The Gift Outright" in such a
way? Is that how the audience of the Kennedy inauguration heard it? Or any
general reader before or since? (Good luck convincing Jack Kennedy that the
poem he requested for his inauguration could just as easily be about
marriage and the "inner process" of becoming a faithful spouse.)


What is it about Fenton that so offends Vendler's sensibilities as a critic?
"It is revealing," she writes in the closing paragraphs of her review, "to
notice how rarely Fenton ends his lectures on a literary note, claiming a
new literary originality of some sort for his writers." The term "literary"
can be taken many ways, but one assumes here that Vendler means the kind of
close reading for which she herself is known, as opposed to the historical
or biographical. Indeed, she concludes: "One would like to see Fenton
writing a series of lectures on works denuded of biographical context--to
see him write as a poet on poetry. On the strength of poetry. To live up, in
short, to his title."


Fenton's real sin, in short, is that as a critic he is so utterly unlike
Helen Vendler. In fact, it's hard to think of two contemporary critics who
lie at further extremes of the spectrum of emphasis, style, and method.
Fenton--who spent much of his career as a foreign correspondent in East Asia
for The Independent (he was among the last Western journalists to leave
Saigon in 1975) and has been a critic for the New Statesman and The Times of
London--is obsessed with biography, politics, and sexual and cultural
identity. His style tends toward the conversational, the anecdotal, and the
irreverent. His arguments are loosely structured (when they are structured
at all), painted in the broadest strokes.


Vendler may lack Fenton's colorful curriculum vitae, but what she lacks in
worldliness she more than makes up for in scholarly authority. A
distinguished lifelong academic, her work on the odes of Keats and on the
sonnets of Shakespeare has been widely acclaimed, and her frequent reviews
for The New Yorker, The New Republic, and The New York Review of Books (to
which Fenton is also a regular contributor) are often widely discussed. As a
critic, Vendler's obsessions are the aesthetic, the lyric, and the most
subliminal elements of poetic technique. Her style is relentlessly serious
and scholarly. Her tightly structured arguments are based almost entirely on
close textual analysis, the sole purpose of which is to pass (sometimes
austere) aesthetic judgment. Vendler's representative poet might well be
James Merrill, whom she described in a recent New Yorker review of his
Collected Poems as "minutely interested in the tiniest elements of language"
and praised for having persevered through "accusations of snobbery,
affectation, preciousness, artifice, perversity, and ?litism." If one poet
among Fenton's favorites can be taken to represent his proclivities, it
would perhaps be Auden, his illustrious predecessor as Oxford Professor of
Poetry, to whom Fenton devotes no fewer than three of his lectures.


Maybe the difference between Fenton and Vendler, and between the opposing
approaches to criticism they represent, comes down to this old, perhaps
irresolvable debate: Is poetry, including Vendler's privileged lyric genre,
a public affair, open and available to all readers and responses, and
therefore part of the public life and political discourse of its time and
place, an artifact of public record and public memory--of history? Or does a
poem exist in a separate, aesthetic realm of the poet's imagination, a
private world to which only the most educated, alert, and sophisticated
readers can gain admittance? And in either case or both, what
responsibility, if any, does the poet--to say nothing of the critic--owe the
world, the public realm? For Vendler, lyric poetry is an "essentially
private genre," and the moment a critic ventures into politics he crosses a
dangerous frontier into the uncivilized terrain of journalism (that
profession of ill repute). Fenton knows that the critic is already a
journalist; for him, a poem, its context, its author's biography, are always
fair political game: They have to be, because for Fenton there are no neat
divisions between politics and art, between art and life.


Tad Richards



From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 01:40:21 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 21:40:21 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Vendler vs Fenton
Message-ID: <F92ZoL31vHu62pELBUo00006ad1@hotmail.com>

Thanks, Tad, for forwarding such an interesting and thought-provoking 
article.  I was famous in writing workshops for saying "There's just one 
more little problem," and I am tired tonight, so all I have to contribute 
are niglets.  You know what niglets are:  they're second cousins of 
sniglets.  In France they're called niglettes.

Niglet #1:

>The only problem
>is that Vendler's animus toward Fenton apparently cannot pause long enough
>to check its own facts: The finished version of Fenton's book contains no
>mention of the Kennedy inauguration at all; the passage she quotes is from
>the uncorrected proofs.)

Aren't galley proofs what critics are usually sent to read?  Sometimes, as 
in the infamous case of the first version of Plath's journals, passages are 
edited/added between proofs and final book, but if this is the only error 
Vendler made, or if she makes other errors like this, it seems less damning, 
at least to me.  She's usually scrupulous.

Niglet #2:

>Vendler's representative poet might well be
>James Merrill, whom she described in a recent New Yorker review of his
>Collected Poems as "minutely interested in the tiniest elements of 
>language"
>and praised for having persevered through "accusations of snobbery,
>affectation, preciousness, artifice, perversity, and ?litism."

Call me madly uninformed, but I always thought the one American poet Vendler 
had the hots for was Jorie Graham.  I can imagine her saying the same things 
about Graham as she says here about Merrill.  I don't know if Jorie Graham 
is all that much more political than Merrill (although it would maybe be 
hard to be _less_ political than Merrill is, and I seem to recall Graham 
writing about power and its abuses, etc. etc.) but this does smack a bit of 
setting-up-of-straw-men which comes to the fore a bit later.

Niglet #3:

>If one poet
>among Fenton's favorites can be taken to represent his proclivities, it
>would perhaps be Auden, his illustrious predecessor as Oxford Professor of
>Poetry, to whom Fenton devotes no fewer than three of his lectures.

While it does seem more likely to assign Favored Poet Status Fenton:Auden 
than Vendler:Merrill, given the devotion of lectures noted above, Auden did 
spend quite a bit of time writing, erm, personal lyric poetry.  One might 
even call him minutely interested in the tiniest elements of language.  Call 
me callous but I never felt Auden was terribly dedicated to the political in 
poetry -- _in fact,_ what about the ending "In the prison of his days / 
Teach the free man how to praise"?  That's an instruction to poets at the 
end of a political poem to lift men's hearts with, again, lyric poetry.  I'm 
reminded of Orwell's sharp criticism of Auden for writing "the necessary 
murder."  I'm not out to debunk Auden (or Fenton) at all -- just to suggest 
that in lining Fenton up as the one who knows journalism and poetry are 
indistinguishable, the personal is the political is the personal, etc., it's 
odd that _Auden_ is his choice poet -- if you're only presenting Fenton as a 
politican man.

And this ties into my objection at the end of the entire article.  The 
author's clearly lining up targets:  
Vendler/Frost/Merrill/authority/patriarchy/non-interest in 
politics/over-interest in aesthetics VS 
Fenton/Auden/subversiveness/liberty/interest in politics as poetry/interest 
in poetry as politics.  I've said before I am not comfortable with boxes and 
labels and overly stringent definitions which make it easier and perhaps 
more comfortable to think about certain things but which nevertheless blind 
us to possibilities and subtleties.

Anyhow, it certainly was a thought-provoking article, even if the thoughts 
provoked here aren't all that terribly coherent.

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

_________________________________________________________________
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From tadrichards at prodigy.net  Sun Jul 29 10:16:34 2001
From: tadrichards at prodigy.net (theoldmole)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 10:16:34 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Vendler vs Fenton
References: <F92ZoL31vHu62pELBUo00006ad1@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <001201c11839$13625b20$6801a8c0@hvc.rr.com>

>  In France they're called niglettes.


   ooh, la la!


  Tad Richards                       "Well said, old mole."
    The Old Mole                         Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet
    of the MoleNet                          Act I, Scene 5
          http://pages.prodigy.net/tadrichards
----- Original Message -----
From: "Moira Russell" <moira_russell at hotmail.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 1:40 AM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Vendler vs Fenton


Thanks, Tad, for forwarding such an interesting and thought-provoking
article.  I was famous in writing workshops for saying "There's just one
more little problem," and I am tired tonight, so all I have to contribute
are niglets.  You know what niglets are:  they're second cousins of
sniglets.  In France they're called niglettes.

Niglet #1:

>The only problem
>is that Vendler's animus toward Fenton apparently cannot pause long enough
>to check its own facts: The finished version of Fenton's book contains no
>mention of the Kennedy inauguration at all; the passage she quotes is from
>the uncorrected proofs.)

Aren't galley proofs what critics are usually sent to read?  Sometimes, as
in the infamous case of the first version of Plath's journals, passages are
edited/added between proofs and final book, but if this is the only error
Vendler made, or if she makes other errors like this, it seems less damning,
at least to me.  She's usually scrupulous.

Niglet #2:

>Vendler's representative poet might well be
>James Merrill, whom she described in a recent New Yorker review of his
>Collected Poems as "minutely interested in the tiniest elements of
>language"
>and praised for having persevered through "accusations of snobbery,
>affectation, preciousness, artifice, perversity, and ?litism."

Call me madly uninformed, but I always thought the one American poet Vendler
had the hots for was Jorie Graham.  I can imagine her saying the same things
about Graham as she says here about Merrill.  I don't know if Jorie Graham
is all that much more political than Merrill (although it would maybe be
hard to be _less_ political than Merrill is, and I seem to recall Graham
writing about power and its abuses, etc. etc.) but this does smack a bit of
setting-up-of-straw-men which comes to the fore a bit later.

Niglet #3:

>If one poet
>among Fenton's favorites can be taken to represent his proclivities, it
>would perhaps be Auden, his illustrious predecessor as Oxford Professor of
>Poetry, to whom Fenton devotes no fewer than three of his lectures.

While it does seem more likely to assign Favored Poet Status Fenton:Auden
than Vendler:Merrill, given the devotion of lectures noted above, Auden did
spend quite a bit of time writing, erm, personal lyric poetry.  One might
even call him minutely interested in the tiniest elements of language.  Call
me callous but I never felt Auden was terribly dedicated to the political in
poetry -- _in fact,_ what about the ending "In the prison of his days /
Teach the free man how to praise"?  That's an instruction to poets at the
end of a political poem to lift men's hearts with, again, lyric poetry.  I'm
reminded of Orwell's sharp criticism of Auden for writing "the necessary
murder."  I'm not out to debunk Auden (or Fenton) at all -- just to suggest
that in lining Fenton up as the one who knows journalism and poetry are
indistinguishable, the personal is the political is the personal, etc., it's
odd that _Auden_ is his choice poet -- if you're only presenting Fenton as a
politican man.

And this ties into my objection at the end of the entire article.  The
author's clearly lining up targets:
Vendler/Frost/Merrill/authority/patriarchy/non-interest in
politics/over-interest in aesthetics VS
Fenton/Auden/subversiveness/liberty/interest in politics as poetry/interest
in poetry as politics.  I've said before I am not comfortable with boxes and
labels and overly stringent definitions which make it easier and perhaps
more comfortable to think about certain things but which nevertheless blind
us to possibilities and subtleties.

Anyhow, it certainly was a thought-provoking article, even if the thoughts
provoked here aren't all that terribly coherent.

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

_______________________________________________
New-Poetry mailing list
New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 11:39:22 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 10:39:22 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fwd: "Letting go" [#1]
Message-ID: <F207Kd6QR7j1HaKtKuf0000b720@hotmail.com>

I'd meant to respond to David Hickman's reasonable question of earlier this 
week, concerning why the issue of list censorship/ethics couldn't be 
discussed at Poetryetc, "where it belongs".

Well, David, Poetryetc cannot freely discuss this issue because the topic 
has been, de facto, proscribed there. And I believe that when actions as 
vindictively censoriousness as have taken place in the past couple weeks 
infect the body of the poetry community, it is, or should be, everyone's 
business, as unpleasant as the business is.

A few years ago this issue emerged on Poetics, the largest of the poetry
discussion lists; the recent behavior of the moderators at Poetryetc makes 
Joel Kuszai, Charles Bernstein, and Chris Alexander look like models of 
civility and fairness in retrospect. Whereas, the Poetics crew had 
assiduously communicated back-channel with Henry Gould and others of those 
ejected, and candidly "explained" their views prior to and in wake of their 
actions, Candice Ward and Alison Croggon have conducted themselves in the 
vulgar ways of ideological thuggery, carrying out their "convenient" 
excisions without notice, and then proffering, in the most reprehensible 
fashion, spurious and slanderous accusations against those they have 
silenced. They have been asked to give evidence of these accusations, either 
front channel or back, and they have not.

I was expelled, the membership of Poetryetc was told, not because of
"overposting" (of which I had never received any warning), and not because I 
had expressed an interest in forwarding comments on poetry from another 
list(comments which I did not forward, unlike a number of other Poetryetc 
members, who have freely forwarded messages from other venues and/or 
re-posted their own posts on other lists), but because there was 
"information received that I had "victimized" an unnamed member of the 
community. I have asked for clarification and have received nothing but one 
vague response from Alison Croggon that she had seen a "hoaxed" email that 
"circumstantially" pointed to me. I have asked both Ward and Croggon to send 
me a copy of this email and they have refused.

Now, and quite predictably, Ward and Croggon have, in a transparent act of 
intellectual cowardice, closed off the archives to public view and
evaluation.

One thing needs to be clear (and it will be further clarified in printed
form): The Poetryetc "moderators???" behavior been carried out not because 
of anything I did on the list (the shameful inability of the moderators to 
come up with any justification is ample proof of that), but because the 
moderators yet harbor ill will over my past participation in a 
poetic-epistolary parody in which the over-reaction of another list was held 
up to good-natured roasting. This is the real reason for the censorship at 
Poetryetc and the bizarre effigy burning conducted in its wake at 
British-Poets listserv. And I submit that such mean, vindictive behavior, 
carried out as it has been under the cloak of libelous aspersion, is an 
insult to the spirit of poetry and its
free discussion, and it should only be "let go," as Moira desires, when 
there is full exposure of the offenders. Otherwise, the pattern of arbitrary 
and vindictive abuse that has exhibited itself will repeat, and the 
infection will spread.

Kent



_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 12:05:38 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 11:05:38 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Corrected: Fwd: "Letting go" [#1]
Message-ID: <F265icUbvBDxroC6POY00006a16@hotmail.com>

Patrick,

If you haven't sent to British-Poets, please forward this version-- mistakes 
corrected. I'll be followign this up with some furhter comments, including 
mention of the shameful silence around Steve Duffy's expulsion.

Kent

-----------
I'd meant to respond to David Hickman's reasonable question of earlier this 
week, concerning why the issue of list censorship/ethics couldn't be 
discussed at Poetryetc, "where it belongs".

Well, David, Poetryetc cannot freely discuss this issue because the topic 
has been, de facto, proscribed there. And I believe that when actions as 
vindictively censoriousness as have taken place in the past couple weeks 
infect the body of the poetry community, it is, or should be, everyone's 
business, as unpleasant as the business is.

A few years ago this issue emerged on Poetics, the largest of the poetry
discussion lists; the recent behavior of the moderators at Poetryetc makes 
Joel Kuszai, Charles Bernstein, and Chris Alexander look like models of 
civility and fairness in retrospect. Whereas the Poetics crew had 
assiduously communicated back-channel with Henry Gould and others of those 
ejected, and candidly "explained" their views prior to and in wake of their 
actions, Candice Ward and Alison Croggon have conducted themselves in the 
vulgar ways of ideological thuggery, carrying out their "convenient" 
excisions without notice, and then proffering, in the most reprehensible 
fashion, spurious and slanderous accusations against those they have 
silenced. They have been asked to give evidence of these accusations, either 
front channel or back, and they have not.

I was expelled, the membership of Poetryetc was told, not because of
"overposting" (of which I had never received any warning), and not because I 
had expressed an interest in forwarding comments on poetry from another 
list(comments which I did not forward, unlike a number of other Poetryetc 
members, who have freely forwarded messages from other venues and/or 
re-posted their own posts on other lists), but because there was 
"information received that I had "victimized" an unnamed member of the 
community. I have asked for clarification and have received nothing but one 
vague response from Alison Croggon that she had seen a "hoaxed" email that 
"circumstantially" pointed to me. I have asked both Ward and Croggon to send 
me a copy of this email and they have refused.

Now, and quite predictably, Ward and Croggon have, in a transparent act of 
intellectual cowardice, closed off the archives to public view and
evaluation.

One thing needs to be clear (and it will be further clarified in printed
form): The Poetryetc "moderators'" actions have been carried out not because 
of anything I did on the list (their shameful inability to come up with any 
justification is ample proof of that), but because the moderators yet harbor 
ill will over my past participation in a poetic-epistolary parody in which 
the over-reaction of another list was held up to good-natured roasting. This 
is the real reason for the censorship at Poetryetc and the bizarre 
celebratory effigy burning conducted in its wake at British-Poets listserv. 
And I submit that such mean, vindictive behavior, carried out as it has been 
under the cloak of libelous aspersion, is an insult to the spirit of poetry 
and its
free discussion, and it should only be "let go," as Moira desires, when 
there is full exposure of the offenders. Otherwise, the pattern of arbitrary 
and vindictive abuse that has exhibited itself will repeat, and the 
infection will spread.

Kent



_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com  Sun Jul 29 12:57:22 2001
From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 09:57:22 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Corrected: Fwd: "Letting go" [#1]
Message-ID: <20010729165851.69894274E@sitemail.everyone.net>

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From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com  Sun Jul 29 12:58:20 2001
From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 09:58:20 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Corrected: Fwd: "Letting go" [#1]
Message-ID: <20010729165915.2FDC536F9@sitemail.everyone.net>

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 13:03:36 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 12:03:36 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] "Letting go" (on Duffy and self-censorship) [#2]
Message-ID: <F47sDsR6wnPUFd45b0p0000b94c@hotmail.com>


Candice Ward pronounced, imperially, to the Poetryetc list on Wednesday, in 
a post "serving notice" that if I continued to push the issue of her crass 
censorship and tactics of slander that she would either press charges 
against me or "file a complaint":

"Let this serve as notice to anyone on Poetryetc who may be tempted to
forward anymore of Kent's libelous posts."

Well, if any further proof were required, there you have it Poetryetc 
members: This is an ax-wielding list commissar who makes up the Rules as she 
goes. No "cross-posting" at Poetryetc and no discussion whatsoever about the 
disappeared! And if you violate the proscription of this State of Emergency 
communique, why you, too, will undoubtedly be dumped in the secret 
cyber-grave.

And the forwarding of attempts to defend myself against Ward's weird 
innuendoes was the ideological "rule" that Steve Duffy broke, of course, and 
the real reason, it should be clear, that he, too, was disappeared (under 
the ridiculous, trumped-up pretense of "personal abuse of another 
listmember")-- just as I was initially given the boot under the cover of 
fabricated charges. (Note, by the way, that not a single person, even those 
who have suffered injustices of similar kind at another poetry list, has yet 
had the decency to say a word in Steve Duffy's defense. What craven 
opportunism. What shame.)

So as I'd said, David Hickman, Poetryetc cannot freely discuss this issue of 
list ethics precisely because there has been a campaign of paranoia and 
intimidation conducted by the listowners and their retinue of confidants 
(not only there, but at British-Poets too, in past days-- the blood lines of 
the two courts are crossed, you see...). This campaign has taken place 
because the listowners and their small mandarin circle (I don't include here 
the funny grouplet of minor sycophantic aspirants) know that they have 
conducted their business in calumnious and disgraceful fashion. What they 
didn't know, in their comfortable arrogance, was that they would be called 
on it and exposed. Now they are trying to jam the doors and batten down the 
hatches.

But the shoot, as they say, is in the can.

Kent


_________________________________________________________________
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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 13:10:13 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 12:10:13 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] mistakes
Message-ID: <F1566Ci6nx8dyDd3OJX0000b87d@hotmail.com>

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From groggydays at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 13:31:54 2001
From: groggydays at hotmail.com (David Bircumshaw)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 18:31:54 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Corrected: Fwd: "Letting go" [#1]
References: <F265icUbvBDxroC6POY00006a16@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <OE65kidcDjoYAPNXRPm00004f6f@hotmail.com>

Funny how people forget their own opinions. Just a little quote here, from
Kent Johnson, in a message to Poetry Etc on Wed 11 June:

"I think the rules are good ones, and praise to the moderators."

Smiling at the absurdity of it all.

David B


----- Original Message -----
From: "kent johnson" <kljohnson45 at hotmail.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>; <pmcmanus at beeb.net>
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 5:05 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] Corrected: Fwd: "Letting go" [#1]


> Patrick,
>
> If you haven't sent to British-Poets, please forward this version--
mistakes
> corrected. I'll be followign this up with some furhter comments, including
> mention of the shameful silence around Steve Duffy's expulsion.
>
> Kent
>
> -----------
> I'd meant to respond to David Hickman's reasonable question of earlier
this
> week, concerning why the issue of list censorship/ethics couldn't be
> discussed at Poetryetc, "where it belongs".
>
> Well, David, Poetryetc cannot freely discuss this issue because the topic
> has been, de facto, proscribed there. And I believe that when actions as
> vindictively censoriousness as have taken place in the past couple weeks
> infect the body of the poetry community, it is, or should be, everyone's
> business, as unpleasant as the business is.
>
> A few years ago this issue emerged on Poetics, the largest of the poetry
> discussion lists; the recent behavior of the moderators at Poetryetc makes
> Joel Kuszai, Charles Bernstein, and Chris Alexander look like models of
> civility and fairness in retrospect. Whereas the Poetics crew had
> assiduously communicated back-channel with Henry Gould and others of those
> ejected, and candidly "explained" their views prior to and in wake of
their
> actions, Candice Ward and Alison Croggon have conducted themselves in the
> vulgar ways of ideological thuggery, carrying out their "convenient"
> excisions without notice, and then proffering, in the most reprehensible
> fashion, spurious and slanderous accusations against those they have
> silenced. They have been asked to give evidence of these accusations,
either
> front channel or back, and they have not.
>
> I was expelled, the membership of Poetryetc was told, not because of
> "overposting" (of which I had never received any warning), and not because
I
> had expressed an interest in forwarding comments on poetry from another
> list(comments which I did not forward, unlike a number of other Poetryetc
> members, who have freely forwarded messages from other venues and/or
> re-posted their own posts on other lists), but because there was
> "information received that I had "victimized" an unnamed member of the
> community. I have asked for clarification and have received nothing but
one
> vague response from Alison Croggon that she had seen a "hoaxed" email that
> "circumstantially" pointed to me. I have asked both Ward and Croggon to
send
> me a copy of this email and they have refused.
>
> Now, and quite predictably, Ward and Croggon have, in a transparent act of
> intellectual cowardice, closed off the archives to public view and
> evaluation.
>
> One thing needs to be clear (and it will be further clarified in printed
> form): The Poetryetc "moderators'" actions have been carried out not
because
> of anything I did on the list (their shameful inability to come up with
any
> justification is ample proof of that), but because the moderators yet
harbor
> ill will over my past participation in a poetic-epistolary parody in which
> the over-reaction of another list was held up to good-natured roasting.
This
> is the real reason for the censorship at Poetryetc and the bizarre
> celebratory effigy burning conducted in its wake at British-Poets
listserv.
> And I submit that such mean, vindictive behavior, carried out as it has
been
> under the cloak of libelous aspersion, is an insult to the spirit of
poetry
> and its
> free discussion, and it should only be "let go," as Moira desires, when
> there is full exposure of the offenders. Otherwise, the pattern of
arbitrary
> and vindictive abuse that has exhibited itself will repeat, and the
> infection will spread.
>
> Kent
>
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>


From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 13:37:27 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 12:37:27 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] And btw, David Bircumshaw
Message-ID: <F37mhVHL74TheTtwq8z00001c6e@hotmail.com>

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 13:40:29 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 12:40:29 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] And btw, David Bircumshaw
Message-ID: <F106KRfcjcMzfoV1qdi0000b6f3@hotmail.com>

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From JforJames at aol.com  Sun Jul 29 14:13:39 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 14:13:39 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetryetc, etc., etc, etc....
Message-ID: <105.6e1e87e.2895ac53@aol.com>

Could the handful of people party to this Poetryetc list spat,
which perniciously has infected NewPoetry & seems perpetual 
in nature, kindly refrain from discussing it frontchannel...
I think I speak for a vast majority on New-Poetry when I say
you're mistaken if you think we're interested.
Finnegan


From FanwoodJEL at aol.com  Sun Jul 29 14:25:25 2001
From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 14:25:25 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetryetc, etc., etc, etc....
Message-ID: <c9.132d74bc.2895af15@aol.com>

amen
thank god
thank you

jeffrey levine

In a message dated 7/29/01 2:14:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
JforJames at aol.com writes:


> Could the handful of people party to this Poetryetc list spat,
> which perniciously has infected NewPoetry & seems perpetual 
> in nature, kindly refrain from discussing it frontchannel...
> I think I speak for a vast majority on New-Poetry when I say
> you're mistaken if you think we're interested.
> Finnegan
> 


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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 14:38:20 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 13:38:20 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] David's rules
Message-ID: <F256PGtPrPrvCWO6hm80000b984@hotmail.com>

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From groggydays at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 14:37:42 2001
From: groggydays at hotmail.com (David Bircumshaw)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 19:37:42 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetryetc, etc., etc, etc....
References: <105.6e1e87e.2895ac53@aol.com>
Message-ID: <OE60trUVYKkpLTkUD5e00004f19@hotmail.com>

I, for one, am happy to comply, and welcome this request by the list-owner.

On a totally different note, those of you who don't know about it might like
to take a peek at my magazine 'A Chide's Alphabet' at www.chidesplay.8m.com
and even perhaps my own collection 'Painting Without Numbers' at
www.paintstuff.20m.com .

The magazine consists of the debut edition, and is genuinely international
in character. Issue 2 will be forthcoming in September/October.

Best

David B


----- Original Message -----
From: <JforJames at aol.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 7:13 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Poetryetc, etc., etc, etc....


> Could the handful of people party to this Poetryetc list spat,
> which perniciously has infected NewPoetry & seems perpetual
> in nature, kindly refrain from discussing it frontchannel...
> I think I speak for a vast majority on New-Poetry when I say
> you're mistaken if you think we're interested.
> Finnegan
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
>


From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 14:44:06 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 13:44:06 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] David's rules (repost after expelling Sondheim from body)
Message-ID: <F257PEkGhAj5p1Fjxe00000b983@hotmail.com>


David, I like you. Really, I do. "It's a paradox," as the vegetarian Lama 
said, on his California visit, munching on his BigMac.

Tell me, in light of the fact that decision on my request to re-join Brit-Po 
so I can freely respond to your and others' present silliness has been 
"delayed," would it be "moral backmail" or "request for fairness" that you 
forward this for me, in response to your post on my "ironic" acceptance of 
the list rules?

Kent

-----

David, as to the rules, yes, I did say I agreed with them. But what is your 
point, my willfully myopic man? I never broke any list rules! That is the 
point. (Take hands off ears, sir, and listen once again): I never broke any 
list rules. That is the point.

Your "friends" are censoring fabricators.

thank you,

Kent

_________________________________________________________________
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From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Sun Jul 29 14:46:16 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 14:46:16 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetryetc, etc., etc, etc....
References: <105.6e1e87e.2895ac53@aol.com>
Message-ID: <3B6459F8.7951@nut-n-but.net>

I'm only very slightly interested in the Kent Johnson thing,
and usually just glance at the posts involved with it.  But
why should it be forced back-channel?  This kind of thing 
seems always to come up at discussion groups like this--
particularly at one where I and others argue about who
really wrote Shakespeare (I'm a traditionalist on that one).
Just what is the problem?  Do people not know how to use a delete
button?  Yes, it's a bit annoying to suddenly have six posts
in a row show up about something one is not interested in, but--
gosh--while I like New-Poetry, I have to say that there have
been times when it's happened there (for me).

I, for one, am all for obedience to the rules of a newsgroup's
owner(s)--and for the right of those owners to expel anyone they
want to.  On the other hand, if I owned one, I would allow anyone
to post anything whatever so long as it was not clearly physically
harmful (contained a virus, for example).

And now, having declared my anarchist sympathies, I promise not
to speak on this subject again.

                                            --Bob G.



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 14:46:09 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 13:46:09 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] And btw, David Bircumshaw (reformatted repost)
Message-ID: <F121eVGiSu5C5JAGZ9X0000b96e@hotmail.com>

I was never "kicked-off" Poetryetc. I left voluntarily and temporarily, in 
attempt to defuse the utter confusion and paranoia caused by David Hess's 
sudden napalm raid against me. The most bizarre expression of this confusion 
(or so I thought at the time) was Ward's (oft-repeated) public accusation 
that I was responsible and had "manipulatively" engineered the whole affair. 
Now, in light of recent events, I am thinking that perhaps Ward was 
measuring her intervention quite carefully, indeed.

So please get it right-- the moderators were never "kind" or "generous" 
towards me.

You and the dizzy Robin Hamilton can drunkenly throw me in the river *after* 
you stop letting the sentimentalities of your "friendships", as you say, 
short-circuit the neurons in your ethical pineal gland.

Kent

_________________________________________________________________
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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 14:49:55 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 13:49:55 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] take it outside
Message-ID: <F150FmWAFsTmIClmpcQ0000b88c@hotmail.com>

Yes, Finnegan, I've had my say and, unless provoked by the Tony Blairish 
Henry Gould or some such numbskull, will now take the matter into print 
format.

Kent

_________________________________________________________________
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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 15:09:35 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 14:09:35 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] A Chide's Alphabet (hurrah)
Message-ID: <F5J1Dt9Vur7v6iuRfX300003770@hotmail.com>

I would like to say, in support of the recent post by my good friend, David 
Bircumshaw, that A Chide's Alphabet is indeed a delightfully curious 
web-zine. In fact, David has promised to print two letter-poems by me in 
issue #2 (issue #1, btw, contains magical poems by my other two close 
fiends, Candice Croggon and Alison Ward): One of the letter-poems includes a 
fantasy I had about Barrett Watten while having lunch in a Greek restaurant 
in Detroit. I was, as I indicate in the letter, wearing womans' clothing at 
the time... But now I fear that David B. will not keep his editor's promise. 
Will he? Won't he?

I can't remember now wht the other letter-poem was aobut, but I know it was 
good.

Kent

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 15:16:18 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 14:16:18 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] oh for the days (poem submitted to The Hat)
Message-ID: <F228jkO22ZhCl8aii080000b80d@hotmail.com>

And oh for the days of Subsub, when Jordan Davis ruled like a benevolent 
child-king, dispensing, like from an eye-dropper, his fin de siecle passive 
aggressiveness.

He was like a god, paring his fingernails.

_________________________________________________________________
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From mcward at nc.rr.com  Sun Jul 29 15:20:17 2001
From: mcward at nc.rr.com (Candice Ward)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 15:20:17 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] FYI
Message-ID: <B789DA31.428D%mcward@nc.rr.com>

I've filed a defamation complaint with this list's server, as I warned James
I would almost a week ago if he continued to allow defamatory posts to and
about me to be published here. He also failed in his list-managerial duty to
me--as a member of New-Poetry--to stop the "abusive postings" that his own
policy prohibits. I've been a member of quite a few poetry-discussion lists
over the past few years, but this is the first one that put me through what
amounted to a hazing period.

No discussion list so tolerant of the wild incivility that seems to prevail
here has much of a reason to congratulate itself on "free speech" either. As
you may or may not have noticed, daily posts attacking me had a repressive
effect on my participation in your discussions.

Candice Ward



From duemer at clarkson.edu  Sun Jul 29 15:30:03 2001
From: duemer at clarkson.edu (Joseph Duemer)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 15:30:03 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] oh for the days (poem submitted to The Hat)
References: <F228jkO22ZhCl8aii080000b80d@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <047e01c11864$de76ac00$1ba6fea9@fwvfv>

Yes, I bet you've had a snootfull of Kent Johnson, Jim. That is the way that
members of several other lists have come to feel. But I'm an anarchist too &
will have may say. And here we have a  post abusing Jordan Davis, though its
author will claim that its mock-ironic tone qualifies it as satire. Mr.
Johnson's complaints of ill-treatment (even if they were true) simply lack
moral standing since it is his own practice to mercilessly bait anyone who
disagrees with him & wear them down through repeated postings. Johnson is
one of those who behave like an ass & then cry foul when people treat him
like an ass. What he calls freedom is license; what he claims to
want--discussion--is monologue. In short, Kent Johnson is in thrall to
abstraction & seems to have no idea at all that other human beings
exist--they are merely texts to be manipulated & published. It's a kind of
literary psychosis, really, & one would take pity & humor him except that
doing so only leads to further abuse.

======================
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts, 5750
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315.268.3967
duemer at clarkson.edu
http://web.northnet.org/duemer
http://www.grammarbitch.com/ppp/index.html
======================


Times are bad. Children no longer
Obey their parents, and everyone
Is writing a book.

[Cicero]




From groggydays at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 16:01:25 2001
From: groggydays at hotmail.com (David Bircumshaw)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 21:01:25 +0100
Subject: [New-Poetry] A Chide's Alphabet (hurrah)
References: <F5J1Dt9Vur7v6iuRfX300003770@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <OE30mRf6Ci6nx8dyDd300004fc8@hotmail.com>

Thanks for your comments on A Chide's Alphabet, and as I've said before, of
course I will publish your pieces, and I endorse your remarks about the
magical quality of Alison's and Candice's poems, if not your typo.

Best

A Small Manchu Orange


----- Original Message -----
From: "kent johnson" <kljohnson45 at hotmail.com>
To: <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Cc: <skankypossum at hotmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 8:09 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] A Chide's Alphabet (hurrah)


> I would like to say, in support of the recent post by my good friend,
David
> Bircumshaw, that A Chide's Alphabet is indeed a delightfully curious
> web-zine. In fact, David has promised to print two letter-poems by me in
> issue #2 (issue #1, btw, contains magical poems by my other two close
> fiends, Candice Croggon and Alison Ward): One of the letter-poems includes
a
> fantasy I had about Barrett Watten while having lunch in a Greek
restaurant
> in Detroit. I was, as I indicate in the letter, wearing womans' clothing
at
> the time... But now I fear that David B. will not keep his editor's
promise.
> Will he? Won't he?
>
> I can't remember now wht the other letter-poem was aobut, but I know it
was
> good.
>
> Kent
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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  Sun Jul 29 16:57:20 2001
From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 16:57:20 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Dead End Webs
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEKEDJDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
References: <l03130302b78899b628b0@[208.20.85.169]>
Message-ID: <l03130300b78a254ef537@[208.20.85.169]>

Right you are about the dead metaphor, Hal, to which I'll plead guilty.
The sentiment behind the trope, however, is another matter, and one I don't
have heart or time to take up in any detail at the moment.  This is one of
those perennial squabbles, obviously, and while in the right mood I'm
willing to wade in anew and see what happens  (occasionally, I even change
my mind!), right now I'm unable.

See if I'm right in rephrasing our differing perspectives as follows,
though:  I tend to fret regularly over the question of connoisseurship (how
dya tell a good poem from a not-so-good?), which seems to me to be raised
in a big way by certain modernist/postmodernist developments,  while you're
unsure that the issue is worth all the fuss; let a million aesthetic
flowers bloom, etc.

Is that close?

Maybe there'll be world enough & time down the line to try and articulate
some thoughts on the whole "make it new" notion,  which has been worrying
me more and more as I fossilize. . . .  Talk about outliving its usefulness!

David Graham
_________________



>> Maybe it's because I think that "make it new" has led us, in the past
>> century or so, down a lot of dead end roads--increasingly so, after the
>> first flush of modernist excitement.  Yes, I know what a dinosaur that
>> makes me--and I would hasten to add that I don't dislike formal innovation
>> so much as I am less and less fascinated by it in and of itself.
>
>Just a brief objection to the road/path metaphor in this context, David.
>I wonder if that trope hasn't outlived its usefulness. Maybe the
>web we've all come to know and love isn't a better analogy to
>where we are today, but then I don't know what is.
>
>Hal     "metaphor--I use them. They keep me regular."
>                         --Paul Violi
>
>Halvard Johnson
>===============


__________________
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
__________________




From aprentiss at agnesscott.edu  Sun Jul 29 18:18:25 2001
From: aprentiss at agnesscott.edu (Amber Prentiss)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 18:18:25 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] FYI
Message-ID: <E7C06C25D501D511BA9900508BB82AA90DE158@ness.agnesscott.edu>

Perhaps you mistake our silence. People have said what they wanted here for
a while. Just because something is said, even repeatedly, doesn't mean
anyone is listening much (except maybe with the same mild voyeuristic
pleasure that drives people to watch the tamer reality shows.) When I say
that your name is neither good nor bad to me and that I don't take this
endless self-devouring flame war nearly as seriously as the people involved
in it, I think that my feelings are broadly applicable. 
-Amber
-----Original Message-----
From: Candice Ward
To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
Sent: 7/29/2001 3:20 PM
Subject: [New-Poetry] FYI

I've filed a defamation complaint with this list's server, as I warned
James
I would almost a week ago if he continued to allow defamatory posts to
and
about me to be published here. He also failed in his list-managerial
duty to
me--as a member of New-Poetry--to stop the "abusive postings" that his
own
policy prohibits. I've been a member of quite a few poetry-discussion
lists
over the past few years, but this is the first one that put me through
what
amounted to a hazing period.

No discussion list so tolerant of the wild incivility that seems to
prevail
here has much of a reason to congratulate itself on "free speech"
either. As
you may or may not have noticed, daily posts attacking me had a
repressive
effect on my participation in your discussions.

Candice Ward

_______________________________________________
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  Sun Jul 29 19:17:42 2001
From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 19:17:42 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] apologies/no quarter
In-Reply-To: <ab.cceabba.28917f0f@aol.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.1010729191722.23449C-100000@godzilla6.acpub.duke.edu>

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 JforJames at aol.com wrote:

> Warning: The list is unmoderated; however, posters who engage in name 
> calling, cursing, or other kinds of aggressive or derisive postings 

Cursing?  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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  Sun Jul 29 19:49:13 2001
From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 19:49:13 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] FYI
In-Reply-To: <B789DA31.428D%mcward@nc.rr.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.1010729192939.23449F-100000@godzilla6.acpub.duke.edu>

Dear Candice, 

I've been off watching my wife have a baby for the last week, and so I'm 
catching up on all this at once.  But I don't think many people on this 
list could possibly think ill of you just because Kent Johnson repeatedly 
slanders your name here and repeats it every time he can.  

That's Kent Johnson, Kent Johnson, Kent Johnson, Kent Johnson!  

I agree with Joe Duemer's characterization of Kent's behavior.  I've seen
it several times before.  I don't know whether it's legally actionable,
but I _do_ believe it's childishness masquerading as performativity.  I also
agree with Henry Gould's assessment of Kent's good qualities. But that
doesn't make him right in this case.

To the list: 

Point in the interest of full disclosure: I have known Candice Ward for
years.  During her time at SAQ, she was considered by me among others to
be the best, most professional managing editor in the academic 
humanities.  It's characteristic of Candice to treat everybody fairly and 
with great care.  Whatever Kent's feelings about the rules of _another_ 
list, his habit of personalizing his grievances is offensive.  

Best,
David

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001, Candice Ward wrote:

> I've filed a defamation complaint with this list's server, as I warned James
> I would almost a week ago if he continued to allow defamatory posts to and
> about me to be published here. He also failed in his list-managerial duty to
> me--as a member of New-Poetry--to stop the "abusive postings" that his own
> policy prohibits. I've been a member of quite a few poetry-discussion lists
> over the past few years, but this is the first one that put me through what
> amounted to a hazing period.
> 
> No discussion list so tolerant of the wild incivility that seems to prevail
> here has much of a reason to congratulate itself on "free speech" either. As
> you may or may not have noticed, daily posts attacking me had a repressive
> effect on my participation in your discussions.
> 
> Candice Ward
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry
> 
> 
> 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg			Director
kellogg at acpub.duke.edu		Writing in the Disciplines
(919) 660-4357		 	Duke University
FAX (919) 660-4372		http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/




From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 21:52:35 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 20:52:35 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Corrected: death is coming
Message-ID: <F223tPJkRK0D8LEHlA900009623@hotmail.com>

Steve,

Beautiful.

Have you seen, Dale and Steve, the latest at the New-Poetry archives? 
Unbelievable and funny to the max. Poor Joe Duemer, rushign to the defense 
of Jordan DAvis (Jordan, Joe Duemer is here to save you!)! Candice 
threatening lawsuit now against Finnegan (agh!). And David Kellogg, former 
Duke-er and pal of Candice-- what a hoot, little does he know what he's 
getting himself into!

I have just returned from Tony's Oyster Bar and my wife is yelling at me to 
get off the computer. Why are you wasting your fucking life, she is yelling. 
Why do you spend more time with these people who don't even exist than with 
us??? Your children are crying in bed at night, and you don't know it!!

Becasue, I say, death is coming, and faster than we know...

Oh artist shcmarist, she says.

The dark beauty of poetry is infinite in its... its... whatever...

Kent



_________________________________________________________________
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From JforJames at aol.com  Sun Jul 29 22:10:38 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:10:38 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Mudlark | James Brook
Message-ID: <2d.f1d44df.28961c1e@aol.com>

Date:    Sat, 28 Jul 2001 19:44:03 -0400
From:    William Slaughter <wrs at UNF.EDU>
Subject: Mudlark | James Brook

New and On View: Mudlark No. 18 (2001)

Weather and Repetition | Poems by James Brook


Contents

Weather and Repetition, Stanzas on the Death of Guy Debord,
Tune of Wreckage, Invisible One, 17 Passive Restraints

James Brook is a poet, translator, and editor. A veteran of the recent
antidisplacement battles in San Francisco, he is an editor for City Lights
Books, where he concentrates on political nonfiction and world literature.
He is the principal editor of Resisting the Virtual Life and Reclaiming
San Francisco. He has translated works by Guy Debord, Henri Michaux, Gellu
Naum, Benjamin Peret, Alberto Savinio, and Sebastian Reichmann. His poems
and essays have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, City Lights Review, Gare Du
Nord, Science As Culture, and elsewhere.


Author's Note

"My early poetry was classically Surrealist in inspiration; that is, it
was based in automatic writing, 'the inner voice' that revealed itself to
the author as ink flowed or typewriter ribbon was struck or characters
were displayed on a cathode-ray tube. The past decade or so has seen the
source of inspiration shift to the external world--and, above all, to
language as the external world of the work. Almost all the poems in this
collection are assembled on the collage principle, in one way or another.
Some of the poems are constructed of bits of text taken directly from
printed sources; for example, 'Weather and Repetition' is a rearrangement
of phrases lifted from the weather reports of Le Monde and The New York
Times. Other poems combine appropriated text with subjective
improvisations on the found language. But language remembered and language
dreamed and language overheard and language translated and language
invented are also 'found'--or discovered. My relationship to language is
thus only more consciously technical, distanced, material in an effort to
make petrified conditions dance to their own tune, always a
scissors-and-paste job."


Spread the word. Far and wide,

William Slaughter
_________________
MUDLARK
An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics
Never in and never out of print...
E-mail: mudlark at unf.edu
URL: http://www.unf.edu/mudlark


From JforJames at aol.com  Sun Jul 29 22:51:17 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:51:17 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Summer Reading: Seferis
Message-ID: <14.17b7e027.289625a5@aol.com>

Here are few outtakes from _A Poet's Journal: Days of 1945-1951
by George Seferis (A. Anagnostopoulos, trans.). A book I found 
at a used book fair halfway across the country from my hometown...
in it was a faded bookmark from Left Bank Books...my favorite 
bookshop in my old hometown (St. Louis) tho I haven't darkened 
its door for over 10 years. (I hope it still exists.) Perhaps I was 
fated to read this book. Anyway, I hope you enjoy these
quotes.
Finnegan

Unimaginable how much patience is needed to _see_ the 
simplest things. How much patience I need to write a single verse.

Climbing on words like a rope ladder, the poem must proceed
by itself and _complete itself_. It is not that easy; slowly, very slowly.

This light, this landscape (Poros, Greece), these days 
start to threaten me seriously. I close the shutters so 
I can work. I must protect myself from beauty...You feel 
your brain emptying and lightening; the long day absorbs 
it. Today I understood why Homer was blind; if he had 
had eyes he wouldn't have written anything.

In today's _Vima_ I read a summary of Erasistratos' lecture. It
ends with the sentence (in quotation marks in the newpaper):
"(poetry or poets) offer the assurance that we who, like Vandals,
besiege the self in us must know that this self of ours will not 
succumb." God help us!



From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 22:51:30 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 21:51:30 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] oh for the days [revision #1, with footnotes]
Message-ID: <F21470SkbsGuBlTAS1K000060f7@hotmail.com>

*Oh*

And oh for the days of Subsub-
poetics,[1] when Jordan Davis[2] ruled like a be-
nevolent child-king, dispens-
ing, like from an eye-
dropper, the absinthe of his fin de
siecle passive aggressive-
ness.[3] He

was like a god,
paring his fingernails, de-
ep inside the library that
extends for miles underground.[4]

---------


1. Subsubpoetics, the listserv founded in wake of the 2nd Brumaire of 
Charles Bonaparte. It was a place of unrivaled critical, poetic, and largely 
homosocial-erotic jouissance, until shut down by its Enlightened owner in a 
(pardonable) snit of the hissy fits.

2. Jordan Davis, bowl-cut and third generation poet of the New York School, 
and Kenneth Koch's pool boy in the summer of 1994. In his photograph in APR, 
Davis's head is surrounded by a bizarre radiance-- whether a chemical 
anomaly in the exposure or an actual Tantric efflorescence, it is impossible 
to tell.

3. From which we drank like baby pigeons. (By the way, has anyone ever 
*seen* a baby pigeon? Don't tell me there can't be a Bigfoot in the Pacific 
Northwest until you can tell me you've seen a baby pigeon.)

4. The double-allusion is overly precious, but since this is a poem about 
absinthe... well, as some South American poet once said:
"Ey, mi amorcito cabecita pelo-pelito de taza, te quiero, mua-mua, poetita 
maudita demasiado refinado."

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From halvard at earthlink.net  Sun Jul 29 23:26:35 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:26:35 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Dead End Webs
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b78a254ef537@[208.20.85.169]>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEEPDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

> Right you are about the dead metaphor, Hal, to which I'll plead guilty.
> The sentiment behind the trope, however, is another matter, and one I don't
> have heart or time to take up in any detail at the moment.  This is one of
> those perennial squabbles, obviously, and while in the right mood I'm
> willing to wade in anew and see what happens  (occasionally, I even change
> my mind!), right now I'm unable.
> 
> See if I'm right in rephrasing our differing perspectives as follows,
> though:  I tend to fret regularly over the question of connoisseurship (how
> dya tell a good poem from a not-so-good?), which seems to me to be raised
> in a big way by certain modernist/postmodernist developments,  while you're
> unsure that the issue is worth all the fuss; let a million aesthetic
> flowers bloom, etc.
> 
> Is that close?

Pretty much so, David. I guess I'm not looking for hard and fast lines between
good and not-so-good, good and great, poems, nor am I looking for lines
between poems and unpoems or between prose and unprose. Unlike Bob G.,
with whom I agree on a lot, I don't much care if words (esp. the tough ones
like "art," "poetry," etc.) ever have universally agreed-upon meanings, but
then I don't care anywhere near as much as he does about nomenclature or
about defining "schools" and so on. 

Only  million aesthetic flowers? I hope we can do better than that.

Hal      Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
		--Noam Chomsky

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson

> 
> Maybe there'll be world enough & time down the line to try and articulate
> some thoughts on the whole "make it new" notion,  which has been worrying
> me more and more as I fossilize. . . .  Talk about outliving its usefulness!
> 
> David Graham
> _________________
> 
> 
> 
> >> Maybe it's because I think that "make it new" has led us, in the past
> >> century or so, down a lot of dead end roads--increasingly so, after the
> >> first flush of modernist excitement.  Yes, I know what a dinosaur that
> >> makes me--and I would hasten to add that I don't dislike formal innovation
> >> so much as I am less and less fascinated by it in and of itself.
> >
> >Just a brief objection to the road/path metaphor in this context, David.
> >I wonder if that trope hasn't outlived its usefulness. Maybe the
> >web we've all come to know and love isn't a better analogy to
> >where we are today, but then I don't know what is.
> >
> >Hal     "metaphor--I use them. They keep me regular."
> >                         --Paul Violi
> >
> >Halvard Johnson
> >===============
> 
> 
> __________________
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> __________________
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 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  Sun Jul 29 23:37:33 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:37:33 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Kellogg
Message-ID: <109.34b44da.2896307d@cs.com>

Congratulations to the Kelloggs on their new child.  I hope the actual birth 
wasn't the week-long ordeal David alluded to.
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From halvard at earthlink.net  Sun Jul 29 23:32:28 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 23:32:28 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Joy Poem
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEDMDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEGEEPDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

Here's one by Pierre Reverdy (translated by
Ron Padgett):


For the Moment

Life is simple and gay
The bright sun rings with a quiet sound
The sound of the bells has quieted down
This morning the light hits it all
The footlights of my head are lit again
And the room I live in is finally bright

Just one beam is enough
Just one burst of laughter
My joy that shakes the house
Restrains those wanting to die
By the notes of its song

I sing off-key
Ah it's funny
My mouth open to every breeze
Spews mad notes everywhere
That emerge I don't know how
To fly toward other ears

Listen I'm not crazy
I laugh at the bottom of the stairs
Before the wide-open door

In the sunlight scattered 
On the wall among green vines
And my arms are held out toward you

It's today I love you

--Pierre Reverdy (trans. Padgett)


Hal

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson





From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Sun Jul 29 23:57:18 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 22:57:18 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] legal threats
Message-ID: <F78gcOrBLSAQV6uPDVn0000bd9d@hotmail.com>

Has anyone at New-Poetry not noticed that Candice Ward, in desperation, is 
setting forth to close down free discussion on this list through 
intimidation and barely-disguised legal threat?

Are people not outraged over this? And ask yourselves, please: What is she 
trying to hide by straightjacketing the last remaining FREE web space for 
poetry discussion in English?

I am satisfied for the time being to have exposed her and Alison Croggon's 
reprehensible actions. I will now, as I said, pursue the matter in other 
venues. Let's see if they and/or their cohorts continue to push the matter 
here.

Kent

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From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 00:17:12 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 20:17:12 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] Johnson messages
Message-ID: <F108xtniFKULPEhGD1X0000bc15@hotmail.com>

In the spirit of compromise, could we make happy both the people who wish to 
discuss Kent Johnson and the people who do not and label Kent 
Johnson-related messages appropriately?  That way, it would be easy both for 
those eagerly following this mess and those eager to delete posts to follow 
up.

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

Wise Wretch! with Pleasures too refin'd to please;
With too much Spirit to be e'er at ease;
With too much Quickness ever to be taught;
With too much Thinking to have common Thought:
You purchase Pain with all that Joy can give,
And die of nothing but a Rage to live.
-- Alexander Pope

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From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 00:23:13 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2001 20:23:13 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] FYI
Message-ID: <F144PrPrvCWO6hm8Ua80000d11f@hotmail.com>

David wrote

>I've been off watching my wife have a baby for the last week

Hey, congrats.  But a week?  That's a _long_ period of labor....any stats?  
Names being bandied about?

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

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From kellogg at duke.edu  Mon Jul 30 01:13:26 2001
From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 01:13:26 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Kellogg
In-Reply-To: <109.34b44da.2896307d@cs.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.1010730002156.25946D-100000@godzilla6.acpub.duke.edu>

On Sun, 29 Jul 2001 Rsgwynn1 at cs.com wrote:

> Congratulations to the Kelloggs on their new child.  I hope the actual birth 
> wasn't the week-long ordeal David alluded to.

The real week-long ordeal is apparently being undergone by Kent's ego. 

Actually, the labor itself was very quick.  Total active labor time
including pushing < 3 hours: "Active" labor is a flexible concept, as I
understand it.  Unlike with our first child, no epidural or other
anesthesia this time -- all natural.

Vitals: Boy, Benjamin Douglas Kellogg, "Ben", born 7/24/01 10:25 a.m., 6
lbs. 3 oz.  Mom, Dad, and Ben doing fine, though his brother Thomas, age
4, has suggested that maybe Ben should sleep in the sun-room or out back. 

Aside to Kent: 

Aren't I allowed to be a character witness, my friend?  I happen to know
Candice, whom you have repeatedly maligned on issues having nothing to do
with this list (a list which, as you yourself point out, is supposed to be
about poetry -- although none of your Candice-related posts have been
about poetry).  I frankly couldn't care less that you were kicked off
another list, or "left voluntarily," or whatever.  The distinction is
useless when it concerns you, the Shannen Doherty of poetry lists. I don't
care if you think Candice is Aaron Spelling; the fight between you and her
has nothing to do with New-Poetry.  Of course, if Candice is really
threatening to sue over this, I'd say that's probably overreacting,
because nobody gives a s--t about your persecution complex.  (I'm trying
to avoid cursing, a New-Poetry no-no.)  But she is probably less familiar 
with that aspect of your online persona than some of us.  

I'm recalling dimly that in the great POETICS list dust-up, virtually all
the list-hoggers were men and many of those who objected to list-hogging,
personal name-calling, and other KJ-like behaviors were women.  At least
one person back then suggested that this was not accidental.  You could
spend all your time bitching about free speech and your rights to express
etc., or you could try to create a community.  Guess which group was
dominated by men.  Guess which group you, Kent, fall into.  

******
*NOTE*
******

I'd like to state at this time that I here publicly object to any of my 
posts on this subject being reprinted, in whole or in part, outside this 
list without my express permission.  I'm saying that because Kent, who 
says I don't know what I'm in for, is preparing an article.  

*******
*/NOTE*
*******


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg			Director, Writing in the Disciplines
kellogg at acpub.duke.edu		Center for Teaching, Learning, and Writing
(919) 660-4357		 	Duke University
FAX (919) 660-4372		http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/






From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Mon Jul 30 07:52:19 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 04:52:19 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fall, 2001 issue of The Salt River Review
Message-ID: <20010730115219.43258.qmail@web12108.mail.yahoo.com>

The Salt River Review is pleased to announce it's Fall, 2001 issue,
with:

Poems byJed Allen, Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, Catherine Daly, David Starkey,
Gwyn McVay, Halvard Johnson, Terry Savoie, and Walt McDonald.
Fiction from Lee Byrd and Henry Shapiro.  
Creative Non-Fiction by Jeff Morton.
Greg Simon on the poetry of Luis Cameons.

The Salt River Review is also happy to enter the realm of hypermedia
with M.D. Coverley's evocative "Afterimage."

The Salt River Review is at: <http://www.poetserv.org>   



=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Mon Jul 30 08:24:00 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 08:24:00 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Frost's "Gift"
Message-ID: <a.1054a414.2896abe0@cs.com>

"The Gift Outright" was first read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at 
William and Mary College on 5 December 1941.  Interesting timing.
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From fmm1 at cornell.edu  Mon Jul 30 08:54:40 2001
From: fmm1 at cornell.edu (Fred Muratori)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 08:54:40 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Ammons' other art
In-Reply-To: <82.db71d7a.2894b305@aol.com>
Message-ID: <4.2.0.58.20010730084008.00a5e400@postoffice2.mail.cornell.edu>

At 08:29 PM 7/28/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Where's Fred Muratori, our resident Ammons specialist?...you've
>been scooped by Candice Ward (clipped from another list)...
>
>From:    Candice Ward <mcward at NC.RR.COM>
>Subject: A. R. Ammons' watercolors
>
>Does everybody but me know he was a painter?
>
>There's a large collection of his watercolors up for sale at Ahabooks.com.
>The prices put them well out of my range--but you can look for free, and
>they're quite well reproduced (http://www.ahabooks.com/).
>
>Don't be put off by the first few as you scroll down if, like me, you find
>them too pretty--there are more interesting ones further on/down, and some
>are downright stunning to my untutored eye.

"Specialist?"  "Scooped?"  Sorry, I didn't realize I was engaged in a 
journalistic competition, obligated to report every aspect of Ammons's life 
to the list.  There are other listees, like John Brehm, who know more about 
Ammons than I do.  But yes, he loved to paint watercolors, as the large 
quantity of his paintings on the walls of Ithaca area homes will 
attest.  His art work appeared on a few covers of _Epoch_ over the 
years.  If this preoccupation wasn't widely publicized outside the local 
environs, it's because he painted more as a hobby, for relaxation, than out 
of any serious artistic ambition (although, it's not difficult to see some 
thematic, abstract connections between the art and the poetry).  He would 
often give pieces away to students, colleagues, and friends.

-- 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 TerryP17 at aol.com  Mon Jul 30 09:27:09 2001
From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 09:27:09 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Poetryetc. ad nauseam
Message-ID: <83.dac6033.2896bab2@aol.com>

<<Could the handful of people party to this Poetryetc list spat,
which perniciously has infected NewPoetry & seems perpetual 
in nature, kindly refrain from discussing it frontchannel...
I think I speak for a vast majority on New-Poetry when I say
you're mistaken if you think we're interested.
Finnegan>>

Second the motion.

--Terry Ponick




From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 09:31:33 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 08:31:33 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] (no subject)
Message-ID: <F234BOh8s4KWiGtXsL10000c606@hotmail.com>

Candice,

As the moderator in charge of overseeing the Poetryetc rules, you should 
stop all this cross-posting!

Give it a rest now. You and Alison got arrogant, messed with the wrong 
person, and you've lost.

It's too bad you couldn't have dealt with your shame without looking like 
you were having a nervous breakdown in print.

Now drop the issue, and drop your ugly threats against the New-Poetry list.

Kent

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 09:32:41 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 08:32:41 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] final word until print
Message-ID: <F2073G9yTWpRnzh0Cpg0000c41b@hotmail.com>

Candice,

As the moderator in charge of overseeing the Poetryetc rules, you should 
stop all this cross-posting!

Give it a rest now. You and Alison got arrogant, messed with the wrong 
person, and you've lost.

It's too bad you couldn't have dealt with your shame without looking like 
you were having a nervous breakdown in print.

Now drop the issue, and drop your ugly threats against the New-Poetry list.

Kent

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 09:38:50 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 08:38:50 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] query on virus/Dan Zimmerman
Message-ID: <F167pv9Lj6MkKKhD5Bo0000c37b@hotmail.com>

I have an unopened message from "Daniel Zimmerman". It's subject heading is 
"Warren 1297". I know that Dan Zimmerman is one fo the most interesting 
poets writing, and I have heard that virused messges are coming from a 
"Daniel Zimmerman."

Poet Dan, if you are on list, could you tell me if this is you or someone 
else?

Kent

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 09:58:48 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 08:58:48 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] new babies
Message-ID: <F62O5SjMKtWNymWzAKb0000153d@hotmail.com>

Congratulations, David Kellogg, on the new baby. Fyi, Dale Smith and Hoa 
Nguyen just had a boy, Keaton, about ten days ago. I think Jordan Davis had 
a baby not too long ago, too. And Helen Vendler, recently, I hear.

Let me say *again*, as a father of two: You don't know what you are in for!

cheers,

Kent


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From TerryP17 at aol.com  Mon Jul 30 09:45:20 2001
From: TerryP17 at aol.com (TerryP17 at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 09:45:20 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: The Rant, part XCVI
Message-ID: <110.303c5f6.2896bef0@aol.com>

<<Becasue, I say, death is coming, and faster than we know...>>

Gesundheit.

TLP



From JforJames at aol.com  Mon Jul 30 10:47:11 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:47:11 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Re: Joy Poem
Message-ID: <a7.11764e3b.2896cd6f@aol.com>

Hal,
thanks for keeping the joy coming...
Finnegan

In a message dated 7/29/01 11:39:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
halvard at earthlink.net writes:

> Here's one by Pierre Reverdy (translated by
>  Ron Padgett):
>  
>  
>  For the Moment
>  
>  Life is simple and gay
>  The bright sun rings with a quiet sound
>  The sound of the bells has quieted down
>  This morning the light hits it all
>  The footlights of my head are lit again
>  And the room I live in is finally bright
>  
>  Just one beam is enough
>  Just one burst of laughter
>  My joy that shakes the house
>  Restrains those wanting to die
>  By the notes of its song
>  
>  I sing off-key
>  Ah it's funny
>  My mouth open to every breeze
>  Spews mad notes everywhere
>  That emerge I don't know how
>  To fly toward other ears
>  
>  Listen I'm not crazy
>  I laugh at the bottom of the stairs
>  Before the wide-open door
>  
>  In the sunlight scattered 
>  On the wall among green vines
>  And my arms are held out toward you
>  
>  It's today I love you
>  
>  --Pierre Reverdy (trans. Padg


From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 11:10:48 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:10:48 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] calling Dan Zimmerman
Message-ID: <F222fCYels0FNPNWX630000c5e9@hotmail.com>

Dan, if you are on this list, could you tell me, ON LIST, if you have just 
sent me a post titled "professional"? I won't open until I hear from you.

thanks,
Kent

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 12:34:42 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 11:34:42 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] trbell and dan z./virii
Message-ID: <F222wInhdAHxNzFiPNl0000c7d7@hotmail.com>

Have now been received total of six messages by trbell at home.com and Dan 
Zimmerman. The four in rapid series from trbell (as replies to postings of 
mine on New-Poetry-- is this Tom Bell, the psychoanalyst poet with whom Ive 
been interestingly conversing at Poetics on poetry and madness?) urge me to 
look at the attachment. And earlier today, I received a message from a John 
Handforth, asking me to look at an attachment, which he claimed was the 
mysterious "hoaxed" email which Alison Croggon had mentioned, but which, 
according to Mr. Handforth, he had himself written.

I've asked each of these posters to cut and paste the attachment onto email 
text, but have received not further replies. Maybe an innocent matter, but 
let's see...

Anyway, since there is a virus(es) afoot these days, seems worth mentioning.

Oh, cloak and daggers in the poetry world. Oh, Hamlet.

Kent

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 12:49:55 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 11:49:55 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] a psychoanalyst losing his marbles
Message-ID: <F21D7zoJDpz1Pjzc0cA00003f17@hotmail.com>

Still incoming. Another from Dan Zimmerman entitled "space tracer". Two more 
"see attachments" from Tom Bell (it turns out it is him, or at least the 
same email of Tom Bell at Poetics).

It would appear that the poet-therapist is losing his marbles?

In the current climate, beware of attachments.

Kent

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From kellogg at duke.edu  Mon Jul 30 12:49:27 2001
From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 12:49:27 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Kellogg
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.1010730002156.25946D-100000@godzilla6.acpub.duke.edu>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.1010730124622.13322E-100000@godzilla6.acpub.duke.edu>

To all, 

In a backchannel message, Joe Brennan has corrected several aspects of my 
recollection of the POETICS dust-up, specifically w/regard to gender 
politics on that list.  As a completely accurate account is beyond me, 
I'm asking that that you ignore the paragraph of my previous post about 
that set of events.  Thanks.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg			Director, Writing in the Disciplines
kellogg at acpub.duke.edu		Center for Teaching, Learning, and Writing
(919) 660-4357		 	Duke University
FAX (919) 660-4372		http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/



From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com  Mon Jul 30 13:01:38 2001
From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:01:38 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Kellogg
Message-ID: <20010730170138.AE8B43ECC@sitemail.everyone.net>

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From FanwoodJEL at aol.com  Mon Jul 30 13:02:26 2001
From: FanwoodJEL at aol.com (FanwoodJEL at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:02:26 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] trbell and dan z./virii
Message-ID: <8f.dfd615f.2896ed22@aol.com>

How awful it must be to find oneself singled out so for every manner of 
sling, slight, arrow and poison dart known to the forces of darkness. Alas, 
I've nothing to attach but my incredulousness at yr faith in our collective 
interest in each and every atom of your inwardness, every fire-breathed 
fantique. 

For God's sake, man, aren't you the least bit concerned about burning out 
your ego--leaving nothing in reserve. It's mere midsummer. Pace yrself. Or 
better yet, start yr own list. I'd subscribe at once. You have my word on it.

As for this list, kind and troubled and surely more than justified sir, know 
I've had to order a new delete key. There's only so much life in them, you 
know. Still, hard to believe the rumor that you've ever been exiled for 
over-posting.

Could we possibly, please, discuss poetry, or something like it?

Nearly teched in Fanwood,
Jeffrey Levine 
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From JforJames at aol.com  Mon Jul 30 13:03:05 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:03:05 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] No Attachments Please
Message-ID: <9c.11676608.2896ed49@aol.com>

I wouldn't open any oddl attachment
at this point....this looks suspicious,
like that Sircam virus that takes all 
your email addresses
and mails them a document from your
machine.
Jim F


From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 14:09:20 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:09:20 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] actors as themselves
Message-ID: <F470MhKqvR91VtDz9VP0000cbf2@hotmail.com>

Jeff,

The post on the attachments was meant as "public service": virused emails 
from a "Dan Zimmerman" have been circulating for a couple weeks, apparently. 
REceiving a long string of bizarre posts from trbell at home.com with 
attachments of strange provenance led me to mention the situation to the 
list.

As to let's talk poetry, great-- how about the below to lead off a possible 
topic. A post of mine re-posted from Poetryetc. It led off a very 
interesting discussion there about self, authorship, personae, etc.:

----------

On the matter of "voice", Alison said that poets should be like actors-- 
"training the voice to become as flexible and expressive an instrument as 
possible."

Thinking of poetry in the tropic light of theatre is very interesting, I 
think, and one can go in different directions with it. One thing that occurs 
to me right off, in resposne to Alison's remark, is that the vast majority 
of poets today, even those who have trained their voices to become supple 
and flexible instruments, insist on "playing themselves." And it's this 
scripted role (ah, the real and arrased script of ideology, as Dana Gioia 
said-- no, just kidding) that underwrites the "common-sense" conflation of 
"voice" with normative, legal poetic identity.

Kent

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 14:13:03 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:13:03 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] reply to David and Alison on "poets' selves"
Message-ID: <F116EBxvl6N6XsxC6iP0000cb85@hotmail.com>

Here's another from that thread. I'll send some more. Let's talk poetry and 
the invisible armor of ideology.

Kent

David B. said:

"...poets will always be saddled with their selves... whatever tactics poet 
will use they will always be the hosts for their questionable problematic 
selves."

I couldn't agree more, David, (as I agree almost entirely with Alison's very 
thoughtful post), and I don't see how you get anything to the contrary from 
what I have said. Waht Pessoa did, thus enriching *his own* and *our* 
"questionable, problematic selves" is to saddle new, utterly fascinating 
poets with selves, selves who commented on the problematic selves of their 
comrades and other "actually existing" (dead and living) poets, including 
Pessoa himself. The vehicle (and you are right, as I think I clearly said, 
that Pessoa's vehicle is only a hint and no "blueprint") creates a kind of 
ontological chamber that makes poetry and life more various and complex and 
interesting. That's the reason. Here's my important question: What's the 
reason for feeling so resistant to the light peeking through the barely 
opened door?

Now, one important qualification that both you and Alison bring up, and 
which I want to think about more. I have, indeed, used "futural-progress" 
type tropes in talking aobut the matter here and elsewhere, and I think I 
want to think more about that and the assumptions behind using such figures. 
So thank you to both you and Alison for that.

Kent

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 14:14:01 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:14:01 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetic theater/ flight tests (reply to Alison)
Message-ID: <F2074g3Sv0YKpDS7hx20000ca34@hotmail.com>

As a follow up to my Poetry as theatre post, I thought I'd share this. Sorry 
for the cross-posting, but since these are mine, and the topic seems 
potentially rich for discussion, I thought I'd send here, too.
Though where is everybody?

Kent

----------

Alison,

Thanks for the response. Let me point out, please, how you misread me.

It's not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with the conventional 
name stamp, no more than there is anything really wrong with the photos of 
the company's actors in the foyer. It's just that such stampings mark a 
*productive horizon* beyond which certain imaginative moves cannot be made 
and certain (mostly undisovered, no doubt) imaginative dimensions cannot be 
entered. Hyper-authorsip, as I argue in an interview forthcoming this fall, 
does not supplant, it *adds*. It's an aperture, a tunneling, hinted at by 
Pessoa, barely touched since.

Now, I understand that conventional attributional forms can also be 
productive, even psychically propulsive, for some (Henry Gould is an 
unusually interesting case, Narcissus purposely drowning himself into his 
reflection to see what's on the other side), but for the vast majority of 
poets (this is indisputable, it seems to me) self-inscription inside an 
institutionalized mode of production/distribution/reception is made without 
a thought, as if it were the law of nature, or something. And this is 
ideology powerfully working, of course.

I am not saying that poets should stop using their names, and I've made this 
clear in a number of published statements; I'm saying that poetry is perhaps 
in the days of Kitty Hawk, and other forms of flight haven't begun to be 
glimpsed. There will be lots of pilots who will be immolated in tests of new 
vehicles powered by weird fuels. It's an exciting time.

By the way, my "toast"/Author conceit in last post was not meant to suggest 
champagne-- I meant the toast that pops out of the toaster!

Kent

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 14:16:37 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:16:37 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poets' acts & the Real of theatre
Message-ID: <F106SHW1HSAHwNKLI1Q0000c93c@hotmail.com>

And this, posted sometime back here, by this guy who only cares about 
"scandal mongering", as Henry Gould would have it. Any comments Jeffrey? 
Let's talk poetry!

But now I'm going fishing for the afternoon.

Kent

----------
This message was posted to Poetryetc. I thougt I'd post it, too, to 
New-Poetries, becasue jeezes, New-poetries, are new poets dead? Is everyone 
too busy following the intern's disappearance? Oprah's pregnancy?

I know, yes, like you, in the face of the Hubble and architecture's marvels 
in general, I feel worhtless, too. But hey, here we are! This is your life, 
Mr. Shoe.

Kent

------

Joe,

You wrote a whole post to me without once taunting my johnson. Thank you. I 
feel like we're friends again!

Yes, I agree with what you say. But it's not very hard to agree with it. In 
this idea of poets "playing themselves", I'm talking about something beyond 
Grandma's tablecloth poets-- I'm talkiing about, pretty much, the whole 
Self-Recycling Theatre Festival of Poetry.

This is how I see it: The "avant-gardists," who theorize about the "self" 
and deploy Brechtian-type "V-effect" devices (as they are most lately 
beginning to say, see Andrews, etc.) in their compositions, are no less 
"playing themselves" than, say, Robert Bly or (to be more up to date) Jorie 
Graham play themselves as "Actor-Poet": The performances are differently 
choreographed, of course, but, at their conclusions, the actors meet with 
the congratulating (or contemptuous) audience in the foyer.

And, lo, what is that on the foyer walls? Why, look, it's the actor's 
photograph, the photo among the others of the company, the photograph (this 
is part of the conceit, to remind you where you are) of the one who had just 
been acting in the one-person play, only here sans the stage make-up. The 
actor and the milling audience delight or bristle in each other's presence, 
united by the shared and psychically comforting knowledge that what just 
transpired in the punctiliously-lit room was merely a fabricatio, a hoax, of 
sorts, the discrete and light-focused actor on stage "playing herself," with 
well-practiced forms and modulations of "expression"-- expressions so wildly 
ranging, in some cases, why, the audience begins to wonder if the actor has 
a "Self"! Imagine...

But thank God, the official company photograph is there to return us to the 
"real": Ron Silliman, Henry Gould, Candice Ward, Joseph Duemer, Alison 
Croggon, Douglas Barbour, Kent Johnson when he writes fishing poems, and 
etc, etc. ad infinitum., quite competent actors playing themselves, all, 
caught within an ideological drama very much outside their "poet-selves", an 
uncountably manifold-act extavaganza, inflected differently in each show at 
each Broadway, each Off-Broadway, or each community theater venue, a drama 
whose script is fractal and written beyond them, them who act out and 
pretend they are not acting, or pretend they are only pretending that they 
are not acting, it doesn't matter, even if a double-negative gets confused, 
they are actors, always-already playing themselves, and their framed photos 
are smiling or else earnest in the (as I said) foyer of the theater, built, 
I forgot to say, with mostly anonymous patron money, directly or indirectly 
disbursed by the State.

By the way, remember that I brought up Pessoa (no one responded, but par for 
the course with that guy with the johnson): Here was a poet, Joe, who 
understood theater in the deepest possible sense: What he understood, in a 
kind of Hegelian intuitional rush, I'd say, is that Real Poetry is the real 
life synthesis (yes, the Situationists were provisionally onto something, 
even if the French CP betrayed in '68 and everyone forgot) that the 
antithesis of staged and institutional Author Function drama/theatre makes 
possible. Poetry (that poetry which moves into its real and unmediated 
nature outside the circumscribed legality of hoaxed identities) is the one 
art that can take the Spirit of Theater from the fabricated, from the 
compromised and faked productional premise that poetry presently entertains, 
to the absolute Real, turning poetry inside out, into a Real object, like a 
Klein bottle, as I said of Gould's tentative rhymes, that "real" laws cannot 
touch.

Save this post, Joe.

Kent





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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 14:20:58 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:20:58 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Emergency [please read]
Message-ID: <F219RohyMMGz0tWqhUY0000c8f9@hotmail.com>

I have just received this from Tom Bell. It appears my suspicions are 
confirmed-- someone is using the names and addresses of poets to spread a 
virus. If you receive any emails from trbell at home.com or from "Dan 
Zimmerman", DO NOT OPEN any attachments they may contain.

Kent


>From: <trbell at home.com>
>To: "kent johnson" <kljohnson45 at hotmail.com>
>Subject: Re:
>Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:53:36 -0500
>
>no, seem to have a virus.  don't open any
>
>tom
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "kent johnson" <kljohnson45 at hotmail.com>
>To: <trbell at home.com>
>Cc: <skankypossum at hotmail.com>
>Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 11:38 AM
>
>
> > Tom, if it's you. I've received a bunch of emails from your address 
>asking
> > me to look at attachments. Could you clarify?
> >
> > You're not losing your marbles, are you?
> >
> > Kent
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at 
>http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
> >
> >
>


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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 14:30:47 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:30:47 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] note
Message-ID: <F78FhGDrFjO0ybvQoG90000c9cb@hotmail.com>

Tom,

I just sent this to New-Poetry list. Very weird. I've gotten about ten 
"replies" from "you" today. My message comes back to me (messages sent 
either to New-Poetry or to you) with a "see attachment". The attachment is 
always from a different source-- last one was fun.pix or something like 
that.

Probably this is something aimed at me as result of Poetryetc flare-up, but 
it might be good to warn Peotics about it, too? Never heard of exact 
addresses being hijacked like this.

--------

I have just received this from Tom Bell. It appears my suspicions are 
confirmed-- someone is using the names and addresses of poets to spread a 
virus. If you receive any emails from trbell at home.com or from "Dan 
Zimmerman", DO NOT OPEN any attachments they may contain.

Kent


>From: <trbell at home.com>
>To: "kent johnson" <kljohnson45 at hotmail.com>
>Subject: Re:
>Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 10:53:36 -0500
>
>no, seem to have a virus.  don't open any
>
>tom
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "kent johnson" <kljohnson45 at hotmail.com>
>To: <trbell at home.com>
>Cc: <skankypossum at hotmail.com>
>Sent: Monday, July 30, 2001 11:38 AM
>
>
> > Tom, if it's you. I've received a bunch of emails from your address 
>asking
> > me to look at attachments. Could you clarify?
> >
> > You're not losing your marbles, are you?
> >
> > Kent
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at 
>http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
> >
> >
>


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From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Mon Jul 30 14:26:16 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:26:16 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Viruses
References: <F222wInhdAHxNzFiPNl0000c7d7@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <3B65A6C8.3B1A@nut-n-but.net>

While reading recent posts, it struck me that there should be some
public service website on the Internet where one could send
suspicious missives to have them tested for viruses.  Is there
such a site?  

                                            --Bob G.




From kellogg at duke.edu  Mon Jul 30 14:54:41 2001
From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:54:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Viruses
In-Reply-To: <3B65A6C8.3B1A@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.1010730145158.13322J-100000@godzilla6.acpub.duke.edu>

On Mon, 30 Jul 2001, Bob Grumman wrote:

> While reading recent posts, it struck me that there should be some
> public service website on the Internet where one could send
> suspicious missives to have them tested for viruses.  Is there
> such a site?  

Keep your antivirus software up to date, and you should have them 
"tested" every time they open.  Obviously you shouldn't open suspicious 
viruses, and you should probably be on Linux, or at least avoid MS Outlook 
:-).  Symantec, maker of McAfee, has an important listing of virus hoaxes 
at www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html  .  

Cheers,
David

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg			Director, Writing in the Disciplines
kellogg at acpub.duke.edu		Center for Teaching, Learning, and Writing
(919) 660-4357		 	Duke University
FAX (919) 660-4372		http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/




From kellogg at duke.edu  Mon Jul 30 14:55:49 2001
From: kellogg at duke.edu (David Kellogg)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:55:49 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Viruses
In-Reply-To: <3B65A6C8.3B1A@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.1010730145510.13322K-100000@godzilla6.acpub.duke.edu>

> While reading recent posts, it struck me that there should be some
> public service website on the Internet where one could send
> suspicious missives to have them tested for viruses.  Is there
> such a site?  

Yes!  

See www.symantec.com/avcenter/submit.html.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David Kellogg			Director, Writing in the Disciplines
kellogg at acpub.duke.edu		Center for Teaching, Learning, and Writing
(919) 660-4357		 	Duke University
FAX (919) 660-4372		http://www.duke.edu/~kellogg/



From dweinsto at middlebury.edu  Mon Jul 30 15:31:29 2001
From: dweinsto at middlebury.edu (David Weinstock)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:31:29 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] note
Message-ID: <200107301926.f6UJQno17851@mailgate2.sover.net>

kent johnson wrote:
"Never heard of exact  addresses being hijacked like this."

Many viruses DO work by sending emails to your own contact list, under your
name. Systems running the popular combination of Windows and Outlook are
usually targeted.

These viruses are particularly insidious because even people who are careful
about opening attachments may not take precautions when something seems to
come from a friend.

Don't open attachments unless you are absolutely sure they were sent
deliberately by a known correspondent!

Good luck,
David Weinstock




From JforJames at aol.com  Mon Jul 30 15:33:36 2001
From: JforJames at aol.com (JforJames at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:33:36 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Poetic theater/ flight tests (reply to Alison)
Message-ID: <2f.189a4fac.28971090@aol.com>

In a message dated 7/30/01 2:15:19 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
kljohnson45 at hotmail.com writes:

> Though where is everybody?
>  
>  Kent
Kent, I think you're driving em underground...I don't see the point
in dredging up Poetryetc posts...esp. now. You're getting 
back to poetry, true, but there are a few not too well hidden 
barbs in those posts. And the overposting, too...
Jim F


From duemer at clarkson.edu  Mon Jul 30 15:28:34 2001
From: duemer at clarkson.edu (Joseph Duemer)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:28:34 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Viruses
References: <Pine.SOL.3.91.1010730145158.13322J-100000@godzilla6.acpub.duke.edu>
Message-ID: <017b01c1192d$d37b9940$b7f6fea9@fwvfv>

KJ writes:
<<I have just received this from Tom Bell. It appears my suspicions are
confirmed-- someone is using the names and addresses of poets to spread a
virus. If you receive any emails from trbell at home.com or from "Dan
Zimmerman", DO NOT OPEN any attachments they may contain.>>

It is the nature of the Sircam virus to grab the names of people you know &
send a message asking you to open the attachment. So you will only get
messages from Tom Bell of Dan Zimmerman if you are in their address books. I
got half a dozen of these from correspondents in Viet Nam.

KJ:
<<Probably this is something aimed at me as result of Poetryetc flare-up,
but
it might be good to warn Peotics about it, too? Never heard of exact
addresses being hijacked like this.>>

This is either high paranoia or a gratuitous attempt to smear the Petc list.
In any case, a number of recent viruses have used this technique, as widely
documented in news stories over the last six months.

jd
======================
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts, 5750
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315.268.3967
duemer at clarkson.edu
http://web.northnet.org/duemer
http://www.grammarbitch.com/ppp/index.html
======================


Times are bad. Children no longer
Obey their parents, and everyone
Is writing a book.

[Cicero]




From duemer at clarkson.edu  Mon Jul 30 15:46:15 2001
From: duemer at clarkson.edu (Joseph Duemer)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:46:15 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] note
References: <200107301926.f6UJQno17851@mailgate2.sover.net>
Message-ID: <019b01c11930$4bf29c00$b7f6fea9@fwvfv>

Several members of Poetryetc, including at least one of the moderators, have
received virus-infected messages from the same source as Kent Johnson, so it
appears unlikely that this is an attack a) aimed specifically at him & b)
coming from someone as retribution for the recent "flare up."

jd
======================
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts, 5750
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315.268.3967
duemer at clarkson.edu
http://web.northnet.org/duemer
http://www.grammarbitch.com/ppp/index.html
======================


Times are bad. Children no longer
Obey their parents, and everyone
Is writing a book.

[Cicero]




From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 16:33:54 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:33:54 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] I stand corrected
Message-ID: <F227sQtgTIFprhMOgRG0000cddb@hotmail.com>

The posts from Joe Duemer and Joe Weinstein satisfactorily explain the 
problem. I stand corrected on assuming that the emails were aimed at me. No 
doubt an overreaction on my part to the barely-veiled accusation by one of 
the Poetryetc moderators that I was likely responsible for the previous 
"Zimmerman" viruses.

Kent

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From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com  Mon Jul 30 16:46:34 2001
From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 13:46:34 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Viruses
Message-ID: <20010730204634.493342756@sitemail.everyone.net>

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From kljohnson45 at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 16:48:57 2001
From: kljohnson45 at hotmail.com (kent johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:48:57 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] dredged posts?/leave
Message-ID: <F270KtWfN3vSAMfKQu10000cd6b@hotmail.com>

Jim,

I'm sharing the posts becasue they bring up interesting issues for 
discussion. Or at least so I think. I am NOT posting them becasue they 
contain any point-scoring "barbs". If anything, their language is quite 
amicable, at most gently roasting, and shows that I was participating, 
before the "Troubles", seriously and in good faith.

The aggravated situation has led me to overpost. I can't argue with THAT 
criticism. I'll take a self-imposed one week vacation now from New-Poetry. 
But I posted the remarks on personae/authorship questions mainly in response 
to Jeffrey's good appeal that the discussion return to poetry. Just offering 
a topic, in case anyone might wish to pick it up-- a difficult and tricky 
one, to be sure, but potentially very rich.

Kent

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From AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU  Mon Jul 30 16:58:43 2001
From: AP201070 at BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (Henry)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 16:58:43 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] short poem
Message-ID: <010730.170104.EDT.AP201070@BROWNVM.brown.edu>



Bees dance above closed lips;
in the clear shadow of the oak
wherever they turn their heads
they follow the bright pattern.

Quietly, by the granite cistern
under a crowded canopy of reds,
in the cool wind a broken spoke
sways whichever way it slips.


From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com  Mon Jul 30 18:31:56 2001
From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 15:31:56 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] I stand corrected
Message-ID: <20010730223156.D80432751@sitemail.everyone.net>

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URL: <http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20010730/baded019/attachment.ksh>

From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Mon Jul 30 20:13:29 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:13:29 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Viruses
References: <Pine.SOL.3.91.1010730145510.13322K-100000@godzilla6.acpub.duke.edu>
Message-ID: <3B65F829.4539@nut-n-but.net>

Thanks for the info, David.  Might come in handy someday,
though I hope I don't ever need it.

                                       --Bob G.

David Kellogg wrote:
> 
> > While reading recent posts, it struck me that there should be some
> > public service website on the Internet where one could send
> > suspicious missives to have them tested for viruses.  Is there
> > such a site?
> 
> Yes!
> 
> See www.symantec.com/avcenter/submit.html.



From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu  Mon Jul 30 22:11:14 2001
From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 22:11:14 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] More Joy
Message-ID: <l03130301b78bc1520227@[208.20.85.238]>

Have we had enough joyful poems?  I think not.  I particularly enjoyed
Kenneth Koch's "In Love With You," which was new to me.  As Jan Hodge said,
"more joy!"

Here is a tiny and perhaps somewhat odd anthology of poems with joy in them.

David Graham
____________________

GEOCENTRIC


Indecent, self-soiled, bilious
reek of turnip and toadstool
decay, dribbling the black oil
of wilted succulents, the brown
fester of rotting orchids,
in plain view, that stain
of stinkhorn down your front,
that leaking roil of bracket
fungi down your back, you
purple-haired, grainy-fuzzed
smolder of refuse, fathering
fumes and boils and powdery
mildews, enduring the constant
interruptions of sink-mire
flatulence, contagious
with ear-wax, corn smut,
blister rust, backwash
and graveyard debris, rich
with manure bog and dry-rot
harboring not only egg-addled
garbage and wrinkled lip
of orange-peel mold but also
the clotted breath of overripe
radish and burnt leek, bearing
every dank, malodorous rut
and scarp, all sulphur fissures
and fetid hillside seepages, old,
old, dependable, engendering
forever the stench and stretch
and warm seethe of inevitable
putrefaction, nobody
loves you as I do.

--Pattiann Rogers
____________________________

Danse Russe


If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,-
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,-

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?
--William Carlos Williams
____________________________



Up on Cripple Creek

by J.R.Robertson.
? 1969 Canaan Music, Inc.


When I get off of this mountain, you know where I want to go?
Straight down the Mississippi river, to the Gulf of Mexico
To Lake Charles, Louisiana, little Bessie, girl that I once knew
She told me just to come on by, if there's anything she could do

Refrain:

Up on Cripple Creek she sends me
If I spring a leak she mends me
I don't have to speak, she defends me
A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one

Good luck had just stung me, to the race track I did go
She bet on one horse to win and I bet on another to show
The odds were in my favor, I had 'em five to one
When that nag to win came around the track, sure enough she had won

(refrain)

I took up all of my winnings, and I gave my little Bessie half
And she tore it up and threw it in my face, just for a laugh
Now there's one thing in the whole wide world, I sure would like to see
That's when that little love of mine, dips her doughnut in my tea

(refrain)

Now me and my mate were back at the shack, we had Spike Jones on the box
She said, "I can't take the way he sings, but I love to hear him talk"
Now that just gave my heart a throb, to the bottom of my feet
And I swore and I took another pull, my Bessie can't be beat

(refrain)

Now there's a flood out in California and up north it's freezing cold
And this living on the road is getting pretty old
So I guess I'll call up my big mama, tell her I'll be rolling in
But you know, deep down, I'm kind of tempted
To go and see my Bessie again.

(refrain)
___________________________________


 LISTENING TO THE GARDEN

          Look at it this way: under the brass fanfare
          of their blossoms, all those zucchinis
          are really incipient oompahs.
          And the peavine tremolos? Middle C
          rubbed out of a rhubarb stalk?

          Now you're beginning to hear it: that line
          of radishes ostinato, bean paradiddles,
          a beefsteak tomato redballing its cadenza.

          Aren't the parts of these vegetables---the phloem,
          the calyx and carina---names of woodwinds
          you'd love to hear, in counterpoint
          to the garden's valves and bells?

          Remember that morning you drove
          into the main street of a town---Colorado Springs,
          was it?---on no holiday you could name?

          Nevertheless, the high school band was passing,
          majorettes in their short, flippant skirts
          frilled like the inner linings of lettuce,
          and shakos, corn-tassel plumed, remember,

          and the frogging on jackets---cucumber vines
          scrolled on themselves. The whole garden's
          flash and patootle was moving off
          toward a snowed-upon peak
          down at the end of that street.
--Brendan Galvin
_________________________________

Lovely

Strange word.
Odd thing to say of anyone.

And not the epithet for
an aging man,
      like this man,

now climbing a staircase into
December's milky light, the sun

sinking through him
like a curator's x-ray unearthing
a recycled canvas,

the early figure loosened
from his body's ruined fresco --

      but he is: Lovely,

the sobriquet given
for certain girls sleepwalking

a foggy cusp, dozing
at the wet rim of beauty's
unconsciousness; a madrigal

and oxymoron containing both
the clean, high bell of bird-song and

the dry-tongued bow burning
across the cello's hips.

In the join,
where a man's thigh meets
the ass's curve, raw

as the rose's puckered labia,
I've touched men there,

set my mouth inside the give
of that blood-colored hollow,
that private, unlikely corner

where a man's softness turns, looking
to hide itself.
--Erin Belieu




__________________
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
__________________




From pmarshock at hotmail.com  Mon Jul 30 23:26:24 2001
From: pmarshock at hotmail.com (Patti Marshock)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:26:24 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] translingual collage
Message-ID: <F131kDTM9wGmAf0Mjka0000e0a5@hotmail.com>


I would have attached this to a prevous post, but all I saw was a bunch of 
"moggly" jabberings on the last thread.

I 've been playing with a new (?) technique for jump starting poems with 
found lines.  Would anyone like to hear about it?  I'm looking for a bit of 
critcism regarding something that has turned out to be fun for me.  It 
involves snatching a piece of written work from somewhere (even a textbook) 
and running it through an online translator a couple of times.  I then pick 
out a few words or phrases that appeal to me and build a poem around them.

Comments?

Patti

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu  Mon Jul 30 23:31:29 2001
From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 23:31:29 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] RE:  Dead End Webs
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEEPDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
References: <l03130300b78a254ef537@[208.20.85.169]>
Message-ID: <l03130303b78bd2738ca2@[209.23.13.117]>

Interesting indeed, Hal.  I'm certainly highly interested in drawing lines
between good and not-so-good poems--as a teacher trying to help students
improve in the craft, as a poet trying to get better at this myself, as a
reader of literature, etc.  Of course I realize that those lines or
standards will never *be* hard and fast, given the nature of language and
poetry, but I confess I don't see any other way to engage the art except by
engaging the issue of evaluation--every time I revise, for instance.

Maybe you'd care to say more on this topic?  How do you revise? How do you
know when a poem is "done"?

David Graham
============================

>> See if I'm right in rephrasing our differing perspectives as follows,
>> though:  I tend to fret regularly over the question of connoisseurship (how
>> dya tell a good poem from a not-so-good?), which seems to me to be raised
>> in a big way by certain modernist/postmodernist developments,  while you're
>> unsure that the issue is worth all the fuss; let a million aesthetic
>> flowers bloom, etc.
>>
>> Is that close?
>
>Pretty much so, David. I guess I'm not looking for hard and fast lines between
>good and not-so-good, good and great, poems, nor am I looking for lines
>between poems and unpoems or between prose and unprose. Unlike Bob G.,
>with whom I agree on a lot, I don't much care if words (esp. the tough ones
>like "art," "poetry," etc.) ever have universally agreed-upon meanings, but
>then I don't care anywhere near as much as he does about nomenclature or
>about defining "schools" and so on.
>
>Only  million aesthetic flowers? I hope we can do better than that.
>
>Hal      Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
>		--Noam Chomsky
>
>Halvard Johnson

__________________
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
__________________




From terran2 at mindspring.com  Mon Jul 30 23:43:00 2001
From: terran2 at mindspring.com (shep)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 20:43:00 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] translingual collage
In-Reply-To: <F131kDTM9wGmAf0Mjka0000e0a5@hotmail.com>
References: <F131kDTM9wGmAf0Mjka0000e0a5@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <a05100301b78bd9692476@[209.179.253.217]>

>I would have attached this to a prevous post, but all I saw was a 
>bunch of "moggly" jabberings on the last thread.
>
>I 've been playing with a new (?) technique for jump starting poems 
>with found lines.  Would anyone like to hear about it?  I'm looking 
>for a bit of critcism regarding something that has turned out to be 
>fun for me.  It involves snatching a piece of written work from 
>somewhere (even a textbook) and running it through an online 
>translator a couple of times.  I then pick out a few words or 
>phrases that appeal to me and build a poem around them.
>
>Comments?
>
>Patti

Hey! Whatever works for you. I've used some random generators, 
available free on the net. Let's see an example.

shep

>_________________________________________________________________
>Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
>
>_______________________________________________
>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  Mon Jul 30 23:55:07 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 23:55:07 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] RE:  Dead End Webs
In-Reply-To: <l03130303b78bd2738ca2@[209.23.13.117]>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEGKDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

> Interesting indeed, Hal.  I'm certainly highly interested in drawing lines
> between good and not-so-good poems--as a teacher trying to help students
> improve in the craft, as a poet trying to get better at this myself, as a
> reader of literature, etc.  Of course I realize that those lines or
> standards will never *be* hard and fast, given the nature of language and
> poetry, but I confess I don't see any other way to engage the art except by
> engaging the issue of evaluation--every time I revise, for instance.
> 
> Maybe you'd care to say more on this topic?  How do you revise? How do you
> know when a poem is "done"?
> 
> David Graham

I revise by going back over something and making changes or not making changes.
Sometimes I try out various line-groupings, line lengths, wordings, phrasings. Some-
times I don't do anything. Sometimes things sit around for a long time waiting to
be looked at again. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they get published, and
*then* I want to change them. Usually I don't. A poem is done when I don't feel
inclined to change it anymore.

Hal     "metaphor--I use them. They keep me regular."
                         --Paul Violi

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson



From CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com  Tue Jul 31 08:30:37 2001
From: CobbCoStudioArts at pro.talentx.com (Robert R.Cobb)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 05:30:37 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] translingual collage
Message-ID: <20010731123037.674362744@sitemail.everyone.net>

An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: not available
URL: <http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20010731/cc4a6cb9/attachment.ksh>

From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu  Tue Jul 31 12:22:57 2001
From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:22:57 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Stafford query
Message-ID: <l03130301b78c8babd306@[209.23.13.110]>

Can anyone tell me which poem by William Stafford includes the line "if you
purify the pond, the lilies die"?  I'm quoting from memory and may have
that wrong. . . .

Thanks.

David Graham

__________________
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
__________________




From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu  Tue Jul 31 12:23:10 2001
From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 12:23:10 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Revision
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEAEGKDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
References: <l03130303b78bd2738ca2@[209.23.13.117]>
Message-ID: <l03130300b78c7cd957b0@[209.23.13.110]>

Well, there's where we agree, I suppose:  I also revise by going back over
what I've written and either making changes or not making changes.  Glad we
cleared that up.

Perhaps where we differ is that occasionally I wonder *why* I'm making such
changes or not making changes, and whether or not there are any principles
(loose, provisional!) by which I revise.

David Graham
__________________


.  Of course I realize that those lines or
>> standards will never *be* hard and fast, given the nature of language and
>> poetry, but I confess I don't see any other way to engage the art except by
>> engaging the issue of evaluation--every time I revise, for instance.
>>
>> Maybe you'd care to say more on this topic?  How do you revise? How do you
>> know when a poem is "done"?
>>
>> David Graham
>
>I revise by going back over something and making changes or not making
>changes.
>Sometimes I try out various line-groupings, line lengths, wordings,
>phrasings. Some-
>times I don't do anything. Sometimes things sit around for a long time
>waiting to
>be looked at again. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they get published, and
>*then* I want to change them. Usually I don't. A poem is done when I don't
>feel
>inclined to change it anymore.
>
>Hal     "metaphor--I use them. They keep me regular."
>                         --Paul Violi
>
>Halvard Johnson



__________________
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
__________________




From wasanthony at yahoo.com  Tue Jul 31 13:39:58 2001
From: wasanthony at yahoo.com (jcervantes)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 10:39:58 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [New-Poetry] Revision
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b78c7cd957b0@[209.23.13.110]>
Message-ID: <20010731173958.41647.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com>

Well, David, I wonder if you ought not to think about it so much.  And,
if you do, then I think you're probably using a mode of thought and
language that differs from that of criticism and analysis.  I hate to
use this term, but it's apt:  I think the changes we make in the act of
revision are "organic" ones and that any methodology of revision is one
we might articulate when we have already abandoned the poem and can
look at it in a cold light.  To *apply* that methodology in the act of
writing - and I consider revision part of that act - would, I think,
restrict the possibilities that arise organically from the world of the
particular poem.  In a sense, each poem has its own methodology for
revision.

And, of course, I'm speaking from my own way of working, which combines
creation and revision in intense sessions.  Any major revisions happen
then.  Later, I may go back and fine-tune:  word choices, deleting
unnecessary or repetitious words.  Or not.

- Jim

--- David Graham <grahamd at mail.ripon.edu> wrote:
> Well, there's where we agree, I suppose:  I also revise by going back
> over
> what I've written and either making changes or not making changes. 
> Glad we
> cleared that up.
> 
> Perhaps where we differ is that occasionally I wonder *why* I'm
> making such
> changes or not making changes, and whether or not there are any
> principles
> (loose, provisional!) by which I revise.
> 
> David Graham
> __________________
> 
> 
> .  Of course I realize that those lines or
> >> standards will never *be* hard and fast, given the nature of
> language and
> >> poetry, but I confess I don't see any other way to engage the art
> except by
> >> engaging the issue of evaluation--every time I revise, for
> instance.
> >>
> >> Maybe you'd care to say more on this topic?  How do you revise?
> How do you
> >> know when a poem is "done"?
> >>
> >> David Graham
> >
> >I revise by going back over something and making changes or not
> making
> >changes.
> >Sometimes I try out various line-groupings, line lengths, wordings,
> >phrasings. Some-
> >times I don't do anything. Sometimes things sit around for a long
> time
> >waiting to
> >be looked at again. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they get
> published, and
> >*then* I want to change them. Usually I don't. A poem is done when I
> don't
> >feel
> >inclined to change it anymore.
> >
> >Hal     "metaphor--I use them. They keep me regular."
> >                         --Paul Violi
> >
> >Halvard Johnson
> 
> 
> 
> __________________
> David Graham
> grahamd at ripon.edu
> __________________
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry





=====
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
James Cervantes: wasanthony at yahoo.com & jvcervantes at earthlink.net
Salt River Review: <http://www.poetserv.org/>
"Ripples" @ <http://www.poetserv.net>
Poetserv:  <http://www.poetserv.com/>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/


From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Tue Jul 31 15:12:17 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:12:17 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Revision
References: <20010731173958.41647.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <3B670311.6E3@nut-n-but.net>

Jim said: " . . . I hate to use this term, but it's apt:  I 
think the changes we make in the act of revision are 'organic' 
ones and that any methodology of revision is one we might 
articulate when we have already abandoned the poem and can 
look at it in a cold light.  To *apply* that methodology in 
the act of writing - and I consider revision part of that act - 
would, I think, restrict the possibilities that arise organically 
from the world of the particular poem.  In a sense, each poem 
has its own methodology for revision.

I completely agree and completely disagree.  Go with intuition
while composing or revising.  BUT, in between, when your intuition
tells you your poem stinks but won't tell you what to do about
it, THEN subject the poem to intense critical analysis.  See
what it's doing, try to figure out what you want it to do and
it isn't doing, etc.  Of course, if my own experience is any
indication, you must be prepared to often do nothing, as well.
Putting a not-yet-three poem aside can do wonders.  Of course,
too, to each his own.

I also critique my poems from the brain after they seem finished,
and I've put them aside a while.  I'm not too methodical about it,
or necessarily overtly verbo-conceptual, but I do many or all of the
following (listed in order of importance, usually, to me):

(1) look (or feel) for dead or superfluous images, locutions, 
attitudes, techniques, etc.,
(2) assure myself the poem makes at least ONE unexpected move
(3) assure myself the poem sufficiently presents a unified effect
(though I want it also to disunify at some of its edges)
(4) worry over the balance between clarity and complexity (it
being near-impossible to get that right in almost any poem)
(5) consider whether or not the text (and my poems are texts as 
well as poems) rises above the personal to the archetypal--that is,
involves not just me but the universe as well (not that I expect 
all my poems to--just the best ones)
(6) make sure I'm not repeating previous poems of mine, at least
not TOO much
(7) try to figure out ways of convincing others that the poem 
is not a total failure

The result of my critique determines whether I deem the
poem finished or not.

                                                   --Bob G.



From halvard at earthlink.net  Tue Jul 31 15:10:59 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:10:59 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Revision
In-Reply-To: <l03130300b78c7cd957b0@[209.23.13.110]>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEHBDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

> Well, there's where we agree, I suppose:  I also revise by going back over
> what I've written and either making changes or not making changes.  Glad we
> cleared that up.
> 
> Perhaps where we differ is that occasionally I wonder *why* I'm making such
> changes or not making changes, and whether or not there are any principles
> (loose, provisional!) by which I revise.
> 
> David Graham

My usual answer to "why" questions, David, is "Well, it seemed
like a good idea at the time." And sometimes it seems like a
good idea later too. I guess I'd flunk out fast if I ever had to
take of Edward Hirsch's you-must-be-able-to-give-a-reason-
for-everything-you-do workshops or courses.  I suppose there
are some principles at work, even if I don't think about them
much before, during or after writing/revising.

E.g.: 

1. Less is better (except when more is better)
2. Use metaphor sparingly and simile even more sparingly
3. Never count anything smaller than a line
4. If it's too much work, it probably won't work

Hal     "Never eat anything larger than your head."
                         --B. Kliban

Halvard Johnson
===============
email: halvard at earthlink.net
website: http://home.earthlink.net/~halvardjohnson



From JackKerouac25 at aol.com  Tue Jul 31 15:17:20 2001
From: JackKerouac25 at aol.com (JackKerouac25 at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:17:20 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] RE:  Revision
Message-ID: <3a.188e3ea6.28985e41@aol.com>

In a message dated Tue, 31 Jul 2001  1:41:48 PM Eastern Daylight Time, jcervantes <wasanthony at yahoo.com> writes:

> In a sense, each poem has its own methodology for
> revision.
> 
> And, of course, I'm speaking from my own way of working, which combines
> creation and revision in intense sessions.  Any major revisions happen
> then.  Later, I may go back and fine-tune:  word choices, deleting
> unnecessary or repetitious words.  Or not.
> 
> - Jim
> 

Jim,

I'm glad to hear that someone else feels as I do.  If I understand you, then you're saying that revision is part of your writing process.  Since I teach composition, I've trained myself to think of writing as revision, that is to say that writing is a process, a process of eternally becoming.

I've found that when I revisit a poem after some time, I don't have the same passion for it, so my revision often leaves it flat and lifeless.  Perhaps this is a shortcoming on my part; perhaps if my work were strong enough, it would retain that same freshness and energy every time I look at it.  I don't know, but I do know that once I've let a poem set for a while, I can't do much with it.  Every now and again, I'll find myself changing a poem from a closed form to open form or the other way around, but I rarely completely overhaul a poem.

Jeff Newberry
Adjunct Instructor
Department of English and Foreign Langauges
University of West Florida


From halvard at earthlink.net  Tue Jul 31 15:13:59 2001
From: halvard at earthlink.net (Halvard Johnson)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 15:13:59 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Revision
In-Reply-To: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJECEHBDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEIEHBDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>

Forgot one:

NEVER subject the poem to intense critical
analysis.

Hal

> 1. Less is better (except when more is better)
> 2. Use metaphor sparingly and simile even more sparingly
> 3. Never count anything smaller than a line
> 4. If it's too much work, it probably won't work
> 
> Hal     "Never eat anything larger than your head."
>                          --B. Kliban
> 



From moira_russell at hotmail.com  Tue Jul 31 18:33:05 2001
From: moira_russell at hotmail.com (Moira Russell)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 14:33:05 -0800
Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Revision
Message-ID: <F119Hmq9PXKmr36P64n0001173d@hotmail.com>

This got me thinking analytically about my method of composition, which I 
dimly feel somewhere is sort of a Bad Thing (remembering the centipede lying 
in the ditch unable to remember which foot goes after which and so on).  
But, dimly and semi-coherently:  I almost always start off with an image, 
nearly a picture, which has to really grip me.  Sometimes I get nearly a 
whole first line, or the first two or three lines, which rarely change when 
they come like that.  A good method for me when working in form is to tease 
around other people's sonnets, quatrains, couplets, whatever, and usually 
what I'll wind up with is so completely different from the original I 
imagine someone would be hard-pressed to trace it.  Those experiments 
usually get thrown out, however, but they're good for working up.  I gained 
a lot of heart when younger from seeing a draft of Elizabeth Bishop's "The 
art of losing isn't hard to master," because I tend to go wild at first, 
have too many lines and images I can't use, too many ways the poem could go, 
too many planned stanzas.  Usually more than half of that goes.  Usually 
what I'll wind up with is something slowly in the process of evolving, first 
second and third or whatever stanzas fairly set, fourth and fifth jelling, 
sixth and seventh still being messed around with.  Sometimes what results 
from the coming-together of stanzas six and seven (just as an example) is 
the dumping of stanzas one two and three.

(interrupted by a ten-minute monologue from a co-worker about her graduate 
advisor.  eek.  flashback)

Anyhow, what I'm trying to say rather long-windedly here, is something I saw 
in the Anne Sexton biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook:  the method is:  
write, write, write.  Then (and only then), in a separate process:  cut, 
cut, cut (or revise, revise, revise).  Then, back to write, write, write.  
Cut, cut, cut.  Repeat until you have something good.  This is the important 
part for me -- the writing and the editing/cutting/revising portions have to 
be separate.  If you go in with an editorial eye and try to spontaneously 
create, you'll freeze yourself up.  If you're not rigorous enough and 
looking for possible flaws when editing, you'll wind up not knowing what to 
cut.  I also find passing a poem by at least another pair or 2 of eyes helps 
immensely.

I forget who it was who said "a writer must murder his darlings" -- although 
it does seem like the worked-over sections of a poem are what tend to suffer 
most.  I also used to be rather nervous over those moments when the poem 
suddenly flew off in another direction entirely, but I've come to see those 
moments as gifts, no matter how much they wreck carefully laid-out plans.

A good exercise for me if a poem isn't working is to "prose" it, to lay out 
a kind of prose argument of it in completely non-poetic (non-formal-poetic 
anyway) form.  This usually always starts to turn to poetry by the end, and 
it's a good way to see the subject in a different way.

But I usually feel very suspicious talking about my working methods (and 
it's fairly rare for me to show work to someone if it's not in a 
semi-finished state) so I'll quit now.

Moira Russell
Seattle, WA

Wise Wretch! with Pleasures too refin'd to please;
With too much Spirit to be e'er at ease;
With too much Quickness ever to be taught;
With too much Thinking to have common Thought:
You purchase Pain with all that Joy can give,
And die of nothing but a Rage to live.
-- Alexander Pope

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



From duemer at clarkson.edu  Tue Jul 31 18:34:37 2001
From: duemer at clarkson.edu (Joseph Duemer)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:34:37 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] RE: Revision
References: <F119Hmq9PXKmr36P64n0001173d@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <029301c11a10$fc8bbde0$b7f6fea9@fwvfv>

"You must kill your darlings." [Faulkner (I think)]

jd
======================
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts, 5750 
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315.268.3967
duemer at clarkson.edu
http://web.northnet.org/duemer
http://www.grammarbitch.com/ppp/index.html
====================== 


Times are bad. Children no longer
Obey their parents, and everyone
Is writing a book.

[Cicero]




From klvarnes at home.com  Tue Jul 31 18:43:41 2001
From: klvarnes at home.com (Kathrine Varnes)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 17:43:41 -0500
Subject: [New-Poetry] Revision
In-Reply-To: <3B670311.6E3@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <B78C9ECC.3E26%klvarnes@home.com>

I have no methodology that I can put into words, but several times I've
revised a poem, lost the revision somehow, and then a year or so later
revised the poem again.  Then, finally cleaning my office, or performing a
post-semester purge, I discover the first revision, only to realize that the
second revision did the same thing.  Sort of creepy; sort of comforting.

Speaking of revision, though, I really recommend _De/compositions_, a recent
book by W. D. Snodgrass, parts of which appears in Southern Review a while
back (and I think someone here--David?-- mentioned). He revises the old
chestnuts and a few great poems by the younger set, like Alice Fulton, into
utter poetic disasters, then offers them side by side.  It's instructive to
see what he takes out or alters (sometimes not much), not just for students
but for poets looking for how to revise a poem from a de-composed state to a
cherished one.  Plus it's a real hoot when he takes a word like
"liquifaction" out of -- oh, you know what poem it is! -- and replaces it
with "scintillation."  Or when he takes "Still to Be Neat" and "The Tyger,"
for instance, and casts them in several different meters.  Or puts William
Carlos Williams's "Poem" into prose to show how important lineation is.

Kathrine



From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Tue Jul 31 18:56:05 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:56:05 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Revision
References: <KOECIOJIGMDEJAEGDFJEIEHBDOAA.halvard@earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <3B673785.4726@nut-n-but.net>

Another way is:

(1) put your poem as quickly as possible onto paper
(2) get permanently away from it lest it tell you something
about itself, or you, that you don't have the courage to face

                                           --Bob G.



From duemer at clarkson.edu  Tue Jul 31 19:09:22 2001
From: duemer at clarkson.edu (Joseph Duemer)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 19:09:22 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Revision
References: <20010731173958.41647.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> <3B670311.6E3@nut-n-but.net>
Message-ID: <02ba01c11a15$d65dee40$b7f6fea9@fwvfv>

<<(1) look (or feel) for dead or superfluous images, locutions, attitudes,
techniques, etc.>>

But one must be careful not to reify such notions. What is "superfluous" is
not universal or, alas, ultimately even knowable. Having said as much, I
tend to go back through my poems & look for forms of "to be," almost always
changing them to some less abstract verb.

<<(2) assure myself the poem makes at least ONE unexpected move . . . >>

What is "unexpected" in one decade becomes old hat in the next.

<<(3) assure myself the poem sufficiently presents a unified effect (though
I want it also to disunify at some of its edges)>>

The notion of "unity" is highly variable, even in science. "All that is
solid dissolves into air."

And so on. I make these responses not to pick a fight, but because I am
myself less & less interested in fine writing, which is what all these
procedures--& those mentioned by others--are designed to produce. I am less
& less interested in the poem as a production . . . but that's more than I
can take on in a single post. Revision, for me, is increasingly a
negotiation--with whom or what I am not quite sure.

jd
======================
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts, 5750
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315.268.3967
duemer at clarkson.edu
http://web.northnet.org/duemer
http://www.grammarbitch.com/ppp/index.html
======================


Times are bad. Children no longer
obey their parents, and everyone
is writing a book.

[Cicero]




From antrobin at clipper.net  Tue Jul 31 19:20:33 2001
From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 16:20:33 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] Revision
References: <20010731173958.41647.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> <3B670311.6E3@nut-n-but.net> <02ba01c11a15$d65dee40$b7f6fea9@fwvfv>
Message-ID: <01e701c11a17$692532a0$2aaeefd8@0021936706>

I've been following this thread with interest and thought I'd put in my
two-hundredths of a buck.

My writing "process," if it can be called such, is similar to Jim's.  I sit
my ass down in the chair and write.  I push out a draft, (usually occasioned
by a line or a rhythm I hear in my head...if it's just a rhythm, I ferment
until I can put interesting words to the rhythm, then begin.  Just as often,
a line, fully-formed pops into my mind, so I begin with that.  Less often, I
happen upon a startling image and go from there. More and more, I find my
creativity sparked by lines from other poems. In any case, when it's time to
write, I know...I just have to sit and do it.)  This first draft is
sometimes nearly complete when I get up from my desk, although I always
tinker, replacing words here and there.   I rarely have success with
completely overhauling a poem, and my publication history seems to back this
up.  The poems accepted for publication are almost always one-offs, poems
that come to me nearly complete and are written in one session, with minor
tweaks in the days or weeks that follow.  What this means, I don't  know.  I
feel uncomfortable discussing "craft" because I'm not sure I consciously
"craft" poems--or the ones I do attempt to craft end up in the round file.

So I'm interested by Joe's statement below:

>I am myself less & less interested in fine writing, which is what all these
> procedures--& those mentioned by others--are designed to produce. I am
less
> & less interested in the poem as a production . .

I too, find myself less-interested in "fine writing" although, I'd be hard
pressed to say what that is exactly.  Care to elaborate?

Tony



From duemer at clarkson.edu  Tue Jul 31 21:18:25 2001
From: duemer at clarkson.edu (Joseph Duemer)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 21:18:25 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fine Writing
References: <20010731173958.41647.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> <3B670311.6E3@nut-n-but.net> <02ba01c11a15$d65dee40$b7f6fea9@fwvfv> <01e701c11a17$692532a0$2aaeefd8@0021936706>
Message-ID: <02de01c11a27$dd8f7e60$b7f6fea9@fwvfv>

Anthony,
any response I give will be tentative, the result of growing disquiet with
my own practice. I make no prescriptions for others. I am simply tired of
writing & reading poems that are finished objects, that seem to seal
themselves off on the page with all the neat little tricks of the trade. I
say this having learned, I think, most of those tricks. I haven't written
anything since finishing the poems in my next book, but when I begin writing
again I hope that the poems somehow take themselves apart on the page. I
hope they have bad manners. I hope they do not need to be embarrassed by
their own beauty or their own beliefs.

jd
======================
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts, 5750
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315.268.3967
duemer at clarkson.edu
http://web.northnet.org/duemer
http://www.grammarbitch.com/ppp/index.html
======================


Times are bad. Children no longer
Obey their parents, and everyone
Is writing a book.

[Cicero]




From antrobin at clipper.net  Tue Jul 31 21:26:10 2001
From: antrobin at clipper.net (Anthony Robinson)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 18:26:10 -0700
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fine Writing
References: <20010731173958.41647.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> <3B670311.6E3@nut-n-but.net> <02ba01c11a15$d65dee40$b7f6fea9@fwvfv> <01e701c11a17$692532a0$2aaeefd8@0021936706> <02de01c11a27$dd8f7e60$b7f6fea9@fwvfv>
Message-ID: <027601c11a29$403ff840$2aaeefd8@0021936706>

Ah,

Thanks.  I just wanted to hear it from someone--
My own poetic practice seems to be coming apart bit by bit as well. The
poems I write that I like (and the ones that others--editors anyway--seem to
favor lately) are not by any means neat and "finished."

After living through (and trying to forget) a lot of workshops and the like,
this is refreshing, but also a bit alarming.
I'm not sure what I mean...but I understand where you're coming from, I
think.

Bad manners galore, indeed.

Thanks for this,
Tony




> Anthony,
> any response I give will be tentative, the result of growing disquiet with
> my own practice. I make no prescriptions for others. I am simply tired of
> writing & reading poems that are finished objects, that seem to seal
> themselves off on the page with all the neat little tricks of the trade. I
> say this having learned, I think, most of those tricks. I haven't written
> anything since finishing the poems in my next book, but when I begin
writing
> again I hope that the poems somehow take themselves apart on the page. I
> hope they have bad manners. I hope they do not need to be embarrassed by
> their own beauty or their own beliefs.
>
> jd
> ======================
> Joseph Duemer
> School of Liberal Arts, 5750
> Clarkson University
> Potsdam NY 13699
> 315.268.3967
> duemer at clarkson.edu
> http://web.northnet.org/duemer
> http://www.grammarbitch.com/ppp/index.html
> ======================
>
>
> Times are bad. Children no longer
> Obey their parents, and everyone
> Is writing a book.
>
> [Cicero]
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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  Tue Jul 31 22:39:00 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 22:39:00 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Revision
References: <20010731173958.41647.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> <3B670311.6E3@nut-n-but.net> <02ba01c11a15$d65dee40$b7f6fea9@fwvfv>
Message-ID: <3B676BC3.1C12@nut-n-but.net>

<<(1) look (or feel) for dead or superfluous images, locutions,
attitudes, techniques, etc.>>
> 
> But one must be careful not to reify such notions. What is > "superfluous" is not universal or, alas, ultimately even knowable.

"Superfluous" to me. 

> <<(2) assure myself the poem makes at least ONE unexpected move . . . 

> What is "unexpected" in one decade becomes old hat in the next.

"unexpected" to me--at the time. 

<<(3) assure myself the poem sufficiently presents a unified effect 
> (though I want it also to disunify at some of its edges)>>
 
> The notion of "unity" is highly variable, even in science. 
> "All that is solid dissolves into air."

"unity" for me.  And, I believe, for sensible scientists.  For
instance, the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen are unified in water 
at room temperature are unified in a way that the atoms of oxygen 
and nitrogen are not unified in air.  No term can cover anything
absolutely, but the best come close enough.

> And so on. I make these responses not to pick a fight, 
> but because I am myself less & less interested in fine writing, 

well, in my case, excellent art since I use many means besides
words, and my "rules" apply to all of them.

> which is what all these procedures--& those mentioned by others--
> are designed to produce. I am less & less interested in the poem 
> as a production . . . but that's more than I can take on in a 
> single post. Revision, for me, is increasingly a
> negotiation--with whom or what I am not quite sure.

Couldjuh at least let us know how a poem can not be a
production?  And what you want it to be--particularly what
you want it to be that does not require words or other 
tools that do SOMETHING effectively?

                                         --Bob G.



From BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net  Tue Jul 31 22:54:31 2001
From: BobGrumman at nut-n-but.net (Bob Grumman)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 22:54:31 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Fine Writing
References: <20010731173958.41647.qmail@web12104.mail.yahoo.com> <3B670311.6E3@nut-n-but.net> <02ba01c11a15$d65dee40$b7f6fea9@fwvfv> <01e701c11a17$692532a0$2aaeefd8@0021936706> <02de01c11a27$dd8f7e60$b7f6fea9@fwvfv>
Message-ID: <3B676F67.71E1@nut-n-but.net>

Joseph Duemer wrote:
> 
> Anthony,
> any response I give will be tentative, the result of growing disquiet with
> my own practice. I make no prescriptions for others. I am simply tired of
> writing & reading poems that are finished objects, that seem to seal
> themselves off on the page with all the neat little tricks of the trade. I
> say this having learned, I think, most of those tricks. I haven't written
> anything since finishing the poems in my next book, but when I begin writing
> again I hope that the poems somehow take themselves apart on the page. I
> hope they have bad manners. I hope they do not need to be embarrassed by
> their own beauty or their own beliefs.

This pretty much answers the question I asked in my last post
about poems that aren't "productions."  I continue always to want
my poems to seem finished (to me) but (1) finished in ways other
poems aren't, or aren't too often at present; and (2) containing 
unfinishable routes beyond the poem (which means, to be more
accurate, that I want a poem of mine to be a sort of finished 
collection of unfinishables around a center that's finished, and
holds the poem together).

Hope I haven't been sounding too pompous/pretentious but I do a 
lot of thinking about this subject, mainly because I sincerely fear 
I don't much know what I'm doing--and want to.

                                                --Bob G.

                                                

                                              

finished collections



From grahamd at mail.ripon.edu  Tue Jul 31 22:57:16 2001
From: grahamd at mail.ripon.edu (David Graham)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 22:57:16 -0400
Subject: [New-Poetry] Revised Revision
Message-ID: <l03130300b78d14049040@[208.20.85.227]>

This has been a fascinating spread of takes on revision (and by the way,
it's very nice to see you, Joe Duemer, joining us here at NewPoetry).  Some
scattered (unrevised!) thoughts on the matter.

For me it's not possible anymore to separate my aesthetics from my pedagogy
for very long.  What I remember from my long-ago training in composition
theory is mainly that revision is a recursive process.   That, and the
handy trick of splitting the word apart to show how "vision" is built in,
to distinguish true revision from mere editing.

Of course, I hardly needed a textbook to tell me these things, but as I
recall it was pleasant to see how much of the theory the kindly
rhetoricians were throwing at us teaching assistants tended to confirm my
seat-of-the-pants knowledge from practice.

And in my book, theory informs practice, tests and contests and overturns
and confirms it, or else it's of little interest to me, a distant parlor
game that some seem to enjoy.  Which is not to say that I write or revise
to cookbook recipe, maintain a single unchanging set of revision standards,
or fail to understand the slipperyness and necessary provisionality of all
this.

But neither is it to believe, as some seem to, that "we murder to dissect"
whenever critical analysis enters the picture--in creation or revision.
Does analysis sour the poetic milk?  Not in my experience, any more than
reading great poetry and being influenced by it necessarily produces
slavish imitation.

In my own practice I do often find it useful to turn off the censor as much
as possible during initial drafting (and the textbooks are full of useful
prompts to accomplish this)--but even that's impossible, strictly speaking.
I've simply been at this business too long for anything I write to be truly
"automatic," and like anyone else I have internalized quite a number of
crafty tricks, rules, proclivities, habits, or what have you.    And it can
be equally interesting, I find, to deliberately turn that censor
on--especially when I've been writing loosely or intuitively for a
while--and see what happens.  Or to set out to violate some of my usual
habits, etc.

This is all familiar enough workshop stuff.

I suspect that at heart I am more like Hal Johnson than not:  I "know" when
a poem is finished when it feels right to me, or feels productively
"wrong," or otherwise satisfies some momentary or longer-lasting whim.
(And all of this in context of quite a bit of craft knowledge that as a
novice I had to learn gradually.)  It can take a rather long time for me to
"know" such a thing--not unusual for me to work on a poem for years.
Still, I have to admit that I do find it useful to mull over the "why"
questions, from time to time--if nothing else, it helps keep me humble, for
pride goeth before bombast, cant, cliche, and triviality.  And I was struck
by something Donald Hall said in an essay:  anything worth learning must
continually be re-learned.  So it seems to me.

My favorite and perhaps most effective way of revising simply involves
cutting--not the article-chopping or verb-wrangling that I would categorize
as part of editing, but the wholesale cutting of entire lines, stanzas, and
poems, working toward some gist that the poem itself seems to suggest, and
that I could not have seen before writing it.  Some platonic notion of
lyric economy lies behind most such moves, naturally; and as Joe Duemer
suggests, it can be fun to violate those proprieties, too, when the
occasion is right.  Earlier this summer I found myself exploring strategies
of delay and digression, for instance, which went very much against my
grain and maybe produced a "good" poem or two.

In practical terms, I think I've been evolving fairly steadily in some of
the "impure" directions that Joe and Anthony speak of, too.  "Show, don't
tell" was the first rule to vanish from my rulebook, though I still expose
my students to the concept, for the good that they may find in it, and for
the fun of outgrowing it.

I've had the experience Kathrine Varnes mentions, too:  revising a poem
twice and then discovering, after the fact, that both revisions are about
the same.  I find that my marginal notes and underlinings in books tend to
be the same, also, even when I am re-reading after a long time has passed.
What this says about me I don't even want to know. . . .

David Graham
---------------------------












__________________
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
__________________




From Rsgwynn1 at cs.com  Tue Jul 31 23:46:55 2001
From: Rsgwynn1 at cs.com (Rsgwynn1 at cs.com)
Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 23:46:55 EDT
Subject: [New-Poetry] Revision
Message-ID: <da.9e364a0.2898d5af@cs.com>

De/Compositions is a great book for teaching idiom and diction.  Snodgrass 
keeps the form in most cases but reduces everything else to lame paraphrase.  
It's fun--and instructive.

I revise all the time, sometimes on poems that are years old.  I don't think 
that just because a poem has appeared in print that that means that you've 
had your final say on it.
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